MINISTER'S BOY. 271 



crops will probably not do more than cover half 

 that sum. And if to diminish the cost of man- 

 agement only one horse is kept, then is the power 

 inadequate to the plough, and the next resource 

 is a good neighbour, possessed in like manner of a 

 little farm and a solitary beast. But the neigh- 

 bour is not long good in a ticklish time when the 

 dust is on the harrow, and the turnip seed has the 

 promise of a shower. Another expedient is to 

 keep two horses, and rent fifty acres to be wrought 

 along with the glebe. But then, alas! no work 

 is ever right, whether as to time or place or quantity, 

 without the constant eye of the master; and the 

 result is one of two the minister either sinks his 

 calling, or loses his substance and becomes bank- 

 rupt. Such disasters, whether from neighbourly 

 quarrels or ruined affairs, have led to the better 

 resort of letting the glebe or of hiring a plough; 

 and hence the man is no longer a necessary appen- 

 dage to the manse. But the minister is not fit 

 for the parish without a pony, and the pony can- 

 not be kept without a boy, who will be half and 

 consequently wholly idle if he have not other work 

 to do: Such is the garden implement now under 

 consideration. 



Whatever may be the outcry as to the useless- 

 ness of this official, let it be remembered, in the 

 first instance, that he is indispensable to the pony, 

 as the pony is to the minister; and further, that 

 he is, if an idle boy, a substitute for an idle man 

 a spectacle less easy to be looked at. And as an 



