Note 13 — Chapter V

I cannot help relating a pathetically amusing remark I once heard in a Dorsetshire cottage. I had looked in on the good housewife in the course of a long walk, and she was telling me about the needs and straits of a recent time of illness. The aged Vicar of the large and thinly-peopled parish was a well-to-do man, and not at all unkind in meaning and manner. But he never gave alms, or indeed material help of any kind. "Poor Mr——," said the cottager, with the kindliest naïveté, "he never do give away anything. There, I suppose it be his affliction."