THE GATHERER.
A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.
SHAKSPEARE.
A clergyman of the name of Mathson was minister of Patteesdale, in Westmoreland, sixty years, and died at the age of ninety. During the early part of his life, his benefice brought him in only twelve pounds a-year; it was afterwards increased (perhaps by Queen Anne's bounty) to eighteen, which it never exceeded. On this income he married, brought up four children, and lived comfortably with his neighbours, educated a son at the university, and left behind him upwards of one thousand pounds. With that singular simplicity and inattention to forms which characterize a country life, thus he himself read the burial service over his mother, he married his father to a second wife, and afterwards buried him also. He published his own banns of marriage in the church, with a woman he had formerly christened, and he himself married all his four children.