When it was known that I was to preach my last sermon on the last sabbath of 1810, everyone, including the seceders to the meeting-house, made it a point to be in the parish kirk, or to stand in the crowd that made a lane of reverence for me to pass from the kirk door to the back-yett of the manse.  It was a moving discourse, and there were few dry eyes in the kirk that day; for my bidding them farewell was as when of old among the heathen an idol was taken away by the hand of the enemy.  Shortly after, a deputation of the seceders, with their minister at their head, came to me and presented a server of silver in token of their esteem of my blameless life, and the charity I had practised towards the poor.

I am thankful that I have been spared with a sound mind to write this book to the end, having really no more to say, saving only to wish a blessing on all people from on high, where I soon hope to be, and to meet there all the old and long-departed sheep of my flock, especially the first and second Mrs. Balwhidders.

* * * * *

ELIZABETH CLEGHORN GASKELL

Cranford

Mrs. Gaskell, whose maiden name was Elizabeth C. Stevenson, was born in Chelsea, London, Sept. 29, 1810.  She married a Unitarian clergyman in Manchester.  Her first literary work was published anonymously, and met with a storm of mingled approval and disapproval.  Charles Dickens invited her to contribute to his “Household Words,” and it was in the pages of that famous periodical, at intervals between December 13, 1851, and May 21, 1853, that her charming sketches of social life in a little country town first appeared.  In June, 1853, they were grouped together under the title of “Cranford,” meeting with wide approval, and have long taken rank as one of the accepted English classics.  The town which figures here as Cranford is understood to have been Knutsford, in Cheshire, which still retains something of that old-world feeling and restfulness which Mrs. Gaskell embodied in the pages of her most engaging book.  “Cranford” is probably the direct progenitor of many latter-day books of the class to which the word “idyll” has been somewhat loosely applied.  Its charm and freshness are unfading; it remains unique and unrivalled as a sympathetic and kindly humorous description of English provincial life.  Mrs. Gaskell died in November, 1865.

I.—­Our Society

On the first visit I paid to Cranford, after I had left it as a residence, I was astonished to find a man had settled there—­a Captain Brown.  In my time Cranford was in possession of the Amazons.  If a married couple came to settle there, somehow the man always disappeared.  Either he was fairly frightened to death by being the only man at the evening parties, or he was accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely connected in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on the railroad.