petitioner left the house of the Reverend
Ambrose Grovel, and betook himself, for the
remainder of the year of preparation, to
Mangold- Wurzel, Hall, the seat of the
Reverend Sir Trulliber Western; that there
he acquired considerable skill in fattening
pigs, and the crossing of breeds; and, as he
was known to excel in the training and
breaking of horses, did train and break in
both to hounds and harness, several of the
best bred hunters and carriage horses in the
county of Hants:

THAT being now upwards of three-and-
twenty years of age, full of health and spirits,
anxious to volunteer for the exploration of
Africa, or the extermination of hostile nations
by the sword, your petitioner—by the persuasion
and promises of his guardians aforesaid;
that is to say, of his two aunts, each with five
hundred a-year at her absolute disposal; of
Sir Trulliber Western, Baronet, aforesaid;
and further, of an old bachelor cousin, who
was reported to have murdered and robbed
an Indian princess at the taking of Seringapatam,
who was honoured and respected
accordingly, and who strongly urged the necessity
of the contemplated step, merely to keep so
much animal courage and robust enterprise
in order—was presented to the bishop as a
simple esquire, and came out with a handle
to his name, and the perpetual obligation to
wear white neckcloths and a black coat:

THAT your petitioner now found himself
established in a parish where there was no
parsonage-house, and where no resident
minister had been heard of, either before or
after the Reformation; where the population
was so purely agricultural, that it could
neither read nor write, nor do anything but
drink and swear; where the roads were
impassable for half the year; and a school,
which had once been founded by a benevolent
blacksmith, for the promulgation of Mormonism,
was converted into a cock-pit. That in
this parish—without rectory, without school,
without rector, with a pauper population,
and untravellable roads—your petitioner
spent upwards of seven months, with no
society, no visitor, no comfortable lodging, no
encouragement from bishop, no superintendence
from archdeacon; and was rapidly
falling into habits of private gin-and-water
and innumerable meerschaum pipes, but
fortunately was prevented from further
degradation by the death of one of the maiden
aunts already mentioned, as having the
absolute disposal of five hundred a-year:

THAT your petitioner's said aunt had
purchased for his benefit the next presentation
to a valuable living, in a favourite county,
within easy distance of three packs of hounds,
and with excellent shooting, easily procured,
in the neighbourhood:

THAT to make this purchase legal (which it
would not have been if it had been effected
during the vacancy of the said valuable
living), your petitioner's said aunt had insisted
on the patron communicating to the vacant
cure of souls the oldest and most unhealthy
clergyman that could be discovered in the
diocese; and, for this end, had recommended
a man of upwards of eighty, who had had
three different strokes of paralysis, had been
for forty years a martyr to the gout, and was
pronounced not likely to survive longer than
was absolutely necessary to read into the
said valuable living, and so make the
purchase of it a legal transaction:

THAT scarcely had the said old man been
inducted, and thereby put in possession of
the temporalities—to the great increase of
fame and reputation to the patron, who was
described in the county newspapers as a
model of kindness and generosity, in at last
rewarding the services of a curate who had
been neglected for sixty years—than a
remarkable change took place in the new
incumbent's health: that he grew fat and rosy,
drove out in a nice phaeton with a pair of
ponies, and smiled in a significant manner;
that then the possibility of a bride and a
specious nursery in the parsonage, was hinted
at by his friends:

THAT your petitioner felt a most injurious
change taking place in his Christian sentiments;
that he hated the said new incumbent
in a manner, and to a degree, in which he
had never hated any one before; that he
looked every morning into the list of deaths
in the newspapers, and gave way to execrations
and ejaculations of the bitterest and
most vulgar kind, when he failed to perceive
the old gentleman's name in the said list;
that he detested all old persons whatever,
and wished a law to be passed making it
penal for any one to live beyond sixty years;
or, that so much of the Hindoo faith should
be engrafted on the Christian as consisted in
putting aged individuals to an honourable
death. That his feelings of objection to the
longevity of the said new incumbent were
excited nearly to frenzy, when Miss Sophia
Western, the youngest daughter of the
before-mentioned Sir Trulliber Western, to
whom your petitioner was engaged by the
most formal promises and vows, declared she
could not wait any longer for an old parson's
demise, who would probably exist till the
frame of all things was dissolved in universal
destruction at the end of the world: and,
accordingly, married her cousin, Jack
Allworthy, who had bought some land in
Canada, and was going out to settle upon his
estate:

THAT your petitioner, on the occurrence of
this blow, determined to console himself for
the delay in his anticipated increase of
income, by buying a share in some lucrative
and respectable business; that with that view,
he applied the remainder of the succession
of his said aunt to the purchase of one-sixth
part of a banking concern, long established,
and holding out great advantages to any
person of good education and steady habits