Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

ISO RHYS LEWIS.
In a sraall, quiet place, tlie "Vicar of the parish," is at no
time an inconsiderable personage. It often happens that there
is a readiness, or an over-readiness, to acknowledge the im-
portance of the fortunate occupant of the Vicarage. His
irremovability from office has possibly a tendency to cause the
Vicar, on his side, to receive, with a good grace, whatever of
importance might be laid upon him, and sometimes a little
more, just as he may be naturally inclined. Mr. Brown was no
exception to the rule, and if there was a man in the town of my
birth who was less respected than he deserved to be, that man
was not Mr. Brown. He was a portly, double-chinned, genial
gentleman, and although I would on no account insinuate that
he " walked as men," still he was, in the literal sense of the
word, "carnal." He bore about his person signs that his living,
worth seven hundred a year, had not been without its bless-
ings. And when I say that others were benefitted by his
comfortable circumstances, I am paying his memory a tribute
which it rightly deserves. Never was his ear heavy to the cry
of the needy, nor his pocket buttoned against the poor and
afiflicted. In him the widow and the orphan found a kindly
friend— especially if they attended Church. Although. Mr.
Brown, like everybody else, was obliged to remember that aearer
is elbow than wrist, the wrist— that is to say, the poor Dissenter
— was not altogether forgotten. "When appealed to for help, if he
could not see his way clear to contribute from his own purse, or
from those legacies left him " as long as water ran," by the de-
parted whose names appeared on the walls of the church, he would
invariably say a good word for the applicants to some guardian
or other, so as to secure them a few pence from the parish. If
anybody wanted a letter of recommendation, it was to Mr. Brown
he went for it. No town's movement, of any consequence,
was complete if Mr. Brown's name did not figure in connection
therewith. However severe their rheumatism, the shaking old
man and the bent old woman, must doff the hat and curtsey to
Mr. Brown when they met him. Those idlers and loafers who
hang around street corners, whose means of living no man
knows, when they saw Mr. Brown, ceased their funning, hid
their cutty-pipes in their palms and touched their hats to
him as he went by. There was some kind of winsomeness.