By Elizabeth L. Banks.

I remember well the pleasurable excitement that announcement used to cause in our farming neighbourhood. We children, sometimes swinging upon the topmost railing of the wicket gates, from which height we could espy the parson's "buggy" afar off, were often proud to be the first bearers of the tidings of his approach. But it was not always we who saw him first. There were times when, obeying the commands of our elders that we must never swing on the "front yard gate because it loosened the hinges," we felt chagrined over the fact that, though we were good, obedient children, we were denied the privilege of first noting the parson's horse round the hedge, in his slow, safe, jog-trot style—a style, by the way, that we all thought the proper equipment of a minister's horse. There were days when our fathers and our brothers and the "hired men," ploughing in the farm fields, hastily dropped their work, tying their horses to the fence-posts, and strode hurriedly to the house with the bit of always welcome news that the parson was making his quarterly round of country visits and might shortly be expected at that particular house, which must forthwith be "tidied up" most especially in his honour. Orders were straightway given that the manufacture of mud-pies in the back yard must be at once abandoned. There was a scurrying to the garden pump or the wash-basin, hands and faces were scrubbed, straying locks were plastered back from our foreheads; soiled, dark gingham aprons were exchanged for clean, stiffly starched, light print ones; and then we were led into the "parlour" and bidden to "sit still and quiet and nice and tidy" in readiness for the parson's visit. If, when the parson was espied, it was near the noon dinner-hour or the night supper-time, extra preparations were made for the approaching meal. Slices of highly valued "pound cake" were brought from the larder, the cellar was ransacked for the choicest jar of home-made jam, and, if time allowed, an unlucky chicken was chased into a corner of the barn-yard and assassinated, to help provide a feast deemed worthy to set before the parson.

The parson lived in the village, some five miles distant. He preached every Sunday morning and evening in the village church to a congregation of perhaps fifty souls, and received from them a salary of five hundred dollars a year. Once in two weeks he drove out to our school-house on the Sunday afternoon to preach to the farmers and their families, who did not attend the village church because they considered it a cruelty to horses that had worked all the week to be obliged to carry the family to church on Sunday. We in our district added one hundred dollars "and a donation party" to the minister's salary. The inhabitants of another farming district, six miles on the other side of the village, rewarded the parson in the same way for preaching to them on the alternate Sundays when he did not come to us; so the minister had, all told, seven hundred dollars a year (£140), and two "donation parties"—not a large sum on which to support a family of five, yet considerably more than Goldsmith's village preacher, who was "passing rich on forty pounds a year."

Four times a year the minister visited all his country parishioners. It generally took him two or three days to go the rounds in one neighbourhood—a neighbourhood, I may say, extended over several miles. He would leave "town" (there were six hundred inhabitants in the place where he presided over the only steepled meeting-house of his three charges!) early in the morning, and reach the first house where he was to call at about ten o'clock. At noon he would have his dinner with some one of the farmer folk, being careful to select for his noon call a family with whom he had not partaken bread on his previous visit of three or six months back; for to have the parson to dinner or supper or to "put him up for the night" was an honour for which there was great rivalry, and he tried to be impartial in his distribution of such favours. During the meal hours, the minister's horse fared as sumptuously as did his good master. Apples and sugar and turnips and carrots and all the luxuries that the farm produced were given to the animal by the children of the place, while the farmer or his hired help brought out their choicest corn and bran and oats and fragrant hay. Nothing was too good for the minister and his horse. Indeed, even the "buggy" would be washed up and made "fit" during the interval of the meal hour.

Happy was that house and its dwellers with whom the minister elected to call late in the evening. The "spare bedroom," which adjoined the parlour and was only opened and aired on great occasions, was given over to him, and he slept upon the softest feather bed, amid the snowiest linen, and beneath a white-fringed canopy. In the morning the usual six o'clock breakfast would be delayed on his account until 6.30, and an hour later the minister was jogging along in his buggy to the next farmhouse.

I have written this much about the country parson with whom my own childhood was associated, because he was a typical American country parson then, and he is typical now. His round of duties and pleasures during his country visits are identical with that of hundreds of others of our country parsons. The practice of taking charge of a village church and then preaching on Sunday afternoons in the neighbouring country schoolhouses, is followed to a very great extent throughout the United States. The salary received is sometimes more, sometimes less, than what I have mentioned. What these men and their wonderful wives are able to do for themselves and their children on salaries ranging from six hundred to a thousand dollars a year is little less than miraculous. I have spoken of the "wonderful wives" of our country parsons. Here is a description of the wife of the country parson who preached in our school-house. She was not and is not unique. There are very many like her.

When she married the parson, she was a graduate of one of our best "mixed colleges." She took her diploma on the day that the man whom she afterwards married took his. She had taken the course in Greek and Latin, the higher mathematics, French, and German. When I knew her as the parson's wife, she gave lessons in French, music, and painting. The young mother of three children, she not only had no nursemaid to look after them, but she had no servants in her kitchen. She did all the housework, including the family washing and ironing, and the baking of the bread and cakes and pies. She made her children's dresses and her own. The parson's shirt front and his spotless white lawn ties were "laundered" by her. At ten o'clock in the morning she presided over the wash-tub, and at three in the afternoon she read Cicero, perhaps in the same kitchen while waiting for the bread to bake in the oven. She never looked untidy, our parson's wife! Even when hanging over the wash-tub or the bread-tray, she wore a smart-looking stuff dress, kept always clean by the donning of an immense bibbed apron. She had not an "at home" day, nor even an "at home" hour. She was always at home when she was in the house, at whatever hour of the day or night a visitor might knock at her front door. If, while in the kitchen, she heard the knocking that announced callers, the bibbed apron was thrown off, and in less than a minute later she appeared at the door, well-dressed and smiling. She was the confidante of all those in trouble; she gave advice to those married and those about to marry; she was president of the Ladies' Aid Society; she led the sewing circle, she played the church organ every Sunday morning and led the singing of the choir as well; she taught a class in the Sunday-school, and then went home and got dinner in time for her husband to start for his school-house preaching. Sunday night she presided over the young people's prayer meeting which preceded the regular preaching service. Twice a year she gave her own children a "party," to which all the other village children were invited. She formed "Bands of Mercy" in all the country round, and wrote little stories for the children to read at their meetings on the subject of kindness to dumb animals.

Her house was often the scene of weddings, for those young women who could not be married at home (church weddings were a rarity), went to the parsonage to be married. There was always cake in the parsonage, and on these occasions the lady of the house would bring forth a bit of it from the larder for the bride and groom, for whom it served as the "wedding cake."

Country parsons—indeed, I think I may say nearly all American clergymen in both city and country—give the fees they receive at weddings to their wives. It is understood that the wedding fee is the perquisite of the minister's wife. Five dollars (£1) is looked upon by the ordinary country parson as a liberal fee. The very rich village grocer or country farmer occasionally astonishes the officiating clergyman with ten dollars, but such a happening is an event that could not be expected to occur oftener than once in a country parson's lifetime. The young man for whom the parson performs the all-important ceremony usually gives what he thinks he can afford. He may give two dollars. He would scarcely give less than that amount in money.

Then there is "payment in kind." A young couple frequently drive up to the parsonage in a "lumber waggon" filled with potatoes, or turnips, or firewood, or flour, beans, pickled pork—in fact, anything of an edible nature that grows on the farm. I have a schoolgirl friend married to a village clergyman, who recently regaled me with a story of a young countryman, who, with his bride, drove up to the parsonage with a large chicken coop, full of cackling hens, which he proudly delivered over to her husband as his fee for performing the marriage ceremony, with the information that "them was as good layin' hens as ever lived, and calc'lated to pervide eggs for a year an' more!"

There are numerous instances of enthusiastic and grateful bridegrooms who have presented the officiating clergyman with live pigs as wedding fees.

But it is not only as a reward for performing the marriage ceremony that the country parson is "paid in kind." Sometimes he receives a large part of his salary in this way. The members of his congregation each subscribe a certain amount of money towards the salary that is guaranteed the minister. Farmer Brown will, he says, contribute four dollars as his share. In the winter, when Farmer Brown should hand over his four dollars to the church treasurer, he finds himself short of ready cash, but with an abundant supply of wood on hand, having in the autumn felled many trees in his forest. Nothing can be more certain than that the minister needs fuel in the winter; therefore, Farmer Brown loads his waggon with logs of wood, drives to the parsonage, and deposits it in the minister's back yard, announcing to the minister that he "reckons thar 's mor'n four dollars wirth of wood in that thar load!"

The minister can, perhaps, make use of that one load of wood very conveniently; but when, as is frequently the case, a dozen frugal farmers among his parishioners are struck with the same sort of notion—that of paying their subscriptions in wood instead of money—the unfortunate parson has more wood than he can burn for many winters to come, and his back yard is entirely taken up with it. He needs sugar, and paraffin, and rice, and butter, as well as a cheerful fireside. Did I say butter? Well, sometimes he gets more butter than he wants, too. Says the farmer to his wife: "Jane, I promised to pay three dollars towards the parson's salary. Bein' as you're makin' fine butter this summer, you jes' take him a couple o' pounds a week till you've made three dollars' worth." Two pounds of fresh yellow butter weekly from the dairy of a parishioner would be appreciated by the parson's family. They would rather have it than the stale butter from the village shop; but since butter is made on all farms, and many farmers' wives send the parson butter to pay off their subscriptions, the parson's larder overflows with butter, while many other necessaries are scarce. It is the same with potatoes and cabbages and beetroots, with eggs, and with hay for the minister's horse, which, by the way, is not forgotten when the time for paying subscriptions comes round. The minister loves his horse, and is glad to have plenty of hay and oats for it to eat; but to have in his barn enough of these articles to last a horse through several lifetimes, while the children are needing boots and coats for the present winter, is not a state of affairs that appeals to his sense of the fitness of things. Some of our country parsons, with an instinct for business, not inborn, but thrust upon them by a stern necessity, have been known to become dealers in wood, potatoes, hay, and other things of which they have an over-supply, selling their surplus stock off to their neighbours. In this way they are able to get a little ready cash with which to purchase such necessary commodities as do not "grow on the farm."

In the beginning of my article I have referred to "donation parties," and have said that some ministers are guaranteed a certain number of dollars and a "donation" as a yearly salary. The donation party is, I believe, a strictly American institution, which originated about a century ago in the very thinly settled regions of the United States among the pioneers. It is still extremely popular in country towns and farming neighbourhoods. Say that a clergyman receives eight hundred dollars a year and a "donation," or it may be that he is promised two donations. That means that besides his money, he will be surprised one night or two nights in the year by fifty or a hundred, or perhaps two or three hundred, people marching into his house with bundles of every size and description. His visitors will bring with them pounds of sugar, barrels of flour, jars of pickles, bags of salt, tinned meats and vegetables, remnants of calicoes, muslins, cloths, and silks, from the village "general store," white lawn neckties, cooking utensils, bed-clothing, pictures to hang upon the wall, patent medicines (including soothing syrups for the babies), shoes and stockings, a few live chickens—in fact, everything that the minds of his parishioners can conceive of his needing. Besides all these things, a "proper" donation party is expected to carry along its own supper, during which, sometimes, a collection is taken up and a purse of money presented to the parson. A good donation party, given by a generous lot of church people, is a thing not to be despised by the recipient. Store-cupboards, cellars, and wardrobes are frequently stocked for a whole year to come, and the minister is thus able to put by, for the education of his children, a goodly sum of money out of his cash salary.

A DONATION PARTY.

(Bringing the parson's "stipend.")