health for future services; for I have partly pledged myself in my own mind, if I live and have health and money, and the French do not come, to take up two new parishes next spring, but, as they are four miles below Cheddar, I have never dared reveal my intention to anyone. I know sloth and self-love will say often 'Spare thyself,' and I feel the extreme concern it will give to those to whom I would wish to give nothing but pleasure, but I have counted the cost. These parishes are large and populous, they are as dark as Africa, and I do not like the thought, that at the Day of Judgment any set of people should be found to have perished through ignorance, who were within my possible reach, and only that I might have a little more ease. I will not say that I am not at times discouraged from this idea; for example, this last week, when, with all my boasting, I have been laid by with five or six days of nervous headache."
Meantime Shipham "suffered dreadfully from a raging fever. We lost seven in two days, several of them our poor children. Figure to yourself such a visitation in a place where a single cup of broth cannot be obtained, for there is none to give, if it would save a life. I am ashamed of my comforts when I think of their wants. One widow, to whom we allow a little pension, burns her only table for firing; another, one of her three chairs. I had the comfort, however, of knowing that poor Jones distributed what
