Wonderful Walker
" PASSING rich on forty pounds a year." The words have become a proverb. Goldsmith' Vicar of " the loveliest village Of the plain " was 4 contented man, and on his salary he entertained all travellers and beggars, and gave alms to the needy.
Just about the time of the immortal Vicar of fiction, there lived another clergyman of flesh and blood, whos stipend at first was five pounds a year, although it was later raised to thirty. Robert Walker was -in charge of a remote Lancashire village called Seathwaite. His income' sounds inadequate to rear and educate nina children, even in 1750. However, he performed thia feat, and well, too. We find him acting as laWyer to hi4 flock, making out their deedsand wills. He was, besidek an expert weaver of wool and cotton and linen, and whole family wore garments of his weaving, made by hi* wife into shirts, cloaks, dresses, and aprons. Boots anci shoes were home-made, too, and he himself often wore a kind of wooden clogs. .
Other -activities he had as well; .Wonderful Walker, as he was called, kept a .sfriall home-dairy and farm; and was his own gardener, cowman, and harvester. The proceeds . of his spinning:wheel and kioin were -tarried by himself to the nearest market town seven or eight' miles away.- His activities make - us feel positively,' breathless. It seems- impossible—but it is a fact—that he gathered the village children together and held a small school • daily. As he took' no fees, his • scholar& helped him on his farm in return. There was no school-. house and the church became the schoolroom, Here Robert Walker sat and apan Whilst the chiidren recited their tasks. . It is a little startling to hear of spinning and secular teaching carried on in the church and of the _altar used as the children's . writing-table. But such is the fact.
They had no other. - .
Wonderful Walker was a reader, and somehow -he got hold of books, though it was no easy matter to find time to study. He read at night and his candles were of rush, "dipped in some oily, stibstance,' home-Made, like everything else used by him and his _family. This' strenuous life suited. Wirt and his . wife. They livedto _ be well. over _ninety, and by the time he died had saved two thousand pounds to be divided among his children, It seems little short of a miracle. Here was a labourer's son, the youngest of twelve, somehow a schoolmaster at the age of seventeen, ordained soon after, combining the duties of ten ordinary men and appaiently doing each one well. For sixty-seven years he held this cure of souls, and then he and his aged wife slipped away from all their activities, almost at the same time.
His tombstone can be seen in the shade of Seathwaite Church. Who can think of Wonderful Walker as "resting in the grave "Y Surely his tall figure, in blue home-spun cloak and clogs, still strides across the fellS, laden with a bulky pack' for market!
L.- C. STREATFEILD.
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