Shepperton by pocketing the sum of thirty-five pounds ten per annum, the
net surplus remaining to him from the proceeds of that living, after the
disbursement of eighty pounds as the annual stipend of his curate. And
now, pray, can you solve me the following problem? Given a man with a
wife and six children: let him be obliged always to exhibit himself when
outside his own door in a suit of black broadcloth, such as will not
undermine the foundations of the Establishment by a paltry plebeian
glossiness or an unseemly whiteness at the edges; in a snowy cravat,
which is a serious investment of labour in the hemming, starching, and
ironing departments; and in a hat which shows no symptom of taking to the
hideous doctrine of expediency, and shaping itself according to
circumstances; let him have a parish large enough to create an external
necessity for abundant shoe-leather, and an internal necessity for
abundant beef and mutton, as well as poor enough to require frequent
priestly consolation in the shape of shillings and sixpences; and,
lastly, let him be compelled, by his own pride and other people's, to
dress his wife and children with gentility from bonnet-strings to
shoe-strings. By what process of division can the sum of eighty pounds
per annum be made to yield a quotient which will cover that man's weekly
expenses? This was the problem presented by the position of the Rev. Amos
Barton, as curate of Shepperton, rather more than twenty years ago.

What was thought of this problem, and of the man who had to work it out,
by some of the well-to-do inhabitants of Shepperton, two years or more
after Mr. Barton's arrival among them, you shall hear, if you will
accompany me to Cross Farm, and to the fireside of Mrs. Patten, a
childless old lady, who had got rich chiefly by the negative process of
spending nothing. Mrs. Patten's passive accumulation of wealth, through
all sorts of 'bad times', on the farm of which she had been sole tenant
since her husband's death, her epigrammatic neighbour, Mrs. Hackit,