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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 26, 19 October 1888, Page 13

" Five-and-twenty pounds a year " is the modest stipend offered by the vicar of a Yorkshire parish in the advertising columns of our contemporary, the Schoolmaster, for a teacher for a moorland school in his neighbourhood. Tho canditate must be certificated and a churchman ; he must also be able to play tbe harmonium ; finally, bis merits must be attested by four gentlemen, of whom two must be clergymen, speaking from their personal knowledge. On close examination of tbe terms it appears that the actual salary is £2C, to which is added £2, the estimated rental value of the schoolmaster's two-roomed cottage, admitted to be "rough," and the children's school fees, which together make up the total amount. The vacant post, we learn from tbe same source, has been filled by a " most excellent mtn " for some years, so that the possibility at least of existing on the salary referred to— assuming that " this most excellent man " had no other means of living — seems, incredible as it may appear, to be established. Moreover, the vicar has already received "a good many applications." Tbis latter fact we gather from a letter from the vicar bim6e f, in wnich he bit'erly complains that bis advertisement has brought upon him some " rude letters " through the post, and voluntarily explaiDS that the value of his own living is only £380, out of which he has to pay four assistant clergy and two lay worutrs, leaving him, '' after ihe greatest economy " — all tbese persons living together in the vicarage — a deficiency of £150 a year to come out of " bis small private means." Clearly the vicar has, on his stitement of the case, no very easy time of it. Still, as his own experience has tmght him that fire gentlem -n living under one roof require for their subsistauce £530 a year, even with " the greatest economy,"' we are It ft without any solution of the problem of how the poor village schoolmaster, tho certificated student, the orthodox churchman, the accomplished harmonium player, the personal friend of '• two clergymen," can be expected to provide for all his earthly wants with £25 a year. — London Maily Nays.