One very wet Sunday Mr. Langhorne was summoned to take an afternoon service several miles distant from his residence.  The congregation consisted of only half a dozen people.  After service he said to the clerk that it was hardly worth while coming so far.  “We might have done with a worse ’un,” was his reply.

That reminds me of another clerk who apologised to a church dignitary who had been summoned to take a service at a small country church.  The form of the apology was not quite happily expressed.  He said, “I am sorry, sir, to have brought such a gentleman as you to this poor place.  A worse would have done, if we had only known where to find him!”

The new vicar of D——­ was calling upon an old parishioner, who said to him:  “Ah!  I’ve seen mony changes.  I’ve seen four vicars of D——.  First there was Canon G——­, then there was Mr. T——­, who’s now a bishop, and then Mr. F——­ came, and now you’ve coom, and we’ve wossened (worsened) every toime.”

A clerk named Turner, who officiated at Alnwick, was a great character, and in spite of his odd ways was esteemed for his genuine worth and fidelity to the three vicars under whom he served.  He looked upon the church and parish as his own, and used to say that he had trained many “kewrats” in their duties.  His responses in the Psalms were often startling.  Instead of “The Lord setteth up the meek,” he would say, “The Lord sitteth upon the meek.”  “The great leviathan” he rendered “the great live thing.”  “Caterpillars innumerable” he pronounced “caterpilliars innumerabble.”  When a funeral was late he scolded the bearers at the churchyard gate.

At Wimborne Minster, Dorset, there used to be three priest vicars, and each of them had a clerk.  It was the custom for each of the priest vicars to take the services for a week in rotation, and the first lesson was always read by “the clerk of the week,” as he was called.  On Sundays, when there was a celebration of the Holy Communion, the “clerk of the week” advanced to the lectern after the sermon was finished, and said, “All who wish to receive the Holy Communion, draw near.”  These words, in the case of one worthy, named David Butler, were always spoken in a high-pitched, drawling voice, and finished off with a kick to the rearwards of the right leg.

The old clerk at Woodmancote, near Henfield, Sussex, was a very important person.  There was never any committee meeting but he attended.  So much so, that one day in church leading the singing and music with voice and flute, when it came to the “Gloria” he sang loudly, “As it was in the committee meeting, is now, and ever shall be ...”

An acquaintance remarked to him afterwards that the last meeting he attended must have been a rather long one!

A story is told of the clerk at West Dean, near Alfriston, Sussex.  Starting the first line of the Psalm or hymn, he found that he could not see owing to the failing light on a dark wintry afternoon.  So he said, “My eyes are dim, I canna see,” at which the congregation, composed of ignorant labourers, sang after him the same words.  The clerk was wroth, and cried out, “Tarnation fools you all must be.”  Here again the congregation sang the same words after the clerk.