This old clerk was only absent one Sunday from “Chosen” Church, and then he was lent to the neighbouring church of Leckhampton.  Instead of the response “And make Thy chosen people joyful,” mindful of his change of locality he gave out with a strong nasal twang, “And make Thy Leck’ampton people joyful.”  The Psalms were somewhat a trouble to him, and to the congregation too.  One verse he rendered “Like a paycock in a wild-dook’s nest, and a howl in the dessert, even so be I.”  He was a thoroughly good old man, and brought up a large family very respectably.

I remember the old clerk, James Ingham, of Whalley Church, Lancashire.  It is a grand old church, full of old dark oak square pews, and the clerk was in keeping with his surroundings.  He was a humorous character, and had a splendid deep bass voice.  He used to show people over the ruined abbey, and his imagination supplied the place of accurate historical information.  Some American visitors asked him what a certain path was used for.  “Well, marm,” said James, “it’s onsartin:  but they do say the monks and nuns used to walk up and down this ’ere path, arm-in-arm, of a summer arternoon.”

It is recorded of one Thomas Atkins, clerk of Chillenden Church, Kent, that he used to leave his reading-desk at the commencement of the General Thanksgiving and proceed to the west gallery, where he gave out the hymn and sang a duet with the village cobbler, in which the congregation joined as best they could.  He walked very slowly down the church, and said the Amen at the end of the Thanksgiving wherever he happened to be, and that was generally half-way up the gallery stairs, whence his feeble voice, with a good tremolo, used to sound like the distant baaing of a sheep.  It was a strange and curious performance.

Miss Rawnsley, of Raithby Hall, Spilsby, gives some delightful reminiscences of a most original specimen of the race of clerks, old Haw, who officiated at Halton Holgate, Lincolnshire.  He was a curious mixture of worldly wisdom and strong religious feeling.  The former was exemplified by his greeting to a cousin of my correspondent, just returned from his ordination.

He said, “Now, Mr. Hardwick, remember thou must creep an’ crawl along the ’edge bottoms, and then tha’ill make thee a bishop.”

He was a strong advocate of Fasting Communion.  No one ever knew whence he derived his strong views on the subject.  The rector never taught it.  Probably his ideas were derived from some long lingering tradition.  When over seventy years of age he set out fasting to walk six miles to attend a late celebration at a distant church on the occasion of its consecration.  Nothing would ever induce him to break his fast before communicating; and on this occasion he was picked up in a dead faint, his journey being only half completed.

On Wednesdays and Fridays he always went into the church at eleven o’clock and said the Litany aloud.  When asked his reason, he said, “I’ve gotten an ungodly wife and two ungodly bairns to pray for, sir.”  He once asked one of the rector’s daughters to help him in the Parody of the Psalms he was making; and on another occasion requested to have the old altar-cloth, which had just been replaced by a new one, “to make a slop to dig the graves in, and no sacrilege neither.”