At Sutton Maddock, Shropshire, there was a clerk who used to read “Pe-li-can in the wilderness,” and the usual “Howl in the Desart,” and “Teach the Senators wisdom,” and when the Litany was said on Wednesdays and Fridays declared that it was not in his Prayer Book though he took part in it every Sunday.  When a kind lady, Miss Barnfield, expressed a wish that his wife would get better, he replied, “I hope her will or summat.”

At Claverley, in the same county, on one Sunday, the rector told the clerk to give notice that there would be no service that afternoon, adding sotto voce, “I am going to dine at the Paper Mill.”  He was rather disgusted when the clerk announced, “There will be no Diving Service this arternoon, the Parson is going to dine at the Peaper Mill.”  The clerk was no respecter of persons, and once marched up to the rector’s wife in church and told her to keep her eyes from beholding vanity.

The Rev. F.A.  Davis tells me of a story of an illiterate clerk who served in a Wiltshire church, where a cousin of my informant was vicar.  A London clergyman, who had never preached or been in a country church before, came to take the duty.  He was anxious to find out if the people listened or understood sermons.  His Sunday morning discourse was based on the text St. Mark v. 1-17, containing the account of the healing of the demoniacally possessed persons at Gadara, and the destruction of the herd of swine.  On the Monday he asked the clerk if he understood the sermon.  The clerk replied somewhat doubtfully, “Yes.”  “But is there anything you do not quite understand?” said the clergyman; “I shall be only too glad to explain anything I can, so as to help you.”  After a good deal of scratching the back of his head and much hesitating, the clerk replied, “Who paid for them pigs?”

[Illustration:  WILLIAM HINTON, A WILTSHIRE WORTHY DRAWN BY THE REV.  JULIAN CHARLES YOUNG]

Many examples I have given of the dry humour of old clerks, which is sometimes rather disconcerting.  A stranger was taking the duty in a church, and after service made a few remarks about the weather, asserting that it promised to be a fine day for the haymaking to-morrow.  “Ah, sir,” replied the clerk, “they do say that the hypocrites can discern the face of the sky.”

The Rev. Julian Charles Young, rector of Ilmington, in his Memoir of Charles Mayne Young, Tragedian, published in 1871, speaks of the race of parish clerks who flourished in Wiltshire in the first half of the last century.  Instead of a nice discrimination being exercised in the choice of a clerk, it seems to have been the rule to select the sorriest driveller that could be found—­some “lean and slippered pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch at side,”

     “triumphant over time,
     And over tune, and over rhyme”—­