nsophisticated recital.

THE PARISH CLERK
A TALE OF TRUE LOVE

'Once upon a time, in a very small country town, at a considerable
distance from London, there lived a little man named Nathaniel Pipkin,
who was the parish clerk of the little town, and lived in a little house
in the little High Street, within ten minutes' walk from the little
church; and who was to be found every day, from nine till four, teaching
a little learning to the little boys. Nathaniel Pipkin was a harmless,
inoffensive, good-natured being, with a turned-up nose, and rather
turned-in legs, a cast in his eye, and a halt in his gait; and he
divided his time between the church and his school, verily believing
that there existed not, on the face of the earth, so clever a man as the
curate, so imposing an apartment as the vestry-room, or so well-ordered
a seminary as his own. Once, and only once, in his life, Nathaniel
Pipkin had seen a bishop--a real bishop, with his arms in lawn sleeves,
and his head in a wig. He had seen him walk, and heard him talk, at
a confirmation, on which momentous occasion Nathaniel Pipkin was so
overcome with reverence and awe, when the aforesaid bishop laid his
hand on his head, that he fainted right clean away, and was borne out of
church in the arms of the beadle.

'This was a great event, a tremendous era, in Nathaniel Pipkin's life,
and it was the only one that had ever occurred to ruffle the smooth
current of his quiet existence, when happening one fine afternoon, in a
fit of mental abstraction, to raise his eyes from the slate on which
he was devising some tremendous problem in compound addition for
an offending urchin to solve, they suddenly rested on the blooming
countenance of Maria Lobbs, the only daughter of old Lobbs, the great
saddler over the way. Now, the eyes of Mr. Pipkin had rested on the
pretty face of Maria Lobbs many a time and oft before, at church and
elsewhere; but the eyes of Maria Lobbs had never looked so bright, the
cheeks of Maria Lobbs had never looked so ruddy, as upon this particular
occasion. No wonder then, that Nathaniel Pipkin was unable to take his
eyes from the countenance of Miss Lobbs; no wonder that Miss Lobbs,
finding herself stared at by a young man, withdrew her head from the
window out of which she had been peeping, and shut the casement and
pulled down the blind; no wonder that Nathaniel Pipkin, immediately
thereafter, fell upon the young urchin who had previously offen