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 a