less. Another
half-hour passed; the clerk looked up from his seat under the pulpit,
but still the rector went on preaching. It was too late then for the
race-course meeting. So when the sermon was at length finished, the
clerk got up and gave out "the 'undred and nineteenth Psalm from yend
to yend. He's preached all day, and we'll sing all neet" (night).

* * * * *

At Westhoughton Church, Lancashire, there was a clerk of the old school,
one Platt, who just before the sermon would stretch his long arm and
offer his snuff-box to his old friend Betty, and to other cronies who
happened to be in his immediate neighbourhood.

* * * * *

The clerk at Stratfieldsaye, who was a character, once astonished a
strange clergyman who was taking the duty. The choir sat in the gallery,
and the numbers were few on that Sunday. "Mon I 'elp them chaps? they be
terrible few," said the clerk. The clergyman quite agreed that he should
render them his valuable assistance, and sit in the gallery. Presently a
man came in late, and was kneeling down to say his private prayer, when
the clergyman was horrified to see the clerk deliberately rise in the
gallery and throw a book at the man's head. When remonstrated with after
service the clerk replied carelessly, "Oh, it were only my way o'
telling him to sing up, as we were terrible short this marning."

CHAPTER XXI

CURIOUS STORIES

The old clerk of Clapham, Bedford, Mr. Thomas Maddams, always used to
read his own version of Psalm xxxix. 12: "Like as it were a moth
fretting in a garment." Apparently his idea was of a moth annoyed at
being in a garment from which it could not escape.

A parish clerk (who prided himself upon being well read) occupied his
seat below the old "three-decker" pulpit, and whenever a quotation or an
extract from the classics was introduced into the sermon he, in an
undertone, muttered its source, much to the annoyance of the preacher
and amusement of the congregation. Despite all protests in private, the
thing continued, until one day, the vicar's patience being exhausted, he
leant over the pulpit side and immediately exclaimed, "Drat you; shut
up!" Immediately, in the clerk's usual sententious tone, came the reply,
"His own." (William Haggard, _Liverpool Daily Post_.)

* * * * *

N.B. I have heard this story before, and in a different key:

The preacher was a young