d or with myself?"

"Pray begin with your own history," replied I.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

"I am the daughter of a parish clerk in a small market-town near the
southern coast of England, within a few miles of a large seaport."

"What is a parish clerk?" I asked, interrupting my mother at the
commencement of her promised narrative.

"A parish clerk," she replied, "is a man who is employed in the parish
or place to which he belongs, to fulfil certain humble duties in
connection with the church or place of worship where the people meet
together to worship God."

"What does he do there?" I inquired.

"He gives out the psalms that are to be sung, leads the congregation in
making their responses to the minister appointed to perform the services
of the church; has the custody of the registry of births, deaths, and
burials of the inhabitants, and the care of the church monuments, and of
other property belonging to the building. In some places he also
fulfils the duties of bell-ringer and grave-digger; that is to say, by
ringing a large bell at the top of the church, he summons the people to
their devotions, during their lives, and digs a hole in consecrated
ground, surrounding the sacred building, to receive their bodies when
dead."

I mused on this strange combination of offices, and entertained a notion
of the importance of such a functionary, which I afterwards found was
completely at variance with the real state of the case.

"My father," she resumed, "not only fulfilled all these duties, but
contrived to perform the functions of schoolmaster to the parish
children."

"What are parish children?" I asked eagerly. "I know what children
are, as Jackson represented to me that I was the child of my father and
mother--but what makes children parish children?"

"They are the children of the poor," Mrs Reichardt replied, "who, not
being able to afford them instruction, willingly allow them to be taught
at the expense of the people of the parish generally."

I thought this a praiseworthy arrangement. I knew nothing of
poor's-rates, and the system of giving relief to the poor of the parish,
so long used in England, afterwards explained to me; but the kindness
and wisdom of this plan of instruction became evident to my
understanding. I was proceeding to ask other questions, when my mother
stopped them by saying, that if I expected her to get through her story,
I must let her proceed without further interruptio