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.)