"I think he be," dryly replied old Joshua.
That the clerk was often a person of dignity and importance is shown by
the recollections of an old parishioner of the rector of Fornham All
Saints, near Bury St. Edmunds. "Mr. Baker, the clerk," of Westley, who
flourished seventy years ago, used to hear the children their catechism
in church on Sunday afternoons. "Ah, sir, I often think of what he told
us, that the world would not come to an end till people were killed
_wholesale_, and now think how often that happens!" She was probably not
alluding to the South African or the Japanese war, but to railway
accidents, as she at once told her favourite story of her solitary
journey to Newmarket, when on her return she remarked, "If I live to set
foot on firm ground, never no more for me."
The old clerk used to escort the boys and girls to their confirmation at
Bury, and superintended their meal of bread, beer, and cheese after the
rite. There was no music at Westley, except when Mr. Humm, the clerk of
Fornham, "brought up his fiddle and some of the Fornham girls."
Nowadays, adds the rector, the Rev. C.L. Feltoe, the clerks are much
more illiterate than their predecessors, and, unlike them,
non-communicants.
Another East Anglian clerk was a quaint character, who had a great
respect for all the old familiar residents in his town of S----, and a
corresponding contempt for all new-comers.
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