He was a curious
mixture of worldly wisdom and strong religious feeling. The former was
exemplified by his greeting to a cousin of my correspondent, just
returned from his ordination.
He said, "Now, Mr. Hardwick, remember thou must creep an' crawl along
the 'edge bottoms, and then tha'ill make thee a bishop."
He was a strong advocate of Fasting Communion. No one ever knew whence
he derived his strong views on the subject. The rector never taught it.
Probably his ideas were derived from some long lingering tradition. When
over seventy years of age he set out fasting to walk six miles to attend
a late celebration at a distant church on the occasion of its
consecration. Nothing would ever induce him to break his fast before
communicating; and on this occasion he was picked up in a dead faint,
his journey being only half completed.
On Wednesdays and Fridays he always went into the church at eleven
o'clock and said the Litany aloud. When asked his reason, he said, "I've
gotten an ungodly wife and two ungodly bairns to pray for, sir." He once
asked one of the rector's daughters to help him in the _Parody_ of the
Psalms he was making; and on another occasion requested to have the old
altar-cloth, which had just been replaced by a new one, "to make a slop
to dig the graves in, and no sacrilege neither.
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