1-17, containing the account of the healing of
the demoniacally possessed persons at Gadara, and the destruction of the
herd of swine. On the Monday he asked the clerk if he understood the
sermon. The clerk replied somewhat doubtfully, "Yes." "But is there
anything you do not quite understand?" said the clergyman; "I shall be
only too glad to explain anything I can, so as to help you." After a
good deal of scratching the back of his head and much hesitating, the
clerk replied, "Who paid for them pigs?"
[Illustration: WILLIAM HINTON, A WILTSHIRE WORTHY DRAWN BY THE REV.
JULIAN CHARLES YOUNG]
Many examples I have given of the dry humour of old clerks, which is
sometimes rather disconcerting. A stranger was taking the duty in a
church, and after service made a few remarks about the weather,
asserting that it promised to be a fine day for the haymaking to-morrow.
"Ah, sir," replied the clerk, "they do say that the hypocrites can
discern the face of the sky."
The Rev. Julian Charles Young, rector of Ilmington, in his _Memoir of
Charles Mayne Young, Tragedian_, published in 1871, speaks of the race
of parish clerks who flourished in Wiltshire in the first half of the
last century. Instead of a nice discrimination being exercised in the
choice of a clerk, it seems to have been the rule to select the sorriest
driveller that could be found--some "lean and slippered pantaloon, with
spectacles on nose and pouch at side,"
"triumphant over time,
And over tune, and over rhyme"--
who by his snivelling enunciation of the responses and his nasal
drawlings of the A--mens, was sure to provoke the risibility of his
hearers.
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