I allude to the old parish clerks of our boy-hood
days. Who does not remember their quaint figures and quainter, though
somewhat irreverent, manner of leading the responses of the
congregation? It is well indeed that our churches, sadly given over to
the laxity and carelessness of a bygone age, should be renovated and
beautified, the tone of the services raised, and the "bray" of the old
clerks, unsuited to the devotional feelings of a more enlightened day,
silenced, but still a shade of regret will be mingled with their
dismissal, if only for the sake of the large stock of amusing anecdotes
which their names recall.
My earliest recollections are connected with old Russell[93], my
father's clerk. He was a little man but possessed of a consequential
manner sufficient for a giant. A shoemaker by trade, his real element
was in the church. His conversation was embellished by high-flown
grandiloquence, and he invariably walked upon the heels of his boots.
This latter peculiarity, as may well be imagined, was the cause of a
most comical effect whenever he had occasion to leave his seat and
clatter down the aisle of the church. How often when a boy did I make my
old nurse's sides shake with laughter by imitating old Russell's walk!
His manner of reading the responses in the service can only be compared
to a kind of bellow--as my father used to say, "he bellowed like a
calf"--and his rendering of parts of it was calculated to raise a smile
upon the lips of the most devout.
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