etc. Sometimes, if they started badly in a
hymn, the clerk would say to the congregation, "Beg pardon, gents; we'll
try again."
As I left home one day, the clerk ran after me. "But, sir, who'll take
the duty on St. Swithin's Day?"
Once or twice, being somnolent, on a hot afternoon he woke up suddenly
with a loud "Amen" in the middle of the sermon.
When I said good-bye to him, having resigned the benefice, he said, very
gravely, "God will give us another comforter."
An old country clerk in showing visitors round the churchyard used to
stop at a certain tombstone and say:
"This 'ere is the tomb of Thomas 'Ooper and 'is eleven wives."
One day a lady remarked: "Eleven? Dear me, that's rather a lot, isn't
it?"
The old man looked at her gravely and replied: "Well, mum, yer see it
wus an' 'obby of 'is'n."
The Rev. W.D. Parish, in his _Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect_, tells
of a friend of his who had been remonstrating with one of his
parishioners for abusing the parish clerk beyond the bounds of
neighbourly expression, and who received the following answer: "You be
quite right, sir; you be quite right. I'd no ought to have said what I
did; but I doeant mind telling you to your head what I've said so many
times behind your back. We've got a good shepherd, I says, an excellent
shepherd, but he's got an unaccountable bad dog.
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