finding it did not return from the end of the row of chairs as quickly
as usual, I discovered this same individual with his hand _in the
bag_. I signed to him impatiently to pass it back. After service he
came to the vestry and said that he had contributed a florin in
mistake for a penny, and was trying to retrieve it. I could generally
estimate pretty accurately the amount of the collection, as I handed
the bag, knowing the extent of each person's usual gift, and sure
enough, there was an extra florin among the coins, with which I sent
him away happy.

The parish must have been an uncivilized place in former times; there
was an accusing record beneath the west window of the tower, in the
shape of a blocked up entrance. I was told that the ringers, not
wishing to enter or leave the tower through the church door during
service, and also to facilitate the smuggling in of unlimited cider
had, after strenuous efforts, cut an opening through the ancient wall
and base some feet in thickness, and that the achievement was
announced to the village by uproarious cheering when at last they
succeeded. A door was afterwards fitted to the aperture, but the
entrance was abolished later by a more reverent Vicar.

The belfry was decorated with various bones of legs of mutton and of
joints of beef, hung up to commemorate notable weddings of prominent
parishioners--perhaps, too, as a hint to future aspirants to the state
of matrimony--when the ringers had enjoyed a substantial meal and
gallons of cider at the expense of the bridegroom. There seems to have
been a traditional connection between church bell-ringing and thirst,
for Gilbert White relates that when the bells of Selborne Church were
recast and a new one presented in 1735, "The day of the arrival of
this tuneable peal was observed as an high festival by the village,