a brown wig, repeated the responses in a nasal twang, and with a
substitution of _w_ for _v_ so constant as not even to spare the
Beliefs; while the local rendering of briefs, citations, and
excommunications included announcements by this worthy, after the Nicene
Creed, of meetings at the town inn of the executors of a deceased duke.
Two hopeful cubs of the clerk sprawled behind him in the desk, and the
back-handers occasionally intended to reduce them to order were apt to
resound against the impassive boards. During the sermon this zealous
servant of the sanctuary would take up his broom and sweep out the
middle alley, in order to save himself the fatigue of a weekday visit.
Soon, however, the clerk and his broom followed Moses and Aaron, the
fiddles and the bassoons into the land of shadows.

No sketch of bygone times, in which the clerk flourished in all his
glory, would be complete without some reference to the important person
who occupied the second tier in the "three-decker," and decked in gown
and bands delivered somnolent sermons from its upper storey. Curious
stories are often told of the careless parsons of former days, of their
irreverence, their love of sport, their neglect of their parishes, their
quaint and irreverent manners; but such characters, about whom these
stories were told, were exceptional. By far the greater number lived
well and did their duty and passed away, and left no memories behind
except in the tender recollections of a few simple-minded folk. There
were few local newspapers in those days to tell their virtues, to print
their sermons or their speeches at the opening of bazaars or
flower-shows. They did their duty and passed away and were forgotten;
while the parsons, like the wretch Chowne of the _Maid of Sker_, live on
in anecdote, and grave folk shake their heads and think that the times
must have been very bad, and the clergy a disgrace to their cloth. As
with the clerk, so with his master; the evil that men do lives after