unintelligible. At any rate, modern clergy are not so deficient in
education as they were in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, when, as
Fuller states in his _Triple Reconciler_, they were commanded "to read
the chapters over once or twice by themselves that so they might be the
better enabled to read them distinctly to the congregation." If the
clergy were not infallible in the matter of the pronunciation of
difficult words, it is not surprising that the clerk often puzzled or
amused his hearers, and mangled or skipped the proper names, after the
fashion of the mistress of a dame-school, who was wont to say when a
small pupil paused at such a name as Nebuchadnezzar, "That's a bad word,
child! go on to the next verse."

Of the mistakes in the clerk's reading of the Psalms there are many
instances. David Diggs, the hero of J. Hewett's _Parish Clerk_, was
remonstrated with for reading the proper names in Psalm lxxxiii. 6,
"Odommities, Osmallities, and Mobbities," and replied: "Yes, no doubt,
but that's noigh enow. Seatown folk understand oi very well."

He is also reported to have said, "Jeball, Amon, and Almanac, three
Philistines with them that are tired." The vicar endeavoured to teach
him the correct mode of pronunciation of difficult words, and for some
weeks he read well, and then returned to his former method of making a
shot at the proper names.

On being expostulated with he coolly replied:

"One on us must read better than t'other, or there wouldn't be no
difference 'twixt parson and clerk; so I gives in to you. Besides, this
sort of reading as you taught me would not do here. The p'rishioners
told oi, if oi didn't gi' in and read in th' old style loike, as they