long blue Sunday coat with huge brass buttons, the tails of which
reached almost to his heels, shorts and brown leggings, and a
low-crowned hat in his hand. He was nearly eighty, but wiry still,
rather blind and somewhat deaf; but the post of clerk is one considered
to be quite independent and irremovable, _quam diu se bene gesserit_,
during good behaviour--on a level with Her Majesty's judges for that
matter. Having been raised to this great eminence some sixty years
before, when he was the only man in the parish who could read, he would
have stood out for his rights to remain there as long as he pleased
against all the powers and principalities in the kingdom--if, indeed, he
could have conceived the possibility of any one, in or out of the
parish, being sufficiently irreligious and revolutionary to dispute his
sovereignty. He was part of the church, and the church was part of
him--his rights and hers were indissolubly connected in his mind.

* * * * *

"The Psalms that day offered a fine field for his Anglo-Saxon plurals
and south-country terminations; the 'housen,' 'priestesses,' 'beasteses
of the field,' came rolling freely forth from his mouth, upon which no
remonstrances by the curate had had the smallest effect. Was he, Michael
Major, who had fulfilled the important office 'afore that young
jackanapes was born, to be teached how 'twere to be done?' he had
observed more than once in rather a high tone, though in general he
patronised the successive occupants of the pulpit with much kindness.
'And this 'un, as cannot spike English nayther,' he added superciliously
concerning the north-country accent of his pastor and master."

On weekdays he wore a smock-frock, which he called his surplice, with
wonderful fancy stitches on the breast and back and sleeves. At length