the old
string players? Barrel-organs, and the things next door to 'em that you
blow wi' your foot, have come in terribly of late years."

"Ay!" said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on seeing him, did
the same thing.

"More's the pity," replied another. "Time was--long and merry ago
now!--when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some
of the quires right. They should have stuck to strings as we did, and
kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents. If you'd thrive in
musical religion, stick to strings, says I."

"Strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go," said Mr. Spinks.

"Yet there's worse things than serpents," said Mr. Penny. "Old things
pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich note
was the serpent."

"Clar'nets, however, be bad at all times," said Michael Mail. "One
Christmas--years agone now, years--I went the rounds wi' the Weatherbury
quire. 'Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all the clar'nets
froze--ah, they did freeze!--so that 'twas like drawing a cork every time
a key was opened; and the players o' 'em had to go into a
hedger-and-ditcher's chimley-corner, and thaw their clar'nets every now
and then. An icicle o' spet hung down from the end of every man's
clar'net a span long; and as to fingers--well, there, if ye'll believe
me, we had no fingers at all, to our knowing."

"I can well bring back to my mind," said Mr. Penny, "what I said to poor
Joseph Ryme (who took the treble part in Chalk-Newton Church for two-and-
forty year) when they thought of having clar'nets there. 'Joseph,' I
said, says I, 'depend upon't, if so be you have them tooting clar'nets
you'll spoil the whole set-out. Clar'nets were not made for the service
of the Lard; you can see it by looking at 'em,' I said. And what came
o't? Why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ on his own account
within two years o' the time I spoke, and the old quire went to nothing."

"As far as look is concerned," said the tranter, "I don't for my part see
that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar'net. 'Tis further off.
There's always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle's looks that seems
to say the Wicked One had a hand in making o'en; while angels be supposed
to play clar'nets in heaven, or som'at like 'em, if ye may believe
picters."

"Robert Penny, you was in the right," broke in the eldest Dewy. "They
should ha' stuck to strings. Your brass-