tice ever given out in church that I ever have heard of,
related to a set of false teeth. The story has been told by many.
Perhaps Cuthbert Bede's version is the best. An old rector of a small
country parish had been compelled to send to a dentist his set of false
teeth, in order that some repairs might be made. The dentist had
faithfully promised to send them back "by Saturday," but the Saturday's
post did not bring the box containing the rector's teeth. There was no
Sunday post, and the village was nine miles from the post town. The
dentist, it afterwards appeared, had posted the teeth on the Saturday
afternoon with the full conviction that their owner would receive them
on Sunday morning in time for service. The old rector bravely tried to
do that duty which England expects every man to do, more especially if
he is a parson and if it be Sunday morning; but after he had mumbled
through the prayers with equal difficulty and incoherency, he decided
that it would be advisable to abandon any further attempts to address
his congregation on that day. While the hymn was being sung he summoned
his clerk to the vestry, and then said to him, "It is quite useless for
me to attempt to go on. The fact is, that my dentist has not sent me
back my artificial teeth; and as it is impossible for me to make myself
understood, you must tell the congregation that the service is ended for
this morning, and that there will be no service this afternoon." The old
clerk went back to his desk; the singing of the hymn was brought to an
end; and the rector, from his retreat in the vestry, heard the clerk
address the congregation as follows:

"This is to give notice! as there won't be no sarmon, nor no more
service this mornin', so you'd better all go whum (home); and there
won't be no sarvice this afternoon, as the rector ain't got his artful
teeth back from the dentist!"

This story so amused George Cruikshank that he wanted to make an
illustration of it. But the journal in which it ought to have appeared
was very short-lived. Hence Cruikshank's drawing was lost to the world.

The clerk is a firm upholder of established custom. "We will now sing
the evening hymn," said the rector of an East Anglian church in the
sixties. "No, sir, it's doxology to-night." The preacher again said,
"We'll sing the evening hymn." The clerk, however, persisted, "It's
doxology to-night"; and doxology it was, in spite of the
parson's protests.

In the days when par