h he faced. There was no musical instrument of any
kind. The hymn, which of course was from Tate and Brady, was the
metrical version of Psalm xlii. The clerk gave out the Psalm, then read
the first line to the congregation, then sang it solo, and then the
congregation sang it altogether; and so on line after line for the whole
eleven verses.

More attention must have been paid in those days to the requirement of
the ninety-first Canon, that the clerk should be known, if may be, "for
his competent skill in singing."

In 1873 I was curate-in-charge of an out-of-the-way Norfolk village. On
my first Sunday I had an early celebration at 8 a.m. I arrived in church
about 7.45, and to my amazement saw five old men sitting round the stove
in the nave with their hats on, smoking their pipes. I expostulated with
them quite gently, but they left the church before service and never
came again. I discovered afterwards that they had been regular
communicants, and that my predecessor always distributed the offertory
to the poor present immediately after the service. When these men in the
course of my remonstrance found that I was not going to continue the
custom, they no longer cared to be communicants.

In 1870, in Norfolk, I went round with the rural dean visiting the
churches. At one church the only person to receive the rural dean was
the parish clerk, who was ready with the funeral pall to put over the
rural dean's horse whilst waiting outside the church.

It was this same church which, in preparation for the rural dean's
visit, had been recently and completely whitewashed throughout. Not only
the walls and pillars, but also the pews, the school forms, the pulpit,
and also the altar itself, a very small four-legged deal table without
any covering. I suppose this was done by the churchwardens to conceal
the dilapidated condition of everything; but they had omitted to remove
the grass which was growing in the crevices of the floor paving.

Mr. Moxon (deceased), formerly rector of Hethersett, in Norfolk, told me
that he had once preached for a friend in a Norfolk village church with
the woman clerk holding an umbrella over his head in the pulpit
throughout the sermon, because of the "dreep."

Miss E. Lloyd, of Woodburn, Crowborough, writes:

About the year 1833 a gentleman bought an estate in North Yorkshire,
seven miles from any town, and built a house there. The parish was
small, having a population of about a hundred souls,