e might grow up to be a
beautiful girl." "Jane _only_, I mean," explained the clerk.

All clergymen know the difficulty of changing the names of the sovereign
and the Royal Family at the commencement of the reign of a new monarch.

In a certain parish in the south of England (the name of which I do not
know, or have forgotten), at the time of the accession of Her late
Majesty Queen Victoria, the rector charged his clerk to make the
necessary alterations in the Book of Common Prayer required by the sex
of the new sovereign. The clerk made all the needed alterations with the
greatest care as regards both titles and pronouns; but not only this, he
carried on the changes throughout the Psalter. Consequently, on the
morning of the fourth day of the month, for instance, the rector found
Psalm xxi. rendered thus: "The Queen shall rejoice in Thy strength, O
Lord: exceeding glad shall She be of Thy salvation," and so on
throughout the course of the Psalms and the whole of the Psalter. Also
in the prayer for the Church Militant, when prayer is made for all
Christian kings, princes, etc., the distracted vicar found the words
changed into "Queen, Princesses, etc." After all, the clerk showed his
thoroughness, but nothing short of a new Prayer Book could satisfy the
needs of the vicar[94].

[Footnote 94: From the information of Miss Marion Stirling, who heard
the story from Prebendary Thornton.]

Canon Gregory Smith tells the following story of a clerk in
Herefordshire, who flourished half a century ago:

In the west-end gallery of the old-fashioned little church were
musicians with fifes, etc. etc. Sometimes, if they started badly in a
hymn, the clerk would say to the congregation, "Beg pardon, gents; we'll
try again."

As I left home one day, the clerk ran after me. "But, sir, who'll take
the duty on St. Swithin's Day?"

Once or twice, being somnolent, on a hot afternoon he woke up suddenly
with a loud "Amen" in the middle of the sermon.

When I said good-bye to him, having resigned the benefice, he said, very
gravely, "God will give us another comforter."

An old country clerk in showing visitors round the churchyard used to
stop at a certain tombstone and say:

"This 'ere is the tomb of Thomas 'Ooper and 'is eleven wives."

One day a lady remarked: "Eleven? Dear me, that's rather a lot, isn't
it?"

The old man looked at her gravely and replied: "Well, mum, yer see it
wus an' 'obby of 'is'n."

The Rev. W.D. Paris