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words I wanted said, he was stolidly my way. I promptly told them that I silent. At last he saw that I was some- would have nothing to do with any of what bothered by his extreme stupidity, them, and shut up the books and left the so in the middle of the service he upset my gravity by volunteering the following apology: "You see, sir, it's so long since I was married afore, that you must excuse my forgetting of these things."

church. The man was furious, and threatened me with a prosecution, and all sorts of terrible pains and penalties. But I never heard another word about him or his amours from that day to this.

On another occasion a very grand wedding came to the church duly armed with a marriage license. But the clerk on entering the particulars in the registers unfortunately discovered that the pet name of the bride had been put into that docu. ment instead of the legal Christian name which her godfather and godmothers had given her at her baptism. We were in a fearful fix. The license was practically no license at all, as the pet name and the real name did not bear the remotest resemblance to one another. Again every one began to talk at once, and we spent so much time in this interesting but entirely useless occupation that the fatal hour of noon got perilously near. It was proposed that the wedding should be postponed for a day, while the mistake was rectified, but this course was stoutly opposed by the bridegroom, who oddly enough adduced as his principal reason, "We shall look such fools before the waiters if we go back unmarried." At last it was proposed that we should go down to the police court, where the magistrates were sitting, and get an affidavit sworn that "Popsy" and "Lucy Victoria" were one and the same person. If this were done I professed myself ready to proceed with the ceremony. According ly, the bridegroom and I got into one of the wedding carriages, drove with all speed to the town hall, and presented ourselves before the astonished eyes of the magistrates there assembled. We explained our business, and one of the Great Unpaid who was assisting the stipendiary on the bench at once most good-naturedly undertook to do our little business for us. An affidavit was drawn up, and sworn to in all haste, and back we galloped to the church just in time to begin the ceremony before the clock struck twelve. By this performance I earned the everlasting gratitude of the bride and bridegroom, but I also brought down on my devoted head a considerable wigging from some official in London to whom the circumstances were in due course reported. He told me the marriage was perfectly valid, but he also ordered me with some asperity "not to do it again."

It was once my lot to have two young ladies in the church at the same time, both wanting to be married to the same man. One of these would-be brides I found waiting for me in the vestry on my arrival at the church a few minutes before the time appointed for the ceremony to commence. She proceeded to explain to me how she was engaged to the faithless swain who was about to appear with another fair one, and how their banns had been put up in the East End parish where they lived, and all arrangements made for the wedding to take place in due course. Meantime she had discovered that her young man had been carrying on with another young woman, and had put up the banns in our West End church, where he hoped that no one would know anything about him. She had hardly finished this explanation when the young man in question walked in with that almost idiotic grin upon his face, so often assumed by "'Arries" on such occasions, and with a most bouncing and gaily apparelled female on his arm. The start of horror which came over his intelligent countenance when he saw who the parson had got with him in the vestry may be more easily imagined than described. But I found myself in a very difficult position. Neither lady would gracefully retire, and I was a young and bashful curate with no judgment in such matters. We all sat down round the ves try table, and proceeded to discuss the situation at considerable length, both the would-be brides (as it is perhaps hardly necessary to mention) continuing the conversation in a high-pitched key at the same time. But we got no nearer to an amicable settlement of the knotty point. Though I need hardly say that my sympathies went strongly with the lady who was first in the field, yet, unfortunately, "it is a free country we live in," and I was very much afraid that I should be obliged to marry the man to the only bride whom he was willing to accept. But while I cogitated the matter, it most fortunately came out in the course of the conversation that neither the man nor woman had ever really "kept residence" by sleeping a single night in our parish. As soon as I dis- The church of which I have been speakcovered this important fact, I at once sawing was in former times used for little else

on week days except weddings in the morning and funerals in the afternoon, and it is reported of the afore-mentioned clerk that on one occasion when a young lady and gentleman called at his house, and asked to go into the church for the purpose of seeing it, he made so certain that they could have come there but for one purpose, viz., to be joined together in holy matrimony, that when they followed him to the church they found to their considerable dismay that he had got out the marriage registers, and fetched one of the curates, so as to despatch their little business as expeditiously as possible. Report says they were brother and sister. But this is supposed to have happened long before my time, and I decline to vouch for the authenticity of the narrative. People are often wonderfully ignorant or careless on all subjects connected with these interesting occasions. I have known couples present themselves at the church without having made any preliminary arrangements, saying that they knew I was a surrogate, and they thought that I could "sell them a license" in the vestry before the service commenced. I was once sent for by a young lady, who asked me "whether it was legal to be married without bridesmaids," and on my assuring her that it was, she proceeded to ask me the further question "whether I would be so very kind as to marry her in her ordinary attire?" The common people have one peculiar habit of their own. When asked to say after the officiating clergyman" with all my worldly goods I thee endow," they frequently say "with all my worldly goods I thee and thou."

But the stupidity is by no means always on the side of the people. I once had a curate who got greatly obfuscated by the number of the banns he was called upon to publish one Sunday morning. So, when at last he got through his task, he wound up by saying: "If any of you know any just cause or impediment why all these persons may not respectably be joined to gether in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it." Of course he meant respectively, but his mistake caused an audible titter from certain of the younger members of the congregation. It has twice happened to me that some one has risen up in the church for the purpose of forbidding the banns. I asked the objector to speak to me in the vestry after service, and the incident passed off and seemed to make little stir in the church at the time, but on both occasions the fact was widely reported in the London papers. I have

heard again of a clergyman who was so awkward that on the first occasion of his officiating at a wedding he stood the whole time at the altar, and read the service exactly as he found it in the Prayer-book, without inserting the names of the interested parties. "I, M., take thee, N., to my wedded wife," etc. I believe this was declared to be a valid marriage, but I think the officiating clergyman deserved a wigging quite as much, if not more, than I did on the occasion of the mistake in the marriage license above referred to.

It frequently happens that when people have been married before a registrar they afterwards develop qualms of conscience at this irregular method of entering into the wedded state, and come to the parson and want to be married again in church. The law specially provides in such cases that any clergyman may read the marriage service over such people, without the production of a license or the publication of banns, but of course he is not to enter such marriages in the registers, as the legal ceremony was complete before. It has happened to me to have to officiate in such cases several times. But on oneoccasion I was rather nonplussed by the answer I got to the question, "John, wilt. thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?" Why, sir, I told you we was married two years ago."

I have several times married a deaf and dumb couple, but never to my knowledge a deaf and dumb person to one who could hear and speak. Sometimes I have used a slate, and written out the questions, while they have written out the replies. Sometimes I have had an interpreter, who followed me in the service with the deaf and dumb alphabet. But it is an awkward business at the best for an outsider, and now that there is a deaf and dumb clergyman (whom I have had the pleasure of meeting), I think that all such weddings ought to be his especial care in future.

I once married a lady of title who was a spinster of seventy-one to a widower of seventy-three. On this occasion the parties procured a special license, with the view of being married in the afternoon, when they thought they would escape notice and be married "on the quiet." But somehow or other the affair got wind, and excited (as was, perhaps, but natural) extraordinary attention, and I have seldom seen a church fuller at a wedding than it was on that interesting occasion. The good old couple are both dead and gone now, but they lived together for some years, and I always took

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a sort of fatherly interest in them from having officiated on the afore-mentioned occasion, though they were not far short of half a century my seniors.

A great many people do not know the difference between an ordinary license, which can be procured without difficulty through any surrogate or at Doctors' Commons, and a special license, which can only be procured with considerable difficulty through the Archbishop of Canterbury, and at a cost of some thirty pounds. I have several times officiated in private houses, where, of course, such special license is necessary, though in Scotland - at all events, until quite recently a large proportion of the weddings were celebrated not in the churches or kirks, but at the home of the bride. Some time ago I granted an ordinary But the license in the ordinary way. people most closely concerned did not consider it an ordinary occasion, for I saw the marriage described in the Times "by special license from the surrogate of the diocese."

Most of my comical reminiscences centre themselves round weddings, but occasionally the comic side will obtrude itself at more sombre times. On one occasion, when I was waiting at the cemetery chapel to commence the service, the undertaker stepped up to the sexton and said, in a very audible aside, "Trimmings allowed, John." This I afterwards discovered was his polite way of making known the fact that the mourners were anxious to present the officiating clergyman with a hatband.

Many years ago, when the Oxford movement was first stirring men's minds, and the old Prayer-book services were beginning to be used again after the lapse of many years, my father was the incumbent of a country parish in Oxfordshire. Ash Wednesday came round, and he thought he would read the Commination Service, but, as his doing so was a decided novelty, and the services of the clerk were not available on a week day, he was in some trepidation as to whether such congregation as was likely to assemble would be equal to the proper saying of the responses in that unaccustomed service. So he carefully coached up his butler in the necessary responses, and took him with him to the service to officiate as clerk. But unfortunately, when the man got there, he could not find the service in his Prayerbook, but thinking he remembered the part that appertained unto him, he said "Amen," not only at the proper places after the denunciatory sentences, but whenever he could manage to get one in right down to the very end of the service.

I once knew a very eloquent clergyman, who could do and say pretty nearly anything you could ask him, except give out a notice. Of these he always made such a terrible bungle that at last his wife used to write them out for him before service, and he used to read them from her But one Palm Sunday, when the paper. notices for Holy Week were of course unusually complicated and voluminous, the paper in question somehow went astray. However, thus suddenly thrown upon his own resources, he resolved to make the best of things, and with a serious face he nerved himself to his task, and began detailing the various services which were to be held during the week. He got on pretty well during the first three days, and gave us a tolerably coherent account of what was going to happen on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But here his patience seemed exhausted, or his pres

One's duty sometimes leads one into On one ocstrangely contrasted scenes. casion, after officiating at a wedding, I had to hurry up to the cemetery to take a fnneral before presenting myself as a guest at the wedding breakfast. This made me a trifle late, and I kept them waiting for a few minutes. A little later I found myself on my legs, in for a speech. I remember that I was unusually hard up for something to say, but it did not occur to me to apol-ence of mind gone, for he went on to ogize for my apparent rudeness in keeping them waiting by telling them where I had been in the mean time. Talking of these odd juxtapositions reminds me of a speech made by an old lawyer in Lincolnshire who came to supper one Sunday night with a clergyman with whom I was read ing before going up to Oxford. After supper my fellow-pupil and I politely escorted him to the door, when he took leave of us as follows: " Well, my boys, good-night. God bless you. Where the devil's my hat?”

astonish his congregation by announcing
in stentorian_tones, "and on Thursday
next, being Good Friday, there will be
When we got into
divine service," etc.
the vestry I said to him, "I declare I be
lieve you will give out some day, on the
first Sunday in the middle of the week,
But he did not take it
there will," etc.
well. So I collapsed.

I do not personally remember anything comical happening to me when reading the churching service; but we have prob ably all of us heard of the parish clerk

who was so much shocked at hearing the curate describe the titled wife of the great man of the parish as "this woman." He knew his manners better, and promptly replied, "who putteth her ladyship's trust in Thee." My fellow-curate at a London church where a fee of eighteenpence was charged for the use of the churching service, once told me that a poor woman hearing of the charge, and alluding to the brevity of the service, replied, "What! Eighteenpence for that bit. It's an imposition. Read some more?"

The following is an exact transcript of a paper still in my possession, which was sent into the vestry one Sunday afternoon: "Miss Patching, wife of John Patching, to be church and cursing baby."

back, I think there is some
room for
doubt whether it would have been chris-
tened on that day. The recollection of
that scene in the little country church re-
minds me of a lusty ejaculation I once
made in the same place-fortunately
quite a clerical one just before I com-
menced my sermon, which must at the
time have greatly surprised my rustic
audience. The fact was, the floods were
out, and, as I had to ride through some of
the water on horseback, I deemed it only
a prudent precaution to affix to my heels a
pair of sharp spurs. I forgot to take them
off when I put on my surplice, and when I
got into the pulpit, which was a very awk-
ward little place, I squatted firmly down
upon them.

I once, on coming into the charge of a It was in the same pulpit that I preached large town district which had been for my first extempore sermon. I had no idea some time previously somewhat neglected, that I had any gifts that way (very likely I discovered that there were a very large was quite right), and I always used to number of children unbaptized. I accord- provide myself with the necessary manuingly determined on holding a great pub. script. On one occasion I put that doculic baptism service, and invited the people ment into my tail coat-pocket, and then to bring their children on a week day even-jogged comfortably down on my cob to the ing in their working clothes. More than church. Somehow or other the sermon a hundred babies were brought in re-jogged out of my pocket, and fell into a sponse to this invitation. On seeing so ditch, where I found it on my journey large a number of parents and god-par-home. I never discovered my loss till I ents assembled, I at once came to the was in the pulpit. We wore no cassocks conclusion that the opportunity was far too in those days, but simply pulled an allgood to be lost, and I therefore ascended enveloping surplice over our riding gear. the pulpit stairs with the view of instruct- I put my hand behind me to bring forth ing them in the meaning of the Holy Sac- my treasure. Horror! It was not there. rament which was about to be adminis- I grasped the situation in a moment. Two tered, and what duties devolved upon them courses seemed to lie before me. I could in connection therewith. But I reckoned not even console myself by thinking of entirely without my host. The babies Mr. Gladstone's proverbial three. One were determined to have their say on that was to explain the mishap which had besubject, and I had no sooner commenced fallen me, and to add the remark, "Theremy remarks than I was surrounded by a fore I am a dumb dog, and cannot bark," perfect "Lamb Fair." I at once saw the and then beat a hasty retreat. I could not necessity of giving up the unequal con- bring myself to adopt this alternative. flict. I surrendered at discretion, and Therefore I chose the other, which was to beat a hasty and undignified retreat. make a bold dash for it, pick up the Bible, That was not the only occasion on which give out a text, and proceed to rebuke my I was in some danger of being worsted by hearers for their backslidings. I got a baby. One of about two years old was through somehow, and my uncritical audionce brought to me to be baptized. It ence expressed themselves so delighted had its own ideas on the subject, and when with the change, that I never used a manI picked it up for the purpose of perform- uscript in that little church again. ing the ceremony it plunged its little hand into my beard and whiskers, and gave them such a thorough good and unmistakable pull, that I was in great danger of calling out with the pain. Another baby was just old enough to run, and run very quickly too. When I came near it, off it went, and, had it not tumbled over a footstool, and thus fallen ignominiously into the hands of its enemies, and been brought |

A lady once sent me a message that her footman had not been confirmed, and that she would like him to join some confirmation classes which were just being formed. One of my colleagues went to call on her with the view of making the necessary arrangements. Just as he was leaving, it suddenly occurred to her that she had a groom, and very likely he was not confirmed either. So she rang the bell, and

told the butler to go over to the stables, | old parish clerk, is still sometimes guilty and find out whether James had been confirmed. In a few minutes the man returned and stolidly announced, "Yes, miss, it's all right. He's been done twice." Of course he meant vaccinated.

of a stroke of unconscious humor. One of my curates, who had previously officiated at a very famous London church, where the sexes were divided, the men sitting on the one side of the aisle and the The offertory occasionally yields its women on the other, once told me a very humors. I can see no fun myself in drop- amusing story of their official. The serping into the plate buttons or peppermint vice was just about to commence. The drops or gilded farthings. But these, and long procession of the surpliced choir was other such-like votive offerings, occasion- drawn up in the vestry, just about to march ally come our way. On one occasion a into the church. The vicar was commild hint was given to a dirty-looking mencing the words of the vestry prayer, verger, when a small coin was carefully when the official in question popped his wrapped up in a bit of paper, inscribed, head through the door and remarked, "For a bath for a prominent church offi-"Please, sir, there's a bishop got in among cial." On another occasion, when the offi- the ladies. Shall I have him out?" ciating clergyman had been somewhat bungling through a difficult litany, a similar piece of paper was marked, "For a singing lesson for the curate." After a somewhat rambling discourse from one of my colleagues, who shall, of course, be nameless, the church warden told me that a man at the bottom of the church, when he offered him the plate, took out a sixpence and looked at it ruefully, and then cast it in with the remark, "Well, you shall have it, old fellow, but it's a deal more than that sermon was worth." It fell to my lot for some Sundays to take the service at a once famous proprietary chapel, where shillings used to be charged for seats at the door. When I was there, the place of worship in question had been made free and open, but one morning a lady arrived, and on taking her accustomed place, and missing the usual impost at the door, sent a shilling by the verger to me in the vestry. On my suggesting that times were changed, and that she would have an opportunity by and by to deposit the coin in question in the offertory bag, she utterly declined to give way to any

I will conclude these disjointed clerical reminiscences by recounting what happened to me once when I was still in deacon's orders. The clerk of a neighboring parish came over to inform me that the parson had been taken suddenly and seriously ill, and that he would be greatly obliged to me if I would take his service for him on the following Sunday morning. The man was much delighted at my consenting, and was profuse in his thanks. Just as he was leaving the room he casually remarked, "Oh, by the way, it is Sacrament Sunday." I then explained to him that I was unable to do what he wanted, for I was only in deacon's orders, and that he must get some one else. He seemed much distressed at the failure of his efforts, and at last, like one trying his last chance, he turned to me with a most insinuating smile, and said, "Couldn't you do it, sir, just for once?"

From The Nineteenth Century.

such new-fangled invention, remarking A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND IN THE YEAR

that "she always had paid a shilling to sit in that seat, and she always would.”

I was somewhat disconcerted one Sunday, when the vicar's Easter offerings were being collected, by a mad woman who brought a basket of stinking fish, which she insisted on personally offering at the altar. She was not such a pleasant person to deal with as a colonial farmer I was once told of by a friend who looked very much distressed at passing the plate on a similar occasion, but explained his apparent shortcoming by remarking in a loud aside, "You'll find a pie on the vestry table."

The modern church verger, though by no means so interesting an animal as the

1663.

I.

THE TRAVELLER INTRODUCED. AMONG the familiars of the French Embassy in the year 1663, when the Comte de Cominges represented the Grand Monarch at the British court, was a thin, lean person, who belonged partly to the Church and partly to the world, a Protestant by birth and a Catholic by trade, named Samuel Sorbières, or de Sorbières as he preferred to be called. He was travelling in England to see the sights, to improve his knowledge, and to become better acquainted with the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury.

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