The Lighter Side of English LifeMoore, Frank Frankfort
General
The Lighter Side of English Life
Moore, Frank Frankfort
England -- Social life and customs; England -- Social life and customs -- Humor
My informant, who was present upon the occasion referred to, was also
a stranger to the place. He was staying with the doctor's family, and,
walking home from the church, the doctor's wife remarked how beautiful
the sermon had been.
“Your rector bears his age very well,” said her companion. “He does not
look a day over forty, and yet, according to his own account, he must be
at least sixty-five.”
“Our rector? But that clergyman is not our rector,” said the lady. “Our
rector is ill; the one we had today came to do duty for him. He is a
stranger.”
“But why, then, should he talk of having baptized half the congregation
and married the other half--of never having been absent from the pulpit
for forty years and more?” asked the man.
“Oh, you are hypercritical!” cried the lady. “Some latitude should be
allowed to clergymen. He only made use of one of the figures of speech
of the pulpit.”
It is recorded of the same estimable charpson--if a parson who also
discharges the duties of a squire has been called a squarson, may not
one who goes out like a charwoman by the day be called a charpson?--that
upon one occasion he was asked to do duty for an absent clergyman at a
village in Hampshire, but the contract was for the morning service
only. When he was disrobing in the vestry after preaching the ser mon,
a couple of churchwardens approached him on the subject of the evening
service also. He said that he would be very pleased indeed to take the
evening service, but of course he should have to receive another guinea.
The churchwardens demurred. They said they thought that, as he was on
the spot----
He shook his head.
“I cannot see that that has anything to do with the case,” said the
clergyman. “One service and sermon, one guinea; two services and two
sermons, two guineas.”
The officials agreed that the article was marked in plain figures;
but still they thought---- Well, would he consent to take the evening
service for another half-guinea?
After thinking over the proposal, the clergyman consented to do so; and
then one of the wardens suggested that perhaps Mr. Gilliman would not
mind saying just a few words--not a sermon--not a regular sermon, of
course, but just a few words--to the congregation after the evening
service.
After some further thought Mr. Gilliman said he would have no objection
to say a few words in this way, and the wardens thanked him and handed
him a sovereign, a half-sovereign, a shilling, and a sixpence. They went
so far as to pay him for the evening in advance, to show that they had
unlimited confidence in him.
On his part he resolved to prove to them that their confidence in him
was not misplaced; so, after reading the evening service, he came to the
front of the altar-rails and said--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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