IN MERRY MOOD.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 14133, 12 February 1910, Page 7

IN MERRY MOOD.

A SHEAF OF ANECDOTES. (No. 2.) SOME STORIES OF THE CLERGY. In comparison with tho number of diverting stories told of persons of other callings, the number of known anecdotes of the clergy is not large. In the Percy anecdotes, a volume of respectable size is certainly devoted to ancc- 1 dotes of the pulpit, but tho anecdotes given therein are more remarkable for the morals drawn than for wit. Later collections of jests and stories depend for their representation of clerical anecdotes largely upon the witty sayings of Sydney Smith, stories of whom are so well known that I avoid repetition of them. In many cases the stories are told at tho expense of the clergy. Nevertheless, instances may be found in which the cloth has been guilty of wit. There is a story concerning an old gentleman of 84 who had taken to tho altar ,a damsel of but 16. To him the clergyman said, “The font is at the other end of the church.” “What do I want with the font?” said tho old gentleman. “Oh!” I beg your pardon,” returned the cleric, “I thought you had brought this child to be christened.” > Nor are instances wanting in which clergymen, other than Irish, have been guilty of laughable “bulls.” It was a Yorkshire parson, who, preaching for a blind asylum, began his discourse gravely, “If all the world were blind what a melancholy sight it would be.”

Bad sermons are, of course, responsible for many clerical anecdotes. One of the best is that of the clergyman who, meeting a friend, asked, “Why do you never come to hear me preach.” The friend answered, “Because I am afraid'of disturbing 'your solitude.” Another good story _is told of Malherbes, who was dining one day with the Archbishop of Rouen, a notoriously dull preacher. Malherbes fell asleep very soon after dinner, but was, awakened by his host, who invited his guest to go and hear him preach. “I beseech your Grace,” said Malherbes, “to excuse me; I can sleep exceedingly well where I am.”

It must have been an ancestor of Bishop Neligan of whom tho next story is told. An old clergyman, at the close of his sermon one Sunday, gave notice to the congregation that in the course of the week he expected to go on a mission to the heathen. One of his parishioners, in great agitation, exclaimed, “Why, my dear sir, you have never told ns one word of this before; what shall we do?” “Oh, brother,” replied the parson, “I don’t expect to go out of this town.” In Dean Ramsay’s Reminiscences is told the story of a minister in the Ncrth of Scotland who was returning thanks in his prayers for the excellent harvest. He began, as usual, “0 Lord, we thank Thee,” etc., and went on to mention the abundance of the harvest and its safe ingathering, but feeling anxious to be quite candid and scrupulously truthful, he added, “All except a few fields between this and Stonehaven not worth mentioning.” Dean Ramsay tells another good story of a North of Scotland clergyman. On coming into church one Sunday the minister found the pulpit occupied by the parish idiot. The elders of the church had been unable to remove Tam without more violence than was seemly, and therefore waited for the minister to dispossess him of the place he had assumed. “Come down, sir, immediately,” was the peremptory and, indignant call; and on Tam being unmoved it was repeated with still greater energy. Tam, however, very confidently replied, looking down from his elevation, “Na, na, minister! Just ye come tip wi’ me. This is a perverse generation, and faith they need us baith.”

Yet another story for Dean Ramsay, also of a “natural.” The congregation of the parish church of Lunan, in Forfarshire, had for some time distressed tho minister by their habit of sleeping in church. He had often vainly endeavoured to impress them with a sense of the impropriety of such conduct. One day, when Jamie ’Fraser,the parish idiot, was sitting in the front gallery wide awake, while many were slumbering around him, the parson tried to rouse the attention of the congregation by saying, “You see even Jamio Fraser, tho idiot, does not fall asleep as so many of you are doing.” Jamio, not liking, perhaps, to be thus designated, coolly replied, “An’ I hadna been an idiot I wad ha’ been sleeping too.” Other stories told of Scotch divines give us some good examples of the retort courteous. In some of the Scotch churches it is, or was, the snobbish custom for the minister to bow after pronouncing the blessing to the principal heritor or heritors. On one occasion the Rev. Dr. Wightman. of Kirkmahoe, being a young bachelor, omitted to salaam the ladies in the Dalswinton pew rather through shyness than discourtesy. A few days later he was taken to task for the omission by Miss Miller, the heritor’s daughter, a famous beauty, who afterwards became Countess of Mar. “Oh, Mr. Wightman, I have a crow to pluck with you. Why did you omit to bow to us ladies last Sunday?” “Surely, surely, Miss Miller, you must know that tho worship of angels is forbidden in tho Church of Scotland?” The Rev. Dr. M'Causland, minister of Douglas in Clydesdale, dining with a largo party, tho Hon. Henry Erskine being one, helped himself so plenteously to watercress and ate it so grossly and greedily that Erskine at last was provoked to say: “Eh, Dr. M'Causland, yo bring me in mind of the great King, Nebuchadnezzar “Ay, indeed, I remind you of Nebuchadnezzar ? That will be because I am eating amang the brutes, then!” A Roman Catholic prelate requested Pugin, tho architect, to furnish designs, etc., for a new church. It was to bo “Very, very handsome, and very cheap,” the parties purposing to erect being “very poor; in fact, having only £ .” “Say thirty shillings more,” cried the astonished architect, “and have a tower and spire at once.” Tho hat was passed round in a certain American congregation for the purpose of taking up a collection. After it had made the circuit of the church it was handed to the minister, who had “exchanged pulpits” with tho regular preacher. He found not a penny in it. After unveiling the hat over the pulpit cushion and shaking it, that its emptiness might bo known, he looked toward tho ceiling, and exclaimed, very fervently, “I thank God that 1 got back my hat from this congregation!’’ Tho famous Scotch divine. Dr. Hugh Blair, wished to bring to a penitent sense of her sins the no less famous Amazon, Soph. Johnstone. In tho long-winded Scotch fashion of that day Ihe doctor first dwelt upon the heinsmsness of sin generally which cost U, to begin with, the Garden of Eden.

He proceeded then to point out penitence as the only possible passport to a return to that felicity from which our first parents had fallen. But here he was interrupted and put to utter rout by Soph., who cried: “Weel, w6el, Doctor, it wud be sina’ pleasure to mo to rin about naked in a garden, eating green apples!” The story of a countryman who “bested” another parson was told in the London Spectator some months ago, in a pleasant sketch of Babylon, a little village under the Mendips. 'ldle writer describes the dying of Jesse Pearce, a gloomy but excellent old bachelor farmer who bred lovely cows, and whose sole parochial interest was a feud with the parson. Jesse kept away from church, and at last died. “’Ess,” said his old house keeper, “he’m gone, and Parson didn’ bury ’en, for he’d gone furrin; so Parson from Stoke parish did put ’on in the dirt. Measter, a did always say, ‘A wnnn’t hev thiccy fellow to put I in the dirt when I be carried out by town-end feet foremost,’ a said. ‘The land wor’ mine,’ said he, ‘and Passon he hadn’ no right to ’en, but I did best ’en,’ a said. So Parson, ho wer’ gone somewhere®, girt ways aff, when Measter took sick, an’ he says, ‘Sarah,’ says he, ‘l’ll best ’en yet. I did best ’eu over the land, and I’ll host ’on to ray buryin’,’ says he; an’ after that ho didn’t take no more heed. Racks of pain he wer’ in, but a didn’ cry out for naught, an’ when I see the poor nose of ’en so keen’s a razor, and him so like in' the face to’s brother that did die thirty year back, I did know how ’twould go. But a never cried out, only did pluck at sheet and speak low to hissolf. ‘My cow,’ a did say, ‘my dear beauty. A shann’t niver sec her no more,’ and’ the tears did run down over’s cheeks. For ho did love thiccy cow, look, so well’s a Christian, and wouldn’ niver let none milk her but I, for I did sing to she when I did milk, so milk would come easy, an’ Measter, ho did sot thiccy cow above any o’s kin. An’ there he did fret, the dear soul, that ho shouldn’ see her no more. Nor didn’, an’ her a beauty, too. But he bested Parson, did Monster, an’ I reckon that wor’ a rale comfort to ’en.” ,