• PAROCHIAL STORIES.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—That cleanliness may be sometimes next to godliness was brought home to me in one of my funniest experiences in my first large parish in the North of England. On an extremely hot day in July I was visiting, for the first time, a very deaf old woman in a back street. The window was open wide to the road, and I, a raw young curate, was seized with more perspiration than inspiration as I thought of my shouting attempts at pastoral visitation being enjoyed by all the neighbours. " Very sorry, sir ! " said the old dame, "but I can't 'ear a word. Mc 'usband is out, or e'd tank to cc." Hitching my chair a bit nearer her ear I yelled in sheer desperation : "Watch my lips." "Very sorry, sir but I can't 'ear a word you say," she repeated. I made one last frantic attempt. "Watch my lips," I shouted. Then a light seemed to gleam in her dim eyes. "Oh yes, sir ! " she said, "I always wash all over once a week." And with that I fled.
My parson brother was once visiting an old man in a northern city. "I bet you can't tell me, sir," he said, "where bicycles is mentioned in the Bible." My brother confessed that he could not, and meekly enquired where the passage was. "In Ezekiel," said the old fellow, triumphantly, "'Wheels within wheels : them's bicycles."
Coincidence is frequently responsible for much humour. The first Sunday of the new Lighting Order, February 10th, 1910, which ordered the darkening of our church windows because of the Zeppelins, was marked quite inadvertently by the hymn, "Let there be light." The following Sunday was very cold. The frost made the church paths so dangerous that more than one slipped and fell. Of course, the first hymn at Matins, chosen a week earlier, was "Be Thou my Guardian " ; and we sang, "Let not my slippery footsteps slide, But hold me lest I fall."—I am, Sir, &c., ARTHUR W. STOTIL Colehill •Vicarage, Wimborne, Dorset.
Previous page
