250 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



an allotment a little distance away. Twice a week, 

 on market day, he loaded his little cart with his 

 produce and went off to sell it at the neighbouring 

 town. His spare time was filled up with odd jobs 

 — hedge-trimming, lawn-mowing, gardening generally, 

 repairing thatched roofs, and forty things besides. 

 I never found him sitting down, nor could get him to 

 sit down for more than five minutes at a stretch; 

 but he would rest on his spade sometimes and give 

 me scraps of his ancient history. Yet he was a small 

 weak-looking man, aged seventy-four! He had been 

 parish clerk over forty-five years, and his father 

 before him had held the office for upwards of fifty. 

 I was reminded of his case afterwards on two 

 occasions in Hampshire churchyards by epitaphs on 

 parish clerks. One was at Heckfield, near Eversley. 

 The inscription reads: 



Beneath this stone lies William Neave, who on the ioth 

 January, 1821, ended a blameless and inoffensive life of 79 years 

 during 45 of which he was Clerk of the Parish. His father, Thomas 

 Neave, and his grandfather, William Neave, had previously 

 filled this office, which (dedicated as it is to uphold in its degree 

 the order and decency of the Established Church) was here 

 uninterruptedly held by three generations of the Neaves through 

 a series of 136 years. In this period how many for whom they 

 had prepared the Font and whose giddy childhood they had 

 effectually chastised were by them finally conducted to the 

 spots around, where now they rest in humble hope of resurrection 

 to life eternal. 



Let us return to the old clerk of Itchen Abbas, 

 whose life had been spent in the village and whose 

 bright memory retained the story of its life during 

 the whole of that long period. Squire, parsons, 

 farmers, labourers, he remembered them all — the 



