But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the
service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village
nooks in the kingdom--a reason of which I am sure you have not the
slightest suspicion. It was the reading of our friend Joshua Rann. Where
that good shoemaker got his notion of reading from remained a mystery
even to his most intimate acquaintances. I believe, after all, he got it
chiefly from Nature, who had poured some of her music into this honest
conceited soul, as she had been known to do into other narrow souls
before his. She had given him, at least, a fine bass voice and a musical
ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to
inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses.
The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence,
subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance,
like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to
nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the
wind among the autumn boughs. This may seem a strange mode of speaking
about the reading of a parish clerk--a man in rusty spectacles, with
stubbly hair, a large occiput, and a prominent crown.
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