barber, or to receive a final touch, of the
clothes-brush at bis wife's hands. He is
not, however, awe-stricken by the thought
of seeing the secretary, for he feels his own
importance mightily, and is sure that the
secretary will recognise it also. He has a
vague idea that the secretary is impatiently
awaiting the interview, and is going to be
delighted to see him, if not for his own
sake, at least for tbat of the irresistible
congress-man who has got him his place.
He arrives at the department, is ushered
into an ante-room, where he finds twenty
unfortunate-looking office-seekers, and he
boldly asks for the secretary, at the same
time giving his card to the messenger.
He is not a little taken aback to be told
that there are at least twenty interviews
which the head has got to get through
before his turn comes, and the messenger
hints that it is possible that the secretary
will not be able to see him at all!
However, at last he penetrates to the sanctum
sanctorum of the department, and advances
promptly and eagerly, with outstretched
hand, towards his future chief. That
personage stares at him, coughs coldly, waves
him coldly to a seat, and asks his name.
The announcement thereof utterly fails to
move a muscle of the great man's face,
who adds insult to injury by asking his
business, intimating that time is valuable.
Our poor servant of a great government
feels limp and stiff, hot and cold, in the
same instant. His rose-coloured vision of
a near intimacy with the secretary, whom
he fully expected to call by his Christian
name within a week, and of the charmingly
familiar terms on which his dear
Betsy would straightway become with the
secretary's wife, vanish suddenly before the
icy bluntness of his chief. He receives,
humbly, the confusingly general and
unsatisfactory instructions which the latter
deigns to give him, and retires a wiser and
a meeker man. He repairs to the chief clerk
of the section in which he has been placed,
who conducts him to a desk, tells him his
especial tasks, and leaves him to himself.
He is in a lofty plainly whitewashed apartment,
with four or five mahogany desks,
perforated with pigeon-holes, and supplied
with spittoons of various and unique design.
The four or five desks are occupied by four
or five clerks, who are to be his official
companions during the period—longer or
shorter — that he and they remain in office.
They have a very sober, demure, quiet air,
as if they suspected the secretary to be in
hiding behind the door, and as if they
wished to show how faithful and obedient
they were, unconscious of his propinquity.
They are very social with the new comer,
however, and he who, an hour ago, had
resolved to hold no unnecessary intercourse
whatever with his fellow- clerks, but to
confine his associations exclusively to the
secretary, and possibly one or two of the
chief clerks, now gladly welcomes their
attentions, and is thankful for their greeting.
His fellow-clerks he finds to be characters
in their way. One is a dry old stager, who
has, wonderful to relate, served the government
these forty years, a man of infinite
jest in a quiet, official way, who has
managed to weather the political storms,
and to be found still swimming, whether
the powers were democratic, whig, or
republican. He never is without a quill
behind his ear, nor does official life ever
sufficiently ruffle him to disturb the sleek
smoothness of his hair and skin. He tells
numberless anecdotes, all of an unmistakable
political flavour, and has an old story
about General Jackson and the abolition of
the National Bank, which he brings out on
every available occasion. Another of the
occupants of the apartment is a nephew of
a down-east senator, a youth with an
exceedingly broad and drawling nasal twang,
a crimson cravat, and an exceedingly loud,
hoarse laugh. A third is a pompous,
middle-aged gentleman, with blue coat and
brass buttons, and a very apparent bunch
of watch-seals, to whom the others pay a
marked and mysterious respect. Our new
clerk soon learns that this person is an ex-
member of congress, rejected of his
enlightened constituency, and glad to find a
haven in a government office. His greatness
is circumscribed, but it is still greatness;
he may yet hold a little court in
department corridors. Yet another is a little,
shrewd, rough- visaged, spike-nosed western
politician, who is smart, has a keen relish
for affairs, is for ever bustling about in a
perpetual fever of uncomfortable activity, and
who engages in a constant warfare with the
elderly clerk on the question whether the
windows shall be up or down in mid-July.

Our new clerk becomes, before long,
experienced, for his tasks require no throes of
intellect, no profound study of treatise or
text-book. He gets to be a very clerkly
clerk, the quill naturally fitting to his ear,
the office hours to his habits, and that
nameless officially decorous, mildly
contented, and easily obsequious air in his
manner, which is discoverable in government
clerks the world over. At first he is
restive under the rule which requires every
clerk to report himself on reaching the