the large mass of letters, which it was his
business to open, and sort, and enter, and
circulate, and index, and keep—in short, to
do everything with but answer; although one
part of his duty, and that by no means the
lightest, is to see that they are answered.

In a well-known office to the west of
Temple Bar, we found a large table covered
with letters; with a huge white vellum
Post-office bag—once white, but now of a very
different colour—crusted with red sealing-wax
and string, and some remains of bits of black
wax to show that it had been in a court
mourning of its own for a king or a queen.
Our friend was soon at work. He sorted the
letters on his table according to their
consequence, he told us, and this too without
opening them, for some he knew by their
envelopes, some by their seals, and others by
the handwriting upon them.

"These are Treasury letters," he said, "and
I take them first. There is 'Treasury' upon
them in the corner, and I am now sorting
them according to the Services—Colonial,
Commissariat, or Home." As he opened them
he flattened them on their faces, and then
proceeded with other Home correspondence,
such as Foreign Office letters, Inland
Revenue letters, and letters from the various
departments of Government in London.
These he treated in the same manner, and
then proceeded to sort the contents of the
large vellum bag, which the office messenger
had by this time emptied on his table.

What a medley of communications in point
of size now broke upon the view! Here were
some as big as six octavo volumes made into
a brown paper parcel; some of a lesser size,
like a volume of Household Words; some of
foolscap size; and some as small as the
envelopes in ordinary use for an amount of
letter-writing that a penny is sufficient to
convey from Kirkwall to St. Michael's Mount.
Our friend was evidently not very well pleased
with the little letters, for he put them aside
to be opened last, as if indeed he would rather
not have them; nor was it at once that we
perceived his reasons, though, as the reader
shall see, he had good enough grounds for
objecting to all letters written on the kind of
paper ordinarily in use in all unofficial
communications.

When he had arranged his letters to his
own satisfaction, he began to open them with
a rapidity which showed that this had long
been his daily employment. With his left
hand he flattened the letters out, and with his
right threw the envelopes into the huge
waste-paper basket by his side. He had
soon a formidable pile of communications to
digest, and it was easy to see that some would
occasion more trouble to him than he thought
should fall to the share of the receiver of the
letter, or the correspondent to whom it is
addressed. "These Irish letters," he said, "give
us unnecessary trouble. Irish officials never
write like English or Scotch officers. They
are sure either to omit the date of the
communication altogether, or, worse still, to give
a wrong date to the letter they profess to
reply to. This," he said, "is another troublesome
class of communication—here is a letter
written on two sides of half-a-sheet of foolscap.
There are enclosures with it. This writer is
carrying out the saving system of M'Culloch,
which the Treasury has sanctioned, but which
the Treasury does not, however, wisely enough,
in its own case follow out, and which nearly
all efficient Government officers are thoughtful
enough to break through. Now, I have to
pin these papers together, and before they
are returned to me they will be riddled with
pin-holes; whereas, if the communication
had been made on a full sheet of paper, I
should have placed the enclosures in the
centre of the letter without a pin, and thus,
if a full sheet instead of a single sheet had
been used by this paper-sparing correspondent,
a little world of convenience, and even of
security would have been gained to your
humble servant and to the public as well."

When his letters were all flattened out
with their faces to the desk, he took them to
an adjoining table, and the messenger, with a
hand-stamp, stamped every letter in the left-hand
corner with an oval-shaped stamp,
containing the name of the office and the words
"Received, 17th of August 1852." He now
took them again to his own seat, and
proceeded to number every letter with a separate
number placed in large characters in the
middle of the first page and close to the top.
He then took a red-ink pen, and wrote the
service or account to which the letter related
—immediately below the office-stamp; and
beneath the head of service, as briefly as
possible, the subject of the communication.
This done, he proceeded to mark with a strong
black-lead pencil the particular references in
the several letters to the letters sent from his
own office, to verify dates, to fill in the dates
and numbers of previous communications,
and then to deliver to a messenger all letters
referring to office letters, with instructions to
"get the drafts"—meaning the drafts of the
letters referred to by the several
correspondents. This getting the drafts engrossed
some time; but our friend was not idle. He
had now opened his register of letters received,
and proceeded to enter the letters not
relating to any previous correspondence,
making the numbers on the register agree with
the numbers he had placed upon the letters.

This book or register is rather a ledger-like
affair, ruled with faint blue lines,
divided into columns, each column having
a separate printed heading. Thus:—  "No.
Name of Accountant, Party, or Office. Date
of the Paper. Nature or Subject of Paper.
Date of Board's Minute. Date of Board's
Order not on the Minutes. Substance of
Board's Orders on Papers not Minuted.
Proceedings. When disposed of. No. of
Former Communication. No. of Subsequent