le remark he ever made worthy of record, or a solitary act
that is not just as well forgotten.

Every City Hall has dozens of just such men, and all political capitals
swarm with them. They are the sons of good families, and have to be
taken care of--Remittance-Men, Astute Persons, Clever Nobodies, Good
Fellows! They are more to be pitied than slaving peasants. God help the
rich--the poor can work!

Work is a solace 'gainst self--a sanctuary and a refuge from the Devil,
for Satan still finds mischief for idle hands to do. The Devil lies in
wait for the idler; and the Devil is the idler, and every idler is a
devil. Saintship consists in getting busy at some useful work.

When Katharine Wood, daughter of Sir Page Wood, became Mrs. O'Shea, she
was yet in her teens. Her husband was twenty. Neither knew what they
were doing, or where they were going.

Captain O'Shea in his shining uniform was a showy figure, and that his
captaincy had been bought and paid for was a matter that troubled
nobody. The pair was married, and when once tied by an ecclesiastic
knot, they proceeded to get acquainted. A captain in the English Army
who has a few good working sergeants is nothing and nobody. If he has
enough money he can pay to get the work done, and the only disadvantage
is that real soldiers scorn him, for soldiers take the measure of their
officers, just as office-boys gauge the quality of the head clerk, or a
salesman sizes a floorwalker. Nobody is deceived about anybody except
for about an hour at a time.

When the time came for Captain O'Shea to drop out of the military
service and become a civilian clerk in the Colonial Office, the army was
glad. Non-comps are gleefully sloughed in the army, just as they are in
a railroad-office or a department-store.

Yet Captain O'Shea was not such a bad person: had he been born poor and
driven a dray, or been understudy to a grocer, he would very likely have
evolved into a useful and inoffensive citizen. The tragedy all arose
from that bitter joke which the stork is always playing: sending
commonplace children to people of power.

And then we foolish mortals try to overawe Nature by a Law of Entail,
which supplies the Aristophanes of Heaven and Gabriel many a quiet
smile. The stork is certainly a bird that has no sense. Power that is
earned is never ridiculous, but power in the hands of one who is strange
to it is first funny, then fussy, and soon pathetic. Punk is a useful
substance,