a varied and agreeable
employment. Enjoyment was written on his face; some letters were even
favourites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked,
and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might
be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in
proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have
been made even a councillor of state. But he worked, as his
companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.

However, it would be untrue to say that no attention was paid to him.
One director being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for his
long service, ordered him to be given something more important than
mere copying. So he was ordered to make a report of an already
concluded affair, to another department; the duty consisting simply in
changing the heading and altering a few words from the first to the
third person. This caused him so much toil, that he broke into a
perspiration, rubbed his forehead, and finally said, "No, give me
rather something to copy." After that they let him copy on forever.

Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He
gave no thought to his clothes. His uniform was not green, but a sort
of rusty-meal colour. The collar was low, so that his neck, in spite
of the fact that it was not long, seemed inordinately so as it emerged
from it, like the necks of the plaster cats which pedlars carry about
on their heads. And something was always sticking to his uniform,
either a bit of hay or some trifle. Moreover, he had a peculiar knack,
as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as
all sorts of rubbish was being flung out of it; hence he always bore
about on his hat scraps of melon rinds, and other such articles. Never
once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day to
the street; while it is well known that his young brother officials
trained the range of their glances till they could see when any one's
trouser-straps came undone upon the opposite sidewalk, which always
brought a malicious smile to their faces. But Akaky Akakiyevich saw in
all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines; and only when
a horse thrust his nose, from some unknown quarter, over his shoulder,
and sent a whole gust of wind down his neck from his nostrils, did he
observe that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of
the street.

On reaching home, he sat down a