nister who had long occupied an official residence, on being evicted
from office said with a pensive sigh, "I hope I am not avaricious, but
I must say, when one was hanging up pictures, it was very pleasant to
have the Board of Works carpenter and a bag of the largest nails for
nothing."

The late Sir William Gregory used to narrate how when a child he was
taken by his grandfather, who was Under-Secretary for Ireland, to see
the Chief Secretary, Lord Melbourne, in his official room. The
good-natured old Whig asked the boy if there was anything in the room
that he would like; and he chose a large stick of sealing-wax, "That's
right," said Lord Melbourne, pressing a bundle of pens into his hand:
"begin life early. All these things belong to the public, and your
business must always be to get out of the public as much as you can."
There spoke the true spirit of our great governing families.

And now our Minister, seated at his official table, touches his
pneumatic bell. His Private Secretary appears with a pile of papers, and
the day's work begins. That work, of course, differs enormously in
amount, nature, importance, and interest with different offices. To the
outside world probably one office is much the same as another, but the
difference in the esoteric view is wide indeed. When the Revised Version
of the New Testament came out, an accomplished gentleman who had once
been Mr. Gladstone's Private Secretary, and had been appointed by him to
an important post in the permanent Civil Service, said: "Mr. Gladstone,
I have been looking at the Revised Version, and I think it distinctly
inferior to the old one."

"Indeed," said Mr. Gladstone, with all his theological ardour roused at
once: "I am very much interested to hear you say so. Pray give me an
instance."

"Well," replied the Permanent Official, "look at the first verse of the
second chapter of St. Luke. That verse used to run, 'There went out a
decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.' Well, I
always thought that a splendid idea--a tax levied on the whole world by
a single Act--a grand stroke worthy of a great empire and an imperial
treasury. But in the Revised Version I find, 'There went out a decree
that all the world should be enrolled'--a mere counting! a census! the
sort of thing the Local Government Board could do! Will any one tell me
that the new version is as good as the old one in this passage?"

This story aptly illustrates the se