er his bell. Some haughty spirits rebelled
against being treated like footmen, and tried to organize resistance;
but Odo Russell, as he then was, refused to join the rebellious
movement, saying that whatever method apprized him most quickly of Lord
Palmerston's wishes was the method which he preferred. The aggrieved
clerks regarded him as a traitor to his order--but he died an
ambassador. Trollope described the wounded feelings of a young clerk
whose chief sent him to fetch his slippers; and in our own day a Private
Secretary, who had patiently taken tickets for the play for his chief's
daughters, drew the line when he was told to take the chief's razors to
be ground. But such assertions of independence are extremely rare, and
as a rule the Private Secretary is the most cheerful and the most alert
of ministering spirits.

But it is time to return from this personal digression to the routine of
the day's work. Among the most important of the morning's duties is the
preparation of answers to be given in the House of Commons, and it is
often necessary to have answers ready by three o'clock to questions
which have only appeared that morning on the notice-paper. The range of
questions is infinite, and all the resources of the office are taxed in
order to prepare answers at once accurate in fact and wise in policy, to
pass them under the Minister's review, and to get them fairly copied out
before the House meets. As a rule, the Minister, knowing something of
the temper of Parliament, wishes to give a full, explicit, and
intelligible answer, or even to go a little beyond the strict terms of
the question if he sees what his interrogator is driving at. But this
policy is abhorrent to the Permanent Official. The traditions of the
Circumlocution Office are by no means dead, and the crime of "wanting to
know, you know," is one of the most heinous that the M.P. can commit.
The answers, therefore, as prepared for the Minister are generally
jejune, often barely civil, sometimes actually misleading. But the
Minister, if he be a wise man, edits them into a more informing shape,
and after a long and careful deliberation as to the probable effect of
his words and the reception which they will have from his questioner, he
sends the bundle of written answers away to be fair-copied and turns to
his correspondence.

And here the practice of Ministers varies exceedingly. Lord Salisbury
writes almost everything with his own hand. Mr. Balfour d