aded upon me by an influential person, upon
whom he has more legitimate claims than upon the Department. He has
prepared the way for a favourable reception by getting his friends to
write to my friends, many of whom have already fulfilled a promise to
interview me in his behalf. His mother and two maiden aunts have written
letters which have drawn from my poor Private Secretary, who has to read
them all, the dry quotation, 'there's such a thing as being so good as
to be good for nothing.' The young hopeful quickly puts an end to my
speculations as to the exact capacity in which he means to serve the
Department by applying for an inspectorship. I ask him what he proposes
to inspect, and the sum and substance of his reply is that he is not
particular, but would not mind beginning at a moderate salary, say L200
a year. As for his qualifications, they are a sadly minus quantity, his
blighted career having included failure for the army, and a clerkship in
a bank, which only lasted a week when he proved to be deficient in the
second and dangerous in the third of the three R's. His case reminds me
of a story of my ranching days, which the exercise of patronage has so
often recalled to my mind that I must out with it. Riding into camp one
evening, I turned my horse loose and got some supper, which was a vilely
cooked meal even for a cow camp. Recognising in the cook a cowboy I had
formerly employed, I said to him, 'You were a way up cow hand, but as
cook you are no account. Why did you give up riding and take to cooking?
What are your qualifications as a cook any way?' 'Qualifications!' he
replied, 'why, don't you know I've got varicose veins?' My caller's
qualifications are of an equally negative description, though not of a
physical kind. He is one of the young Micawbers, to whom the Department
from its first inception has been the something which was to turn up. He
had, of course, testimonials which in any other country would have
commanded success by their terms and the position of the signatories,
but which in Ireland only illustrate the charity with which we condone
our moral cowardice under the name of good nature. I am glad when this
interview closes.

One more type--a Nationalist Member of Parliament! He does not often
darken the door of a Government office--they all have the same
structural defect, no front stairs--he never has asked and never thought
he would ask anything from the Government. But he is interested in s