given it to him; and
when I went to bed that night in the room that had been evidently
prepared for their conjugal chamber, I felt that Dobbs's worst trials
were over. The walls were hung with souvenirs of their ante-nuptial
days. There was a portrait of Dobbs, aetat. 25; there was a faded
bouquet in a glass case, presented by Dobbs to Fanny on
examination-day; there was a framed resolution of thanks to Dobbs from
the Remus Debating Society; there was a certificate of Dobbs's election
as President of the Remus Philomathean Society; there was his
commission as Captain in the Remus Independent Contingent of Home
Guards; there was a Freemason's chart, in which Dobbs was addressed in
epithets more fulsome and extravagant than any living monarch. And yet
all these cheap glories of a narrow life and narrower brain were upheld
and made sacred by the love of the devoted priestess who worshiped at
this lonely shrine, and kept the light burning through gloom and doubt
and despair. The storm tore round the house, and shook its white fists
in the windows. A dried wreath of laurel that Fanny had placed on
Dobbs's head after his celebrated centennial address at the
school-house, July 4, 1876, swayed in the gusts, and sent a few of its
dead leaves down on the floor, and I lay in Dobbs's bed and wondered
what a first-class clerkship was.

I found out early the next summer. I was strolling through the long
corridors of a certain great department, when I came upon a man
accurately yoked across the shoulders, and supporting two huge pails of
ice on either side, from which he was replenishing the pitchers in the
various offices. As I passed I turned to look at him again. It was
Dobbs!

He did not set down his burden; it was against the rules, he said. But
he gossiped cheerily, said he was beginning at the foot of the ladder,
but expected soon to climb up. That it was Civil Service Reform, and
of course he would be promoted soon.

"Had Gashwiler procured the appointment?"

No. He believed it was ME. I had told his story to
Assistant-secretary Blank, who had, in turn related it to
Bureau-director Dash--both good fellows--but this was all they could
do. Yes, it was a foothold. But he must go now.

Nevertheless, I followed him up and down, and, cheered up with a
rose-colored picture of his wife and family, and my visit there, and
promising to come and see him the next time I came to Washington, I
left him with his self-impo