s another little difficulty: the Private Secretary
was, to a certain extent, an influential man, but not sufficiently
influential for an Idea of his to be so brilliant as one evolved by a
King or a Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the Press and the public
generously decided that the Idea was a good one, although it had its
assailable points; so the Private Secretary was considerably boomed in
the dailies and weeklies, and interviewed (with portrait) in the
magazines; and he was a made man.

[Illustration]

But, after he had got made, it was accidentally divulged that the Idea
had never been his at all, but had sprung from the intelligence of his
brother, an obscure Government Clerk.

There it was again--the Private Secretary, having been made, could not
be disintegrated; so he continued to enjoy his good luck, with the
exception of the L5 note, which the Prime Minister privately requested
him to return with interest at 10 per cent.

[Illustration]

It was put about at first that the Clerk who had originated the Idea was
a person of some position; and so the Idea continued to enjoy a certain
amount of eulogy and commendation; but when it was subsequently divulged
that the Clerk was merely a nobody, and only had a salary of five and
twenty shillings a week on account of his having no lord for a relation,
it was at once seen that the Idea, although ingenious, was really, on
being looked into, hardly a practicable one. However, the affair brought
the Clerk into notice; so he went on the stage just as the excitement
over the affair was at its height, and made quite a success, although he
couldn't act a bit.

[Illustration]

And then it was proved beyond a doubt that the Clerk had not found the
Idea at all, but had got it from a Pauper whom he knew in the St.
Weektee's union workhouse. So the Clerk was called upon in the Press to
give up his success on the boards and go back to his twenty-five
shilling clerkship; but he refused to do this, and wrote a letter to a
newspaper, headed, "Need an actor be able to act?" and, it being the
off-season and the subject a likely one, the letter was answered next
day by a member of the newspaper's staff temporarily disguised as "A
Call-Boy"--and all this gave the Clerk another lift.

About the Pauper's Idea there was no difficulty whatever; every
newspaper and every member of the public had perceived long ago, on the
Idea being originally mooted, that there was really nothing at all