rior to intellect? I am to be a messenger,--a
Foreign Service Messenger is the grand title,--a creature to go over the
whole globe with a white leather bag or two, full of mischief or gossip,
as it may be, and whose whole care is to consist in keeping his time,
and beins never out of health.

"They say in America the bears were made for Colonel Crocket's dog, and
I 'm sure these places were made for fellows of my stamp,--fellows to
carry a message, and yet not intrusted with the telling it.

"The pay is capital, the position good,--that is, three fourths of the
men are as good or better than myself; and the life, all tell me, is
rare fun,--you go everywhere, see everything, and think of nothing. In
all your dreams for me, you never fancied the like of this. They talk
of places for all sorts of capacities, but imagine a berth for one of no
capacity at all! And yet, mother dear, they have made a blunder,--and
a very absurd blunder too, and no small one! they have instituted a
test--a sort of examination--for a career that ought to be tested by a
round with the boxing-gloves, or a sharp canter over a course with some
four-feet hurdles!

"I am to be examined, in about six weeks from this, in some foreign
tongues, multiplication, and the state of my muscles. I am to show proof
that I was born of white parents, and am not too young or too old to go
alone of a message. There's the whole of it. It ain't much, but it is
quite enough to frighten one, and I go about with the verb _avoir_ in my
head, and the first four rules of arithmetic dance round me like so many
furies. What a month of work and drudgery there is before _you_, little
woman! You 'll have to coach me through my declensions and subtractions.
If you don't fag, you 'll be plucked, for, as for me, I'll only be your
representative whenever I go in. Look up your grammar, then, and your
history too, for they plucked a man the other day that said Piccolomini
was not a general, but a little girl that sang in the 'Traviata'! I
'd start by the mail this evening, but that I have to go up to the
Office--no end of a chilling place--for my examination papers, and to
be tested by the doctor that I am all right, thews and sinews; but I
'll get away by the afternoon, right glad to leave all this turmoil
and confusion, the very noise of which makes me quarrelsome and
ill-tempered.

"There is such a good fellow here, Skeffington,--the Honorable
Skeffington Darner, to speak of him