office clerk or the landing waiter," continued
Layton, with fresh warmth,--for when excited he could rarely control
himself,--"to test some poor aspirant for eighty pounds per annum in his
knowledge of mathematics or his skill in physical geography, while you
make governors that cannot speak correctly, and vice-governors whose
despatches are the scorn of Downing Street; to proclaim that you want
your tide-waiter to be a moral philosopher, but that the highest offices
in the State may be held by any political partisan active enough,
troublesome enough, and noisy enough to make himself worth purchase;
you demand logarithms and special geometry from a clerk in the Customs,
while you make a mill-owner a cabinet minister on the simple showing of
his persevering; and your commissioners, too,--'Quis custodiet, ipsos
custodes!'"

"You probably, however, submitted to be examined, once on a time, for
your medical degree?" asked Ogden.

"Yes, sir; and that ordeal once passed, I had ample leisure to unlearn
the mass of useless rubbish required of me, and to address myself to the
real cares of my profession. But do you suppose that if it were demanded
of me to subject myself to another examination to hold the humble post I
now fill, that I should have accepted it?"

"I really cannot answer that question," said Ogden, superciliously.

"Then I will, sir. I would not have done so. Eighty pounds a year is a
very attractive bribe, but it may require too costly a sacrifice to win
it."

"The neighborhood is a very poor one," struck in Millar, "and, indeed,
if it had not been for the strenuous exertions of my friend Colonel
Karstairs here, we should never have raised the forty pounds which gives
us the claim for as much more in the presentments."

"And yet you got two hundred and thirty for a regatta in June last!"
said Layton, with a quiet smile.

"The way of the world, doctor; the way of the world! Men are never
stingy in what regards their own amusements!"

"That is the port, doctor; the other is Lafitte," said the rector, as he
saw Layton hesitate about a choice.

And now the talk took a capricious turn, as it will do occasionally,
in those companies where people are old-fashioned enough to "sit" after
dinner, and let the decanter circulate. Even here, however, conversation
could not run smoothly. Ogden launched into the manufacture of wines,
the chemistry of adulterations, and the grape disease, on every one of
which Layton