consulting the convenience or the wishes of his employer, who is, through trades’ unions and special class legislation, entirely at his mercy!

“Clerks, shopkeepers, and struggling professional men, cannot do this, however. They have to conform to certain rules of society; and keep up an appearance of respectability on, frequently, half the sum that the mechanic gets in wages, as I’ve said already—while groaning under a burden of taxation from which the great ‘liberal’ fetish is completely free. He is a ‘working-man,’ my dear:—they, are nothing of the sort.—Oh, no!”

“Do they really obtain such good wages?” I inquired;—“if so, what on earth do they do with the money?”

“Yes,”—said the vicar, in full swing of his favourite political argument,—“if anything, I have rather understated the case than exaggerated it. The manager of one of the telegraph-cable manufactories down the river, told me the other day, that, many of the hands drew four and five pounds regularly each Saturday. And these men, he further informed me, spent the greater part of this in drink and pleasuring on their off-days. They will have good food and the best, too—such as I cannot afford, in these days of high butchers’ bills; notwithstanding that they make such a poor show for their money, and save none of it, either! I do not complain of this, politically speaking, for, ‘an Englishman’s house is his castle,’ you know, and he has the right to live as he pleases; but, I do say, that when poor curates and clerks are so taxed, these men ought to bear their share of the taxation, possessing, as they do, incomes quite as large and in many cases greater.”

“But, they are taxed indirectly, though, are they not?”—I asked.

“Certainly; but, so also are all of us, the larger number of real working-men of the country—quite in addition to the heavy burden we have to bear of local and direct taxation! The pseudo ‘working-man’ should fairly contribute his quota to all this—particularly, since his bottle-holders have been so clamourous for giving him a share in the government of the state. If he wants ‘a share in the government,’ why, he should help to support it:—that’s what I say!”

And the vicar then went off into a tirade against class legislators and radical politics, not forgetting to animadvert, too, on the “Manchester School”—his great bête noir.

“I wonder what Mr Mawley would say, to hear you run down his favourite party so!”—I said, when he gave me another opening to put in a word.—“He’s such a rabid Liberal.”

“Mawley is thorough,” said the vicar; “I do not agree with his views, certainly; but he really believes in them and acts up to his theories, which is more than can be said for a good many of our ‘Liberal’ statesmen! What can one think of them when one hears them talking of ‘economy,’ and cutting down the poor clerk’s salary, without dreaming of touching their own little snug incomes of five thousand a-year!”

“But what has all this got to do with Frank’s appointment, brother?” asked Miss Pimpernell, with a sly chuckle of satisfaction. She always said she disliked arguments; but, she was never better pleased than to hear the vicar expressing his sentiments on topics of the day. He was so earnest and delighted when he got a good listener—although, he was rather shy of speaking before strangers.

“Dear me!”—exclaimed the vicar, rubbing his forehead vigorously.—“I declare, I thought I was talking to Parole d’Honneur! You must forgive me, Frank.”

“Do you think you could manage to get him an appointment, my dear?”—repeated my little old friend, bringing the vicar back to our main question, now that she had unhorsed him from his Radical charger.

“Yes, certainly,”—replied the vicar, cordially,—“I do not see why I should not. I’ll speak to the bishop to-morrow, if I can catch him in. He’s got some good influence with the ministry; and, with mine in conjunction, the two of us together ought to manage it, eh, Sally?”

“And how soon do you think, sir,”—I asked,—“would you be likely to procure it for me? I’ve been a long time idle; and, I am, now, anxious, you know, to make up for lost time.”

Miss Pimpernell’s words had thoroughly spurred me up. I wanted to set to work for Min at once.

“How soon, eh, my boy?”—said he, kindly.—“You must have some special object to be so anxious for employment! But, you need not be shy, Frank; I can guess it, I think, without your telling me; and, I’m glad of it. How soon, eh? Let me consider. If I see the bishop to-morrow, as I very likely shall, we might arrange to get you a nomination in a fortnight, I think; but, I’m certain, I can promise obtaining it within a month at the outside. Will that do, Frank?”

“Oh, thank you, sir!”—I exclaimed, in grateful gladness,—“that is ever so much sooner than I expected! I thought it might take months to get me an appointment! I shall be ready for it, however, when it comes, all the same, dear sir.”

“You had better get crammed in the meantime, however, my boy,” said the vicar, reflectively.

“‘Get crammed,’ brother!”—said Miss Pimpernell, aghast at the term, of which she clearly did not understand the slang sense. “Get crammed! Why, what do you mean? Frank is thin, certainly, and he might be a little stouter to advantage; but, has he got to be of a particular weight, the same as the height of recruits is measured for the army?”

The vicar laughed, and held his sides in hearty merriment.—“Sally, Sally!”—he exclaimed after a while.—“You will be the death of me some day! I did not allude to physical cramming, such as the Strasbourg geese undergo; but, mental stuffing. A ‘crammer’ is a ‘coach,’ you know.”

“I’m sure I don’t,”—said little Miss Pimpernell, energetically;—“for, what with your crammers and coaches, I really do not know what you are speaking about!”

“Well, my dear, I’ll now enlighten you,”—said the vicar, still laughing at the old lady’s very natural mistake.—“Crammers and coaches, are certain high-pressure machines, in the form of man, for forcing any amount of superficial knowledge into uneducated youths within a fixed time. It is an unnatural process, resulting pretty much in the same way as does the artificial mode of fattening geese:—the latter have diseased livers; while, the subjects of high-pressure cram are usually afterwards subject to unmitigated ignorance—of the worst kind, because it pretends to learning—in addition to an insufferable pedantry, which can never convince judges acquainted with the genuine article! Ah, my dear, as Pope wisely wrote, ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing!’”

“Then you mean tutors,”—said Miss Pimpernell.—“Why could you not call them by their proper name?”

“I could, my dear,”—said the vicar, good-humouredly,—“but, the term I used, is an old relic of college jargon; you see how hard it is to cure oneself of bad habits!”

“And you think Frank will want to be ‘crammed,’ then?”—asked Miss Pimpernell, making use of the very word she had just abused, because she thought her brother might feel hurt at her implied reproach. The dear old lady would have talked slang all day if she had believed it would have given the vicar any satisfaction!

“Yes, my dear,”—he replied.—“You see, he might have to compete for his appointment with a dozen others; and, as the examination for the civil service is now pretty stiff in its way, it would not do for him to fail. Frank has received a good sound public school education; but, they ask so many purely-routine questions of candidates, that he had better have a tutor who makes these subjects his speciality, to put him up in the little details of the machinery.”

“I never thought of that,”—said