CHAPTER X.
OUR CIVIL SERVICE.
Some of the public officers of Millburg are interesting in their way. The civil service system of the village is based upon the principle that if there is any particular function that a given man is wholly unfitted to perform he should be chosen to perform it. The result is that the business of our very small government goes plunging along in the most surprising manner, with a promise that it will end some day in chaos and revolution—of course upon a diminutive scale.
A representative man is Mr. Bones, the solitary night-watchman of the town. One of the duties of Mr. Bones is to light the street-lamps. It is an operation which does not require any very extraordinary effort of the intellect; but during a part of the summer the mind of Mr. Bones did not seem to be equal to the strain placed upon it by this duty. It was observed that whenever there were bright moonlight nights Mr. Bones would have all the lamps burning from early in the evening until dawn, while upon the nights when there was no moon he would not light them at all, and the streets would be as dark as tar. At last people began to complain about it, and one day one of the supervisors called to see Mr. Bones about it. He remarked to him,
"Mr. Bones, people are finding fault because you light up on moonlight nights and don't light the lamps when it is dark. I'd like you to manage the thing a little better."
"It struck me as being singular, too, but I can't help it. I've got instructions to follow the almanac, and I'm going to follow it."
"Did the almanac say there'd be no moon last night?"
"Yes, it did."
"Well, the moon was shining, though, and at its full."
"I know," said Mr. Bones, "and that's what gits me. How in the thunder the moon kin shine when the almanac says it won't beats me out. Perhaps there's something the matter with the moon; got shoved off her course may be."