CHAPTER XVIII
For a few days after my introduction to the Service, I felt like a new boy in school. I was not welcome, it was clear, and Mr. Kingdom seemed to consider me rather an addition to his burdens than a useful member of his staff. I smiled upon every one who came within smiling distance. It is a safe and non-committal act, and one I did well, and sometimes with happy results. My smile was not the stereotyped smile of the première danseuse, which means nothing, but a wide, genial, ingratiating article, which looked as if it reached down my back and pervaded my whole body. Some dogs wag their tails with such hearty enthusiasm that they appear to wag their whole body. Of such kind was my smile, and I made friends thereby.
I made my first requisition after a few days, Pa assisting. It covered quite a list of things, a desk, ink, bottles, pads, pens, and paper; a whisk, a brush and comb, and various other sundries, which are not procurable now. “A hair brush!” said the Deputy to Mr. Kingdom, when my requisition was put before him, “Wesblock has no hair.” “Pardon,” said Mr. Kingdom, “he has nearly all the hair in the office.” So the hair brush was not struck off.
The Political Era was followed by the Soap-and-Candles Era, the Era of small things and small men, when men who should have been large, and wide-minded were busy fussing over such trivial details as soap, lead pencils, rubber bands, sealing-wax, hours of attendance and book signing. These things, and the want of power to deal with the broad and vital questions concerned, help to prevent the Civil Service from taking its proper place in the esteem and respect of the country. But I preach, which is not a function of an Automaton.
I soon discovered, in various holes and corners of the service, many of my old college chums and acquaintances, who had evidently come to the same pass as myself. I picked them up in every Department and every class, and asked myself the question: “Why does M’Gill turn out so many Civil servants?” Pa answered the question at once. “Don’t you see,” he said, “that the percentage of fools is pretty much the same in all paths of life, and that passing a Jackass through a certain process in a university, and tagging him with a degree, does not make him less a Jackass. In truth an educated Jackass is a more hopeless fool than the common or garden variety, because he believes that his degree makes him of the aristocracy of intellect. The only advantage a Jackass gets by having a college degree is that he can enter the Civil Service and no questions asked. His degree would not pass him unquestioned into any other employment.”
I very soon concluded that the Civil Service involved, if you took it seriously, a form of disease which saps your self-esteem and kills out your originality.
After I had been some months with Mr. Kingdom and a friendly feeling had been established between us, he said to me one day, “Wesblock, I rather like you personally, but you will never make a good Civil servant.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because you are not hum-drum enough,” he replied.
“Thank God for that!” said I, and Kingdom smiled.