He was certainly the most hum-drum person I had ever met. I really believe he loved the Service. Mild spoken, good tempered, patient, just, and honest—such was the character of the man—usually he was solemn as a funeral, but one thing saved him happily from being quite wooden and monotonous. He could see a joke and grin.
During my first three months in the office of Mercenary Dispensations, I had to perform the very pretty financial feat of keeping a family in Montreal and myself in Ottawa, on nothing at all. This because I had to pass the Treasury Board, or the Treasury Board had to pass me, or some equally important formality had to be gone through. Such were the conditions to be satisfied before I could be listed, classified and qualified to receive those large, pleasant pieces of paper, which ask the Bank of Montreal to please pay to the order of John H. Wesblock, etc., etc. Thus a great deal of the time of the Service is taken up in waiting for something to happen which has actually taken place. I was to learn later that a piece of work, which might take two hours in actual performance, would have its intended effect in only five or even ten days or a month. After three months spent in patience and a boarding-house, I received my first Government cheque, for services at the rate of three dollars per day, Sundays included. I could have laid bricks or made coffins and been paid better. Fortunately for my little three dollars per day, the cost of living had not then reached the serious point it attained later. Gambling with real estate lots as counters had not brought house rent to its present abnormal figure. A house fit to live in was then procurable at twenty dollars per month. Still, with four children and a wife to feed, clothe, and shelter, my way was not easy.
Minister One’s secretary was Mr. Jellyman, a good fellow and a clever one, whom I had known in Montreal as a clerk to the most notorious crook amongst the city’s lawyers. Being private secretary to One was a heart-breaking position, and it finished poor Jellyman, both morally and physically. One had also a kind of under or second secretary, a very splendid young widow, who did not make things any easier for Jellyman. When I found Jellyman in Ottawa he had lost his easy laugh and his keen appreciation of a jest; he was now generally solemn and sour.
Nearly everybody feared One. He was a martinet, and considered himself a power in the land. Being a non-smoker himself, he hated smoking, and gave forth his dictum that there should be no smoking in any office in his Department. He succeeded in stopping smoking about as well as he succeeded in larger things, which is saying little. This fussy, little, self-important man of the hour appeared one morning in an office of one of the rented public buildings, and found a rough-looking person smoking a pipe in the hall.
“Put out that pipe,” screamed the excitable Minister.
The smoking person took a couple of extra strong draws and looked Mr. Minister over. “What for?” he quietly inquired.
“Because I say so,” bawled the Minister stamping his foot in rage.
“Then I will not,” said the person.
“Oh, ho! you will not? Do you know who I am?” said One.
“I do not,” said the smoker, coolly smoking.