During the entire time that I remained under his watchful leadership, he never spoke to me, but once again in this gracious manner. Indeed, when I mentioned the circumstance to all the fellows, they expressed considerable doubt as to his having spoken to me so at all, ascribing my account of our interview to the richness of my imagination; but, he really did say what I have related. I am rather proud of the fact than not.
My comrades as a body were a nice, gentlemanly set; and we got on very well together.
As a matter of course, we had one especial individual who was commonly regarded as the butt of the room—a good-natured, heavy man, with a dull face and a duller comprehension; but, he seemed proud and pleased always when singled out as a mark for our chaff:—he took it as an honour, I think, ascribing our fun to delicate attention.
We had also a “swell,” who was as irreproachable in his dress as Horner:—I remember, the whole office felt flattered when his name once appeared in the list of those attending the Queen’s Drawing-room; while, his fashionable doings, as recorded in the columns of the Morning Post, caused our room to be envied by every other division of “the branch.”—Young and old, “swell” and butt not excepted—we consorted on the friendliest of footings. We were knit together in the closest bonds of brotherhood; and were in the habit of looking down upon all other departments as not to be compared to that, of which our room, was, in our opinion, the acknowledged head.
Generally speaking, men belonging to the public service are more gregarious, and stick to one another in a greater degree, imitating the clanship of Scotchmen and Jews, than those occupied in any other walk in life.
Professionals move, as a rule, in petty cliques; city people find their interests clash too much for them to associate in such harmony as do those engaged in Government offices. They may be said, certainly, to form a clique, and to have strong party interests also; but then, their clique is so large a one that the prominent features of narrow-mindedness and utter selfishness, which distinguish smaller coteries, are lost in its more extended circle; while, its interests are self-centred, its members having nothing to fear or expect from the outside public.
And yet, with all that good fellowship and staunch fidelity, as a class—when personal pique, and what I might call “promotion jealousy,” does not interfere to mar the warm sympathies that exist between the units of this officially happy family—Government clerks are a very discontented set of men, grumbling from morning until night at their position, their prospects, their future.
Really, when I first joined, I thought them all so many Lady Dashers in disguise. I could hardly believe that such cheerful fellows should be at heart so morbidly exacerbated!
They do not, it is true, grumble at those of their own standing in the service; nor do they try to out-manoeuvre their fellows of the same department; but, third-class men are jealous of those in the second-class, second-class men of lucky “seniors,” hankering after their shoes; and all, alike envious, both individually and collectively, of other branches, unite in one compact band of martyrs against the encroachments and tyrannies of higher officialdom—considering chiefs, secretaries of state, and such like birds of ill-omen, as virtual enemies and oppressors, with whom they are bound to prosecute a perpetual guerilla warfare:—a warfare in which, alas! they are sadly over-matched.
Smith does not mind in the least—that is, as far as human nature can be magnanimous—that Robinson, of his own office, should be preferred before him, and raised to a superior grade in advance of his legitimate turn. He may, undoubtedly, believe it to bear the semblance of “hard lines” to himself personally, that he was not chosen instead; still, he puts it all down to Robinson’s wonderful luck, and his own miserable fatality, bearing his successful comrade no ill-will in consequence.