the public generally,—­that the normal Government clerk is quite indifferent to his work.  No greater mistake was ever made, or one showing less observation of human nature.  It is the nature of a man to appreciate his own work.  The felon who is made simply to move shot, perishes because he knows his work is without aim.  The fault lies on the other side.  The policeman is ambitious of arresting everybody.  The lawyer would rather make your will for you gratis than let you make your own.  The General can believe in nothing but in well-trained troops.  Curlydown would willingly have expended the whole net revenue of the post-office,—­and his own,—­in improving the machinery for stamping letters.  But he had hardly succeeded in life.  He had done his duty, and was respected by all.  He lived comfortably in a suburban cottage with a garden, having some private means, and had brought up a happy family in prosperity;—­but he had done nothing new.  Bagwax, who was twenty years his junior, had with manifest effects, added a happy drop of turpentine to the stamping-oil,—­and in doing so had broken Curlydown’s heart.  The ‘Bagwax Stamping Mixture’ had absolutely achieved a name, which was printed on the official list of stores.  Curlydown’s mind was vacillating between the New River and a pension,—­between death in the breach and acknowledged defeat,—­when a new interest was lent to his life by the Caldigate envelope.  It was he who had been first sent by the Postmaster-General to Sir John Joram’s chambers.  But the matter had become too large for himself alone, and in an ill-fated hour Bagwax had been consulted.  Now Bagwax was to be sent to Sydney,—­almost with the appointments of a lawyer!

They still occupied the same room,—­a fact which infinitely increased the torments of Curlydown’s position.  They ought to have been moved very far asunder.  Curlydown was still engaged in the routine ordinary work of the day, seeing that the proper changes were made in all the stamps used during the various hours of the day,—­assuring himself that the crosses and letters and figures upon which so much of the civilisation of Europe depended, were properly altered and arranged.  And it may well be that his own labours were made heavier by the devotion of his colleagues to other matters.  And yet from time to time Bagwax would ask him questions, never indeed taking his advice, but still demanding his assistance.  Curlydown was not naturally a man of ill-temper or an angry heart.  But there were moments in which he could hardly abstain from expressing himself with animosity.

On a certain morning in August, Bagwax was seated at his table, which as usual was laden with the envelopes of many letters.  There were some hundreds before him, the marks on which he was perusing with a strong magnifying-glass.  It had been arranged that he was to start on his great journey in the first week in September, and he employed his time before he went in scanning all the envelopes bearing the Sydney postmark which he had been able to procure in England.  He spent the entire day with a magnifying-glass in his hand;—­but as Curlydown was also always armed in the same fashion, that was not peculiar.  They did much of their work with such tools.