“Thank you.  I will not trouble you for the half-dollar.  I shall try to get along without the appointment.  Good night, uncle.”

“Good night, Salmon.”  Dudley accompanied him to the door.  He must have seen what a blow he had given him.  “You think me harsh,” he added; “but the time will come when you will see that this is the best advice I could give you.”

“Perhaps,” said Salmon, stiffly; and be walked away, filled with disappointment and bitterness.

“Well, did he promise it?” asked Williams, who sat up awaiting his return.

He had been thinking he would like to have Salmon in his own room at the Department; but now, seeing how serious he looked, his own countenance fell.

“What!  Didn’t he give you any encouragement?”

“On the other hand,” said Salmon, “he advised me to buy a spade and go to digging for my living!  And I shall do it before I ask again for an appointment.”

Williams was astonished.  He thought the Senator from Vermont must be insane.

But, after the lapse of a few years, perhaps he, too, saw that the uncle had given his nephew good advice indeed.  Williams remained a clerk in the Department, and was never anything else.  Perhaps, if Salmon had got the appointment he sought, he would have become a clerk like him, and would never have been anything else.

In a little more than twenty years Salmon was himself a Senator, and had the making of such clerks.  And what happened a dozen years later?  This:  he who had once sought in vain a petty appointment was called to administer the finances of the nation.  Instead of a clerk grown gray in the Department, to whom the irreverent youngsters might be saying to-day, “——­, do this,” or, “——­, do that,” and he doeth it, he is himself the supreme ruler there.  He could never have got that place by promotion in the Department itself.  I mention this, not to speak slightingly of clerkships,—­for he who does his duty faithfully in any calling, however humble, is worthy of honor,—­but to show that the ways of Providence are not our ways, and that often we are disappointed for our own good.  Had a clerkship been what was in store for Salmon, he would have obtained it; but since, had he got it, he would probably have never been ready to give it up, how fortunate that he received instead the offer of fifty cents wherewith to purchase a spade!

It may be, when the new Secretary entered upon his duties, Williams was there still; for there were men in the Treasury who had been there a much longer term than from 1826 to 1861.  I should like to know.  I can fancy him, gray now, slightly bald, and rather round-shouldered, but cheerful as a cricket, introducing himself to the chief.

“My name is Williams.  Don’t you remember Williams,—­boarded at Mrs. Markham’s in ’26 and ’27, when you did?”

“What!  David Williams?  Are you here yet?”

“Yes, your Honor.” (These old clerks all say, “Your Honor,” in addressing the Secretary.  The younger ones are not so respectful.) “I was never so lucky as to be turned out, and I was never quite prepared to leave.  You have got in at last, I see!  But it was necessary for you to make a wide circuit first, in order to come in at the top!”