I remember a senior clerk in the office where I first worked to whom there was a general aversion.  He was the only clerk who was really disliked, for all the others, old or young, serious or gay, steady or rackety, had each some pleasant quality.  This unfortunate fellow had none.  He was small, mean, cunning, a sneak and a mischief maker.  He carried tales, told lies, and tried to make trouble, for no reason but to gratify his inclinations.  He was a dark impish looking fellow, as lean as Cassius and as crafty and envious as Iago.  The chief clerk, to his credit be it said, gave a deaf ear to his tales, and his craft and cunning obtained him little beyond our detestation.

In our own office about half our number were youths and single men and about half were married.  Our youngest benedict was not more than eighteen years of age, and his salary only 45 pounds a year.  On this modest income for a time the young couple lived.  It was a runaway match; on the girl’s part an elopement from school.  They lived in apartments, kept by an old lady, a widow who, being a woman, loved a bit of romance, and was very kind to them.  He was a manly young fellow, a sportsman and renowned at cricket, and she was amiable and pretty, a little blonde beauty.  The parents were well to do, and in due time forgave the imprudent match.  At this we all rejoiced for he was a general favourite.

Looking back now it seems to me the office staff was in some ways a curious collection and very different to the clerks of to-day.  Many of them had not entered railway life until nearly middle-age and they had not assimilated as an office staff does now, when all join as youths and are brought up together.  They were original, individual, not to say eccentric.  Whilst our office included certain steady married clerks, who worked hard and lived ordinary middle-class respectable lives, and some few bachelors of quiet habit, the rest were a lively set indeed, by no means free from inclinations to coarse conviviality and many of them spendthrift, reckless and devil-may-care.  At pay-day, which occurred monthly, most of these merry wights, after receiving their pay, betook themselves to the Midland Tap or other licensed house and there indulged, for the remainder of the afternoon, in abundant beer, pouring down glass after glass; in Charles Lamb’s inimitable words:  “the second to see where the first has gone, the third to see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there is another coming, and a fifth to say he is not sure he is the last.”  Some of the merriest of them would not return to the office that day but extend their carouse far into the night; to sadly realise next day that it was “the morning after the night before.”

I do not think our ladylike chief clerk ever indulged in these orgies, but I never knew more than the mildest remonstrance being made by him or by anyone in authority.