At the floored and roaring victim "Foreign devils" look askew, Hands in pockets buried well. Piteous YOUNGHY-BUNG-BOO-HOO Hoped that from the mud they'd picked him. But laugh they, "Young Jap's fair licked him! _Shall_ we intervene? Ah, well, We'll _think_ of it. Time will tell. Meanwhile let him lie and yell, Yellow YOUNGHY-BUNG-BOO-HOO!"
JOHNNY CHINAMAN. "BOO-HOO! HE HURTEE ME WELLY MUCH! NO PEACEY MAN COME STOPPY HIM!"]
I have supposed that you have been appointed Secretary to the Public Squander Department. You will have much to do, so the less you have to read, the better. Under these circumstances, I merely supply you at this moment with the following
_Examination Paper for Would-be Private Secretaries._
1. Give your autobiography, either as (1) a good story against yourself, (2) a minute in four lines, or (3) a long yarn suitable for filling up the time when things have to be kept going for three-quarters of an hour to accommodate your chief.
2. Describe your duties to your chief (1) when he is in town but wants to be thought away in the country, and (2) when you have to assist him as "Vice-chair" at a dinner party.
3. Given that you have for neighbours at a political banquet a race-horse owner, a supporter of the temperance cause, a theatrical proprietor, and a rural dean. Write an anecdote that will interest all of them, and cause the conversation between them to be general.
4. Take the following facts. Owing to a blunder, a ship has been sent to a wrong port, carrying a wrong cargo to a wrong receiver, who has sent it away, and thus prevented it being used for its right purpose. This trifling error of judgment has caused a war that could easily have been prevented. Explain all this away in such a manner that the statement when delivered by your chief shall be received with "general cheering" in the House of Commons.
5. Write a short essay showing your points and testing your capabilities.
_Dealer._ "WHAT? THIS 'ERE LITTLE 'OSS BIN SHOT OVER? LOR' BLESS Y', HEEPS O' TIMES!"
[_Purchaser tests the fact, and is perfectly satisfied._]
I said, when I last took up my pen as a veracious chronicler of the recent history of Mudford (for this is the name of our village; not elegant, perhaps, but none the less true to life), that my meeting deserved a chapter to itself. It does. It deserves, in point of fact, many chapters, though I only purpose to give it one. But it must be the third chapter, and not the second. For before this meeting was held, many things happened, and as I look back I often wonder how it was that I was enabled to endure all the trials and tribulations which Fortune had in store for me, and that I am spared to write this unpretending account of all that happened. I say this, because I have been reading of late historical romances, and I find from them that a little moralising is never out of place in the course of a story.