greatest importance to me. You know my idea of marrying?"

"Marry!" said Scully; "I thought you had given up that silly scheme.
And how, pray, do you intend to live?"

"Why, my intended has a couple of hundreds a year, and my clerkship
in the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office will be as much more."

"Clerkship--Tape and Sealing-Wax Office--Government sinecure!--Why,
good heavens! John Perkins, you don't tell ME that you are going to
accept any such thing?"

"It is a very small salary, certainly," said John, who had a decent
notion of his own merits; "but consider, six months vacation, two
hours in the day, and those spent over the newspapers. After all,
it's--"

"After all it's a swindle," roared out Mr. Scully--"a swindle upon
the country; an infamous tax upon the people, who starve that you
may fatten in idleness. But take this clerkship in the Tape and
Sealing-Wax Office," continued the patriot, his bosom heaving with
noble indignation, and his eye flashing the purest fire,--"TAKE this
clerkship, John Perkins, and sanction tyranny, by becoming one of
its agents; sanction dishonesty by sharing in its plunder--do this,
BUT never more be friend of mine. Had I a child," said the patriot,
clasping his hands and raising his eyes to heaven, "I would rather
see him dead, sir--dead, dead at my feet, than the servant of a
Government which all honest men despise." And here, giving a
searching glance at Perkins, Mr. Scully began tramping up and down
the garden in a perfect fury.