said it, or that it had something to say
of which the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, blundered one
half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted
immaculate by an accommodating majority.

Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a
long career of this nature, that several solemn lords had attained the
reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from
having practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution
Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of that temple, the result
of all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to
the junior messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as
a heaven-born institution that had an absolute right to do whatever it
liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant
nuisance.

The Barnacle family had for some time helped to administer the
Circumlocution Office. The Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered
themselves in a general way as having vested rights in that direction,
and took it ill if any other family had much to say to it. The Barnacles
were a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed
all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places. Either
the nation was under a load of obligation to the Barnacles, or the
Barnacles were under a load of obligation to the nation. It was not
quite unanimously settled which; the Barnacles having their opinion, the
nation theirs.

The Mr Tite Barnacle who at the period now in question usually coached
or crammed the statesman at the head of the Circumlocution Office, when
that noble or right honourable individual sat a little uneasily in his
saddle by reason of some vagabond making a tilt at him in a newspaper,
was more flush of blood than money. As a Barnacle he had his place,
which was a snug thing enough; and as a Barnacle he had of course put
in his son Barnacle Junior in the office. But he had intermarried with
a branch of the Stiltstalkings, who were also better endowed in a
sanguineous point of view than with real or personal property, and of
this marriage there had been issue, Barnacle junior and three young
ladies. What with the patrician requirements of Barnacle junior, the
three young ladies, Mrs Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, and himself,
Mr Tite Barnacle found the intervals between quarter day and quarter day
rather longer than he could have des