he efficiency of its protection by leaving it alone. There
was the engaging Young Barnacle, deriving from the sprightly side of the
family, also from the Circumlocution Office, gaily and agreeably helping
the occasion along, and treating it, in his sparkling way, as one of the
official forms and fees of the Church Department of How not to do it.
There were three other Young Barnacles from three other offices, insipid
to all the senses, and terribly in want of seasoning, doing the marriage
as they would have 'done' the Nile, Old Rome, the new singer, or
Jerusalem.

But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus Tite
Barnacle himself, in the odour of Circumlocution--with the very smell of
Despatch-Boxes upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, who
had risen to official heights on the wings of one indignant idea, and
that was, My Lords, that I am yet to be told that it behoves a Minister
of this free country to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the
charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to
damp the independent self-reliance, of its people. That was, in other
words, that this great statesman was always yet to be told that it
behoved the Pilot of the ship to do anything but prosper in the private
loaf and fish trade ashore, the crew being able, by dint of hard
pumping, to keep the ship above water without him. On this sublime
discovery in the great art How not to do it, Lord Decimus had long
sustained the highest glory of the Barnacle family; and let any
ill-advised member of either House but try How to do it by bringing in
a Bill to do it, that Bill was as good as dead and buried when Lord
Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in his place and solemnly said, soaring
into indignant majesty as the Circumlocution cheering soared around
him, that he was yet to be told, My Lords, that it behoved him as the
Minister of this free country, to set bounds to the philanthropy,
to cramp the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the
enterprise, to damp the independent self-reliance, of its people. The
discovery of this Behoving Machine was the discovery of the political
perpetual motion. It never wore out, though it was always going round
and round in all the State Departments.

And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was
William Barnacle, who had made the ever-famous coalition with Tudor
Stiltstalking, and who always kept ready his own particular recip