clerks, who sit at a long high desk, with a low railing or screen in front
of them. Before the senior is a brass rail, along which he can, if he
chooses, draw a red curtain. He is too hard at work and intent upon some
manuscript to so much as raise his head as you enter. But the two younger
men, eager for a change, look over the screen, and very civilly offer to
attend to your business. When you have said that you wish to see the head
of the firm, you naturally imagine that your name will be at once shouted
up the tube, and that in a minute or two, at farthest, you will be ushered
into the presence of the principal. In that small country town there
cannot surely be much work for a lawyer, and a visitor must be quite an
event. Instead, however, of using the tube they turn to the elder clerk,
and a whispered conversation takes place, of which some broken sentences
may be caught--'He can't be disturbed,' 'It's no use,' 'Must wait.' Then
the elder clerk looks over his brass rail and says he is very sorry, but
the principal is engaged, the directors of a company are with him, and it
is quite impossible to say exactly when they will leave. It may be ten
minutes, or an hour. But if you like to wait (pointing with his quill to a
chair) your name shall be sent up directly the directors leave.

You glance at the deck, and elect to wait. The older clerk nods his head,
and instantly resumes his writing. The chair is old and hard--the stuffing
compressed by a generation of weary suitors; there are two others at equal
distances along the wall. The only other furniture is a small but solid
table, upon which stands a brass copying-press. On the mantelpiece there
are scales for letter-weighing, paper clips full of papers, a county
Post-office directory, a railway time-table card nailed to the wall, and a
box of paper-fasteners. Over it is a map, dusty and dingy, of some estate
laid out for building purposes, with a winding stream running through it,
roads passing at right angles, and the points of the compass indicated in
an upper corner.

On the other side of the room, by the window, a framed advertisement hangs
against the wall, like a picture, setting forth the capital and reserve
and the various advantages offered by an insurance company, for which the
firm are the local agents. Between the chairs are two boards fixed to the
wall with some kind of hook or nail for the suspension of posters and
printed bills. These boards are covered