With the suite of offices to the
left we have nothing to do, but will confine our attention to a
moderate-sized room to the right of the Registrar's office, and
connected by a door, now closed, with that large and handsomely
furnished chamber. This was the office of the Clerk of Shipwrecks,
and it was at present occupied by five persons. One of these was the
clerk himself, a man of goodly appearance, somewhere between
twenty-five and forty-five years of age, and of a demeanor such as
might be supposed to belong to one who had occupied a high position
in state affairs, but who, by the cabals of his enemies, had been
forced to resign the great operations of statesmanship which he had
been directing, and who now stood, with a quite resigned air,
pointing out to the populace the futile and disastrous efforts of
the incompetent one who was endeavoring to fill his place. The Clerk
of Shipwrecks had never fallen from such a position, having never
occupied one, but he had acquired the demeanor referred to without
going through the preliminary exercises.

Another occupant was a very young man, the personal clerk of the
Registrar of Woes, who always closed all the doors of the office of
that functionary on Wednesday afternoons, and at other times when
outside interests demanded his principal's absence, after which he
betook himself to the room of his friend the Shipwreck Clerk.

Then there was a middle-aged man named Mathers, also a friend of the
clerk, and who was one of the eight who had made application for a
subposition in this department, which was now filled by a man who
was expected to resign when a friend of his, a gentleman of
influence in an interior county, should succeed in procuring the
nomination as congressional Representative of his district of an
influential politician, whose election was considered assured in
case certain expected action on the part of the administration
should bring his party into power. The person now occupying the
subposition hoped then to get something better, and Mathers,
consequently, was very willing, while waiting for the place, to
visit the offices of the department and acquaint himself with its
duties.

A fourth person was J. George Watts, a juryman by profession, who
had brought with him his brother-in-law, a stranger in the city.

The Shipwreck Clerk had taken off his good coat, which he had worn
to luncheon, and had replaced it by a lighter garment of linen, much
bespattered w