d nothing further to
expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not
wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a
liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely
filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing
his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to
read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on
the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual,
and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now
in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be
honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no
satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some
event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own
had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent.
"Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr Butterwell
he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that
gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. "Don't tell me. I
know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been looking at things
with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And then he would
tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not
denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted
that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his
shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't
think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be.

Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in
his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might
achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without
undergoing present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its
attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It
was thus that Mr Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was
solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife
as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his
friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed.

Mr Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in
the Prime Minister, in the _Daily Jupiter_, in the General Committee
Office, and in himself. He had long thought that everything was
nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General
Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything mu