was over 100 degrees, and the atmosphere was permeated with dust. Truly a marvellous feat!

Something has now been said of our Army's Medical Service in the field, of its marvellously-perfect organization, of the individual initiative, cool courage, skill, endurance and sense of duty shown by its members in the most trying tests that can well be conceived; but it must be remembered that there are other officers of the R. A. M. C. who, though they are not serving in the field, have to discharge duties as essential to the efficient working of the department. A long succession of most able, experienced and practical men have built up the present system of administration and execution, and it has been the good fortune of Surgeon-General Jameson, the present DirectorGeneral, to see how admirable in every Blackwood's Magazine.

respect is the result of the labor done by himself and his predecessors. He has, within the last few months, had to face a gigantic task, and to face it at the head of a service which is miserably undermanned. Complaints have, in one or two instances, been made of socalled shortcomings in the department that he controls, but they have been the outcome of profound ignorance as to real facts, and in no single case have they been justified-indeed, they have always been triumphantly refuted. The strain has been terrible, but in no detail has the medical service given way. Surely there is here a combination of science, of business capacity, of patriotic feeling, of profound sense of duty, which our nation should be proud to see in servants of the State. Surely it should not be ungrateful.

Chambers's Journal.

P. F. Slater.

XI.

WANTED. AN ATTORNEY-CLERK

SHIP.

Joanie's hope that Mr. England would get an attorney clerkship did not meet with immediate fulfilment, a thing which surprised Joanie less than it did Mr. England.

In a rather long life it had rarely happened to Joanie Pickersgill to have his hopes meet with immediate fulfilment; on the other hand, John England, in a life of three and twenty years, had met with few disappointments, and was so little inured to being thwarted, that when a fortnight passed and he found himself still unemployed, his state of mind became parlous.

John had taken the usual steps to obtain the clerkship which he desiredthey were, in the main, the steps which are still taken-and when nothing came of this procedure, he concluded that an attorney clerkship was not to be had. Joanie, more practical, decided that the thing now to be done was to take other steps, and as the one which primarily recommended itself to him was, he knew, one which would not commend itself to John England, he took it on his own responsibility.

Possessing himself of a specimen of John's handwriting, Joanie determined to call on every attorney in Croydon, and on every attorney within a tenmile radius north, south, east and west of Croydon. He calculated that a deputy application of this sort, carried through on a large scale, might effect more than John had effected by direct application on a much smaller scale. He did not quite count the costs of the thing, because he had never done any.

thing in precisely the same style before, but when they turned out to be heavy he lost little of his cheerfulness, for he had not to pay them with hard cash. He would have parted with hard cash for John England, but he preferred to part with other things.

When he had called on some hundred attorneys, Joanie found upon reflection that the reception accorded to him by these gentlemen had been of three kinds, and he decided forthwith that the profession of an attorney is adopted by men of three types-the buffoonish, the phlegmatic, and the choleric.

This opinion was in so far justified, as Joanie, in his capacity of deputyapplicant for the post of clerk, had been received sometimes with sarcastic amusement, more often with chilling indifference, and most often with anger. He had on no less than three occasions been ejected with what was little short of violence, this affording him a peculiar gratification from a belief that gentlemen so heady would, in all probability, quarrel with their clerks, to fill whose place they might be glad to engage the writer of so fair a hand as Mr. England. In every case Joanie was careful to leave behind him Mr. England's address, which he localized as the house next to the Independent Chapel in Pound Street, Croydon. In the case of the sarcastically-amused, he took occasion to mention this address gravely at parting; in the case of the phlegmatic, he mentioned it civilly in mid-interview; and in the case of the choleric, by whom he was usually dismissed with a volley of invective, he contrived to mention it at the last in a tone pitched just one note higher than that used by the other party.

It is only fair to say here that the

choleric reception so largely accorded to Joanie was not altogether without some justification. While strictly honest, Joanie had the appearance of a person who might properly be viewed with suspicion; his face was not an index to his good qualities, his dress was bewildering and his insistence and inirritability were, in a high degree, annoying. Another point must here be mentioned. Not being a man of ready speech, Joanie had laboriously composed and committed to memory an harangue which, in itself extremely diffuse and incoherent, was rendered the more incomprehensible by being recited in a voice which was modelled on that employed by tenth-rate cathedral guides.

Having begun this recitative, Joanie went through with it without punctuation, and regardless of consequences, apparently under the impression that the sarcastic, the indifferent, and the choleric would, all alike, in after moments, the probability was, recall the sweet reasonableness of it. This happened in no single instance, but another thing happened which justified Joanie in his methods.

When he had called upon over a hundred attorneys, taking them as they came on the road which he happened to make his beat for the day, Joanie secured from one a courteous hearing. This worthy, who hailed from Joanie's own county, listened to the harangue without interruption; then, addressing the odd-faced, oddly-clad old countryman in his own Yorkshire dialect, desired him to make a plain statement of facts.

In the conversation which followed, Joanie managed to put fairly clearly the case of John England, and in the sequel he found himself homeward bound with cheering news.

Mr. Elwes was not himself in need of a clerk, but believed that he knew of an attorney who was in immediate

A week later, John England was appointed clerk to Mr. Elwes's friend.

This was the piece of high good fortune which heartened him to write again to Penelope. He deferred doing this till he should have good news to tell her, and only as he set about writing to her realized that, having written two letters in one week, he had observed silence through more than six weeks, for it was more than six weeks since he had found himself at Grantham in a condition which necessitated his making a sojourn there.

Unwilling to detail the course which events had taken since that day, John, as has already been set forth, wrote a brief, cheerful letter, inferentially attributing to business pressure a silence the true cause of which was not business pressure.

Having despatched that letter, he waited, with a joyful heart, for the reply to it.

Joanie, the while, watched his master's daily going forth with a look happy and unhappy. He was happy to see no longer in John England's face the expression of fierce despair that had come to it when, after the usual steps having been taken to procure a clerkship, no clerkship had been procured. On the other hand, it did not consort with his notions of the fit that young Mr. England of Bucklands should embark on a life of all work and no play; and when, after some ten days given to his new occupation, Joanie observed young Mr. England to wear anew a rueful countenance, he jumped to the conclusion that the life of a quill-driver was killing this gentle

man.

In actual fact, John England was in good bodily case, but was plunged into sorrow by receiving a curt, cold letter from Penelope.

Reading this letter, John reflected

that the writer of it had probably conferred with Alce, and had, at her instigation, taken this altered tone towards him. He indulged in a number of other hypotheses no less terrible and no less sad, his ingenious working out of which gave to him an appearance which day by day became more lamentable, with the result that Joanie experienced no small anxiety on his account, and was gravely casting in his thoughts what should be done, when an event took place which he decided would restore John England's cheerful

Before its being set forth what the event was which Joanie regarded as calculated to re-establish the cheerfulness of John, it must be said that Joanle did not suspect the real cause of John's distress. He was aware that John had quitted his home because of a disagreement with his father on the subject of marriage; but whereas Jasper England-very sensibly, Joanie thought-desired his son to marry a young lady of fortune, the said son, with singular wrongheadedness, favored a young lady with no fortune whatever.

Joanie, who was warmly atftached to the family of Jasper England, was especially attached to the eldest son, as he signally proved by following him into exile; but Joanie, who thus showed that he had an utopian strain in himself, did not approve of John's utopianism in wooing. For this reason, while he believed John to be in regular correspondence with Alce, he never reverted to that young lady. He took it for granted that she was duly grateful for the singular devotion of her lover. That no word had passed be

tween her and him was not a thing that Joanie could divine. Lovers' quarrels he had heard of, but that lovers parted by two hundred miles of roadway could be quarrelling he did not dream; still less did he dream that a strained relation, not originating in a downright quarrel, could arise between such per

sons.

On the other hand, Joanie thought it not impossible that John, accustomed to a life led largely in the open air, found the change to office work unbearable, and the insipidities of a young lady's letters insufficient to make good to him in the long run all that he had resigned.

Having come to this conclusion, he took soundings as to whether John, on the principle that second thoughts are best, was inclined to go back upon the decision which had led to his eviction from Bucklands. John gave him to understand that such was not the case, and Joanie, if the truth is to be told, was not so angry at the young man's obstinacy that he did not rejoice exceedingly to find himself in a position to convey to him what he deemed most delectable news.

"Sir," he said, presenting himself at the door of John's sleeping-room one morning, some hour before the time at which he usually presented himself there.

John did not stir. This was not that he did not hear Joanie, or that he was aware that Joanie was earlier than usual. He slept lightly, but this circumstance made him no more willing to leave his bed, wherefore he habitually let Joanie call him several times in succession.

After the usual lapse of time he sat up with the deeply-injured look with which the greater part of humanity meets the morning call to rise. It changed to one of strong surprise as he observed that Joanie's expression was not his ordinary one of apologetic in

sistence. Mere words are insufficient to describe it. Suffice it to say, that John sprang from his bed with the alacrity which the greatest of sluggards develops when the revèille is "House afire!"

Joanie, having roused his man, led the way to a garret, the sole occupant of which was ordinarily Sweetlips, who now shared it with six pups.

"You have there, sir, a moderate pack," Joanie said, laconically.

The hour was early, and the air was chill; John had not sluiced the sleep out of his eyes, and was clad in one light garment only. These circumstances contain the all of excuse that can be made for the manner in which he met the well-meant but scarcely well-timed intimation of Joanie.

With an interjection of the class ignored by all the best grammarians in their chapters on that particle, he Vouchsafed not even a look at the really handsome family of Sweetlips, but returned whither he had come, and anew enveloped himself in the bedclothes.

When, an hour later, Joanie reappeared on his thankless errand, and, by a steady recitative, again induced his master to sit up, there was in his face only its wonted look, a trifle modified by pardonable resentment, for Joanie's intention had been infinitely kind, and John's treatment of him had been, to put the matter most mildly, singularly inappreciative.

Upon reflection, John himself felt conscience-pricks, and he took occasion to make peace with Joanie before setting out upon his daily work. He did not put on sackcloth and ashes-a proceeding on his part which would have greatly embarrassed Joanie-but he said, in a tone under the banter in which there was something which was not banter:

"Shall we to-morrow, Joanie, go ahunting?"

"This is your jest, sir," Joanie said, gravely, "but you will allow that six pups make a moderate pack."

John stroked his chin, and said, thoughtfully:

"I will allow, Joanie, that these six pups may become a source of profit, if not of amusement, to me, for my hunting days are at an end, but hereabout there are many gentlemen who will not stick to purchase Sweetlips's offspring." Joanie fairly snorted.

John smiled ruefully, and then he added:

"How, Joanie, do you think that my small stipend should suffice these hungry mouths?"

"For that, sir, I have found a way," Joanie replied, quietly; "which is, that after the time you owe Mr. Skiffin"he named the lawyer in whose employ John was-"you shall act as accountant for a butcher, my friend, who will pay you, it is agreed, in offal."

The words in this speech which most struck John he repeated in a voice the irony in which was too fine for it to take effect upon Joanie.

"It is-agreed!" John said.

"Ay, sir, an' please you," Joanie replied, on a note held finely steady, in view of the fact that the speaker was comprehensively proud that he had arranged this matter so early. He had, it subsequently transpired, held a conference with his friend, the butcher, prior to first waking John, whose anxiety anent ways and means in the case of so many more mouths to feed he had foreseen.

The one-time heir of Bucklands had had to sing small in many ways since carrying out his plan of self-support. A time had been when he had not dreamed that he should ever be an attorney's clerk-that time had passed; but the time had not yet come at which he could face with equanimity the prospect of becoming a butcher's accountant. With a burst of joyless