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Is it necessary to say that never having known any training in thrift, having indeed belonged to the least provident of all our notably improvident workers, I soon found the shoe pinching, soon discovered that forty shillings a week was devoid of elasticity, especially when curbed by payments to be made for furniture purchased on the very unsatisfactory "hire system"? Perhaps not, but in any case it was this, coupled with the knowledge that all my fellow clerks were driven by the necessities of their miserable pay into bye-ways of supplementing their income, that lured me back to trade again. Here let me digress for a purpose. Many and grave scandals have been unearthed in the Civil Service, note well, in the higher branches even, but none I think greater than those where poorly paid clerks toiled to do the work for which their seniors were paid; said seniors being meanwhile engaged in amassing fortunes as eminent authorities upon art, the drama, or sport. But in the office where I was employed no such scandals were possible, seeing that the pay of the most powerful clerk therein was less than the annual tailor's bill of some of the superior Civil Service clerks. And whatever might be the value put upon our labours by those without, it is at least incontrovertible that we worked hard, so hard indeed that our superimposed labours after hours in order to keep the domestic pot boiling were cruel.