Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/85

 received the answers to a certain advertisement which he had inserted in the newspapers, setting forth that a young man with excellent testimonials—he knew he could get them from the rector of Helmingham—was desirous of giving instruction in the classics and mathematics. Advertising, he thought, was a better and more gentlemanly medium, than causing a detailed list of his accomplishments to be inscribed in the books of the Ecclesiastical Registry, as a horse's pedigree and performances are entered in the horsedealer's list; but when, after hunting for half an hour through the columns of the newspaper's supplement, he found his advertisement amongst a score of others, all of them from men with college honours, or promising greater advantages than he could hold forth, he began to doubt the wisdom of his proceeding. However, he would wait and see the result. He did so wait for three days, but not a single line addressed, as requested, to W. J. found its way to Winchester-street. Then he sent for the newspaper again, and began to reply to the advertisements which he thought might suit him. He had no high thoughts or hopes, no notions of regenerating the living generation, or of placing tuition on a new footing, or rendering it easy by some hitherto unexplained process. He had been an usher in a school, for the place of an usher in a school he had advertised, and if he could have obtained that position he would have been contented. But when the few answers to his advertisement arrived, he saw that it was impossible to accept any of the offers they contained. One man wanted him to teach French with a guaranteed Parisian accent, to devote his whole time out of school hours to the boys, to supervise them in the Indian sceptre athletic exercises, and to rule over a dormitory of thirteen, "where, in consequence of the lax supervision of the last didaskolos, severe measures would be required," for twenty pounds a year. Another gentleman, whose note-paper was ornamented with a highly florid Maltese cross, and who dated his letter "Eve of S. Boanerges," wished to know his opinion of the impostor-firebrand M. Luther, and whether he (the advertiser) had any connexions in the florist or decorative line, with whom an arrangement in the mutual accommodation way could be entered into; while a third, evidently a grave sententious man, with a keen eye to business, expressed, on old-fashioned Bath-post, gilt-edged letter paper, his desire to know "what sum W. J. would be willing to contribute for the permission to state, after a year's residence, that he had been one of Dr. Sumph's most trusted helpmates and assistants?"

No good to be got that way, then, and a visit to Camoxons' imminent, for the money was running very, very short, and the conventional upturning of stones must be proceeded with. Visit to Camoxons' paid, after much staring through the ground-glass windows (opaque generally, but transparent in the Bible and Sceptre artistic bits) much ascent and descent of two steps cogitatively, final rush up top step wildly, and hurried, not to say pantomimic, entrance through the ground-glass door, to be confronted by the oldest and most composed of the sable-clad clerks. Bows exchanged; name and address required; name and address given in a low and serious whisper, and repeated aloud in a clear high treble, each word, as it was uttered, being transcribed in a hand which was the very essence of copperplate into an enormous book. Position required? Second or third mastership in a classical school, private tutorship, as secretary or librarian to a nobleman or gentleman. So glibly ran the old gentleman's steel pen over these items that Walter Joyce began to fancy that applicants for one post were generally ready and willing to take all or any, as indeed they were. "Which university, what college?" The old gentleman scratched his head with the end of his steel-pen holder, and looked across at Walter, with a benevolent expression which seemed to convey that he would rather the young man would say Christchurch than St. Mary's, and Trinity in preference to Clare. Walter Joyce grew hot to his ear tips, and his tongue felt too large for his mouth, as he stammered out, "I have not been to either University—I," but the remainder of the sentence was lost in the loud bang with which the old gentleman clapped to the heavy sides of the big book, clasped it with its brazen clasp, and hoisted it on to a shelf behind him with the dexterity of a juggler.

"My good young friend," said the old clerk, blandly; "you might have saved yourself a vast amount of vexation, and me certain amount of trouble, if you had made that announcement earlier! Good morning!"

"But do you mean to say"

"I mean to say that in that book at the