Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/52

 underwent reconstruction when the blockade was modified in 1918: Teixeira became secretary to the department; I succeeded him as head of the intelligence section; and, when I left in 1919, he stayed behind to help in dismantling the old machine and in assembling a new one to supply economic information to the peace conference.

Our correspondence for the last three years of the war was restricted to the times when one of us was away. These absences grew more frequent as Teixeira exchanged one illness for another. His letters present him as a government servant rejoicing in his work, tingling with the new sense of new responsibility and, "from his circumstances having been always such, that he had scarcely any share in the real business of life", suggesting irresistibly a comparison with Dr. Johnson at the sale of his friend Thrale's brewery, "bustling about, with an ink-horn and pen in his button-hole, like an exciseman". So much of them, however, is taken up with departmental business that I have drawn sparingly upon them.