smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and

all went merry as a marriage bell. Two or three clerks that were reading

the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody

said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from

Fourth Assistant Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the

very day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I

passed out of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division. I had got so

accomplished by this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment

I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than

two, or maybe three, times.

So I stood there till I had changed four different times. Then I said to

one of the clerks who was reading:

"Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?"

"What do you mean, sir? whom do you mean? If you mean the Chief of the

Bureau, he is out."

Will he visit the harem to-day?"

The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper.

But I knew the ways of those clerks. I knew I was safe if he got through

before another New York mail arrived. He only had two more papers left.

After a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I

wanted.

122

Sketches New and Old