The Three Clerks

by Anthony Trollope

how often does it come to pass that the man who will work is seen begging his bread? we may almost say never—unless, indeed, he be a clergyman.

There are many ludicrous points in our blessed constitution, but perhaps nothing so ludicrous as a juryman praying to a judge for mercy. He has been caught, shut up in a box, perhaps, for five or six days together, badgered with half a dozen lawyers till he is nearly deaf with their continual talking, and then he is locked up until he shall die or find a verdict. Such at least is the intention of the constitution.

Mr. Oldeschole felt a hearty inward conviction that his office had been of very great use. In the first place, had he not drawn from it a thousand a year for the last five-and-twenty years? had it not given maintenance and employment to many worthy men who might perhaps have found it difficult to obtain maintenance elsewhere?

Poor youth! his ideas of earning his bread did not in their wildest flight spread beyond the public offices of the Civil Service.

How precious are all the belongings of a first baby; how dear are the cradle, the lace-caps, the first coral, all the little duds which are made with such punctilious care and anxious efforts of nicest needlework to encircle that small lump of pink humanity! What care is taken that all shall be in order! See that basket lined with crimson silk, prepared to hold his various garments, while the mother, jealous of her nurse, insists on tying every string with her own fingers. And then how soon the change comes; how different it is when there are ten of them, and the tenth is allowed to inherit the well-worn wealth which the ninth, a year ago, had received from the eighth. There is no crimson silk basket then, I trow.