of the subordinate officer intrusted with the addition of my household
to the compilation of the Census pleased me greatly--"Appointed
Enumerator" was distinctly good. I should have been willing (of course
for an appropriate _honorarium_) to have accepted so well-sounding an
appointment myself. To continue, the general tone of the instructions
"to the Occupier" was excellent. Such words as "erroneous,"
"specification," and the like, appeared frequently, and must have been
pleasant strangers to the householder who was authorised to employ
some person other than himself to write, "if unable to do so himself."
To be captious, I might have been better pleased had the housemaid who
handed me the schedule been spared the smile provoked by finding me
addressed by the "Appointed Enumerator" as "Mr. BEEFLESS," instead of
"Mr. BRIEFLESS." But this was a small matter.

I need scarcely say that I took infinite pains to fill in my paper
accurately. I have great sympathy with the "Census (England and Wales)
Act, 1890," and wished, so far as I was personally concerned, to carry
out its object to the fullest extent attainable. I had no difficulty
about inserting my own "name and surname," and "profession or
occupation." I rather hesitated, however, to describe myself as an
"employer," because the "examples of the mode of filling-up" rather
suggested that domestic servants were not to count, and for the
rest my share in the time of PORTINGTON, to say the least, is rather
shadowy. For instance, I could hardly fairly suggest that in regard
to the services of my excellent and admirable clerk, I am as great an
employer of labour as, say, the head of a firm of railway contractors,
or the managing director of a cosmopolitan hotel company. Then,
although I am distinctly of opinion that I rightly carried out the
intentions of the statute by describing myself as "the head of the
family," my wife takes an opposite view of the question. In making the