Now, if your crown is to be of anything better than leaves, there must be
some solid benefits to compensate you for the labours you have undergone.
A considerable salary will be placed at your disposal, and you will draw
upon it without ceremony, whenever you have occasion. You will be a
privileged person in every respect. As for toils, and muddy tramps, and
wakeful nights, the time for those have gone by. Your prayers have been
heard: you will take your ease, and sleep your fill. You will do the work
you were engaged to do, and not a stroke besides. This, indeed, is what
you have a right to expect. There would be no great hardship in bowing
one's neck to a yoke so light, so easy--and so superbly gilded. But alas,
Timocles, many, nay all of these requirements are unsatisfied. Your
office, now that you have got it, is attended with a thousand details
insufferable to all but slaves. Let me rehearse them to you; you shall
judge for yourself whether any man with the slightest pretence to culture
would endure such treatment.

Let me begin with your first invitation to dinner, which may reasonably
be expected to follow, as an earnest of the patronage to come. It is
brought to you by a most communicative slave, whose goodwill it must be
your first care to secure. Five shillings is the least you can slip into
his palm, if you would do the thing properly. He has scruples. 'Really,
sir--couldn't think of it; no, indeed, sir.' But he is prevailed upon at
last, and goes off, grinning from ear to ear. You then look out your best
clothes, have your bath, make yourself as presentable as possible, and
arrive--in fear and trembling lest you should be the first, which would
wear an awkward air, just as it savours of ostentation to arrive last.
Accordingly you contrive to hit on the right moment, are received with
every attention, and shown to your place, a little above the host,
separated from him only by a couple of his intimates. And now you feel as