boss or the work yet, but I think we shall get on very well
together. Hartley is his name, and this much is tolerably certain
concerning him, he is a rising man, his business is increasing, and,
as I said before, I am his senior draughtsman, therefore should he
"hum," I shall endeavour to hum too. Tell old Major that I can
whistle as loud and as long as I like, and that I can smoke all day
if I please. But I don't please; that's just the rummy part of it.
Now in Hawk's shanty they don't like whistling, and for the life of
me I couldn't keep quiet there. Also they object to the fumes of
tobacco, therefore they missed many a half hour of my time, which
was spent in sacrificing to the king of weeds. Here, in a free
country, I can do as I please, and yet, for some reason or another,
I don't do it. The office is on the fourth flat of the Victoria
Chambers--good height up you see. My lamp is going out--must shut up
for to-night.... Well,

I've just come down again from up a height, as they say in your part
of the world. I finished my first drawing to-day, was highly
commended, and gave it my junior to trace. My second job is a patent
saw-sharpening affair for circular saws. They want half-a-dozen
different plane views, and a perspective arrangement, to be worked
up from a few rough tracings, a rougher specification, and a
photograph with a man in it--the patentee, I believe--so if I
flatter him in the matter of unlikeness he is bound to be well
pleased. I don't know yet, though, if he has to go in or not. The
Patent Office is bound to keep a record, in pictures or models, of
the results of mens' brains, whether eccentric or otherwise, but not
of the general appearance of their possessors. More's the pity, I
think; for from what I have seen of the models in the Patent Office,
they would furnish specimens for the phrenological study of mental