On the other hand, I have read that the Prime Minister has appointed one right reverend gentleman, aged 67, to be Bishop of A.; another reverend gentleman, aged 71, to be Dean of B.; and a third, who graduated a year before me, to be Bishop of C. But the Premier himself is 71, and this alters a man’s point of view. I admit that a dean requires little freshness and originality: but in the annals of another branch of the public service I read, that in 1857, when the Indian Mutiny broke out, the Government asked Sir Colin Campbell to take command of the British forces in India, he being then 65, and that he started in 24 hours. “It’s Tommy this an’ Tommy that, an’ Tommy go away, But it’s good grey ’eaded ’ero, when the band begins to play.” I have taken a slight liberty with Mr. Kipling’s lines. However, the arrangement suited me admirably, and it is only to preserve my British right to grumble, that I grumble. I had intended to retire at the age of sixty, when I became eligible for a pension: but, like Andrew Fairservice, whom I have already twice quoted, I had “e’en daikered on frae year’s end to year’s end.” Therefore when the spring of 1906 clearly revealed to me that the coming December would bring me freedom, I made no complaint. That spring had added Salford, with 220,000 people, to my already enormous family. Salford, be it known to southern readers, adjoins Manchester much as Westminster adjoins London, but in part as Westminster adjoins Lambeth; for the Irwell is the boundary for some distance. Salford is a County Borough with three members of Parliament: there is no visible boundary between the Manchester and Salford types of M.P.: they have all bathed in Irwell. Nor is there any visible boundary between the two styles of school architecture: there, too, Manchester has set the fashion, and Salford, _nimium vicina Cremonae_, has followed it; but Salford, being the poor relation, is in a more deplorable state. Educationally, however, Salford is now full of zeal. We got on very well together, and--so far--I should have been glad to stay for another six months, in order to weld together the inspecting machinery of the two towns. “There’s aye something to saw that I would like to see sawn, or something to maw that I would like to see mawn, or something to ripe that I would like to see ripen,” said the same Andrew; but it could not be. My hands were full. I yearned to empty them, and fold them, and write no more reports with them. The prospect of another November in Manchester was unendurable, and I determined to retire on October 1st, thus incidentally relieving the country of the burden of maintaining me on the active staff for the two months before my birthday. “What loss is it to be rid of care?” said the deposed Richard II.