Work in any shape he detested; if we took him a despatch he would look at it with a sigh, and say, “Put it on the _monceau immonde_.” What he dubbed the _monceau immonde_ was a pile of papers “to be dealt with,” carried backwards and forwards daily between the press and the middle table, which used to grow and grow until Wylde, the second in command, could stand it no longer, and would set to work to clear it all off, while Dolly Oom, sipping weak soda-water and brandy and uttering incapable sighs, would look on and shake his head with a look of outraged dyspepsia. There was one point upon which dear old Dolly Oom would stand no nonsense. All words ending in _ic_ must have a final _k_—publick, eccentrick, etc. Soft and gentle as cotton-wool in all other matters, in this he was as hard and inexorable as the rock of Gibraltar! Upon that _k_ depended the validity of treaties, the whole authority of the Secretary of State. Wylde was a splendid worker and knew the African business well. If his minutes of between fifty and sixty years ago had been acted upon, much trouble and many tragedies would have been avoided. He was convinced of the part that South Africa must at some future time play on the world’s chessboard. Unfortunately the value of his opinion was largely discounted by the fact that he had not the gift of writing; moreover, in those days none but European politics were thought worthy of the brains of statesmen. Even American affairs, until the war broke out between North and South, aroused little interest, and as for Africa, there was only one man who took any heed of it, and his was a cry in the wilderness. There was none to hear, and poor Wylde’s minutes were buried without hope of resurrection in the _campo santo_ of the Record Office. It was rather a blow for young Oxford, full of the zeal deprecated by Talleyrand, and eager to distinguish itself in the most secret negotiations, to be set down to copy charter-parties and cargo-lists of the filthy ships that were engaged in the Slave Trade, and which sailed from New York bound for St. Thomas—nominally the St. Thomas of the West Indies, but in reality for that ill-omened island off the Guinea Coast where the “cargo of ebony” was to be picked up. If only the poor slaves could have been consulted, how they would have prayed against the measures that were taken for their protection! A slave was a chattel worth money, and would repay care and good food on the voyage. But with Her Majesty’s cruisers always on the alert, the poor wretches were battened down under hatches in conditions so appalling that the accounts of their sufferings were absolutely sickening. Only the fittest and strongest could by any possibility survive. How many were thrown overboard for the benefit of the sharks no man could tell.