At one of these desks sits a lovely sylph-like creature, whose bird-like hands always reminds me of Charlotte Bronté’s. She is scarcely bigger than the two big books which she handles and “keeps”—and to see her at them, perched upon a high stool, _is_ “a sight.” Born and reared in affluence, fragile in constitution, and exquisitely sensitive in organism, she is yet intellectually one of the best clerks—no “_employés_” in the Bureau. Years ago, she was placed at this eighteen hundred dollar desk, which a man-clerk had just vacated. She has filled it, performing its duties for seven or eight years, for the woman’s stipend of nine hundred dollars. When the new Civil Service Rules first went into operation, she was awarded twelve hundred dollars per annum, for her service from that date. To have awarded her the remaining six hundred dollars, which was paid the man at the same desk, for doing the same work, would have been an equality of justice, from which the average official masculine mind instinctively recoiled. _Apropos_ of the preponderance of favor with which this same official masculine mind is able to regard and reward itself, is the case of a lady in another division. She has mathematical genius, and is one of the best practical mathematicians in the Treasury Department. Many of the statistical tables, for reports to Congress, are made out by her. Members of Congress, on the most important committees, do not disdain to come to her for assistance in making out their reports. Near two years ago, a man-clerk, in the same room with this lady, (who received his appointment through political favoritism,) became so dissipated, that he was totally unfitted to fulfil the duties of his desk, and he was carried by his friends to an inebriate asylum. Since that time, this lady, in addition to the arduous duties of her own desk, has performed all the labor accruing to that of the absent inebriate. She whose official existence as a clerk is denied by the legislators who employ her, has performed steadily, for many months, the labor of two men-clerks. How much does she receive for so doing? Nine hundred dollars a year. The eighteen hundred dollars, which she earns at one desk, is paid to the drunkard in whose name she earns it! The Government, who support this man for being a drunkard, forces a woman to do his work for nothing, or lose the chance of earning the pittance paid to her in her own name. This lady, broken in health by her long-continued and overtaxing toil, sees what before her? Surely not recognition or justice from the Government which she serves and honors, while it, through selfishness and injustice, disgraces itself.