This last question is answered truthfully only by the very poor; for, as the Government grants no pensions to the widows and orphans of employés who have had a private income of 20_l._ per annum, it naturally follows that very few employés are to be found who own to the fraction of a zwanziger. At the foot of the paper a broad margin is left, headed by the inoffensive title “Special Remark.” This margin is secretly filled up by the employé’s immediate superior, who there inscribes his own private opinion of the man who, throughout all the preceding answers, has sought to place himself in the best light possible. This opinion is never stated openly, but is, on the contrary, so carefully concealed that the employé never knows what his chief thinks of him, nor what report he makes to the greater chiefs above. The “special remark” is the indication which the high officials consult: it is the shadow of him who is remarked on, following him with noiseless step wherever he goes, and looming behind him, black and threatening, when he stands in the sunlighted prospect of a hoped-for promotion. An adverse remark is the stumbling-block, the _pierre d’échopment_ of every Austrian bureaucrat: he cannot get over it; unless, indeed, he is able to leap over the head of the special remarker, and so change places and functions with him. Yet, in spite of all these disagreeables, and notwithstanding the absence of salary for the first years of service, a place in a Government office is much sought after, and very difficult to procure. The curriculum, too, leading to it, is not a light one. Neither in Hungary nor in Bohemia, neither in Croatia nor in Corinthia, can a man obtain a Government office unless he has studied Latin and philosophy, logic and the exact sciences. Not that he is ever required to make use of his knowledge; but it is decreed that the knowledge should be acquired. The “course” takes eight years—the term prescribed by Government as absolutely necessary for the completion of an employé’s polite education. And when, after these eight years of hard study—after the numberless fees and presents, flatteries, bowings, and scrapings, initiatory to an appointment—the young man has at last wormed himself into the service, what is he to the Government? Not more than a sharp lad who writes a good hand is to the grocer at the corner. Indeed not so much; for the grocer would have to pay the sharp lad for his services, while the paternal Government would not dream of such an extravagance. No young man can hope for an apprenticeship who expects anything beyond the honour of being allowed to serve for love—and the future! This paternal Government—this national huckster which deals only in paper—paper diet, paper constitution, paper money, paper reform, neutrality, or amnesty—keeps its highly-educated apprentice of twenty-five somewhat longer than Laban kept Jacob waiting for his daughter. Ten, fifteen, and even twenty-five years he may have to serve