A rule, which no one nowadays seems very desirous of fathering, but nevertheless a rule of long standing, states that when a department chief enters an elevator in any of the department buildings it must carry him without other stops to his floor. The other passengers in the car must wait the time and the will of the chief, no matter how urgent may be their errands or how short the time at their command. A gradual increase of this silly rule has made it include many assistants, sub-chiefs and assistants to sub-chiefs. Only the elevator man knows the rank at which a government employé becomes entitled to this peculiar privilege. But he does know, and woe be to that little stenographer who enters the Department of X---- at just three minutes of nine in the morning, with the expectation of being at her desk with that promptness which the Federal government demands of the folk in its service. The second assistant to a second assistant of a sub-chief of a sub-division may have entered. The little stenographer's desk is upon the third floor; the gentleman whose official title spelled out reaches almost across a sheet of note paper is upon the seventh. There are folk within the crowded elevator-car for the fourth and fifth and sixth floors as well. But they have neither title nor rank and the car shoots to the seventh floor for the benefit of the Mr. Assistant Somebody. If there is another Assistant Somebody there to ride down to the ground floor--and there frequently is--you can imagine the consternation of the clerks. And yet it is part of the system under which they have to work when they work for that most democratic of employers--Uncle Samuel. The secretary of an important department who entered the cabinet with the present administration stayed very late at his office one evening, but found the elevator man awaiting him when he stepped out into the hallway of the deserted building. It was only a short flight of stairs to the street, and the secretary--it was Mr. Bryan--asked the man why he had not gone home. "My orders are to stay here, sir, until the secretary has gone home for the night," was the reply.