May the twofold offspring of one stock hold fast still, as in days of yore, to that One Name in the Bible which is above every name! Then shall the two great branches of the Anglo-Norman race continue to multiply and be strong, and all the continents of the world shall be blessed through their means. CHAPTER VII. OFFICERSHIP. I SET out with the intention of writing six chapters on the “London Directory;” and, lo! I have reached the mystic seven. The worst of it is, that at the present rate of progress I shall have to transgress the editorial licence by at least four more before I can possibly bring my remarks to a close, consistent with the demands of my subject. Nevertheless, the Editor has only to say the word, and I will wipe,—not my tearful eye, but my goose quill, and bid my courteous reader adieu! The other day I met a friend, and he greeted me with the remark, “Awfully dry.” Thinking he referred to the weather—it was the end of June—and feeling decidedly warm, I assented cordially, when I discovered that the statement was intended to be a less polite than concise criticism upon one or two of my later instalments to _The Fireside_, on the subject that heads these pages. My friend made several other remarks founded on the first, and went so far as to offer me some advice—a very dangerous thing, as everybody knows. It was to this effect: “Stick to your text.” What is my text? I asked, thinking to take him off his guard. “The London Directory,” he replied promptly. Well, I must admit that in the last two papers I slightly wandered from my text. My excuse is this: baptismal names are in the London Directory as well as surnames; and the baptismal names of to-day are as different from the baptismal names of five hundred years ago as were the baptismal names of five hundred years ago from those in vogue five hundred years before that. This curious fact I wished to bring out and develop. At the same time I wanted to show that it was the English Bible that had caused the change. Whether I succeeded in so doing, I must leave to the reader to decide. At any rate, I can now turn, with such cheerfulness as my stern critic has left me, to the next class of English Surnames represented in the London Directory—that originated by Office, whether ecclesiastical or civil. I have got the Directory itself at my left elbow, not merely as a monitor to warn me, but also as a reference to support me. Looking to this mighty tome, then, for inspiration as well as illustration, I at once begin.