seeing that he had obtained them on false pretences; but he did not seem to see his way to do these things: on the contrary, he very incisively asked what would be the use of a man's becoming Prime Minister if it was only to resign things to which he had no right. Still, he did the handsome thing: he presented an autograph portrait of himself to the Secretary, together with a new £5 note, as a recognition of any inconvenience he might have suffered in consequence of the mistake.
Now, too, there was another little difficulty: the Private Secretary was, to a certain extent, an influential man, but not sufficiently influential for an Idea of his to be so brilliant as one evolved by a King or a Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the Press and the public generously decided that the Idea was a good one, although it had its assailable points; so the Private Secretary was considerably boomed in the dailies and weeklies, and interviewed (with portrait) in the magazines; and he was a made man.
But, after he had got made, it was accidentally divulged that the Idea had never been his at all, but had sprung from the intelligence of his brother, an obscure Government Clerk.
There it was again—the Private Secretary, having been made, could not be disintegrated; so he continued to enjoy his good luck, with the exception of the £5 note, which the Prime Minister privately requested him to return with interest at 10 per cent.
It was put about at first that the Clerk who had originated the Idea was a person of some position; and so the Idea continued to enjoy a certain amount of eulogy and commendation; but when it was subsequently divulged that the Clerk was merely a nobody, and only had a salary of five and twenty shillings a week on account of his having no lord for a relation, it was at once seen that the Idea, although ingenious, was really, on being looked into, hardly a practicable one. However, the affair brought the Clerk into notice; so he went on the stage just as the excitement over the affair was at its height, and made quite a success, although he couldn't act a bit.
And then it was proved beyond a doubt that the Clerk had not found the Idea at all, but had got it from a Pauper whom he knew in the Weektee's union workhouse. So the Clerk was called upon in the Press to give up his success on the boards and go back to his twenty-five shilling clerkship; but he refused to do this, and wrote a letter to a newspaper, headed, "Need an actor be able to act?" and, it being the off-season and the subject a likely one, the letter was answered next day by a member of the newspaper's staff temporarily disguised as "A Call-Boy"—and all this gave the Clerk another lift.
About the Pauper's Idea there was no difficulty whatever; every newspaper and every member of the public had perceived long ago, on the Idea being originally mooted, that there was really nothing at all in it; and the Chuckler had a very funny article, bursting with new and flowery turns of speech, by its special polyglot contributor who made you die o' laughing about the Peirastic and Percipient Pauper.
So the Pauper was not allowed his evening out for a month; and it became a question whether he ought not to be brought up before a magistrate and charged with something or other; but the matter was magnanimously permitted to drop.
By this time the public had had a little too much of it, as they were nearly reduced to beggary by the contributions they had given to one ideal-originator after another; and they certainly would have lynched any new aspirant to the Idea, had one (sufficiently uninfluential) turned up.
And, meanwhile, the Idea had been quietly taken up and set
