Mr. Lumsden, the senior partner of Lumsden and Westmacott, the well-known scholastic and clerical agents, was a small, dapper man, with a sharp, abrupt manner, a critical eye, and an incisive way of speaking. Your name, sir? said he, sitting, pen in hand, with his long, red-lined folio in front of him. Harold Weld. Oxford or Cambridge? Cambridge. Honours? No, sir. Athlete? Nothing remarkable, I am afraid. Not a Blue? Oh no. Mr. Lumsden shook his head despondently and shrugged his shoulders in a way which sent my hopes down to zero. There is a very keen competition for masterships, Mr. Weld, said he. The vacancies are few and the applicants innumerable. A first-class athlete, oar, or cricketer, or a man who has passed very high in his examinations, can usually find a vacancy--I might say always in the case of the cricketer. But the average man--if you will excuse the description, Mr. Weld--has a very great difficulty, almost an insurmountable difficulty. We have already more than a hundred such names upon our lists, and if you think it worth while our adding yours, I dare say that in the course of some years we may possibly be able to find you some opening which...
