He soon saw that the river was to be turned in on him, and that he was to be officially obliterated in the flood.
The civility of those wonder-doing demigods--those Magi of the Civil Service office--was most oppressive to him.

When he got to the board, he was always treated with a deference which he knew was but a prelude to barbaric tortures.

They would ask him to sit down in a beautiful new leathern arm-chair, as though he were really some great man, and then examine him as they would a candidate for the Custom House, smiling always, but looking at him as though they were determined to see through him.
They asked him all manner of questions; but there was one question which they put to him, day after day, for four days, that nearly drove him mad.

It was always put by that horrid young lynx-eyed new commissioner, who sat there with his hair brushed high from off his forehead, peering out of his capacious, excellently-washed shirt-collars, a personification of conscious official zeal.
'And now, Mr.Oldeschole, if you have had leisure to consider the question more fully, perhaps you can define to us what is the--hum--hm--the use--hm--hm--the exact use of the Internal Navigation Office ?' And then Sir Warwick would go on looking through his millstone as though now he really had a hope of seeing something, and Sir Gregory would lean back in his chair, and rubbing his hands slowly over each other, like a great Akinetos as he was, wait leisurely for Mr.Oldeschole's answer, or rather for his no answer.
What a question was this to ask of a man who had spent all his life in the Internal Navigation Office! O reader! should it chance that thou art a clergyman, imagine what it would be to thee, wert thou asked what is the exact use of the Church of England; and that, too, by some stubborn catechist whom thou wert bound to answer; or, if a lady, happy in a husband and family, say, what would be thy feelings if demanded to define the exact use of matrimony?
Use! Is it not all in all to thee?
Mr.Oldeschole felt a hearty inward conviction that his office had been of very great use.

In the first place, had he not drawn from it a thousand a year for the last five-and-twenty years?
had it not given maintenance and employment to many worthy men who might perhaps have found it difficult to obtain maintenance elsewhere?
had it not always been an office, a public office of note and reputation, with proper work assigned to it?
The use of it--the exact use of it?
Mr.Oldeschole at last declared, with some indignation in his tone, that he had been there for forty years and knew well that the office was very useful; but that he would not undertake to define its exact use.