17. Ogbury Barrows

We went to Ogbury Barrows on an archæological expedition. And as the
very name of archæology, owing to a serious misconception incidental to
human nature, is enough to deter most people from taking any further
interest in our proceedings when once we got there, I may as well begin
by explaining, for the benefit of those who have never been to one, the
method and manner of an archæological outing.

The first thing you have to do is to catch your secretary. The genuine
secretary is born, not made; and therefore you have got to catch him,
not to appoint him. Appointing a secretary is pure vanity and vexation
of spirit; you must find the right man made ready to your hand; and when
you have found him you will soon see that he slips into the onerous
duties of the secretariat as if to the manner born, by pure instinct.
The perfect secretary is an urbane old gentleman of mature years and
portly bearing, a dignified representative of British archæology, with
plenty of money and plenty of leisure, possessing a heaven-born genius
for organisation, and utterly unhampered by any foolish views of his own
about archæological research or any other kindred subject. The secretary
who archæologises is lost. His business is not to discourse of early
English windows or of palæolithic hatchets, of buried villas or of
Plantagenet pedigrees, of Roman tile-work or of dolichocephalic skulls,
but to provide abundant brakes, drags, and carriages, to take care that
the owners of castles and baronial residences throw them open (with
lunch provided) to the ardent student of British antiquities, to see
that all the old ladies have somebody to talk to, and all the young ones
somebody to flirt with, and generally to superintend the morals,
happiness, and personal comfort of some fifty assorted scientific
enthusiasts. The secretary who diverges from these his proper and
elevated functions into trivial and puerile disquisitions upon the
antiquity of man (when he ought rather to be admiring the juvenility of
woman), or the precise date of the Anglo-Saxon conquest (when he should
by rights be concentrating the whole force of his massive intellect upon
the arduous task of arranging for dinner), proves himself at once
unworthy of his high position, and should forthwith be deposed from the
secretariat by public acclamation.

Having once entrapped your perfect secretary, you set him busily to work
beforehand to make all the arrangements for your expected excursion, the
archæologists generally cordially recognising the important principle
that he pays all the expenses he incurs out of his own pocket, and
drives splendid bargains on their account with hotel-keepers, coachmen,
railway companies, and