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The following officers are appointed by the mayor, with the concurrence of the aldermen: a superintendent of streets, an inspector of buildings, three commissioners each for the fire and health departments, four overseers of the poor, besides a board of nine directors for the management of almshouses, houses of correction, lunatic hospital, etc.; a city hospital board of five members, five trustees of the public library, three commissioners each for parks and water-works; five chief assessors, to estimate the value of property and assess city, county, and state taxes; a city collector, a superintendent of public buildings, five trustees of Mount Hope Cemetery, six sinking fund commissioners, two record commissioners, three registrars of voters, a registrar of births, deaths, and marriages, a city treasurer, city auditor, city solicitor, corporation counsel, city architect, city surveyor, superintendent of Faneuil Hall Market, superintendent of street lights, superintendent of sewers, superintendent of printing, superintendent of bridges, five directors of ferries, harbour master and ten assistants, water registrar, inspector of provisions, inspector of milk and vinegar, a sealer and four deputy sealers of weights and measures, an inspector of lime, three inspectors of petroleum, fifteen inspectors of pressed hay, a culler of hoops and staves, three fence-viewers, ten field-drivers and pound-keepers, three surveyors of marble, nine superintendents of hay scales, four measurers of upper leather, fifteen measurers of wood and bark, twenty measurers of grain, three weighers of beef, thirty-eight weighers of coal, five weighers of boilers and heavy machinery, four weighers of ballast and lighters, ninety-two undertakers, 150 constables, 968 election officers and their deputies.

The fence-viewer decides the matter, and charges a small fee for his services. Where it is necessary he may order suitable walls or fences to be built. The measurers of wood do the same for firewood. The sealers test the correctness of weights and measures used in trade, and tradesmen are not allowed to use weights and measures that have not been thus officially examined and sealed.

* pay two hundred thousand incorruptible storekeepers and measurers who will not divert anything from the depots for their friends or themselves;

In the first place, very good wages, to which were attached, and from which hung, like extra bunches of grapes on his vine, the revenues of the civil and criminal registries of the provostship, plus the civil and criminal revenues of the tribunals of Embas of the Chatelet, without reckoning some little toll from the bridges of Mantes and of Corbeil, and the profits on the craft of Shagreen-makers of Paris, on the corders of firewood and the measurers of salt.

One eccentric old sea captain proposed to sound the sea with a torpedo, or shell, which should explode the instant it touched the bottom. Another gentleman proposed to try it by the magnetic telegraph, and designed an instrument which should telegraph to the expectant measurers above how it was getting on in the depths below.

Other town officers are the surveyors of highways, who are responsible for keeping the roads and bridges in repair; field-drivers and pound-keepers; fence-viewers; surveyors of lumber, measurers of wood, and sealers of weights and measures. Meanwhile the strays are duly fed by the pound-keeper, who does not let them out of his custody until all expenses have been paid.

Though they are held in small estimation, and are relegated to the same level as the butchers and measurers of grain, they are none the less desired, and their presence is considered indispensable at all ceremonies wedding fêtes, and on the birth of a son, on the occasion of circumcision, or for simple banquets.

Measurers and sealers may be appointed by the selectmen. Such are the officers always to be found in the Massachusetts town, except where the duties of some of them are discharged by the selectmen. Of these officers, the selectmen, town-clerk, treasurer, constable, school committee, and assessors must be elected by ballot at the annual town-meeting.

A horizontal straight line continued does not leave the earth's surface, but gradually approaches it. It does not seem that the measurers were psychologists enough to guard against the effect of preconceived notions in the process of applying their method. It is rather odd that pure geometry has its full share of paradoxers.

Sometimes they walked along the bottom, stirring to right and left of them a host of low-class life, slimy leeches, dingy crustaceans of every imaginable kind. Sometimes they traversed the middle deeps, brushing against the beetles and the boatmen and the water-snails. Sometimes they sunned themselves on the surface, snapping idly at the measurers and whirligigs.