Then you go in. But when the government
changes by revolution--or by election, which sometimes happens, when
no one is looking--why, then the departments shift around in La
Libertad to suit themselves better, and they're apt to leave their
signs behind them. Besides that, each new minister will decorate
himself and his department with names to fit his ideas of beauty and
usefulness, and he'll proclaim these in the official gazette for the
intention of his department. The Guadaloupeans argue the competence
of a minister according as he has a department with titles that sweep
the horizon and claim kin with the Antipodes and the Resurrection.
Only it seemed to me that these things tended in time to make the
figures of speech on the signs sort of far-fetched.
It was that way that Flannagan and I, with David, the tin-type man
and the tumblers, fell on the "Department of Military and Internal
Peace," when we were looking for permits to ship cargoes and deliver
Japanese performances, under the sign "Office of Discretionary
Regulations." That may have been all right enough, for most of the
departments were that accommodating they would do any agreeable
business that came their way; but it appeared to me, the revolutions
left the government too full of idioms.
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