The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1867-02-13

Come home come home! come home!
Please father, dear father, come home!
son Being Washington Clerk"
We are indebted to the Washington
correspondent of the Mack-a-cheek Press
for the following graphic sketch of the
career, trials and tribulations ola Wash
ington clerk. Many will recognize and
fully appreciate its lights and shadows:
Sir, Washington is the devil-ish de-
scribed by Victor Hugo. 1 have been
fourteen years struggling in its embra-
ser. 1t sucks your blood with its
myriad paralyzing mouths of landlords,
grocers, bakers and butchers, its wood
vendors and coal dealers. When |
came here first, fresh from the Miami
Valley, had blood in my veins; l was
young, sir, and felt the impulses of
youth. NY coming here was the first
yielding to a temptation. My purpose,
as held it then, was to get little
capital to begin life. All, as Burns has
said, "the one false step is meier retriev
ed" The sap is gone out of me, sir; |
am no longer young. am in the grip
of the terrible vice, and the iron has
entered my soul-and it is not tonic.
Sir, this office-holding business is indeed
vice-a vice that described by Pope,
such, s3j 20 % aas..-- .a. g.
GAS to be hated needs but to be seen,
But seen too oft, familiar with its face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace"
We do not see the vice at first; it is
the tempting mask we see-the rouged
face of the terrible syren-soon we de-
tect the wretched features underneath,
which we endure from certain force
of incipient habit; then comes a feeling
of pity indescribable-it is hardly self
pity then we embrace it for good, in
fact we have all the while been embra-
cling it! Come to W ashington for a
clerkship? Go to the devil, sir, at
once! l have been here sir, as / said
before, for fourteen years I am forty
years old. The heats of youth cooled
off on the anxiety of small salary the
strength of manhood has ebbed in the
pinching trials of caring for a large
family. Never the cheerful warmth
Of competency in doors always the
chill winds Of poverty, prohesying
starvation, out of doors; for, the fact
that there comes day when the noun
ers mourning the loss of their offices)
go about the steets, is always in your
waking first thought, and always in your
last consciousness before sleeping,
My friend, you are young-look at
these gray and palsy-shaken fellows;
they are clerk-grown old. Ask any one
of them how it has been with him; he
will tell you that he has been living
from year to year with the constant
dread Of hearing the official voice say
Through the nervous lips of the yellow
envelope) 600" Go! Whittier will
he go? The props of selfsupport are
taken away when you accept an Office !;
the longer you remain, the weaker and
more helpless you become-there will
dawn morning when the almond
bough shall flourish and the grasshop-
per shall be burden and desire shall
fail. Business and the ways of the
world have grown long unfamiliar /;
you are distrusted by your friends-you
will be SO unhappy, because of too lit
tie importance,) as not to have or de-
serve an enemy. He who trusts in
Providence and does nothing himself
but trust, is not worthy of human conf
dence, and the gods will fout at him.
!. Put your shoulder to the wheel,
first, and will help you," was said
by Jupiter to the driver of stalled
wagon, who sat down upon the fence
and prayed the god to give him a lift.
Go home. Go to work. Be a man.
But, suppose you get an office; what
then? You come here and go to board.
. ing. Then after while you get mar.
ried you go to boarding with your
wife. That little paradise where two
are met together and have one life
mean home, sir-you will never see.
have an old friend who has been living
here, boarding here, forty years. I ex.
pressed my surprise one day, that with
his family he should never have taken a
house. sob, you know, Henry, have
only been living here temporarily" was
his answer. Temporarily! That is it,
everything is temporary here, sir There
is wind in Dante's Hell that, by fits
and starts, sweeps certain lovers away
they cannot pause and rest. That dread
full wind blows in Washington, strand
look at these treasury clerks, men and
women; how onathey will feel that
breath which indeed bloweth whittier
land when) it listeth! Temporarily,
STRIP -
Dryden was SO bound up in his books
that his wife one day exclaimed: 81