The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-21

looking out OF window while salute was
firing in his honor, and he saw man lose one
Of his legs by the bursting of cannon.
When the man Lad recovered his health,
General Grant was President Of the United
States. What more natural than that the
President should ask Mr.. Boutwell, to give the
unfortunate man. if convenient, n watchmans
place in the Treasury? He pitied the man,
and he had the power to give
him effectual relief at the public ex-
pense. Most men would have yielded
TO this impulse of benevolence, as General
Grant did, and most men perhaps approved
the act. Nevertheless, it is Just in this way
that the Capitol. the departments, the post
offices, and the custom houses get clogged
with supertiuous persons. 1t is thus that one
legged Incompetence pushes from its place
two-legged ability Some one, 5oho cdRHot be
REFUSED, asks the appointment, and then one
of two things must happen either q man
must be summarily and unhandsomely if not
inhumanly, thrust from his post, or two men
must be set to doing one mans work. Gene
rally, both these things are done The two
men go on for while, until some new broom
sweeps one or both away, to make room for
the favorites of another irresistible parsonage.
An entertaining writer, some weeks ago, IA
vored the public with "reminiscences of former
administrations, III order to show that
the people cordially sustain a President who
lndulges his personal feelings at the peoples
cost. He told a story of General Jackson,
which might have been true, the incident
being entirely characteristic. General"
asked an old friend of the ex-President, at
his Tennessee Hermitage, ''tell me why You
kept yourself and all your friends in trouble,
through your first Presidential term, by keep
ing Mr.. Gwinn Marshal of Mississippi" 70
this General Jackson replied: my
mother fled with Inc and my brother from the
oppression Of the British, who held possession
of North Carolina, we were very, very poor.
My brother had a long sickness (occasioned
by wound received from a British officer
because he refused to do some menial service).
and finally died. In the midst of our distress
and poverty, an Old Baptist minister called at
our logcabin and spoke the first kind words
my mother heard i'll her new home; and this
good man continued to call, and he finally
made our house his lodging-place, and
continued to pre- \ ii, when better ones
in the neiPhboTlood We're at his service.
Years rolled on and this good man
died Well, sir. when the news was
brought me that 7 was elected President. l
put up my hand, and exclaimed, Thank God
for that. for il will enable me to give the best
Office under the Government to the son of the
old minister who was the friend of my mo-
ther and of me il my youth; and kept my
PROMISE and, il it had been necessary, l
would have sacrificed my office before he
should have been removed
The feeling was natural and noble The
only question Is, whether man should re-
quite at the expense of his county services
done to his mother. The relater of the an
ecdote appends to it this Commentary
General Jackson was triumphantly reelected
to a second term. 1t is true; but it was in
spite Of such errors as this, not in conse-
or4 ,,cr
can remember that mad period of our political
history will not Justify personal government
by the example Of General Jackson.
Few of us, perhaps, have an adequate sense
Of the superior sacredness of public property
to private, of public trusts to private. Little
things betray our sluggish public conscience
No man, except a thief. would think of
taking a sheet of postage-stamps from the
desk of banker or merchant; but in Wash
ington it seems to be only men exceptionally
honorable who scruple to use, or even to
take, franked envelopes, which appear to be
lying about everywhere. Still fewer have a
proper sense of how much worse it is to
steal from all their fellow-citiZens than it is
to steal from one OF them. In everything re-
lating to the Government, citizen of the
United States should feel that he is upon his
most sacred honor. We are here in double
trust Our difficult and still doubtful expert
ment is for mankind as we'll as ourselves. I
would not magnify a small sin into great
one: still less would 1 assume to be more
virtuous than others; and yet it seems to me
that a citizen Of the United States should
shrink from accepting a proffered frank as
he would avoid touching only enough
pitch to deale the tips of his
fingers.
The reader has probably often asked him
self, while wandering about the Capitol, what
could possess Congress to throw away the
public money upon some of those pictures
that disgrace the Western Continent, and
human nature generally, in the Rotunda. He
has, perhaps, also, after giving up that con-
undrum essayed to conjecture why no men,
Der has risen superior to the clamor of econo-
msts. and proposed an appropriation Of two
dollars to white wash them from the view OF
mankind. 1t was bad enough to put them
there; but to keep, them visible, year after
wear. and give new commissions to the
painters who produced them, are acts
almost too aboujnable to be recEoned
among the small sins Of the national legisla-
ture.
Congress no doubt interpreted correctly
the wishes Of the ople in making the Capt.
tol stately and ornate; and it was an exqui-
site Thought TO go On decorating and COM
pleting il while the hosts of the Rebellion
were entrenched within sight of its rising
dome. Every building that belongs to the
nation, every object that bears upOnits surface
the letters ':U s.. should have something in
its style and appearance that will convey to
! the mind Of the beholder feeling of the i'm
perial grandeur of ne coUntry's mission and
destiny. Those nasty and cheap sub-post