The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1870-06-10

four long years, Homer's touching picture
of the last sad scene between the noble
Hector and his weeping family rises before
my sympathetic imagination. Great
laughter. When see him plunging reck-
lessly into an office of the duties of which
he is profoundly and defiantly ignorant |
am reminded of the selfsacrifcing heroism
of Curtius when he leaped into the yawn-
ing gulfwhich opened in the Roman forum
When | behold him sadly contemplating
his ma iestic features in one of those gor-
Seous and costly mirrors which is furnished
him ut the public expense my heart goes
out to him in sympathy. When see him
seated sorrowfully at a miserable repast of
sea-terrapin and champagne ny very
bowels yearn for him. Laughter. And
when | see him performing perhaps the on
ly duty for which he is fully competent
signing the receipt for his monthly pay
| am so overwhelmed with pity for his
miserable condition that wish / were in
his place. Great laughter When such
considerations as these, sir, have come
crowding upon my mind, appealing to
every generous sentiment of my better ma
ture; when l have thought how the official
nerves of our poor neglected public servants
are racked by "the car rattling DER the
stony Streets" have felt, under the sud-
den impulse of the moment, that we ought
to tear up the old cobble-stone pavement
on the avenue and supply its place with
one of the new fashioned patent wooden
ones, over which the splendid carriages of
our Government officials with their coats
of arms and liveried outriders might glide
as smoothly and noiselessl IN as the aerial car
of the fairy queen through the rose-tinted
clouds of the upper ether. Applause and
laughter.
But, alas the House is estopped, Mr..
Chairman, by its own action to entertain
any such considerations rs these for when
my friend from Ohio Mr.. Mungen1 some
time ago offered a resolution inquiring
how many carriages, horses, harness, and
other trappings mobility the Government
furnished its officials at its own expense
it was promptly rejected, on the ground,
as supposed, that it was a great State
secret, and that it should not even be hin
ted to the plebeian tax payers in the coun
try that our Government officials here ever
rode in carriages at all, but that they
should be left to indulge the innocent il
fusion that their selt-sacrifcing servants
here at "the capital of the nation" bowed
down by the cares of State or the painful
burdens of their own ponderous intellects,
plod slowly along, with eyes bent upon the
ground, while their hearts are with the
loved ones far away Laughter
Sir, | would like to meet one of your
constituents (Mr. Paine in the chair in his
suit of homespun butterut-pardon me,
| believe some wear butternut in your
State. Laughter say would like to
meet one of your honest hearted, patriotic
old constituents, who feels an honest pride
in the fancied simplicity and purity Of our
republican form of government, down here
Seventh street, where the one legged veter-
an with his hand-organ grinds out his
wailing appeal to the charity of his patri-
otto countrymen as they pass, when some
gentleman high in authority sweeps by in
his splendid phmton behind spanking
span of thorough breds, driven by fun
ky dressed in a drab overcoat and stove
pipe hat, with n silver buckle in front of
it almost as big as garden gate. Laugh
ter. | would like to see him open his
eyes and stare at the passing pageant.
think | can see him now watching the
glittering equipage. AS it fades away in
the dim perspective the old man turns slow
ly away, muttering ''sic transit gloria man,
d." and the manned soldier strikes up,
CHATS the way the money goes; pop goes
the weasel" Laughter.
But, Mr.. Chairman, in my Judgment
there is more in this measure than seems to
be visible on the surface. think, sir, it
contains the materials for another of those
neyer-ending repasts for the hungry flock
of small retainers who hover like vultures
about this capital to prey on governmental
garbage, and for which there must be paid
out of the public Treasury an unlimited
amount of money. Lay not, beseech you,
the iiattering JUNCTION to your soul that
because the amount to be expended in this
project appears to be limited to $1S0,000,
that it will stop there. tell you there is
no power short Of an omniscient Provi-
dence that can foretell what the Govern
ment will eventually have to pay for the
improvement of this avenue if it under
takes it at all. 1t is true, that assisted by
the wonderful powers of science the as
tronomer can sit in his closet and tell pre-
cisely at what moment, and at what par
ticular part of the sidereal heavens comet
will reappear who has been absent thous-
and years on his painless pilgrimage
through the wilderness Of space, and true
to the very letter of the prophecy his fiery
train flashes upon our vision. He tells us
there hangs upon the confines of our sys-
TEN nameless planet, so far away in the
dim regions of the outer universe that NOR
tai eye hath never seen it. We turn the
telescope upon the point he indicates, and
there is the stranger world, which has swept
on in silent grandeur unseen by man since
creations morning dawn. He predicts a
total eclipse of the sun hundred ears in
the future, and names the exact time and
place upon the earth at which the sublime
phen omenon will first he seen, and, whcth
er it be upon the costly icebergs of Alaska
or the blood-stained soil of suffering Cuba,
punctual to the second the gigantic shadow
falls upon the precise spot he indicates
But, sir, to foretell what any public i'm
provement about this city will cost or when
it will be finished not only deties the high
est powers of mathematics, but is beyond
the utmost range of human conjecture it.
self [Great laughter.
| "When the stars shall fade away, the himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years."
then, and not till then may you expect
to see one of these Government Jobs
completed and the last deficiency bill pass
ed to pay for it.. Laughter. To some
| al n, 80, Law,