Litchfield enquirer., 1872-12-12
From the Atlantic Monthly. AN INSPIRED LOBBYIST.

ard his numerous influential friends for bids me to mention his name abruptly lately entered into the body of Mir. Anan- ias Pullwool. of Washington. D. C..
 l As the said body was capacious one, havi ng been greatly enlarged circumfer- antially since 1t acquired its full lOngl- tude, there was accommodation in 1t for both the soul of Pullwool himself Git was very little one) and for his distinguished visitant. Indeed, there was so much room in it that they never crowded each other, and that Pullwool hardly knew. if he even mistrusted, that there was chap in with him. But other people must have been aware of this double tenantry, or at least must have been shrewdly suspicious of it, for it soon became quite common to hear fellows say, "Pullwool has got the Devil in him.
 There was, indeed, a remarkable change "a change not so much moral as phys ical and mental-in this gentleman's ways of deporting and behaving himself. From being logy in movement and slow If not absolutely dull in mind, he became wOn- derfully agile and energetic. He had been a lobbyist, and he remained lob- byist still, but such different one, so much more vigorous, eager, clever, and impudent, that his best friends (if he could be said to have any friends) scarce ly knew him for the same Pullwool. His fat fingers were in the buttonholes of con- gressmen from the time when they put those buttonholes on in the morning to the time when they took them of at night.
 He seemed to be at one and the same moment treating some honorable mem Der in the bar-room of the Arlington, and running another honorable member to cover in the committee-rooms of the Capitol He log rolled bils which nobody else believed conld be log-rolled, and he pocketed fees which absolutely and point-blank refused to go into other peo- ples 4sOokets, During this short period of his life he was tue most successful and 1 famous lobbyist in Washington, and the most sought after by the most rascally and desperate claimants of unlawful mil | lions,
 | But, like many another man who has the Devil in him, MT. Pullwool ran his luck until he ran himself into trouble. 1 An investigating committee bounced upon him; he was put into confinement for re- fuslng to answer questions; his flchings i were held up to the execration of the en- vious, both by virtuous members and d virtuous press; and when he at last got out of -durance he found it good to quit the District of Columbia for g season. Thus it happened that MT. Pullwool and his eminent lodger took cars and went to and fro upon the earth seeking what they might devouR.
 In the course of their travels they ar rived ill 8 little State, which may have | been Rhode Island, may have been Connecticut, or may have been one of the Pleiades, but which at all events had two capitals. Without regard to Merse's Gazetteer, or to whatever other Gazetteer we shall affirm that one of these capitals was called Slowburg and the other Fast burg. For some hundreds of years Get us say five hundred, in order to be sure and get it high enough) Slowburg and Fastburg had shared between them, turn 1 and turn about, year on and year off, all the gubernatoriai and legislative pomps 1 and emoluments that the said 'State had to bestow. On the 1st of April of every odd year, the governor, preceded by Gtt- izen soldiers, straddling or curvetting through the mud, the governor, fol- lowed by twenty barouches full of eminent citizens, who were not known to be eminent at any other time, but | who made a rush for ride onthis Oc- casion as certain old ladies do a fu- nerals,-th governor, taking off his hat ts pavements full of oitizens of all ages, sizes, and colors, who did not pretend to be eminent, governor, catching a fresh cold at every corner, and wishing the whole thing were passing at the equa- tor,-the governor triumphantly entered Slowburg, g,-observe, Slowburg.-readh his always enormously long message there, and convened the legislature there. On the first of April. of every even year the same governor, or better one who had succeeded him, went through the same ceremonies in Fastburg. Each of these capitals boasted, or rather blushed over, shabby old barn of State House, and each of them maintained company of foot guards, and ditto of rse-guards, the latter very loose in their saddles. In each the hotels and boarding-houses had full year and lean year, according as the legislature sat in the one or in the other. In each there was loud call for fresh shad and stewed oysters, under the same biennial conditions.
 Such was the oscillation nf grandeur and power between the two cities. Itwas an old-time arrangement, and like many other old-fashioned things, as for instance wood fires in open fireplaces, 1t had not only its substantial merits but it's super fisial inconveniences. Every year certain ancient officials were obliged to pack up hundreds of public documents and expe- dite them from Fastburg to Slowburg, or from 6lowburg hack to Fastburg. Every year there was an expense of 5 few dollars on this account, which the State Treas urer figured up with agonies of terror, and which the opposition roared at as If the administration could have helped it. The State-Houses were two mere deform- ities of patched plaster and leprous white wash; they were such shapeless, graceless, dilapidated wigwams, that no sensitive patriot could look at them without want ing to fly to the uttermost part of the earth; and yet 1t was not possible to build new ones, and hardly possible to obtain appropriations enough to shingle out the weather; for Fastburg would vote no money to adorn Slowburg, and Slowburg was equally niggardly towards Fastburg. The same jealousy produced the same frngality in the management of other pub lie institutions, so that the patients of the lunatic asylum were not much better lodged and fed than the average sane cit izen, and the gallows- birds in the States prison were brought down to tempera- ture which caused admirers of that spe- cies of fowl to tremble with indignation. In short, the two capitals were as much at odds as the two poles of . magnet, and the results of this repulsion were not all of them worthy of hysterical admiration.
 But advantages seesawed with disad- vantages. In this double-endsr of State, political iobbery was at fault, be- cause it had no headquarters. It could not get together ring; it could not raise a corps of lobbyists. Such few axe-grind- CTS as there were had to dodge back and forth between the Fastburg grindstone ever fairly getting their tools sharpened. Legislature here and legislature there; it was like guessing at pea between two thimbles; you could hardly ever put your finger on the right one. Then what one capital favored the other disfayored; and between them appropriations were kicked and hustled under the table; the grandest of railroad schemes shrhnk into waste paper baskets; in short, the public treas ury was next door to unauproachable