The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-07-10
TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 10.

mind. The resonant and vigorous integrity
which fercely reiterates that "the President
is determined for the future that his pledges of
civil Service Reform shall be executed to the
letter, That the President is thoroughly in
earnest in the whole business of Civil Service
Reform" do not seem to have SO practical and
powerful an influence ON the ofice-seeking ele-
ment as the report of Colonel Aver quietly
guenched out of the Philadelphia Custom
House Commission under cover of the dust
ana clamor raised by the hallooing, and Mr..
Slmons quietly marched in; or of s'Mr. John
y. Howard Of Ohio, who wrote biography of
PRESIDENT Hayes" silently slipped into the
New York Custom House, willis all the Reform
mob is shouting with one voice, "Great is Re-
form and President Hayes is its prophet 1t is
inspiring to hear that Secretary Evarts intro
duced system of Civil Service Reform as re-
CARDS the appointments of consular Clerks
but when this great System whose advent
and progress are thus heralded on the wings Of
lightning, is boiled down in the next sentence
into "a clerk who has been three years in the
Department yesterday passed satisfactory
examination, and was assigned to Honolulu"
the proof of the pudding must be confessed to
be very minute and over against the rapid
change OF base among both home and foreign
officers, that one lone Honolulu clerk sailing
over the Pacific seas seems as "a system" to
pass in music out of sight.
So when the gratified Reformer, sitting calm
ly on the ruins of George 81. Butler and Mr..
Keys fraternal letter, announces, with prefer
natural gravity that sit is creditable to Mr..
Key hat the first important appointment he
has had to make in his Department is filled by
the promotion of the most competent subor-
dinate of the:retring officer, instead of calling
in politician unskiled in the duties of the
office" the vulgar oface-seeker does not pros
trate himself in alteration before Mr.. Keys
wisdom and integrity with the alacrity and en-
thusiasm that would be becoming, but rather
shifts coarsely about with his nose in the air,
inquiring, show came there q vacancy for Mr..
Hazen?" Oh but Gen. BARRIERS resignation
was wholly voluntary. Y-a-a s, muses. the vul-
gar office-seeker, knocking still more insistent-
ly at the gates of the White House. So was
Mr. Boxers; but when Mr.. Boxer learned
frstIfrom the Associated Press that he had
resigned, and called Indignantly upon the
Secretary of State and the President to
know the reason why, "as he had not in
tended to resign, he learned that the dispatch,
stating that he had resigned was authorized
from the State Department" So did Mr.. Tai
bot resign ION account of an affection of the
eyes," Not that Solicitor Talbot's eyes gave
any sign of troubling himself, but they seem to
have troubled the Department-and they had
to 60! So did Mr.. Washburne resign, over
taken by sudden fatigue with the duties of dip
lomacy in the pleasant land of France. And
on the whole the narrow, partisan, corrupt, ma
lignant, disappointed, Ofice-seekiDg mind can
not help suspecting that this widespread and
concentrated resignation was very much like
that of the old farmers wife.
"Was she willing to die?' inquired the sym.
pathizing neghbor.
''she was obleeged tor GAIL HAMILTON.