Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1878-01-02
From our Regulor Correspondent
Washington Letter.
WASHINGTON. Dec. 90.

| Old things are passing away, but all
things are not made new. The old and
the new are so blendedi that it is i'm
possible to tell when the one ends, and
where the other begins. There are many
courses from Z" the egg to the apple" and
there is IL hazy frontier where vice fades
into virtue. Revelations no longer burst
upon our unprepared senses, but rather
dawn upon our expectant understandings.
| hope you will not think your CORE
spondcnL has been drinking egg nogg, for
all this platitude is not that ordinary
Christmas inspiration, but merely pre-
lude to letter upon the decline and fall
of the political machine, and the wheels
that will be buried beneath its ruins; for.
YOU know, the orator said: 1.-The day that
her gallant ship goes down, our little boat
sinks in the vortex" The little boat "
is the social machine. Political and social
life intertwine, but this is simply a truism,
and narrow one at that, for all life inter-
twues.
Last night l went to the first New York
state sociabe of the season, and was dis
appointed in not seeing rs many beautiful
ladies AS | had expected to see. OF
course it is ungallant and brutal to-
burt this truth out, but | paid for my
ticket, do not write fOp the Washington
papers, and it is not necessary for you,
| 10 A,,ttoc hn l,Hiao fbie
city, YOU doubtless have enough of that to
do in your own district, and no man should
torture his conscience without an object.
From the accounts published in the morn
inc papers here of the "brilliant affair.""
" the superb dresses" and the styles of
particular ladies, disguised in such ex-
quisite rhetoric, that, could the sentences
be materalized into fair womanhood,
their own mothers would not know them
it is evident that the local press under
stands its business, and is not making any
new departure in this sweet branch of
journalism. To mollify the envy of any
| Washington paper, | will say, on the
authority of an expert, that there was but
one costume worth rs much as two hun
| bred dollars, and that was worn by lady
of odious complexion, scraggy arms, and
heavy features. And this was the New
| York socablr that in former times was, i'll
not all that the local journals said, at least
something more than sparse attendance
of department clerks of both sexes, for,
the immense hall used to be crowded with
senators and members Of the lower house,
and not unfrequcntly the president and
cabinet were present. There is nothing
much in the decadence of this social insti-
tuition, except as it is symptomatic of the
decline of something more important.
For Years the residents from different
states have maintained their respective
state socables ut the Capitol, and they
| have been miniature courts of the respect
| i've states, and intimately connected with
their political campaign organizations.
The New York organization while it was
| formally dissolved at the order of the
president. as II political machine, encour-
aged by the defiance of Senator Conkling,
has made IL desperate effort to live in
social guise, with half closed eye on
politics, for what may turn up. Its effort
| to live is, believe, failure, and its death
an episode in the progress of reform. Re-
form, in its chronological sense means only
change. Let us hope that the change, or
reform, will not be for the worse.
A remark very often heard in Washing
ton Isl "Society here is very peculiar, it
is not us it is in other places" Those
who take Il superficial view of the subject,
attribute certain social phenomena to
what they vaguely term the depravity of
Washington society; but society here, as
elsewhere, is the result of natural, artfi-
cial, and psychological forces, and is not
essentially different from the society of
any capital, or from the society of the
various localities which compose it. We
have here the government clerk from
Maine, Tennessee, South Carolina, and
every other state; us a rule, l do not think
they are us well informed, us easy and
simple in their manners, or as tast, full in
their dress, rs the average salesman or
clerk in other cities; but they are, in the
worst sense, excellent politicians. They
have lived long in fear of an official axe
| that never ceases to menace the thread of
their tenure. A long state of dependence
and vassalage has undermined their man
illness, and stimulated the arts of servility
and cunning. 1t is the constant study OF
the clerk to please the chief of his bureau
not SO much by attention to his clerical
work. as by some ersonal favor or work
of homage; he knows, by instinct, the
observation Of Chesterfield, that princes
are more 1atlered by personal attachment
than by II political service and the chief
of the Bureau is his prince. The bureau
crat is in turn servile and cunning, for
his prince is cabinet officer, or some
powerful political patron. And thus it is
through all the depths and shoals of politi-
cal and Off iaI life. Titled men, generals
and Judges, of soft muscle and mediocre
ability, have their ambition soothed with
snecures, and the silvery rythm of regu-
lar pay. With such men and such no.
tees ii will be Inferred that society at the
capital as far as it Is affected by depart
mental official life, has not in its organism
the promise of power and perfection. But
departmental, official, and clerical, society
is what two other classes in Washington
would call lower strata. True some of
its individuals are cultured, rs they say in
Boston, and many others have progressed
us far us to say either " and neither )"
with the long sound on the first syllable,
or, if through force of habit, and II better
education, they inadvertently give those
words the long c sound, they repeat and
correct themselves, as Judge Davis did,
on the same words, in his first speech in
the senate. Big men, l mean big in the
way of beef and adipose, do puerile things
sometimes. But to return to the subject.
The higher strata of society is composed
of military and naval officers, and their
families. The way they elevate their
aristocratic noses, ape foreign manners
and fashions, repel an ordinary member of
congress unless he is rich, or court and
wheedle him if he is on the naval or mill
tary committees, is, as the proprietor of
side show would say, both moral and in
structiye. Another class. neither military,
naval, nor official, is known as the old
Washngtonian. He is related Gf he
knows himself) to the CAROLS, Lees, or
Randolphs, or AdamseG, or Ewes, or Me-
thusaehs, or some other old Virginia
family. have not exhausted the subject
but have exhausted my space. c.
Steamer Vandalia, with Gen. Grant and
family on board, sailed from Malta for
Alexandria on Monday. A salute was
fired from the forts rs the Vandnlia left