The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1878-01-03
AFFAIRS IN WASHINGTON.
From Our Regular Correspondent.
WAsH1NGToN, Dec. 20, 1877.


From Our Regular Correspondent.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 1877.
|. Old things are passing away, but all
things are not made new. The old and
the new are so blended that it is impossi-
BILE to tell where the one ends or where
the other begins. There are many
courses from 'the egg to the apple" and
there is 8 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 cor
respondent 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 lesser
wheels that will be buried beneath its
ruins; for, you know, the orator said:
athe day that her gallant ship goes down,
our little boat sinks in the vortex" The
slittle boat is the social machine. Po-
litical and social life intertwine, but this
is simply truism, and narrow one at
that, for all life intertwines.
Last night I went to the first New York
State sociable of the season, and was dis
appointed in not seeing as many beauti-
full ladies as had expected to see. Of
course it is ungallant and brutal to blurt
this truth out, but I paid for my ticket,
do not write for the Washington papers,
and it is not necessary for you, Mr.. Edi-
tor, to flatter the ladies of this city you
doubtless have enough of that to do in
your own district, and no man should tor
ture his conscience without an object.
From the accounts published in the
morning papers here Of the brilliant
affair."" ''the superb dresses" and the
styles of particular ladies, disguised in
such exquisite rhetoric, that, could the
sentences be materialized into fair wo-
manhood, their own mothers would not
know them-it is evident that the local
press knows its business, and is not max
ing any new departure in this sweet
branch of journalism. To molify the
envy of any woman who may read the
account in Washington paper, l will
say, on the authority of an expert, that
there was but enc costume worth as much
as 5000, and that was worn by lady of
odious complexion, scraggy arms and
heavy features. And this was the New
York sociable that, in former times was,
if not all that the local journals said, at
least something more than sparse at
tendance of Department clerks of both
sexes, for the immense hall used to be
crowded with Senators and Members of
the lower House, and not unfrequently
the President and Cabinet were present.
There is nothing much in the decadence
of this social institution, except as it is
symptomatic of the decline of something
more important. For years the residents
from different States have maintained
their respective State sociables at the
Capitol, and they have been miniature
courts of the respective States, and init
mately connected with their political
campaign organizations. The New York
organization, while it was formally dis
solved at the order of the President, as a
political machine, encouraged by the de-
iance of Senator Conkling, has made a
desperate effort to live in social guise,
with half closed eye on politics, waiting
for what may turn up. Its effort to live
is, 1 believe, failure, and its death is an
episode in the progress of reform. Re-
form, in its genealogical sense, means
only change. Let us hope that the
change, or reform, will not be for the
worse.
A remark heard very often in Wash
ington is: "Society here is very peculiar,
it is not as it is in other places" Those
who take superficial view of the sub
ject, attribute certain social phenomena
to what they vaguely term the depravity
of Washington society; but society here,
as elsewhere, is the result of natural, arti-
fetal, 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; as a rule, I do not
think they are as well informed, SIS easy
and simple in their manners, or as taste
full in their dress, as 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 under
mined their manliness, and stimulated
the arts of seryility and cunning. 1t is
the constant study Of the clerk to please