Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1879-01-08
Washington Letter.

Yesterdays New Year calls in Wash
. ington were repetition of the old famil-
J lar programme. The president. cabinet
officers, judges of the supreme court,
nearly everybody official and non-official
received; and everybody called. The
weather was rs disagreeable as possible.
1t rained or showed without cessation
throughout the day. The few ladies that
did not receive looked on from behind the
window curtains and kept tally of the
callers at their neghbors across the way.
The New Year receptions at the capital
are good, if for nothing else, TO display
the imposing reserve strength of the army
and navy. 1t has been the policy of our
government to bring the chiefs of the saw
ages, like Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, TO
the eastern cities, to impress them with
the strength of our population, the extent
OF our resources, and the hopelessness of
their cause in the irrepressible conflict.
This policy has had no apparent effect
upon Indian wars, because the savage is
unable TO distinguish those who have been
taught French, engineering, and waltzng,
to qualify them for their executoners, and
the shop keepers and dandies who prone
made Pennsylvania Avenue. The accom-
plished pups of war " from West Point,
and the exquisite civilian, look precisely
alike when the former is masquerading in
citizens dress. as is his custom 964 DAYS of
the year. The way to make the govern
mental policy effective would be to bring
the Indians here on the first day of the
year, and let them see our officers in their
warike panoply. They would then realize
from their epaulettes, and scarfs, and gold
braid, and buttons, what terribly destruct-
i've fellows they are, and what numerous
reserve we keep at the capital with Penn
sylvania Avenue as the line of our defense.
But the New Year official ceremonies
are instructive and impressive in at least
one other way. We are reminded on the
first ''ay of the year that we have foreign
relations; that we as people do not live
to ourselves, nor order the fashion of our
national household; that republicansm is
not such new departure as the apostles
OF new tangled steam, electricity and
printing presses would have us believe;
that in spite Of our discovery of new
continent, tue width of the Atlantic ocean.
and our Wanted secession from monarch
ical forms and formulas, we are compelled
to serviely copy that which the effete des-
potlsms perpetuate only as q venerable
tradition. When we see the foreign di-
plomatic corps-the gorgeous ambassadors
OF Russia, Turkey, Austria, Denmark and
Sweden, with their numerous attaches,
any one of them with twice as much gold
braid and tinsel rs our own resplendent
army and navy officers, our minds are
carried back to the days of Tallerand and
Matternich, or, farther, to the age of Rich
elieu and Machiavelli, when the politics
OF nations were not discussed, and the Sc
crets OF courts anticipated and exposed by
the press-cabled to the four quarters of
the globe, for the information of all the
world, and, finally, for the information of
the successors of Matternich and Tai
lerand. When we see the modern embas-
sador in his arducus and delicate diplo. |
matte work of calling at the White House
one day of the three hundred and sixty
i've, presenting his compliments to the
president and wishing him and Mrs.
Hayes Happy New Year,-our hearts
(not our pockets) may swell with the re-
Election that, in spite of the press, steam,
the Atlantic ocean, and the Atlantic cable,
we have the proud privilege of paying q
few millions a year in support of this
venerable, antique mimicry of diplomacy
at foreign courts. c.