Eureka daily sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1871-1887, 1881-03-30
IN a A OF SIEGE.

The President, according to common
report. is in a state Of siege. Rumors of
a grand army Of persons hungering and
thirsting for place come up to Washing
ION. while the President is said to be
haggard and pale from the intensity of
the conflict. We suppose, however, that
whatever the pressure may be, the Pres
;dent does not suffer it to rob him Of
sleep. He is not new to Washington, its
phenomena at the beginning of an Ad-
ministration, or to the legitimate business
of his position. He has already caused
II to be made known that there will be
no general turning out and putting in Of
persons charged or to be charged with
the details of public business. Vacancies
will be filed. Chiefs of bureaus and
divisions may disappear from the places
which knew them and reappear else
where, either higher up in the list or in
private stations. But that there is to be
any general and far-reaching change which
shall accommodate the grand army of
seekers after place is not at all probable.
1t is idle, however, to deprecate the
assembling of the persons at the Capital
intent upon some real or imagined better
ment of their fortunes. depreciation will
do no manner of good. Sneering will
not dispense such assemblages. 1t is
natural enough, and if the applicants can
stand it, the general public certainly can.
The unfortunate who goes to Washington
to get a place on the civil list, and spends
more while vibrating between his long
ings and the departments than he could
save from a first-class clerkship in a year,
is to be pitied, of course. But SO are
hosts of waiting persons everywhere to
be pitied. The man who waits, and
longs, and demands what a hundred
others are waiting and longing for will
probably lose the best chance he ever had
to better his condition. The golden OPP
portunity is never so far away from even
the most luckless individual. 1t is not
the opportunity that fails, but the vision
of the man himself. He has heard of
the golden opportunity. but never seen
it, and with his ambitions fixed on dross.
he never will see it.
failure. Hence the greater number Of
the seekers after place now in Washing
ton are certain to be cured. They will
hang around, deluded by the good-natured
excuses and subterfuges of the dispensers
of patronage. until their money disap-
pears. Then they will try to borrow
more to fling after that which is lost.
When that moment arrives, they will be
able to measure the depth of their de-
fusion. Some will succeed. Some will
find that there are more borrowers than
lenders in Washington. And if some
body should furnish transportation for
some disappointed person, SO that he
could return to his native heath a wiser
though a sadder man, the victim will
probably fail to recognize in such a friend
the best friend he ever had. It is only
when a fellow awakes to the emptiness
of his purse, far from home, that he
really comprehends the vanity of human
wishes. The world appears to him as his
purse-empty-life a mistake, and friend
ship a delusion and a snare And this is
the experience of hundreds in the past,
and it is to be the experience of thousands
in the future. Warning can do no good
it cannot deter such persons from daring
their fate, but it may cause them to reflect.