Arizona silver belt. [volume] (Globe City, Pinal County, Ariz.) 1878-19??, 1883-10-06
RObb'S RalllblcS.

N~SA
visit the Interior Department in
Washington? If not, and you ever
do, this is what you will find: An i'm
mense building, severely Doric, staid
and respectable looking as forty-year
old spinster, with series of flights of
stairs, running at right angles with
each other (the fights and a some
what imposing facade, with a not very
capacious door. Inside, the long low
ceilinged corridors. half as dark as a
tunnel, are fringed with rooms, every
one of which seems to have been
labelled and put in its place more for
reference than use. Once in a while
as you pass along over the marble
floor, your feet making noise enough
to bring to life the dead claims that
are filed away, door swings open
and you find life in the rooms, for
busy clerks and clerkesses are a; work
attending to some new complication
made by the irrepressible chronic
nuisance of the Indian Territory,
Paine; or some thieving Indian gent;
or some disputed land grant; or pat
ent for mine, or some one or other
of the numerous things that belong to
the Interior" branch of the public
service. As he walks along the cor
ridors he'll see the genus female clerk
in anything but her pristine be; uty.
l wonder if one of them ever was
young! l wonder if any of them ever
had cheeks that looked as hcugh
Rubens might have touched tlem
with his brush when its color was
brightest! Romped? Never! They
never even "growed," like Topsy; they
were always clerks. No bit of color
no rose, no bow of bright ribbon, nc
peal of merry woman laughter about
them. Sombre looks, sombre dresses
sombre manners-the atmosphere Of
the old Doric pile has been too much
for them. Its architectural frigidity
has chilled them. 1t has not had such
an effect, however, upon the negro
porters, or janitors, or whatever you
choose to call them, who lurk in al,
coves, and around corners, and who
look out upon you from their vantage
ground, like Victor Hugo's cutie fish
may have done upon the toiler by the
sea: Your thoroughbred African
likes Office. It don't matter what it
is, so long as1t gives him chance to
develope his self consciousness, and
puts him ON pedestal where he can
look down ON the calciming, boot.
blacking, bundle carrying, clothes re.
pairing rag-tag and bob-tail of his
race. The visitor will wander around
until he finds one of the rooms la,
belled, Commissioner of Indian AT.
fairs" and if he has aught TO say tc
'the Commissloner" he will find ar
old man inside the room, sad-faced
white headed, quakerish in appear
ance, so attentive to business that he
does not look up till you speak to him
intellectual looking, and as undemon'
strative as one of the trygliphs in the
cornice of the building. He looks as
y the architecture had affected him
too. His position is an anomalous
one--he does not frame the policy ol
the government in regard to the In
dians, but he has to shoulder the re-
sponsility. He does not appoint his
Indian Agents, but he is made the OBJ
jective point at which the white mer
who are injured by the rascality o.
the Agents hurl their anathemas.
never did have an itch for Office, and
would rather be the devil for coun
try newspaper, than have his. If the
visitor has, as | had, business with the
Secretary of the Interior, he will b.
presented. at the Sccretary'S door
with card upon which he must Writ