Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-01
4 CITY OF sLuMBER.



Dull Admluistrafion-A Lack Of Gay
Young nIiIIionaIres- Good Prospects for
Little Fun.
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE DIsPATcH.J
I WASHINGTON, d. O., August so-since
Washington has come to be . city capable Of
supporting. summer hotels it has not been
! lduller' than at this time. It reminds one Of
some city of the far southland, where there is
nothing the livelong day to stir the blood to en-
thusiasm, where the flowers and the breezes
and the trees constantly provoke languor and
Incidence, where there Is nothing but love and
music and symphonies Of color. where the lotos
miglI well flourish as in any country Of the
world, and where all men and women might
eat Of it and forget that there Is any struggle
for life or any creature called death. Dreams
float in the atmosphere even for the workmen
tearing up the street, and for the scrub women
who are at this moment focking into the
Treasury building to raop up the diurnal ac-
cumulation of civil service spittle and the sift-
ing dust Of the aspnaltum.
The crude greens Of the trees and verdure
are softened by the sweet decay of autumn
into grateful russell, Ae warm gray that
tints the evening of life. The citizen goes
about his work merely to keep up Appearances
knowing there is nothing to sell and nobody 20
buy. Those favored mortals, the employees of
the State, dream through the six and half
hours of the easy work Of the slacKened season.
and skip out to the country in the early after
noon to be wooed by the crickets and katydids
until the following morning is well advanced.
The hotel clerk does little but admire himself
and his diamonds, especially the former. by all
odds the most magnificent thing In Washing
ton in the absence of the President and Cabi-
net The correspondent, that most patient and
all,
his rounds of the departments and the Lotels,
getting little news, in good sooth, but building
up valuable acquaintance with the hundreds
of new statesmen who have lately come into
OH ee through the cunning of that Napoleon of
po liticians. Mr.. Matthew Stanley Quay, With
out whose generalship the gentlemen who now
sit in the chairs of the chiefs would be bowling
outside Of the city walls
In short, we are at our best and loveliest,
sort of heavenly stagnation, which, alasl will
soon be utterly despoiled by the politicians
who will come to make unnecessary laws. and
the dear ten thousand who will return from
their summer flirting to live here again . short
season of their lives. I
Dull Admiuisfratiou.
We common people who never have any
leisure, to whom a vacation has never come
since we lived in the mysterious world beyond
our birth, have been having restfuI grateful
time, without Congress- without the courts,
witho ut scandals, everything moral and quies-
cent as dried-up duck pond. Maledictions
upon the house hunters who are already be-
ginning to haunt the streets looking for dwell
ings for the season. and let me tell them
here and now that their coming will be in vain,
for we're not going to have tithe Of the at
tractive gayety of the last four years. The
young millionaires of the last administration
will have no counterpart in this Among all of
the new comers there is not one Whitney or
one Mrs. Whitney to take the frigid edge of
from the administrative formality and melan-
choly, and launch forth into genial, liberal, un-
inquiring, high-nyine
The society of the last administration may
have been "a pace that kills." but that sort of
murder is picturesque to us cynical outsiders,
who are here to be amused, and have right to
grievously complain Of any administration that
does not furnish the highest order of social cir
Gus. The spectacle Of the grand entrances and
hippodromes, and ground and lofty perform
ances of the fashionable circle, the social
trust" as 1t were, are part of our entertain
ment that we cannot dispense with in that
season when we are forced at any rate to en-
dure an infusion of alien blood, but grave
fear is expressed that the features Of Govern
ment embodied in receptions and state dinners,
gossip, and paper hunts, will be sadly lacking
under the operation Of this old-fashioned,
economical, neutrality-suspicious. admins
tration. Under Cleveland everything had an
aroma of cakes and ale, but nobody seems to 4
be able TO forecast what perfume will be waited
from the drawing rooms of the new dispensa-
tion, where the worm is dead that produces the
elixir of the still, and the fire of Old Tokay, is
ever quenched.
Still Some Fun Left.
But let us not despair. There is at least a
pleasure in the painless woods of speculation,
and until the doom of utter tameness falls a nd
spreads its final pail over all things merry and
bright let US look with hope upon the pros
poets of the professional newspaper humorist,
the sad-eyed punster the face dripping with
pathos Of the manufacturer Of machine jokes,
the fellow who has become bald Furnishing old
stories and selling them for new, the martyr
going into a consumption with midnight pere-
grinations searching the very stars for comic
saying. Lacking the circus these will keep US
amused, tor the more the want in the brilliancy
of the official going and coming, the greater
the opportunity for the writer of droll things,
and things semi-wise, and things ironical; and
the prophet of the present, prophet of full
stomach and ruddy complexion. looks abroad
tells more food for fun than there has been in
a decade of Sundays.
I think the people are becoming each year
less reverentlal of the so-called rulers of the
land, fctitiously also at times called public
servants. There is disposition among writers
to rail at that which is comical. or grotesque,
or mean, or crude, or suggestive Of the swelled
head, even when it is in lofty place, and it
looks as though the targets for the journalistic
javelin would be legion.
A World of Compensation.
The Democrats were somewhat humble in
Office. They felt they were on trial. They
were novel experiment in laundering, and
they felt the eyes of the world upon them to
know if they would wash. There was some
thing the matter with their soap, and they went
forth soiled as they came. The Republicans
were vain of their Renaissance. Behold, we are
white and clean, said they, as though it were a
matter OF native purity, instead of superior
quality or quantity Of soap, and every man of
them imagines that he is in some way one Of
the elect.
Therefore, though the circus may fail of some
of its attractions, there is on the horizon mir
age Of the fun that is coming in the domain Of.
official assumption, of blunders, and quarrels
of the party family, and fatal jealousies, and
contempt of small men in high positions shown
by big men in lower positions that promise to
take the place of even the paper hunts, the
social scandals, and the love making of a nice
new President and his nice new wife. This is
a world Of compensations. If we can't find fun
in one way we will in another, If we want It,
E. W. l.