Evening star., 1898-09-03
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED

handmade cushion on his front door step.
He was in his shirt sleeves. He petted his
dog, and he smoked a pretty good cigar.
He looked contented, comfortable, at his
ease. And he said:
Friends of mine In this town, and friends
OF mine who are not in this town, but who
come on here gala occasions and use
my good bed rooms and eat the good
tflngs L cheerfully set before them, often
erdeavor to make me world-weary and
tired of my lot in life, by saying to me
something like this:
How can you, man of pretty fairish
ability of decent front and probably of
more than an ordinary amount of shrewd-
ness, resign yourself to the thought of per-
petually holding down government job?
How can you crawl every morning into a
nig, overgrown stone building. loll and
dawdle around there for few hours, with
out really accomplishing anything toward
your own advancement in life, and then
crawl out in the early evening" carrying
nome with You the consciousness that IN
reaiity you're the tiniest kind of cog in
perhaps the most enormous wheel in the
worid-that II You were to drop out of that
wheel at the close of your dawdling and
iollng this afternoon, say, you wouldn't be
missed any more than solitary little
shrimp is missed that hops out of a can of
bait? How can you endure the monotony
OF 1t! How can you square 1t with your
conscience to settle Gown to dreary, un-
ambitious career of this sort?'
My boy, when a fool man talks to me
in such strain, 1 very rarely answer him
at all If 1 do answer him. I agree with
him. I say, You've got it right or That's
a TACT or something of that kind. The
men who say these things to me, of course,
are not in the government employ them
selves. They are in business, here or else
where-very few of them in business for
themselves, YOU understand; but in busi-
ness in that they work for other people.
Wen. ! let them get away with their propo-
sltlon that I'm more or less of a lunatic
for having put in about twenty years In
the service Of one Of the government de-
partments. 1t pleases them, that propo-
sition, and 1t doesn't bother me a little bit.
HencA l permit them to sympathize with
me. and I agree with them, and I say,
You've got 1t right, or That's fact OF
something of that kind.
But have they got 1t right? Not by
burned sight, have they! I know what 1
can do, and what can't do. In this life,
better than they do. Moreover, 1 know
what won't do. Likewise, 1 know what
to do ever since I had the luck to slip into
the employ of Uncle Sam I don't, for
example, have to bolt a hunk Of bread and
butter and scorch my mooth with a cup
of hot, half-cooked. sloppy coffee. o. morn
ipgs. In order to get down town in time
to open up store at o'clock am. At
O'Clock O. mornings I am usually slumber-
ing peacefully and dreaming of purple
meadows and low-laughng waters and
murmuring trees. 1 don't have TO plow
around store with a pencil behind my
ear from o'clock in the morning until
about O'Clock in the evening, getting my
cuffs grimy and my temperature elevated.
1 don't have to hang around a store until
al; hours Of the night, taking a quarterly
or monthly inventory. I don't have to
knuckle to irate customers. 1 don't have
to perpetually dodge the boss Not much,
do !. When the hcur-hand of the clock is
on the stroke of 4, after putting in fair
days work for pretty fair days pay, I
slam my desk to, and that's the last the
United States government knows of me. or
cares to know of me, for another seven
teen hours.
When the concrete that floors the
streets of this pretty town begins to get
bit soft under foot / write out bit of a
slip OF paper and in a couple of hours
Uncle Sa mhas given me permission to go
off to the woods, or the mountains, or the
beach, or any old place pick, for a thirty
day whirl with my family, and Uncle Sam
he pays the freight while I'm gone. If /
feel dumpy at any time and want to snug
gle up in my room for a Gay or so-with
the newspapers and magazines and my as
sortment of pipes at my side-the old gen
tleman with the red stripes on his pants
for whom | work tells me to do So and
that he will fix 1t that my pay shall go on
all the same
Now, 1 tried the business game for a
goodly enough number of years before I
had the luck to get into the service of the
government. My boy, it wasn't in it! 1
had to work like a Nubian slave from early
morning until late at night. I got paid
about S15 week, on the average, but /
used to indulge in pipe dreams about some
day being rich and prosperous merchant
member of the board of trade, and ali
that sort of thing, just the same. The firm
that got five years of work out of ME un-
der such conditions then decided to go out
or business. and 1t was up to me to hustle
for another job. A man out west where 1
lived. whose grave I deck with flowers
every year, then put me to this gov
ernmental graft to use a phrase of the
street, and I've been in a government Of
tce ever since, and patting my back over
it, at that.
Now, regard me. don't need to tell you
what pay l get from Uncle Sam, but I
don't mind telling you that the first wages
L got In the department amounted to 81 900
per annum Well, I've minded my own
business. and cut out the whisky and trim
mings, and they've been tacking on addi-,
uons to my pay right along for nearly two
decades | get pretty neat little bundle
of new bills every two weeks. and l get
everything that's coming to me. I've got
a dollar or two slowed away, at that-if I
We're to get fired tomorrow l wouldn't
have to peddle books and dine off ginger
snaps and milk, and neither would my
family. Fact is. I'm a landlord, and once
in while I become grandilouuent and
talk about me tenants I've got a few
pretty good houses and lots scattered over
this town, and any man that thinks I
haven't got enough coin slowed away in
bank to meet doctors bills, or any other
kind of emergency bills, in fact, Is labor
ing under misapprehension. I've got four
young ones, a couple of girls and couple
of boys, pretty well grown up, and guess
they're about as well fixed as to the
amount of knowledge in their headpieces
as any of my neighbors' young ones. Now
do you suppose that had / stuck to some
legitimate business, as my croaking friends
phrase it, I'd be sitting here tonight, as
big ard sassy and independent and bull
headed as I am at this present moment Of
time? Well, wot not!
All of which is respectfully submitted.
They Never Do.