The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-11-30
News ana Gossip @ Washington
BY LuoUzN JULIEN WALKER.

Washington, Nov 2s.-(special.l-A | wonderfully beautiful young girl of 17 or l IS years with the face and figure Of Psyche. her deep brown hair falling free and wholly unrestraiped from underNsatn daring wide-awake hat; and pink roses chasing one another across her cheeks, | that were softer than any velvet whose warp and wool man ever fashioned from the primal fig leaf down to this hour or our Thanksgiving for the privelege Of l Knowing fair and good women-this beau nful young girl, astride of thorough, with marvellous grace along upper Penn- sylvania Avenue past my hotel al an- hour-by sun in yesterdays afternoon breath of May lent to November. This may read like a schoolboy's callow competition" but you ought to have seen that girl a-straddle of the thorough: pred Any other man less accustomed than myself to see and adore beautiful | women would in this circumstance be utterly unable to write at all; he would sit and dream and burn tobacco-quite paralyzed. So if the usual reports from this end of wire flow not with customary | regularity, you will be justified in assum- | ing that somewhat aging slave Is hang ing around the fashionable Northwest quarter of this town looking for an alto | gether angelic young Psyche a-straddle of | bay thoroughbred.
 l Perhaps it may be confession that this | particular slave of the graphite pencil and | the br1ar-root pipe remains an untravelled ! villager, but, honestly, he never before witnessed a gentle-woman riding mans saddle a-straddle of horse. He had read of such things, as occurring recently In Boston, but he has read of many things he never hoped to see, and has never visited Boston.
 Truly the fair young thing on horse back was enchanting. She, like her horse. was clearly thoroughbred. She looked l like little English aristocrat, and ! rather than Venus added to her superla- tive attractiveness.
 | Her bearing, her unsurpassable grace fulness, her every movement just as fully proclaimed her a gentlewoman as ten pages of pedigree could have done. At the distance of the twenty paces be- hind her fixed by the law of good form all over the world, rode her groom in livery, and of course he was too we'll trained to ever suffer his eyes to wonder from her. At the moment of her arrival in front of the hotel the street was crowded with automobiles and all man. ner of vehicles. many of which were oc- | cupied by persons of fashion; but she looked neither to the right nor the left, and recognized no one; nor did her spirit ed horse cease the resUained gallop to which her gauntletted Nttle hand held
 him. In and out and around and about that vehicular maze she guided that per- feet horse with unerring skill.
 l The observer was grateful for the 1 crowded state of the street, yet that horses slow pace. as he bounded up and down, was far too fast. One glanced swiftly at Psyche's beautiful face; at her rakish hat: at the little gold-mounted crop in the little hand and on down that dream of shapeliness to the tiny little booted foot resting far through the bright little silver stirrup: and from the boot slowly upward to the fair face one look ed again-and still looked until thorough bred maiden and thoroughbred steed dis 1 appearded in the Northwest.
 more? Let's just dream. and burn to- MARRIAGE A FAILURE.
 After all the discrimination against wo- men clerks in the great departments of the government, it remained for the first Da ttle-axe blow to be dealt by the trustee of the pie assets of the administration. Postmaster General Payne. who boldly and unsentimentally proclaims that any p. o. d. girl who may hereafter marry | needn't return from her wedding festiv- ities, for he will suffer no such bride to | chew gum or do other things at desk in the big rock postoffice.
 Nay, neither maid nor widow clerk may change her name and keep her job. No, hubby. or no old job no job, or no hubby. | That's MT. Payne's painful law unto the Widow Clerk and Miss Clerk.
 This law is not new. it is merely new that If a woman clerk changes her name by marriage, she must be reappointed to her position, or be incapacitated for fur ther public service: discretion in the mat ter of reappointment being left to the heads of the various departments. Mir. l Payne is the first to exercise the discre- | ton against the women clerks: but there l is an impression here that other heads of departments will soon follow his ex- | ample.
 With certain specified exceptions, the | civil service law provides that no two members of the same immediate family shall be appointed to the classified ser vice. the exceptions in the main applying to Union soldiers and dependent parents. | Presumptively this feature of the law | would not be enforced against brothers and sisters past the age of 2l and resid- ing with their parents. for usually such as these pay board and therefore in d sense each is family. even though un- | married.
 Still Mir. Paynes order comes in the na- ture of a shock following, as it does, 50 closely upon Adjutant General Corbin s earnest and wise recommendation against the marriage of army lieutenants who are without substantial private income, and the Methodist Bishop Duncan's recent public plea in Richmond that poor young preachers restrain their matrimonial i'm l pulses. Yet these common sense views of marriage really apply to poor young men l everywhere who are neither lieutenants nor preachers.
 HARD ON THE MEN.
 In all the armies and navies of Europe
 T n Al