The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-19
MANY DOOMED ID DISAPPOINTMENT Officeseekers a Sad Spec
 tacle at Capital LIFE AT WETUMPKA One of the Finest of the Saturday Afternoon Towns" in Alabama.
 Was All Life and Activi-
 ty Yesterday
LIFE AT WETUMPKA
By WALTER HARPER

Wetumpka, March 1S.-(Special. 1.-The sight of contending legislators and suf- fering office-seekers in Montgomery made me so sad I came over to Wetumpka. where I could inspect the state prison farm and hear the prisoners crack their amusing jokes about how they cracked
 'nuts' before the paternal common wealth cancelled their responsibilities and put them on easy street.
 Now there is no heinous design in my mention of legislators and convicts in the same breath The convicts should realize that as long as they behave them selves and do not try to pass big bills" that are loaded they will never be trans ferred to the legislature
 But my real sympathy goes out to the man who is waiting for this same bunch of legislators to create some political office that the governor may appoint him to it.
 A great horde of these have deserted their farms, their business and their homes and with a blanket of ill-ftting content drawn about their wasting forms have camped in the geranium beds of the state capitol. They are roasting on the benches of the capitol Hobbies, on the curbing along Dexter avenue and in the hotels.
 Occasionally the governor steps from his seclusion with the innocent sudden ness of a clock kuckoo, announces an appointment and retires without a word of apology to the one dozen or twenty seven other men who have been waiting six and eight months for the same job.
 Then these disappointed ones either go home busted and cussing the adminis- tration or they get busy with the legisla- ture in ''quick lunch scheme to create a new office with a fat salary attached to which the governor cannot but name the chief conspirator.
 But this precipitates another long, sick ening wait. It is heart-rending. It takes days and sometimes weeks to get new bill started and then piloted through the various labarynthan chambers of the house, the senate and the various com mittees. And then when the new office is created there is no dead sure certainty that the executive favor will fall on the particular instigator of the office. Ap- pointments are mighty handy to the ap- pointing power and there has been no pledged obligation.
 The expectant officeseeker forms habit of suspicion and nervousness that is really pitiable. He is startled by every sound The creaking of committee room door almost prostrates him. Though he Is ac- customed to gumshoeing, light step behind him throws him into convulsions.
 Then the jumbled dilemmas of the leg islators troubled my sympathetic soul. They drift and founder on a turbulent sea of political complications with never a kind guardian angel to show them where they are at. The lobbyist Is his only friend and he wears an impenetrable dis guise that may conceal anything.
 So I came over to Wetumpka to smile and laugh with the carefree convicts who do not give a rap whether liquor is sold under license or on the second floor.
 Then over herein Elmore county the dogwood is blooming and the doves are mating The oak and the maple along the frolicing Coosa river are putting on their "seemore frocks of green and crimson and the barefoot plowboy sings early and late of his Little Annie Laurie"
 This is life.
 Wetumpka is a fine old Saturday aft ernoon town" It may snooze a good part of the five first days of the week, but by noon Saturday it is thoroughly awake.
 The farmers from far and near come in with their teams, their wives and their dogs and buy weeks supply of meat, sugar, coffee, calico, tobacco and snuff
 The merchants get busy and put on the