Year: 1878

WASHINGTON, D. c., May 6, 1878.


The story of the office-seeker who
visi : Washington from afar and Of the


resident here, the most persistent Of the


lot, has been often told with every form


of variation. He or she has been lam


pooned by wits great, medium and small,
and made to appear the very incarnation


of everything mean and contemplate.


Snubbing only makes the applicant the


more pertinacious and the gross insults
to which they are daily subjected on the
part of our public servants" who rep
resent us in Congress, and the intellect
ual lights who serve their country at the
heads of the various bureaus of the Exc
cutive Departments, the aggregate form
ing what is known as bureaucracy
never, according to the regulation YER
sion, provoke them to strike back lest
they prejudice their prospects Ridicule,
satire, irony, metaphor, in short every
resource of the brilliant Washington
correspondent" has been exhausted to
the end of making them so odious and
loathsome as to deter others from both
ering and worrying in like manner the
souls of our great men whose minds are
so pre-occupied with the great problems
of craftsmanship that it is not to be ex


pected they will unbend to listen to the
prayers of nobodies who have neither
money, influential friends nor votes at
their command to insure even civil
treatment, let alone favorable considera
ton. So far as subordinate Federal
positions are concerned, about all the
incumbents of the higher positions who
never. yield them till forced out, and
many of the correspondents who are
never known to refuse one, are agreed
that they should be avoided as we would
a pestilence. Excluding from the list
all that make Office the aim oftheir lives
and who can urge not one valid reason
why they should be gratifed by receiv-
/ ing appointments, there is large resi-
dunn of worthy people who seek en-
ployment under Government as the
most remuneratiye of anything offering.
If we may credit the testimony of hun
dreds of them who come from a dis


tance, they have been encouraged to be


lieve-some promised absolutely-th4t
they may rely on the would-be member
of the House or the Senator who is
seeking to represent them to secure
them Offices. BY sacrifices Of various
kinds they are enabled to get together
enough to bring them here, and not a
few arrive without enough TO pay a
weeks board. They find vast differ
ence in the manner of the cordial, SYM
pathetic "hail fellow well met" individual
seeking votes at home, and the frigid,
formal member of Congress here, whose
memory has to be vigorously logged by
the trembling constituenteyent tosecure
recognition at all, if he has been unsuc-
cessful in eyading them and is met face
/ to face. If sought at their own or their
boarding houses, the caller is insulted
likely by the impertinent and supercil-
ious manners Of the meniai who brings
word that the geqtleman is mot in IN
response to the cal Id sent up. liable to
Withstand the contemptuous, often inso-
lent, airs of the professional liar con-
fronting them, and they venture to
inquire when the great man may be
expected, the cup of the poor inqmres
humiliation is made to run over by the
naughty reply of this colored gentiman
or SON of Erin. Those with ordlnarly
thin skins are only too glad to borrow or