"A shepherd. Tended his flocks on the honey-scented hills of Solano."
"Well, all I can say is, d--n your California pastorals!"
THE OFFICE SEEKER
He asked me if I had ever seen the "Remus Sentinel."
I replied that I had not, and would have added that I did not even know where Remus was, when he continued by saying it was strange the hotel proprietor did not keep the "Sentinel" on his files, and that he, himself, should write to the editor about it. He would not have spoken about it, but he, himself, had been an humble member of the profession to which I belonged, and had often written for its columns. Some friends of his--partial, no doubt--had said that his style somewhat resembled Junius"s; but of course, you know--well, what he could say was that in the last campaign his articles were widely sought for. He did not know but he had a copy of one. Here his hand dived into the breast-pocket of his coat, with a certain deftness that indicated long habit, and, after depositing on his lap a bundle of well-worn doc.u.ments, every one of which was glaringly suggestive of certificates and signatures, he concluded he had left it in his trunk.
I breathed more freely. We were sitting in the rotunda of a famous Washington hotel, and only a few moments before had the speaker, an utter stranger to me, moved his chair beside mine and opened a conversation. I noticed that he had that timid, lonely, helpless air which invests the bucolic traveler who, for the first time, finds himself among strangers, and his ident.i.ty lost, in a world so much larger, so much colder, so much more indifferent to him than he ever imagined. Indeed, I think that what we often attribute to the impertinent familiarity of country-men and rustic travelers on railways or in cities is largely due to their awful loneliness and nostalgia. I remember to have once met in a smoking-car on a Kansas railway one of these lonely ones, who, after plying me with a thousand useless questions, finally elicited the fact that I knew slightly a man who had once dwelt in his native town in Illinois. During the rest of our journey the conversation turned chiefly upon his fellow-townsman, whom it afterwards appeared that my Illinois friend knew no better than I did. But he had established a link between himself and his far-off home through me, and was happy.
While this was pa.s.sing through my mind I took a fair look at him. He was a spare young fellow, not more than thirty, with sandy hair and eyebrows, and eyelashes so white as to be almost imperceptible. He was dressed in black, somewhat to the "rearward o" the fashion," and I had an odd idea that it had been his wedding suit, and it afterwards appeared I was right. His manner had the precision and much of the dogmatism of the country schoolmaster, accustomed to wrestle with the feeblest intellects. From his history, which he presently gave me, it appeared I was right here also.
He was born and bred in a Western State, and, as schoolmaster of Remus and Clerk of Supervisors, had married one of his scholars, the daughter of a clergyman, and a man of some little property. He had attracted some attention by his powers of declamation, and was one of the princ.i.p.al members of the Remus Debating Society. The various questions then agitating Remus,--"Is the doctrine of immortality consistent with an agricultural life?" and, "Are round dances morally wrong?"--afforded him an opportunity of bringing himself prominently before the country people. Perhaps I might have seen an extract copied from the "Remus Sentinel" in the "Christian Recorder" of May 7, 1875? No? He would get it for me. He had taken an active part in the last campaign. He did not like to say it, but it had been universally acknowledged that he had elected Gashwiler.
Who?
Gen. Pratt C. Gashwiler, member of Congress from our deestrict.
Oh!
A powerful man, sir--a very powerful man; a man whose influence will presently be felt here, sir--HERE! Well, he had come on with Gashwiler, and--well, he did not know why--Gashwiler did not know why he should not, you know (a feeble, half-apologetic laugh here), receive that reward, you know, for these services which, etc., etc.
I asked him if he had any particular or definite office in view.
Well, no. He had left that to Gashwiler. Gashwiler had said--he remembered his very words: "Leave it all to me; I"ll look through the different departments, and see what can be done for a man of your talents."
And--
He"s looking. I"m expecting him back here every minute. He"s gone over to the Department of Tape, to see what can be done there. Ah!
here he comes.
A large man approached us. He was very heavy, very unwieldy, very unctuous and oppressive. He affected the "honest farmer," but so badly that the poorest husbandman would have resented it. There was a suggestion of a cheap lawyer about him that would have justified any self-respecting judge in throwing him over the bar at once. There was a military suspicion about him that would have ent.i.tled him to a court-martial on the spot. There was an introduction, from which I learned that my office-seeking friend"s name was Expectant Dobbs. And then Gashwiler addressed me:--
"Our young friend here is waiting, waiting. Waiting, I may say, on the affairs of State. Youth," continued the Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, addressing an imaginary const.i.tuency, "is nothing but a season of waiting--of preparation--ha, ha!"
As he laid his hand in a fatherly manner--a fatherly manner that was as much of a sham as anything else about him--I don"t know whether I was more incensed at him or his victim, who received it with evident pride and satisfaction. Nevertheless he ventured to falter out:--
"Has anything been done yet?"
"Well, no; I can"t say that anything--that is, that anything has been COMPLETED; but I may say we are in excellent position for an advance--ha, ha! But we must wait, my young friend, wait. What is it the Latin philosopher says? "Let us by all means hasten slowly"--ha, ha!" and he turned to me as if saying confidentially, "Observe the impatience of these boys!" "I met, a moment ago, my old friend and boyhood"s companion, Jim McGlasher, chief of the Bureau for the Dissemination of Useless Information, and," lowering his voice to a mysterious but audible whisper, "I shall see him again to-morrow."
The "All aboard!" of the railway omnibus at this moment tore me from the presence of this gifted legislator and his protege; but as we drove away I saw through the open window the powerful mind of Gashwiler operating, so to speak, upon the susceptibilities of Mr. Dobbs.
I did not meet him again for a week. The morning of my return I saw the two conversing together in the hall, but with the palpable distinction between this and their former interviews, that the gifted Gashwiler seemed to be anxious to get away from his friend. I heard him say something about "committees" and "to-morrow," and when Dobbs turned his freckled face toward me I saw that he had got at last some expression into it--disappointment.
I asked him pleasantly how he was getting on.
He had not lost his pride yet. He was doing well, although such was the value set upon his friend Gashwiler"s abilities by his brother members that he was almost always occupied with committee business. I noticed that his clothes were not in as good case as before, and he told me that he had left the hotel, and taken lodgings in a by-street, where it was less expensive. Temporarily of course.
A few days after this I had business in one of the great departments.
From the various signs over the doors of its various offices and bureaus it always oddly reminded me of Stewart"s or Arnold and Constable"s. You could get pensions, patents, and plants. You could get land and the seeds to put in it, and the Indians to prowl round it, and what not. There was a perpetual clanging of office desk bells, and a running hither and thither of messengers strongly suggestive of "Cash 47."
As my business was with the manager of this Great National Fancy Shop, I managed to push by the sad-eyed, eager-faced crowd of men and women in the anteroom, and entered the secretary"s room, conscious of having left behind me a great deal of envy and uncharitableness of spirit. As I opened the door I heard a monotonous flow of Western speech which I thought I recognized. There was no mistaking it. It was the voice of the Gashwiler.
"The appointment of this man, Mr. Secretary, would be most acceptable to the people in my deestrict. His family are wealthy and influential, and it"s just as well in the fall elections to have the supervisors and county judge pledged to support the administration. Our delegates to the State Central Committee are to a man"--but here, perceiving from the wandering eye of Mr. Secretary that there was another man in the room, he whispered the rest with a familiarity that must have required all the politician in the official"s breast to keep from resenting.
"You have some papers, I suppose?" asked the secretary, wearily.
Gashwiler was provided with a pocketful, and produced them. The secretary threw them on the table among the other papers, where they seemed instantly to lose their ident.i.ty, and looked as if they were ready to recommend anybody but the person they belonged to. Indeed, in one corner the entire Ma.s.sachusetts delegation, with the Supreme Bench at their head, appeared to be earnestly advocating the manuring of Iowa waste lands; and to the inexperienced eye, a noted female reformer had apparently appended her signature to a request for a pension for wounds received in battle.
"By the way," said the secretary, "I think I have a letter here from somebody in your district asking an appointment, and referring to you?
Do you withdraw it?"
"If anybody has been presuming to speculate upon my patronage," said the Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, with rising rage.
"I"ve got the letter somewhere here," said the secretary, looking dazedly at his table. He made a feeble movement among the papers, and then sank back hopelessly in his chair, and gazed out of the window as if he thought and rather hoped it might have flown away. "It was from a Mr. Globbs, or Gobbs, or Dobbs, of Remus," he said finally, after a superhuman effort of memory.
"Oh, that"s nothing--a foolish fellow who has been boring me for the last month."
"Then I am to understand that this application is withdrawn?"
"As far as my patronage is concerned, certainly. In fact, such an appointment would not express the sentiments--indeed, I may say, would be calculated to raise active opposition in the deestrict."
The secretary uttered a sigh of relief, and the gifted Gashwiler pa.s.sed out. I tried to get a good look at the honorable scamp"s eye, but he evidently did not recognize me.
It was a question in my mind whether I ought not to expose the treachery of Dobbs"s friend, but the next time I met Dobbs he was in such good spirits that I forebore. It appeared that his wife had written to him that she had discovered a second cousin in the person of the a.s.sistant Superintendent of the Envelope Flap Moistening Bureau of the Department of Tape, and had asked his a.s.sistance; and Dobbs had seen him, and he had promised it. "You see," said Dobbs, "in the performance of his duties he is often very near the person of the secretary, frequently in the next room, and he is a powerful man, sir--a powerful man to know, sir--a VERY powerful man."
How long this continued I do not remember. Long enough, however, for Dobbs to become quite seedy, for the giving up of wrist cuffs, for the neglect of shoes and beard, and for great hollows to form round his eyes, and a slight flush on his cheek-bones. I remember meeting him in all the departments, writing letters or waiting patiently in anterooms from morning till night. He had lost all his old dogmatism, but not his pride. "I might as well be here as anywhere, while I"m waiting,"
he said, "and then I"m getting some knowledge of the details of official life."
In the face of this mystery I was surprised at finding a note from him one day, inviting me to dine with him at a certain famous restaurant.
I had scarce got over my amazement, when the writer himself overtook me at my hotel. For a moment I scarcely recognized him. A new suit of fashionably-cut clothes had changed him, without, however, entirely concealing his rustic angularity of figure and outline. He even affected a fashionable dilettante air, but so mildly and so innocently that it was not offensive.
"You see," he began, explanatory-wise, "I"ve just found out the way to do it. None of these big fellows, these cabinet officers, know me except as an applicant. Now, the way to do this thing is to meet "em fust sociably; wine "em and dine "em. Why, sir,"--he dropped into the schoolmaster again here,--"I had two cabinet ministers, two judges, and a general at my table last night."
"On YOUR invitation?"
"Dear, no! all I did was to pay for it. Tom Soufflet gave the dinner and invited the people. Everybody knows Tom. You see, a friend of mine put me up to it, and said that Soufflet had fixed up no end of appointments and jobs in that way. You see, when these gentlemen get sociable over their wine, he says carelessly, "By the way, there"s So-and-so--a good fellow--wants something; give it to him." And the first thing you know, or they know, he gets a promise from them. They get a dinner--and a good one--and he gets an appointment."
"But where did you get the money?"
"Oh,"--he hesitated,--"I wrote home, and f.a.n.n.y"s father raised fifteen hundred dollars some way, and sent it to me. I put it down to political expenses." He laughed a weak, foolish laugh here, and added, "As the old man don"t drink nor smoke, he"d lift his eyebrows to know how the money goes. But I"ll make it all right when the office comes--and she"s coming, sure pop."
His slang fitted as poorly on him as his clothes, and his familiarity was worse than his former awkward shyness. But I could not help asking him what had been the result of this expenditure.