"There's no secret about it--you merely don't give me a chance to--""Now look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a man comes to Washington, I don't care if it's from heaven, let alone Cherokee-Strip, it's because he wants something.And I know that as a rule he's not going to get it; that he'll stay and try--for another thing and won't get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks--and they take up a collection and bury him.There--don't interrupt me, I know what I'm talking about.Happy and prosperous in the Far West wasn't I?
You know that.Principal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody, kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington.Well, nothing would do but I must go Minister to St.James, the Governor and everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented--no getting out of it, had to do it, so here I came.A day too late, Washington.Think of that--what little things change the world's history--yes, sir, the place had been filled.Well, there I was, you see.I offered to compromise and go to Paris.The President was very sorry and all that, but that place, you see, didn't belong to the West, so there I was again.
There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little--we all reach the day some time or other when we've got to do that, Washington, and it's not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large and all around--I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople.Washington, consider this--for it's perfectly true--within a month I asked for China;within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was away down, down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in the gift of the government of the United States--Flint-Picker in the cellars of the War Department.And by George I didn't get it.""Flint-Picker?"
"Yes.Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century.
The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol.
They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been overlooked and forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the same."Washington said musingly after a pause:
"How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--""Three dollars a week.It's human life, Washington--just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer."There was another meditative silence.Then Washington said, with earnest compassion in his voice--"And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get absolutely nothing for it.""Nothing?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his amazement to expand."Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?