Part 18 (2/2)

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 fas.h.i.+onably-cut clothes had changed him, without, however, entirely concealing his rustic angularity of figure and outline. He even affected a fas.h.i.+onable 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.

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