Part 17 (2/2)
These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in the Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative, when one of the Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a pa.s.sion and said: ”Where have you been all day?”
I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a Cabinet meeting.
”To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at a Cabinet meeting?”
I said I went there to consult-allowing for the sake of argument that he was in any wise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and ended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on bomb-sh.e.l.ls, egg-sh.e.l.ls, clamsh.e.l.ls, and I don't know what all, connected with conchology, and n.o.body had been able to find me.
This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel's back. I said, ”Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six dollars a day? If that is the idea, let me recommend the Senate Committee on Conchology to hire somebody else. I am the slave of no faction! Take back your degrading commission. Give me liberty, or give me death!”
From that hour I was no longer connected with the government. Snubbed by the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman of a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my bleeding country in the hour of her peril.
But I had done the state some service, and I sent in my bill: The United States of America in account with the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, Dr
To consultation with Secretary of War $50 To consultation with Secretary of Navy $50 To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury $50 Cabinet consultation No charge To mileage to and from Jerusalem, via Egypt, Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz, 14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile $2,800 To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day $36
Total $2,986 -[Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go back when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I can understand.]
Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-six dollars for clerks.h.i.+p salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me to the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply marked in the margin ”Not allowed.” So, the dread alternative is embraced at last. Repudiation has begun! The nation is lost.
I am done with official life for the present. Let those clerks who are willing to be imposed on remain. I know numbers of them in the departments who are never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting, whose advice is never asked about war, or finance, or commerce, by the heads of the nation, any more than if they were not connected with the government, and who actually stay in their offices day after day and work! They know their importance to the nation, and they unconsciously show it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance at the restaurant-but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts of little sc.r.a.ps from the newspapers into a sc.r.a.pbook-sometimes as many as eight or ten sc.r.a.ps a day. He doesn't do it well, but he does it as well as he can. It is very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect. Yet he only gets eighteen hundred dollars a year. With a brain like his, that young man could ama.s.s thousands and thousands of dollars in some other pursuit, if he chose to do it. But no-his heart is with his country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a sc.r.a.pbook left. And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such knowledge as they possess they n.o.bly lay at the feet of their country, and toil on and suffer for twenty-five hundred dollars a year. What they write has to be written over again by other clerks sometimes; but when a man has done his best for his country, should his country complain? Then there are clerks that have no clerks.h.i.+ps, and are waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a vacancy-waiting patiently for a chance to help their country out-and while they are waiting, they only get barely two thousand dollars a year for it. It is sad-it is very, very sad. When a member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employment wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon his country, and gives him a clerks.h.i.+p in a department. And there that man has to slave his life out, fighting doc.u.ments for the benefit of a nation that never thinks of him, never sympathizes with him-and all for two thousand or three thousand dollars a year. When I shall have completed my list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statement of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see that there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half enough pay.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
The following I find in a Sandwich Island paper which some friend has sent me from that tranquil far-off retreat. The coincidence between my own experience and that here set down by the late Mr. Benton is so remarkable that I cannot forbear publis.h.i.+ng and commenting upon the paragraph. The Sandwich Island paper says: How touching is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his mother's influence:-'My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking, and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having complied with her pious and correct wishes. When I was seven years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total abstinence; and that I have adhered to it through all time I owe to my mother.'
I never saw anything so curious. It is almost an exact epitome of my own moral career-after simply subst.i.tuting a grandmother for a mother. How well I remember my grandmother's asking me not to use tobacco, good old soul! She said, ”You're at it again, are you, you whelp? Now don't ever let me catch you chewing tobacco before breakfast again, or I lay I'll blacksnake you within an inch of your life!” I have never touched it at that hour of the morning from that time to the present day.
She asked me not to gamble. She whispered and said, ”Put up those wicked cards this minute!-two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other fellow's got a flus.h.!.+”
I never have gambled from that day to this-never once-without a ”cold deck” in my pocket. I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games that are being played unless I deal myself.
When I was two years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total abstinence. That I have adhered to it and enjoyed the beneficent effects of it through all time, I owe to my grandmother. I have never drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water.
HONORED AS A CURIOSITY
If you get into conversation with a stranger in Honolulu, and experience that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are treading on by finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike out boldly and address him as ”Captain.” Watch him narrowly, and if you see by his countenance that you are on the wrong track, ask him where he preaches. It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of a whaler. I became personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and ninety-six missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile foreigners and their families; and the final fourth is made up of high officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about cats enough for three apiece all around.
A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs one day, and said: ”Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no doubt!”
”No, I don't. I'm not a preacher.”
”Really, I beg your pardon, captain. I trust you had a good season. How much oil-”
”Oil! Why, what do you take me for? I'm not a whaler.”
”Oh! I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency. Major-General in the household troops, no doubt? Minister of the Interior, likely? Secretary of War? First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? Commissioner of the Royal-”
”Stuff, man! I'm not connected in any way with the government.”
”Bless my life! Then who the mischief are you? what the mischief are you? and how the mischief did you get here? and where in thunder did you come from?”
”I'm only a private personage-an una.s.suming stranger-lately arrived from America.”
”No! Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's government! not even a Secretary of the Navy! Ah! Heaven! it is too blissful to be true, alas! I do but dream. And yet that n.o.ble, honest countenance-those oblique, ingenuous eyes-that ma.s.sive head, incapable of-of anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this, and-”
Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I shed a few tears on him, and kissed him for his mother. I then took what small change he had, and ”shoved.”
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