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 endeavouring to adorn, I yielded to perse. cution, 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 50 50 No charge. 2,800 To mileage to and from Jerusalem,* viâ Egypt, Algiers, To Salary as Clerk of Senate Committee on Conchology, six 36 Total . $2,986 Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of 36 dollars for clerkship 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 * 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. embraced at last. Repudiation has begun! The nation is lost. True, the President promised that he would mention my claim in his Message, and recommend that it be paid out of the first moneys received on account of the Alabama claims; but will he recollect to do it? And may not I be forgotten when the Alabama claims are paid? Younger claimants than I am may be forgotten when the Alabama claims are paid. I am done with official life for the present. Let those I clerks who are willing to be imposed on remain. 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 scraps from the newspapers into a scrap-book-sometimes as many as eight or ten scraps 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 1,800 dollars a year. With a brain like his, that young man could amass 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 scrap-book left. And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such knowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of P their country, and toil on and suffer for 2,500 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 clerkships, 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 2,000 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 clerkship in a Department. And there that man has to slave his life out fighting documents for the benefit of a nation that never thinks of him, never sympathises with him— and all for 2,000 or 3,000 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. A DARING ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION OF IT. THE Fenian invasion failed because George Francis Train was absent. There was no lack of men, arms, or ammunition, but there was sad need of Mr. Train's organising power, his coolness and caution, his tranquillity, his strong good sense, his modesty and reserve, his secrecy, his taciturnity, and above all his frantic and bloodthirsty courage. Mr. Train and his retiring and diffident private secretary were obliged to be absent, though the former must certainly have been lying at the point of death, else nothing could have kept him from hurrying to the front, and offering his heart's best blood for the Down-trodden People he so loves, so worships, so delights to champion. He must have been in a disabled condition, else nothing could have kept him from invading Canada at the head of his “children.” And, indeed, this modern Samson, solitary and alone, with his formidable jaw, would have been a more troublesome enemy than five times the Fenians that did invade Canada, because they could be made to retire, but G. F. would never leave the field while there was an audience before him, either armed or helpless. The invading Fenians were wisely cautious, knowing that such of them as were caught would be likely to hang; but the Champion would have stood in no such danger. There is no law, military or civil, for hanging persons afflicted in his peculiar way. He was not present, alas !-save in spirit. He could not and would not waste so fine an opportunity, though, to send some ecstatic lunacy over the wires, and so he wound up a ferocious telegram with this : WITH VENGEANCE STEEPED IN WORMWOOD'S GALL! And keep your powder dry. SHERMAN HOUSE, GEO. FRANCIS TRAIN. CHICAGO, Noon, Thursday, May 26. P.S.-Just arrived and addressed Grand Fenian Meeting in Fenian Armoury, donating 50 dollars. This person could be made really useful by roosting him on some lighthouse or other prominence where storms prevail, because it takes so much wind to keep him going that he probably moves in the midst of a dead calm wherever he travels. |