Dickens might draw some laughable sketches, or caricatures, from the live specimens of office-seekers now on hand here. The new President has just advised them all to go home and leave their papers behind them; and such a scattering you never saw! One fellow came here from Illinois, and was introduced to a wag who, he was told, had "great influence at court," and who, although destitute of any such pretensions, kept up the delusion for the sake of the joke. The "Sucker" addressed the man of influence something in this wise:
"Now, stranger, look at them papers. Them names is the first in our whole town. There's Deacon Styles—there ain't no piouser man in all the county; and then there's Rogers, our shoemaker—he made them boots I got on, and a better pair never tramped over these diggins. You wouldn't think them soles had walked over more than three hundred miles of Hoosier mud, but they hev though, and are sound yet. Every body in our town knows John Rogers. Just you go to Illinois, and ax about me. You'll find how I stand. Then you ask Jim Turner, our constable—he knows me; ask him what I did for the party. He'll tell you I was a screamer at the polls—nothing else. Now, I've come all the way from Illinois, and a-foot too, most of the way, to see if I can have justice. They even told me to take a town-office to—hum! but I must have something that pays aforehand—such as them 'char-gees,' as they call 'em. I hain't got only seven dollars left, and I can't wait. Jist git me one o' them 'char-gees,' will ye? Them'll do. Tell the old man how it is; he'll do it. Fact is, he must! I've airnt the office, and no mistake!"
Doubtless he had "airnt" it; few persons who go to Washington and wait for an office, but earn their office, whether they obtain it or not.
It is Horace Walpole, in his egotistical but very amusing correspondence, who narrates the following amusing anecdote:
"I must add a curious story, which I believe will surprise your Italian surgeons as much as it has amazed the faculty here. A sailor who had broken his leg was advised to communicate his case to the Royal Society. The account he gave was, that having fallen from the top of the mast and fractured his leg, he had dressed it with nothing but tar and oakum, and yet in three days was able to walk as well as before the accident. The story at first appeared quite incredible, as no such efficacious qualities were known in tar, and still less in oakum; nor was a poor sailor to be credited on his own bare assertion of so wonderful a cure. The society very reasonably demanded a fuller relation, and, I suppose, the corroboration of evidence. Many doubted whether the leg had been really broken. That part of the story had been amply verified. Still it was difficult to believe that the man had made use of no other applications than tar and oakum; and how they should cure a broken leg in three days, even if they could cure it at all, was a matter of the utmost wonder. Several letters passed between the society and the patient, who persevered in the most solemn asseverations of having used no other remedies, and it does appear beyond a doubt that the man speaks truth. It is a little uncharitable, but I fear there are surgeons who might not like this abbreviation of attendance and expense; but, on the other hand, you will be charmed with the plain, honest simplicity of the sailor. In a postscript to his last letter, he added these words:
"I forgot to tell your honors that the leg was a wooden one!"
There was great delicacy in the manner in which a foreigner, having a friend hung in this country, broke the intelligence to his relations on the other side of the water. He wrote as follows: