Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/145

you that upon the avenues, and in the hotels, and at all public places you meet a motley throng with anxious eyes, nervous movements, a curious expression of countenance. Gradually you learn to understand what it means. After a few days you desire to pay your respects to the President. With something akin to awe you enter the White House to visit the Chief Magistrate of this grand Republic. Of course you expect to find him surrounded by his council of State, and, being new to the duties of his great office, diligently and earnestly studying those great problems which it will be his mission to solve. But how do you find him? In the midst of the same anxious faces, the same eager eyes, the same nervous countenances which have already attracted your attention before, and man after man pressing upon him, pouring hurried tales into his ear, or thrusting papers at him with the vehemence of extreme urgency. What do they ask for? They all want office, and want it quickly. You see the President bewildered, confused; and after a little while you come to the unwelcome conclusion that the great chief of the American Republic, in his present situation at least, is an object of pity. From him you go to visit the ministers of State, the heads of the Departments, and what do you find there? You expect, of course, to see them at least, if the President is otherwise occupied, engaged in an arduous study of their great duties, for to them also these duties are new. But you find the same spectacle there; a pressing multitude asking for office. You visit Senators and Representatives, and how do you find them? Engaged in the consideration of the great political questions whose solution the situation of things demands of them? No; you find them surrounded by the same crowd, dogged from place to place, marching along the avenues at a hurried step, followed by a long train of anxious pursuers, running to the President, running to the Depart-