Official duty was at all times weighing upon our mind like a leaden load. Oft in the stilly night we have been wakened by the oppressing thought that, perhaps at that moment, on some distant reservation, some pale-faced villain might be selling valley-tan to the gentle, untutored Indian brave, and it has tortured us and robbed us of slumber and joy. Now it is a relief to know that very soon we shall be free from this great responsibility. If an Indian gets drunk on the reservation, or a time-honored government mule is stolen, we shall not be expected to get up in the night and administer swift and terrible justice to the offender. Old-man-with-a-torpid-liver can go as drunk as he pleases on the reservation. It does not come under our jurisdiction any more. We can sleep now nights while some other man peels his coat, and acts as the United States nemesis for this diocese. Sometime during the ensuing week we will turn over the lead pencil and the blotting paper of the office to our successor. We leave the Indian temperance movement in his hands. The United States mule, kleptomaniac also, we leave with him. With a clear conscience and an unliquidated claim against the government for $9.55, the earnings of the past two years, we turn over the office, knowing that although we have sacrificed our health, we have never evaded our duty, no matter how dangerous or disagreeable. Yet we do not ask for any gold-headed cane as a mark of esteem on the part of the government. We have a watch that does very well for us, so that a testimonial consisting of a gold watch, costing $250, would be unnecessary. Any little trinket of that kind would, of course, show how ready the department of justice is to appreciate the work of an efficient officer, but we do not look for it, nor ask it. A thoroughly fumigated and disinfected conscience is all we want. That is enough for us. Do not call out the band. Just let us retire from the office quietly and unostentatiously. As regards the United States Commissionership, we retire to private life. In the bosom of our family we will forget the turbulent voyage of official life through which we have passed, and as we monkey with the children around our hearthstone, we will shut our eyes to the official suffering that is going on on all around us. POISONS AND THEIR ANECDOTES. |AN amateur scientist sends us a long article written with a purple pencil on both sides of twelve sheets of legal cap, and entitled "Poisons and Their Anecdotes." Will the soft-eyed mullet-head please call and get it, also a lick over the eye with a hot stove leg, and greatly oblige the weary throbbing brain that, moulds the scientific course of this paper? CORRESPONDENCE. Cheyenne, September 6, 1882.