There have been times when it would have given me much pleasure to visit
Washington, but I did not vote for Mr. Cleveland, to tell the truth, and I
know that if I were to go to the White House and visit even for a few
days, he would reproach me and throw it up to me. It is true I did not
pledge myself to vote for him, but still I would hate to go to a man's
house and eat his popcorn and use his smoking tobacco after I had voted
against him and talked about him as I have about Cleveland.
No, I can't be a hypocrite. I am right out, open and above board. If I
talk about a man behind his back, I won't go and gorge myself with his
victuals. I was assured by parties in whom I felt perfect confidence that
Mr. Cleveland was a “moral leper,” and relying on such assurances from men
in whom I felt that I could trust, and not being at that time where I
could ask Mr. Cleveland in person whether he was or was not a moral leper
as aforesaid, I assisted in spreading the report that he had been exposed
to moral leprosy, and as near as I could learn, he was liable to come down
with it at any time.
So that even if I go to Washington I shall put up at a hotel and pay my
bills just as any other American citizen would. I know how it is with Mr.
Cleveland at this time. When the legislature is in session there, people
come in from around Buffalo with their butter and eggs to sell, and stay
overnight with the president. But they should not ride a free horse to
death. I may not be well educated, but I am high strung till you can't
rest Groceries are just as high in Washington as they are in Philadelphia.
I hope that you will not glean from the foregoing that I have lost my
interest in national affairs. God forbid. Though not in the political
arena myself, my sympathies are with those who are. I am willing to assist
the families of those who are in the political arena trying to obtain a
precarious livelihood thereby. I was once an official under the Federal
government myself, as the curious student of national affairs may learn if
he will go to the Treasury Department at Washington, D.C., and ask to see
my voucher for $9.85, covering salary as United States commissioner for
the Second Judicial District of Wyoming for the year 1882. It was at that
time that a vile contemporary characterized me as “a corrupt and venal
Federal official who had fattened upon the hard-wrung taxes of my fellow
citizens and gorged myself for years at the public crib.” This was unjust
I was not corrupt I was not venal. I was only hungry!
Street Cars and Curiosities.
There is an institution in Boston which the Pilgrim Fathers did not
originate. That is the street car. There is a street car parade all day
on Washington street, and a red-light procession most of the night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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