I do not believe in carrying civil service reform to the extent that you will not allow an officer to resign. I do not believe that that principle should be insisted upon to that degree that there would only be two ways left to get out of office--death or suicide. I believe, other things being equal, any party having any office within its gift will give that office to the man that really believes in the principles of that party, and who has worked to give those principles ultimate victory. That is human nature. The man that plows, the man that sows, and the man that cultivates, ought to be the man that reaps. But we have in this country a multitude of little places, a multitude of clerkships in Washington; and the question is whether on the incoming of a new administration, these men shall all be turned out. In the first place, they are on starvation salaries, just barely enough to keep soul and body together, and respectability on the outside; and if there is a young man in this audience, I beg of him: Never accept a clerkship from this Government. Do not live on a little salary; do not let your mind be narrowed; do not sell all the splendid possibilities of the future; do not learn to cringe and fawn and crawl. I would rather have forty acres of land, with a log cabin on it and the woman I love in the cabin--with a little grassy winding path leading down to the spring where the water gurgles from the lips of earth whispering day and night to the white pebbles a perpetual poem--with holly-hocks growing at the corner of the house, and morning-glories blooming over the low latched door--with lattice work over the window so that the sunlight would fall checkered on the dimpled babe in the cradle, and birds--like songs with wings hovering in the summer air--than be the clerk of any government on earth. Now, I say, let us lengthen the term of office--I do not care much how long--send a man to Congress at least for five years. And it would be a great blessing if there were not half as many of them sent.