And I know that as a rule he's not going to get it; that he'll stay and try--for another thing and won't get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks--and they take up a collection and bury him. There--don't interrupt me, I know what I'm talking about. Happy and prosperous in the Far West wasn't I? You know that. Principal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody, kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington. Well, nothing would do but I must go Minister to St. James, the Governor and everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented--no getting out of it, had to do it, so here I came. A day too late, Washington. Think of that--what little things change the world's history--yes, sir, the place had been filled. Well, there I was, you see. I offered to compromise and go to Paris. The President was very sorry and all that, but that place, you see, didn't belong to the West, so there I was again. There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little--we all reach the day some time or other when we've got to do that, Washington, and it's not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large and all around-- I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople. Washington, consider this--for it's perfectly true--within a month I asked for China; within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was away down, down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in the gift of the government of the United States--Flint-Picker in the cellars of the War Department. And by George I didn't get it."
"Flint-Picker?"
"Yes. Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century. The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol. They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been overlooked and forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the same."
Washington said musingly after a pause:
"How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--"
"Three dollars a week. It's human life, Washington--just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer."
There was another meditative silence. Then Washington said, with earnest compassion in his voice--
"And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get absolutely nothing for it."
"Nothing?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his amazement to expand. "Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?"
It was Washington's turn to be amazed. He was stricken dumb; but the wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face were more eloquent than any words could have been. The Colonel's wounded spirit was healed and he resumed his seat pleased and content. He leaned forward and said impressively:
"What was due to a man who had become forever conspicuous by an experience without precedent in the history of the world?--a man made permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James all the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda--salary payable in guano--which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before they got down to my name in the list of applicants. Certainly something august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable experience was my due, and I got it.