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406 curious bystanders asking what was wrong left to prove I had not been the victim of some strange delusion.

Saint Denis Cemetery lay drowsing in the blue, faint twilight. It has no graves as we know them, for when the city was laid out it was below sea-level and bodies were stored away in crypts set row on row like lines of pigeon-holes in walls as thick as those of mediaeval castles. Grass-grown aisles run between the rows of vaults, and the effect is a true city of the dead with narrow streets shut in by close-set houses. The rattle of a trolley car in Rampart Street came to me faintly as I walked between the rows of tombs; from the river came the mellow- throated bellow of a steamer's whistle, but both sounds were muted as though heard from a great distance. The tomb-lined bastions of Saint Denis hold the present out as firmly as they hold the memories of the past within.

"Down one aisle and up another I walked, the close-clipped turf deadening my footfalls so I might have been a ghost come back to haunt the ancient burial ground, but nowhere was there sign or trace of Julie. I made the circuit of the labyrinth and finally paused before one of the more pretentious tombs.

"'Looks as if she'd stood me up,' I murmured. 'If she has, I have a good excuse to——'

"'But non, mon coeur, I have not disappointed you!' a soft voice whispered in my ear. 'See, I am here.'

"I think I must have jumped at sound of her greeting, for she clapped her hands delightedly before she put them on my shoulders and turned her face up for a kiss. 'Silly one,' she chided, 'did you think your Julie was unfaithful?'

"I put her hands away as gently as I could, for her utter self-surrender was embarrassing. 'Where were you?' I asked, striving to make neutral conversation. 'I've been prowling round this graveyard for the last half-hour, and came through this aisle not a minute ago, but I didn't see you——'

"'Ah, but I saw you, chéri; I have watched you as you made your solemn rounds like a watchman of the night. Ohé. but it was hard to wait until the sun went down to greet you, mon petit!'

"She laughed again, and her mirth was mellowly musical as the gurgle of cool water poured from a silver vase.

"'How could you have seen me?' I demanded. 'Where were you all this time?'

"But here, of course,' she answered naively, resting one hand against the graystone slab that sealed the tomb.

"I shook my head bewilderedly. The tomb, like all the others in the deeply recessed wall, was of rough cement incrusted with small seashells, and its sides were straight and blank without a spear of ivy clinging to them. A sparrow could not have found cover there, yet...

"Julie raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms out right and left while she looked at me through half-closed, smiling eyes. 'Je suis engourdie—I am stiff with sleep,' she told me. stifling a yawn. 'But now that you are come, mon cher, I am wakeful as the pussy-cat that rouses at the scampering of the mouse. Come, let us walk in this garden of mine.' She linked her arm through mine and started down the grassy, grave-lined path.

"Tiny shivers—not of cold—were flickering through my cheeks and down my neck beneath my ears. I had to have an explanation ... the snake, her declaration that she watched me as I searched the cemetery—and from a tomb where a beetle could not have found a hiding-place—her announcement she was still stiff from sleeping, now her reference


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 OWARD the end of the third day from Kalgan we were following a blind trail among low, grass-covered hills, all about us beautiful pastureland dotted over with herds of horses and cattle. A sharp turn in the road revealed a group of yurts like many that we had passed, but two khaki tents a little at one side showed the European, and in a few minutes I found myself among the new friends that so speedily become old friends in the corners of the world.

Here I was to make the real start for my journey across the desert, and by good luck it turned out that one member of the little settlement, a man wise in ways Mongolian, was leaving the next morning for a trip into the heart of Mongolia, and if I went on at once we could journey together for the two or three days that our ways coincided. There was nothing to detain me, fortunately, and by noon the next day I was again on the road.

I looked with some complacency at my compact but wholly adequate little caravan. My luggage, including a capacious Chinese cotton tent, was

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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text: Index:Franklin D. Roosevelt to Harry Hopkins - NARA - 194909


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Rh to a half-forgotten graveyard as her garden.

"'See here, I want to know——' I started, but she laid her hand across my lips.

"'Do not ask to know too soon, mart coeur,' she bade. 'Look at me, am I not veritably elegante?' She stood back a step, gathered up her skirts and swept me a deep curtsy.

"There was no denying she was beautiful. Her tightly curling hair had been combed high and tied back with a fillet of bright violet tissue which bound her brows like a diadem and at the front of which an aigret plume was set. In her ears were hung two beautifully matched cameos, outlined in gold and seed-pearls, and almost large as silver dollars; a necklace of antique dull-gold hung round her throat, and its pendant was a duplicate of her ear-cameos, while a bracelet of matt-gold set with a fourth matched anaglyph was clasped about her left arm just above the elbow. Her gown was sheer white muslin, low cut at front and back, with little puff-sleeves at the shoulders, fitted tightly at the bodice and flaring sharply from a high-set waist. Over it she wore a narrow scarf of violet silk, hung behind her neck and dropping down on either side in front like a clergyman's stole. Her sandals were gilt leather, heelless as a ballet dancer's shoes and laced with violet ribbons. Her lovely, pearl-white hands were bare of rings, but on the second toe of her right foot there showed a little cameo which matched the others which she wore.

"I could feel my heart begin to pound and my breath come quicker as I looked at her, but:

"'You look as if you're going to a masquerade,' I said.

"A look of hurt surprize showed in her eyes. 'A masquerade?' she echoed. 'But no, it is my best, my very finest, that I wear for you tonight, mon adore. Do not you like it; do you not love me, Edouard?'

"'No,' I answered shortly, 'I do not. We might as well understand each other, Julie. I'm not in love with you and I never was. It's been a pretty flirtation, nothing more. I'm going home tomorrow, and——'

"'But you will come again? Surely you will come again?' she pleaded. 'You cannot mean it when you say you do not love me, Edouard. Tell me that you spoke so but to tease me——'

"A warning hiss sounded in the grass beside my foot, but I was too angry to be frightened. 'Go ahead, set your devilish snake on me,' I taunted. 'Let it bite me. I'd as soon be dead as——'

"The snake was quick, but Julie quicker. In the split-second required for the thing to drive at me she leaped across the grass-grown aisle and pushed me back. So violent was the shove she gave me that I fell against the tomb, struck my head against a small projecting stone and stumbled to my knees. As I fought for footing on the slippery grass I saw the deadly, wedge-shaped head strike full against the girl's bare ankle and heard her gasp with pain. The snake recoiled and swung its head toward me, but Julie dropped down to her knees and spread her arms protectingly about me.

"'Non, non, grand'tante!' she screamed; 'not this one! Let me——' Her voice broke on a little gasp and with a retching hiccup she sank limply to the grass.

"I tried to rise, but my foot slipped on the grass and I fell bade heavily against the tomb, crashing my brow against its shell-set cement wall. I saw Julie lying in a little huddled heap of white against the blackness of the sward, and, shadowy but clearly visible, an aged, wrinkled Negress with turbaned head and cambric.


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 stowed away in a small Russian baggage cart, a strong, rough, two-wheeled affair drawn by two ponies, and driven by the Mongol who was to guide me to Urga. My boy bestrode rather gingerly a strong, wiry little Mongol pony, of the "buckskin" sort, gay with Western saddle and red cloth. Wang bravely said he would do his best to ride the pony when I did not care to use him, but he added pathetically that he had never before mounted anything save a donkey. As for me, I sat proudly in an American buggy, a "truly" one, brought from the United States to Tientsin and then overland to Kalgan. It was destined for a Mongol prince in Urga, and I was given the honour of taking it across the desert. There are various ways of crossing Mongolia, in the saddle, by pony, or camel cart; one and all are tiring; the desert takes its toll of the body and the spirit. But here was a new way, and if comfort in Gobi is obtainable it is in an American buggy; and with a pony for change, no wonder I faced the desert without dismay.

The combined caravans looked very imposing as we moved off. All told, we were one Swede, one American, one Chinese, seven Mongols, one Irishman (Jack), and twelve horses, Three of the Mongols were lamas, the rest were laymen, or "black men," so called from their unshorn black hair worn in a queue. They were all dressed much alike,

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text: Index:Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill - NARA - 194910


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 one of the lamas had clothes of the proper red colour, and all rode their sturdy ponies well, mounted on high-peaked saddles.

After the first day we fell into our regular course, an early start at six o'clock or so, long halt at noon, when tents were set up, and all rested while the horses grazed, and then on again until the sun went down below the horizon. During the hotter hours I took my ease in the buggy, but in the early morning, and at the end of the day I rode. The Mongols were gay young fellows, taking a kindly interest in my doings. One, the wag of the party, was bent on learning to count in English, and each time he came by me he chanted his lesson over, adding number after number until he reached twenty. The last few miles before getting into camp was the time for a good race. Then, riding up with thumbs held high in greeting, they would cry to me "San?" ("All right?") and answering back "San!" I touch my horse and we are off. Oh, the joy of those gallops with the horsemen of the desert! For the moment you are mad. Your nomad ancestors—we all have them—awake in you, and it is touch and go but you turn your back forever on duties and dining, on all the bonds and frills that we have entangled ourselves in—and then you remember, and go sadly to bed.

The weather was delightful; whatever there might be in store for me, the present was perfect. A

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 dawn, no severe heat but for a short time in the middle of the day, which cooled off rapidly in the late afternoon, the short twilight ending in cold, starlit nights. The wonder of those Mongolian nights! My tent was always pitched a little apart from the confusion of the camp, and lying wrapped in rugs in my narrow camp-bed before the doors open to the night wind, I fell asleep in the silence of the limitless space of the desert, and woke only as the stars were fading in the sky.

At first we were still in the grassland; the rolling country was covered with a thick mat of grass dotted with bright flowers, and yurts and men and herds abounded. Happenings along the road were few. The dogs always rushed out from the yurts to greet us. They looked big and savage, and at first, mindful of warnings, I kept close guard over Jack; but he heeded them as little as he had the Chinese curs, and hardly deigned a glance as he trotted gaily along by the horses who had captured his Irish heart. Once we stopped to buy a pony, and secured a fine "calico" one, unusually large and strong. Again a chance offered to get a sheep, not always possible even though thousands are grazing on the prairie, for a Mongol will sell only when he has some immediate use for money. The trade once made, it took only a short time to do the rest,—to kill, to cut up, to boil in a big pot brought for the purpose, to eat.

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408 apron bending over her, nursing her head against her bosom and rocking back and forth grotesquely while she crooned a wordless threnody. Where had she come from? I wondered idly. Where had the snake gone? Why did the moonlight seem to fade and flicker like a dying lamp? Once more I tried to rise, but slipped back to the grass before the tomb as everything went black before me.

"The lavender light of early morning was streaming over the tomb-walls of the cemetery when I waked. I lay quiet for a little while, wondering sleepily how I came there. Then, just as the first rays of the sun shot through the thinning shadows. I remembered. Julie! The snake had bitten her when she flung herself before me. She was gone; the old Negress—where had she come from?—was gone, too, and I was utterly alone in the old graveyard.

"Stiff from lying on the ground, I got myself up awkwardly, grasping at the flower-shelf projecting from the tomb. As my eyes came level with the slab that sealed the crypt I felt the breath catch in my throat. The crypt, like all its fellows, looked for all the world like an old oven let into a brick wall overlaid with peeling plaster. The sealing-stone was probably once white, but years had stained it to a dirty gray, and time had all but rubbed its legend out. Still, I could see the faint inscription carved in quaint, old-fashioned letters, and disbelief gave way to incredulity, which was replaced by panic terror as I read:

"Julie! Little Julie whom I'd held in my arms, whose mouth had lain on mine in eager kisses, was a corpse! Dead and in her grave more than a century!"

silence lengthened. Ned stared miserably before him, his outward eyes unseeing, but his mind's eye turned upon that scene in old Saint Denis Cemetery. De Grandin tugged and tugged again at the ends of his mustache till I thought he'd drag the hairs out by the roots. I could think of nothing which might ease the tension till:

"Of course, the name cut on the tombstone was a piece of pure coincidence,' I hazarded. "Most likely the young woman deliberately assumed it to mislead you——"

"And the snake which threatened our young friend, he was an assumption, also, one infers?" de Grandin interrupted.

"N-o, but it could have been a trick. Ned saw an aged Negress in the cemetery, and those old Southern darkies have strange powers——"

"I damn think that you hit the thumb upon the nail that time, my friend," the little Frenchman nodded, "though you do not realize how accurate your diagnosis is." To Ned:

"Have you seen this snake again since coming North?"

"Yes," Ned replied. "I have. I was too stunned to speak when I read the epitaph, and I wandered back to the hotel in a sort of daze and packed my bags in silence. Possibly that's why there was no further visitation there. I don't know. I do know nothing further happened, though, and when several months had passed with nothing but my memories to remind me of the incident, I began to think I'd suffered from some sort of walking nightmare. Nella and I went ahead with preparations for our wedding, but three weeks ago the postman brought me this——"

He reached into an inner pocket and drew out an envelope. It was of soft gray


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 Two hundred miles from Kalgan we passed the telegraph station of Pongkiong manned by two Chinese. It is nothing but a little wooden building with a bit of a garden. The Chinese has his garden as surely as the Englishman, only he spends his energy in growing things to eat. At long intervals, two hundred miles, these stations are found all the way to Urga and always in the charge of Chinese, serviceable, alien, homesick. It must be a dreary life set down in the desert without neighbours or visitors save the roving Mongol whom the Chinese look down on with lofty contempt. Indeed, they have no use for him save as a bird to be plucked, and plucked the poor nomad is, even to his last feather. It is not the Chinese Government but the Chinese people that oppress the Mongol, making him ready to seek relief anywhere. Playing upon his two great weaknesses, lack of thrift and love of drink, the wandering trader plies the Mongol with whiskey, and then, taking advantage of his befuddled wits, gets him to take a lot of useless things at cut-throat prices—but no bother about paying, that can be settled any time. Only when pay-day comes the debts, grown like a rolling snowball, must be met, and so horses and cattle, the few pitiful heirlooms, are swallowed up, and the Mongol finds himself afoot and out of doors, another enemy of Chinese rule.

Whenever we halted near yurts, the women turned

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text: Index:Henry Stimson to Franklin D. Roosevelt - NARA - 194911


text: Index:Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill - NARA - 194912


text: Index:Draft of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill - NARA - 194913


text: Index:Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill - NARA - 194914


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Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/26

Rh paper, edged with silver-gilt, and the address was in tiny, almost unreadable script:

"U'm?" de Grandin commented as he inspected it. "It is addressed à la française. And the letter, may one read it?"

"Of course," Ned answered. "I'd like you to."

Across de Grandin's shoulder I made out the hastily-scrawled missive:

"You recognize the writing?" de Grandin asked. "It is——"

"Oh, yes," Ned answered bitterly. "I recognize it; it's the same the other note was written in."

"And then?"

The boy smiled bleakly. "I crushed the thing into a ball and threw it on the floor and stamped on it. Swore I'd die before I'd keep another rendezvous with her, and——" He broke of?, and put trembling hands up to his face.

"The so mysterious serpent came again, one may assume?" de Grandin prompted.

"But it's only a phantom snake," I interjected. "At worst it's nothing more than a terrifying vision——"

"Think so?" Ned broke in. "D'ye remember Rowdy, my airedale terrier?"

I nodded,

"He was in the room when I opened this letter, and when the cottonmouth appeared beside me on the floor he made a dash for it. Whether it would have struck me I don't know, but it struck at him as he leaped and caught him squarely in the throat. He thrashed and fought, and the thing held on with locked jaws till I grabbed a fire-shovel and made for it; then, before I could strike, it vanished.

"But its venom didn't. Poor old Rowdy was dead before I could get him out of the house, but I took his corpse to Doctor Kirchoff, the veterinary, and told him Rowdy died suddenly and I wanted him to make an autopsy. He went back to his operating-room and stayed there half an hour. When he came back to the office he was wiping his glasses and wore the most astonished look I've ever seen on a human face. 'You say your dog died suddenly—in the house?' he asked.

"'Yes,' I told him; 'just rolled over and died.'

"'Well, bless my soul, that's the most amazing thing I ever heard!' he answered. 'I can't account for it. That dog died from snake-bite; copperhead, I'd say, and the marks of the fangs show plainly on his throat.'"

"But I thought you said it was a water moccasin," I objected. "Now Doctor Kirchoff says it was a copperhead "

"Ah bah!" de Grandin laughed a thought unpleasantly. "Did no one ever tell you that the copperhead and moccasin are of close kind, my friend? Have not you heard some ophiologists maintain the moccasin is but a dark variety of copperhead?" He did not pause for my reply, but turned again to Ned:

"One understands your chivalry, Monsieur. For yourself you have no fear, since after all at times life can be bought too dearly, but the death of your small dog has put a different aspect on the matter. If this never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized serpent which comes and goes like the boîte à surprise—the how do you call him? Jack from the box?—is, enough a ghost thing to appear at any


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 out to see me, invading my tent, handling my things. They seemed to hold silk in high esteem. My silk blouses were much admired, and when they investigated far enough to discover that I wore silk "knickers," their wonder knew no bounds. In turn they were always keen to show their treasures, especially of course their headdresses, which were sometimes very beautiful, costing fifty, one hundred, or two hundred taels.

A wife comes high in Mongolia, and divorce must be paid for. A man's parents buy him a wife, paying for her a good sum of money which is spent in purchasing her headgear. If a husband is dissatisfied with his bargain he may send his wife home, but she takes her dowry with her. I am told the woman's lot is very hard, and that I can readily believe: it generally is among poor and backward peoples; but she did not appear to me the downtrodden slave she is often described. On the contrary, she appeared as much a man as her husband, smoking, riding astride, managing the camel trains with a dexterity equal to his. Her household cares cannot be very burdensome, no garden to tend, no housecleaning, simple cooking and sewing; but by contrast with the man she is hard-working. Vanity is nowise extinct in the feminine Mongol, and, let all commercial travellers take note, I was frequently asked for soap, and nothing seemed to give so much pleasure as when I doled

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text: Index:Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill - NARA - 194919


text: Index:James H. Rowe, Jr. to Franklin D. Roosevelt - NARA - 194920


text: Index:James H. Rowe, Jr. to Missy LeHand - NARA - 194921


text:
Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/27

410 time and place it wills, but sufficiently physical to exude venom which will kill a strong and healthy terrier, you have the fear for Mademoiselle Nella, n'est-ce-pas?"

"Precisely, you——"

"And you are well advised to have the caution, my young friend. We face a serious condition."

"What do you advise?"

The Frenchman teased his needlepoint mustache-tip with a thoughtful thumb and forefinger. "For the present, nothing," he replied at length. "Let me look this situation over; let me view it from all angles. Whatever I might tell you now would probably be wrong. Suppose we meet again one week from now. By that time I should have my data well in hand."

"And in the meantime——"

"Continue to be coy with Mademoiselle Nella. Perhaps it would be well if you recalled important business which requires that you leave town till you hear from me again. There is no need to put her life in peril at this time."

weren't for Kirchoff's testimony I'd say Ned Minton had gone raving crazy," I declared as the door closed on our visitors. "The whole thing's wilder than an opium smoker's dream—that meeting with the girl in New Orleans, the snake that comes and disappears, the assignation in the cemetery—it's all too preposterous. But I know Kirchoff. He's as unimaginative as a side of soleleather, and as efficient as he is unimaginative. If he says Minton's dog died of snake- bite that's what it died of, but the whole affair's so utterly fantastic——"

"Agreed," de Grandin nodded; "but what is fantasy but the appearance of mental images as such, severed from ordinary relations? The 'ordinary relations' of images are those to which we are accustomed, which conform to our experience. The wider that experience, the more ordinary will we find extraordinary relations. By example, take yourself: You sit in a dark auditorium and see a railway train come rushing at you, Now, it is not at all in ordinary experience for a locomotive to come dashing in a theater filled with people, it is quite otherwise; but you keep your seat, you do not flinch, you are not frightened. It is nothing but a motion picture, which you understand. But if you were a savage from New Guinea you would rise and fly in panic from this steaming, shrieking iron monster which bears down on you. Tiens, it is a matter of experience, you see. To you it is an everyday event, to the savage it would be a new and terrifying thing.

"Or, perhaps, you are at the hospital. You place a patient between you and the Crookes' tube of an X-ray, you turn on the current, you observe him through the fluoroscope and pouf! his flesh all melts away and his bones spring out in sharp relief. Three hundred years ago you would have howled like a stoned dog at the sight, and prayed to be delivered from the witchcraft which produced it. Today you curse and swear like twenty drunken pirates if the Rontgenologist is but thirty seconds late in setting up the apparatus. These things are 'scientific,' you understand their underlying formula?, therefore they seem natural. But mention what you please to call the occult, and you scoff, and that is but admitting that you are opposed to something which you do not understand. The credible and believable h that to which we are accustomed, the fantastic and incredible is what we cannot explain in terms of previous experience. Voilà, c'est très simple, n'est-ce-pas?"


text: Index:Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill - NARA - 194922


text: Index:Marguerie LeHand to Code Room - NARA - 194926


text: Index:Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill - NARA - 194927


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 out a small piece. Perhaps in time even the Mongol will look clean. Asiatics as a rule know little about soap; they clean their clothes by pounding, and themselves by rubbing; but sometimes they put an exaggerated value upon it. A Kashmir woman, seeing herself in a mirror side by side with the fair face of an English friend of mine, sighed, "If I had such good soap as yours I too would be white."

But there is a good deal to be said against washing, at least one's face, when crossing Gobi. The dry, scorching winds burn and blister the skin, and washing makes things worse, and besides you are sometimes short of water; so for a fortnight my face was washed by the rains of heaven (if at all), and my hair certainly looked as though it were combed by the wind, for between the rough riding and the stiff breezes that sweep over the plateau, it was impossible to keep tidy. But, thanks to Wang, I could always maintain a certain air of respectability in putting on each morning freshly polished shoes.

Of wild life I saw little; occasionally we passed a few antelope, and twice we spied wolves not far off. These Mongolian wolves are big and savage, often attacking the herds, and one alone will pull down a good horse or steer. The people wage more or less unsuccessful war upon them and at times they organize a sort of battue. Men, armed with lassoes, are stationed at strategic points, while others, routing the

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The Civil Service and the Patronage/Chapter 06

had sown the wind, and Van Buren was to reap the whirlwind; nor can there be much doubt that, so far as the civil service is concerned, he deserved the harvest that he garnered. Martin Van Buren is a man with a recently rehabilitated reputation: we find in him now a force and an ability unacknowledged by his contemporaries, and the temptation is to go to the extreme and to sink the politician in the statesman. It is true that in 1829 he did not directly meddle in minor politics to any considerable extent, and that as president he made but eighty removals. His indirect influence under Jackson, however, we have seen to be enormous; and the chief reason for his moderation while at the head of the government was that the personnel of the service was favorable to him, as is shown by the large number of office-holders who supported his candidacy at the Baltimore convention. It is quite true that the spoils system was not the work of Van Buren or of Jackson, or of any one man; it was the result of a gradual development: but evolution cannot relieve an individual of his personal responsibility any more than predestination excuses a man's sin. The fact remains that Van Buren stood before the country as the head of the Albany Regency and the representative supporter of the spoils system; that he associated with politicians who represented what was worse in the politics of the

time; and that he appointed Jesse Hoyt to succeed Samuel Swartwout as collector at New York.

It is because of the opportunity which it affords for a study of the results of the spoils system on governmental efficiency that Van Buren's administration is chiefly interesting to the student of the civil service. Principles remained as Jackson had enunciated them; qualifications were the same as in 1829; and the machinery was in a state of transition between the confusion which we observed in the last chapter and the definite order of the fifties. While the materials for such a study are unusually abundant, it is peculiarly difficult to arrive at a fair judgment. Conditions, as we have seen, varied greatly in different parts of the country, and Jackson added another element of diversity.

A spoils system does not drive ability from the civil service; it rather attracts many brilliant men who think they can sail best in troubled waters; it appeals to the gambler's instinct. Such men have characteristics different from those of the seekers after the safe monotony of a life position, but their capacities are fully as great. The really deleterious change that the spoils system does make is to throw open the doors of office to a very inferior class of men, and to lower the minimum of capacity required. This fact, by increasing the distance between the extremes, makes the task of generalization more difficult. A special condition must also be given due weight at this time, — the panic of 1837.

Investigation into the efficiency of the civil service under Van Buren is not much aided by popular criticism of the details of administration, for comments on them are almost as rare, during the twelve years from 1829 to 1841, as during the previous period. The department of the national government that most nearly affects the larger part of our population is the post-office. At the beginning of Jackson's administration, when the great change of personnel had disturbed the delicate machinery of the mails, there was some public fault-finding, but after the

first few months it was heard no more; the tolerance of the American public cannot be exaggerated. There was some congressional investigation, but it was hushed by the death of Barry. Our discussion must therefore be based chiefly on official documents, and, in the main, be confined to two departments, — the land office and the customs service.

The land office was peculiarly liable to suffer from all the adverse conditions of the times. The local offices were widely scattered, and often in places difficult of access; the officers were therefore comparatively independent. The majority of them, moreover, were situated along the frontier, or in the newer districts, where it was often impossible to find, except at long intervals, proper means of forwarding to the central government the money received for lands. Local banking institutions were unsound and local currency worthless a hundred miles away. Moreover, the frontier lacks the business knowledge, and consequently the high standard of business honesty, of a long-established community. As Mr. Garesche, a clever agent of the treasury, wrote to Secretary Woodbury, the code of morality in general was lower than that acknowledged in the East. When, in addition to these circumstances, the sudden expansion of land purchases, springing from $5,000,000 in 1834 to nearly $25,000,000 in 1837, is remembered, with the temptations to speculation thus brought to the land officers, it cannot be astonishing that irregularities are to be found.

During these years the treasury department had special agents travelling about the country examining the condition of the offices, the local standing of the officers, and sometimes their political affiliations. Whether the investigations on the latter point were or were not in pursuance of verbal instructions cannot be ascertained, but the fact that the subject is very often not mentioned would seem to indicate that they were not. A characteristic summing up of such an investigation is as follows: “Messrs. Ball and Leiper appear intelligent men, and no doubt will conduct the business with fidelity and impartiality. They

are zealous supporters of the administration, and very popular.” Mr. Garesche, the ablest of these agents, reported that very few officers understood bookkeeping: there is scarcely an office reported in which the examiner did not find errors that, on examination, proved careless rather than fraudulent; the different sets of books hardly ever coincided. In 1836 Garesche was sent to New Orleans to investigate fraudulent land purchases, which rumor magnified to such an extent that the governor mentioned the subject in a message to the legislature; but close examination by a legislative committee revealed scarcely anything definite, except some looseness in dealing with purchasers.

Such incompetent bookkeepers could not successfully cover up extensive frauds; but the government was not as particular as it should have been in enforcing the land laws, and a clever man could buy as much land as he wished regardless of restrictions. Many of the officers bought land extensively on their own account, sometimes covering it with the name of a near relative or partner. Some loaned out for their own advantage the government balances that they held; and many were in the habit of exchanging money, a practice which might or might not be dishonest, but which was certainly improper considering the monetary conditions of the time. One receiver of public money was reported as farming out his office. The locating of purchases upon the plats seems to have been poorly done, a circumstance from which resulted much confusion; but the only complaint commonly made to the special agents by the public was that the land surveying was not done rapidly enough, and this may have been the result of the voracious demand rather than of inactivity.

That the crisis of 1837 should under these conditions have

staggered the land office can cause no surprise. The statement of Clay, that sixty-four out of sixty-seven of its local officers were defaulters, may have been temporarily true; but owing to the wise leniency and careful nursing of Secretary Woodbury the loss was not so great as might have been anticipated. It is impossible to state, with any near approach to accuracy, what the loss finally amounted to; $750,000 would fairly approximate it.

If we may trust the apparently frank reports of the special agents, it is noticeable that nearly all these men had the confidence of their communities; and often, though they had an unfavorable balance against them, they retained the confidence of the treasury department. An interesting case is that of the receiver of public money at Columbus. He had speculated with government funds and had lost, and he appeared as a defaulter. Mr. Garesche, who examined the case, wrote to Woodbury: “The man seems really penitent; and I am inclined to think, in common with his friends, that he is honest, and has been led away from his duty by the example of his predecessor, and a certain looseness in the code of morality which here does not move in so limited a circle as it does with us at home. Another receiver would probably follow in the footsteps of the two. You will not, therefore, be surprised if I recommend his being retained, in preference to another appointment; for he has his hands full now, and will not be disposed to speculate any more. . . . He has, moreover, pledged his word that, if retained, he will strictly obey the law. . . . Lenity towards him . . . might stimulate him to exertions which severity might perhaps paralyze.” He further stated that the deficit amounted to $55,965.54, and that the defaulter owned land that, if sold at

$1.25 per acre, would amount to $61,549.98. We may disagree with Mr. Garesche as to the expediency of retaining the officer under the circumstances, but he was certainly right in his estimate of conditions. It was, in the mind of most frontiersmen and inhabitants of new places, a very long step between stealing another's money and speculating with it. The main fault lay in the general unfamiliarity with business methods; and we may question whether even Adams could have kept the service entirely above its environment, though he might well have done better than Jackson and Van Buren.

Somewhat different was the plight of the customs department. There the defalcations were less widespread; but the individual cases were more striking, and the losses were due to simon-pure dishonesty. Educated by thirty years of corrupt politics, the New York politicians were ready to make the most of the chance that Jackson gave them. Swartwout proved a “king of defaulters”; his stealings were estimated, in 1838, at $1,250,000. So cleverly had his books been falsified that as late as 1836 he deceived a committee politically hostile to him. He passed the evening of his days abroad, accompanied in his flight by Price, the district attorney, who stole a paltry $60,000 on his own account, but aided Swartwout in his operations.

Jesse Hoyt, who succeeded to the New York collectorship, was more fortunate rather than essentially better than Swartwout. He drew the interest on large sums of public money, and left a temporary deficit of $160,563.31, which would have been much larger if he had not written off in his own favor, without any legal justification, $201,580 as a one per cent fee on the duties collected. The congressional reports make it clear that the

custom-house was regarded as the Democratic citadel of New York, and that the collector's chief function was to return a Democratic majority. Some idea of the loss of efficiency is given by the fact that, while the collection of customs under Adams cost one and one-half per cent, it cost under Swartwout two and one-half, and under Hoyt five and one-half; it is impossible to estimate the financial loss of the government, as much of this was the result of fraudulent assessment and connivance at the illegal entry of goods. These evils, unlike those of the land office, were due solely to the spoils system: Jackson alone was responsible for Swartwout; Van Buren alone was responsible for Jesse Hoyt, and neither Swartwout nor Hoyt would have been appointed by any previous administration.

The spoils system was violently attacked from the beginning. The leaders of the opposition were personally affected by it. Clay wrote, “Our poor friends, Cutts, Watkins, and Lee, are among the sufferers.” It was easy for those who were being despoiled to see distinctly the evils which the system brought in its train. Clay wrote, May 15, 1829, “Incumbents, feeling the instability of their situation, and knowing their liability to periodic removals, at short terms, without any regard to the manner in which they have executed their trust, will be disposed to make the most of their uncertain offices while they have them, and hence we may expect immediate cases of fraud, predation and corruption.” In a debate in 1831, Webster magniloquently elaborated these and other evils; and in the same year the National Republican convention in New York violently denounced the proscription.

The efforts of the Whig leaders to check Jackson's course were futile, as we have seen, but they served to make both sides think out their principles. The first attempt to define the programme of the opposition was made March 7, 1834, when Clay

introduced into the Senate a series of resolutions embodying some doubtful constitutional interpretations and referring several questions to committees. At the next session of Congress a committee was appointed to consider the whole subject of the reduction of the patronage, and to report to the Senate such measures as seemed advisable. Calhoun was chairman, and Judge White, who had served on the similar committee of 1826, was an active member. Benton, who had been the leading figure in the previous investigation, was now in favor with the administration, and so could take no prominent part in a proceeding which was an implied criticism of Jackson. The report was submitted February 9, 1835, and was at once ordered to be printed for public distribution, together with Benton's report of 1826. The bills which were its logical outcome were not presented with the report itself, but may be combined with it in treatment. The suggestions in brief were: (1) a constitutional amendment to secure the distribution of the surplus; (2) a provision that banks be charged interest on the national money left with them on deposit — measures intended to cut down the patronage. In addition, the following regulations in regard to that part of the civil service which must be retained were proposed: (3) that the Four Years' Bill be repealed; (4) that the accounts of all disbursing officers be periodically laid before the Senate; (5) “that, in all nominations made by the President to the Senate, to fill vacancies occasioned by removal from office, the facts of the removal shall be stated to the Senate at the same time that the nomination is made, with a statement of the reasons for such removal.”

The debate brought forth by this report was brilliant. Webster devoted the greater part of his speech to the exposition of his favorite doctrine that the Senate possessed the constitutional right to advise and consent to removals. He was willing to support the bill proposed, because he thought that the

and particularly the regulation that the president should present to the Senate the causes of removals, “mild and gentle” as they were, would have some effect in correcting the evils which beset the progress of the government. Clay took the same general ground, but proposed an amendment resembling the Tenure-of-Office Bill of 1867. Calhoun delivered by far the ablest speech, but he, too, occupied himself chiefly with the constitutional question, taking it up from the point of view of expediency.

These speeches, and others, were eloquent and sincere; they exhibited high ideals of the civil service pleasing to contemplate, and are full of passages suitable for quotation by the civil service reformer. When we turn, however, to the measures proposed, we find a paucity of invention painful to contemplate. If these men, after ten years of discussion of the civil service, could not propose measures better calculated to improve it, their ability has been overrated. The fact is, that what had so long occupied their attention was not primarily the civil service, but the patronage: their first object was not to secure good work, but to reduce the power of the president; it was still political and administrative reform which they felt necessary. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of thirty-one to sixteen, slept for a year, and then was killed by the House in committee of the whole. The Whigs, therefore, were constrained to wait for the adoption of their plans until they should obtain control of all branches of the government.

The interest in these debates evinced in the country at large was great enough to urge the Whig leaders to redoubled efforts; and when the crises of 1837 and 1839 came, they pointed to them as a fulfilment of their predictions. With unremitting zeal they belabored the administration for the fraud and incompetency which infested the service. As far as issues are discernible in the noisy campaign of 1840, reform was the

most prominent. Particularly was this true in the South, where the state-rights men, a little out of sympathy with many of the schemes of their Northern allies, could join unequivocally in the plan to curtail the powers of the chief executive. The Democrats vainly brought countercharges, claiming that all the defaulters had been Federalists and were now at heart Whigs. This was quite too absurd to fool the people, and the result of the election was to place the Whigs in full control of the government and give them an opportunity to put into effect the reform that they had been so long preaching.

How was the reform to begin? Should the Whigs follow the precedent set by Jackson? These questions forced themselves peremptorily forward in the very hour of victory. Though Harrison, in a letter to the people of Tennessee, indicated that he would not make removals for opinion's sake, the question could not be considered as settled. The cabinet eagerly discussed it, and the opposition papers announced that a prescriptive policy was being forced upon the president by the Whig leaders, especially by Clay. Whatever might be the position of the leaders, the insistent call of the office-seeking mob, numbering from thirty to forty thousand, that travelled to Washington could not be mistaken. We have the testimony of Adams that they were orderly and well-behaved; but their influence on the policy of the administration was precisely the same as that of their predecessors in 1829, and they found a voice in the blatant Madisonian. Whatever its repugnance, the cabinet during March, 1841, decided upon an extensive change of personnel throughout the civil service.

Much time might be spent in discussing the chain of events that led up to this decision; but it would be time wasted, for

the result was practically dictated by circumstances. It was a fundamental weakness of the civil service as established in the United States at that time, that when one party had begun to turn out its opponents, its successors were almost forced to do the same. The long continuance of the Republican party in power after 1801 had put off the evil time, but had not changed the conditions. Ninety-nine out of every hundred Whigs thought that the Democrats deserved punishment for the proscription of 1829, and that the most appropriate penalty would be to turn them out of the offices they had usurped. For many years, moreover, the Whigs had been criticising the civil service as corrupt, and naturally their first step in reform was to put new blood into it: similia similibus curantur. When it is remembered, in addition, that the majority of the Whigs were human Americans, who wanted a good office if they could get it, it must be conceded that a proscription was inevitable.

One result of the proscription was an amusing volte face, not uncommon in American journalism. The Democratic papers were filled with material that might have been cribbed from their opponents of 1829. They resorted to the old device, that the Federalists used in Jefferson's time, of publishing each day extracts from speeches which had been delivered by the Whig leaders in condemnation of Jackson, and beneath these headings citing specimens of their practice now that they were in power. The more conservative Whig papers barely mentioned offices, and printed appointments only, omitting removals, as Niles claimed that Jackson editors did twelve years earlier. The Madisonian, however, boldly took up the gospel of the Telegraph, and resorted to all the old arguments of the spoilsmen, — rotation, and the duty of the executive to complete the proscription that the people, by removing the elective officers, had begun. Papers of a middle type did not defend removals in general, but rejoiced in the ejectment of “brawling and unscrupulous public lecturers.”

The most effective answer to criticism that the Whigs could

have given would have been the adoption of the measures which they themselves had proposed in 1835. This obvious course they did not follow, either because they had become convinced that such schemes were impracticable, or because they merely considered that circumstances alter cases. When Mr. Watterson, in June, 1841, introduced a resolution preceded by a long preamble setting forth the sentiments of Webster, Clay, and Crittenden on the question of the patronage, and calling for “the names of all officers dismissed. . . with the reasons for the dismissals in each particular case,” the House refused, by a vote of 130 to 57, to suspend the rules to allow the resolution to be considered. Two reports were presented to Congress: one to the House by Garrett Davis in 1842, recommending that the law of 1820 be repealed, and that removals be made for stated cause only; and the other to the Senate by J. T. Morehead in 1844, embodying an argument for the right of the Senate to advise and consent to removals; but no action was taken on either of them.

Instead of carrying out their programme and so justifying their good faith, the Whigs attempted the impossible task of defending their own action by showing how black were their opponents. Commissions were appointed to investigate government offices wherever mismanagement was suspected. One was sent to Norfolk; another headed by Matthew St. Clair spread dismay through Washington; the most important was that of which Poindexter was chairman, and which exposed the rottenness of the national service in the city of New York. These commissions exposed much fraud; but some of them committed the error of sitting behind closed doors, and they were therefore denounced by the Democrats as “espionage commissions,” whereby their findings were greatly discredited, and the excuse which they were expected to furnish for the Whig proscription was deprived of its effect.

The mere fact that removals were made does not prove that the spoils system was adopted; and it is, therefore, important to study more closely the position of the great Whig statesmen in 1841, and the general policy of the party. Clay was undoubtedly the leader, and he seems to have disdained petty politics. Curtis, the friend of Webster, endeavored to secure Clay's support for the collectorship at New York by promising to work for the latter's nomination for the presidency in 1844 — the matter to be kept secret from Webster. Clay seems to have been shocked at the proposition, to have rejected it, and to have desired to inform Webster. He made it a rule to support no applicants for positions; but this attitude was more a matter of convenience than of probity, and is therefore not particularly commendable, for, when appointments have to be made by personal selection, if the best men refuse to interfere, the choice is thereby left to their inferiors. He evidently found it difficult to maintain his aloofness. March 15, 1841, he wrote to General Harrison that he had not said that Mr. Curtis should not be appointed to the New York collectorship. “I have never,” he said, “gone beyond expressing the opinion that he is faithless and perfidious, and, in my judgment, unworthy of the place.”

Webster wrote to Everett, February 2, 1841, that he did not know what would be done in regard to the foreign agents. “As to officers out of the cabinet,” he said, “little or nothing is yet known. The richer collectorships and attorneyships are subjects of much competition; so are the post-offices in the great cities. I intend to exert my influence to get a snug little place for I. P. Davis, and that is all the purpose, relative to such matters, that I have as yet expressed.” His later official

with the administration forced him to take somewhat more interest in appointments; but all the evidence confirms the impression derived from this letter, that on the whole he considered the selection of civil servants a subject unworthy of his serious attention.

The sudden death of Harrison and the accession of John Tyler spread consternation through the ranks of the Whig office-seekers. It was feared that he might be unwilling to remove Democrats; but, as Greeley says, “he turned out better than had been expected.” Tyler felt bound by the hopes that General Harrison had excited, and appointed many to whom the latter had promised places, but whom he did not live long enough to commission. In the end of April he wrote a friendly letter to Clay: “My attention is turned to the removals from office after the manner that you suggest, and I hope that to the recent appointments you have nothing to object. The post-office at Lexington shall be attended to.” The proscription was therefore continued in spite of the “accident.”

The machinery for distribution was not much in evidence in 1841. Whig congressmen naturally received many requests for the use of their influence; but Adams thought that success depended on whether the congressman was in favor with the cabinet; and this administration seems to have more closely controlled appointments, both general and local, than that of twelve years before. Senator Tallmadge wrote to President Harrison: “The more I reflect on the subject, the more I am surprised at the nomination suggested to you of Mr. —— as Marshal for the Northern district of New York. I do not

know the man and I never heard of him — and I insist upon it, that it is my right, representing the State of New York, to be heard in relation to the appointments in the state — no man knows more about the state than myself — and I repeat that the appointment of —— —— is the best appointment that can be made. . . . I am willing to take the responsibility of it.” This vigorous protest was heeded, but not until Tallmadge had written several letters and had secured the support of “a large portion of the Whig senators of New York, the leading members of the Assembly and all the acting canal commissioners.” The local party organization of New York City made an effort to control minor appointments there, but with only fair success; and the hand of the administration was everywhere felt. In the country as a whole there would seem to have been less machinery and less friction than in 1829.

Claims for office were based on a great variety of grounds. There were charges of nepotism; and the removal of Dr. Martin, the experienced chief clerk of the state department to make way for Webster's son, was certainly in questionable taste, though some excuse for it is afforded by the intimate relations which exist between that officer and the secretary of state. As usual, the martyrs of the Jacksonian persecution were considered as having just claims upon the administration; but the most convincing argument that the office-seeker could submit in support of his application was service to the party. Activity or docility in Congress still commanded recognition, though it had now come to be regarded as undignified to leave the legislative for the administrative service, and the old opposition to the appointment of congressmen had not entirely disappeared. Levi Lincoln endeavored to avoid this latter criticism by resigning his seat before receiving his nomination to the collectorship at Boston.

Newspaper men were still the most important single class of

party workers, and they were given fitting recognition, although the Whigs had criticised the appointment of editors by Jackson. Not so many, however, obtained prominent posts as previously, for the business was becoming more profitable and leading editors did not need office. After a bitter debate which very nearly resulted in a duel between Clay and King of Alabama, Thomas Allen received the printing of the Senate as a reward for his dashing conduct of the Madisonian. The Madisonian followed Tyler in his quarrel with the Whigs, whereupon the latter returned to the ever loyal National Intelligencer.

Politicians of a low grade were occasionally successful, particularly those from Pennsylvania, where the Whigs had a reputation for sharp practice. The appointment of Alexander Ferguson, popularly known as Bela Badger, to the naval office at Philadelphia was considered very discreditable. The qualifications of the man who was appointed collector at New York are described as follows in a letter from Peter B. Porter to Clay: “Although not personally popular, [Curtis] is represented as possessing an extraordinary share of tact or stratagem; and as being able, by his skill in planning and combining, and his untiring industry in executing, to produce the most astonishing political results. That, with the office of Collector (which he [Weed] considers as second only in influence to that of Postmaster-General) he could, on all important occasions, command the vote of the city of New York, and par conséquence, of the State. . . . Now I do not doubt that Mr. Curtis is a man of rare address. . . . And I have as little doubt that if he succeeds in obtaining the office, its patronage will be disposed in favors to his particular political friends.”

While the methods of selection were thus much the same under the Whigs as under the Democrats, the former drew, in many parts of the country, from the wealthier portion of the population, and so commanded a greater share of business ability. Webster sent an able circular to the heads of departments, instructing them to prevent all interference with elections on the part of public officers and all assessments for political purposes, and to require promptness in rendering accounts. There were more complaints at the appointment of abolitionists than at the conduct of the service. Although the repeal of the subtreasury act left public money at the discretion of the public officers, there were no defalcations and no frauds for the succeeding administration to investigate. The climax of praise is reached when we are able to quote from the diary of John Quincy Adams, for a date some time after the starting of the new government, that “as yet, the appointments have not been absolutely discreditable.”

The sweep of 1841 was by no means so nearly complete as that of 1829. The 458 removals made, out of a possible total of 924, would seem to represent a proportionately greater change than at that time; but, for reasons which will appear later, only 304 of these removals should be here considered. Of the usual conditions, three — the number of officers who are indispensable, of offices whose emoluments are too small to attract, and of friends in office — should all be kept in mind; but the exemption of the South is not so marked as formerly, and one new condition must be added. In 1841, for the first time, many officers resigned to escape removal. Among them was George Bancroft, collector at Boston, in commenting on whose resignation the prejudiced Madisonian said that he took this

action because of some technicality of the customs law by which a resigning officer might receive certain fees that would not be paid to one who was removed. The proscription extended, as was customary, beyond the presidential offices into the departmental and local offices. Levi Lincoln, at Boston, is reported to have had, within three or four days, 830 personal applications for the fifty places within his gift.

This study of the conduct of the civil service under the first administration of the Whigs reveals the fact that they adopted all the characteristic practices of the spoils system. Their leaders were indifferent; either willingly or perforce they permitted a repetition of the deeds which they had so violently condemned. The fact that the offices were better executed and the public better served than previously proves, not that the spoils system was non-existent, but that it is not absolutely synonymous with bad service; that efficiency depends more on the characteristics of the men appointing and appointed to office than on the method of selection.

Special attention should be paid to Tyler's 154 removals, which involved a curious episode after the resignation of Webster, when the break with the Whigs was complete and the president alone was responsible for the policy pursued. Tyler had looked with disgust on the Jacksonian proscription; and his son, Lyon G. Tyler, asserts that he retained his scruples on becoming president, and countenanced removals only because he felt bound to fulfil many of the promises of Harrison; and that even this feeling of obligation did not prevent his tearing in pieces whole lists of proposed appointments which involved removals. A minute study of his conduct, however, shows that, as the fight grew fiercer, he found it impossible to forego the use of a weapon so ready to his hand as the patronage.

Tyler considered himself a “Republican” of the old school, and Levi Lincoln argued on this supposition in July, 1841, when he desired the treasurer at Boston, who was not a Whig,

to be retained. By the summer of 1842 to be a Democrat became a recommendation to Tyler. W. W. Irwin, one of the “corporal's guard,” wrote to Caleb Cushing in regard to the postmaster at Harrisburg, “He is a Democrat and I don't want to see him removed.” May 16, 1843, Tyler wrote to Hugh S. Legaré, who was acting as secretary of state, advising him to appoint as chief clerk Dr. Martin, who had been removed by Webster. This appointment, he said, would be equivalent to putting a Democrat at the head of a department. Not only were the Democrats to be placated, but a third party was to be formed, and the president eagerly looked about for places to give to friends and supporters. J. A. Scoville wrote to Calhoun, October 25, 1842, “I wish with all my heart we had the control of Mr. Tyler's appointments, but Mr. Rhett writes me that he thinks Tyler is working for his own nomination.” When Calhoun became secretary of state, he wrote to R. M. T. Hunter: “The claims on the part of Mr. Tyler's political and personal friends on him are pressing,. . . many of them have had their expectations excited for a long time. . . . Acting, as I suppose, under the force of the circumstances alluded to, he makes most of his appointments on his own responsibility without consulting the appropriate Department. This, however, is in strict confidence.”

Vacancies did not occur often enough to answer the president's needs, and he gradually began a proscription of his own. April 1, 1842, he wrote to N. Beverley Tucker: “Do you know Samuel Merry, the receiver of public money at St. Louis, who and what is he? And if he is not the proper sort of man, how would Mr. Brown like the place?” While this sweep was not extensive, it included many valuable posts, among them the ministry to Brazil; the collectorships at Portland, Boston, Savannah, Mobile, Baltimore, and New York; the post of surveyor at New Orleans, Baltimore, and New York; the naval office at New York; the post-offices at Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Albany; the governorships of Florida and Wisconsin; and many more of salient political importance. The climax was

reached in the spring of 1844, when the president was pushing with all his might and main the annexation of Texas. In June the Tribune, apropos of the removal of the surveyor at New York, remarked, “All our office-holders who are not of the latest Tyler and Texas stamp, with India rubber consciences and a firm belief in the integrity and disinterestedness of the Accident, will soon go overboard.”

It is not surprising that a president without a party encountered difficulty with the Senate, and that scarcely a post was filled without one or two rejections or withdrawals. Particularly unwilling were his opponents to allow him to fill an associate judgeship of the Supreme Court, although he made a very creditable selection for it. The Whigs especially opposed this nomination before the election of 1844, in hopes that the appointment might be deferred until Clay became president. After the election had taken away this hope, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Samuel Nelson, previously chief justice of New York.

Tyler's appointments were, as Calhoun said, made from the ranks of his personal and political friends, with the personal element fully as prominent as the other. His personal friends were men of ability and honesty, and consequently the service suffered no detriment except that which was inevitable from the frequent changes. Among his appointees were Caleb Cushing, Robert Rantoul, Jr., and Henry A. Wise, men of ability; while many others, themselves unfamiliar, had names which indicate local respectability. The only removal of special interest was that of Solomon Van Rensselaer, who was at last deprived of office.

In the summer of 1844 the political status of Tyler and his friends was precarious. Nominally a candidate for reëlection,

he really had no chance whatever of success. What, then, would be the standing of the men he had placed in office? Most of them were Democrats and could support Polk's nomination. Could not Tyler, by withdrawing in his favor, secure consideration for them? These questions were in everybody's mouth. Robert J. Walker, unwilling to risk Texan annexation by a divided vote, wrote to Polk asking if Jackson would not reinstate Tyler in the Democratic party; while Tyler's friends suggested to Jackson a union of forces, whereby they would be brought “into the support of Polk and Dallas,” and would be “received as brethren by them and their friends, all former differences forgotten.” Jackson answered these propositions with an emphatic “no”; but Tyler apparently believed that, openly or tacitly, some arrangement had been reached. He withdrew from the race, and on September 13, 1844, wrote to his daughter that if Polk came to power, the new administration would be a continuance of his own.

Polk seems to have been in some danger of committing himself to this policy, as he requested Tyler to give a certain position to his brother. Tyler readily assented to this proposition, which seemed to establish his position in the Democratic party; but if he really thought that an agreement had been made to retain his friends in office, he showed bad faith and an extreme lack of tact by continuing, between the election and the inauguration of Polk, to make removals and appointments, for which at that time there could have been no motive other than a desire to provide for his friends. The result was that Polk, even if he wavered for a time, in the event justified the confidence of Jackson, who wrote to him: “The offices are filling up by Tyler. . . . I have said to my friend Blair that you have sufficient energy to give yourself elbow room, whenever it becomes necessary.”

“The revival of the old democracy by the elevation of General Jackson in 1828, and the accession of a new set of men in 1829, presented the first rabid and hungry scenes of office-begging that the government of this country ever experienced. The spirit with which the democratic dynasty of 1829 went into power began to leaven the whole political world in the country. Violence and rancor increased throughout the republic. . . . On Harrison's accession was there reform or change in their exhibitions? Not at all. . . . The torrent of office beggars set over him and the cabinet like the torrent of Niagara over its precipitous cliffs. . . . The principle of rewarding friends and punishing foes, by using the public offices of the country for the purpose, has been recognized and practised for the last twenty years by both parties; but it is a practice and a principle which has existed only in modern times.” This editorial from the New York Herald of 1849 was in substance perfectly true. Both parties were now thoroughly committed to proscription; and he was indeed a hypocrite, as Marcy said, who did not acknowledge that, as an actual fact, to the victor belonged the spoils. So far as the national service was concerned, this policy was, moreover, an innovation of “modern times”: some political removals had indeed been made by Adams, many by Jefferson, and there was from the first some play of factions about the federal offices in various states; but not until 1829 did the genuine spoils system come into existence; and since that date it has flourished without break, though with some recent diminution.

We have found that, by turning our attention from national politics to those of the states, it is possible to discover for the spoils system a pedigree the authenticity of which is vouched for by strong family resemblance. In 1820 it was an institution of New York and Pennsylvania; it found adherents even in staid Massachusetts, and strong pressure was being brought to induce the central government to give it favor. As years passed, adherents increased and pressure grew, until we are surprised, not so much that it received general recognition at last, as that its adoption was delayed so long. This steady progress, advancing with constantly accelerated speed towards

universal acceptance, overcoming the repugnance of the Whig leaders, although they were committed against such use of the patronage, and of Tyler, although his father had been one of the first to raise his voice against the evils of political appointments, implies such an impelling force behind the movement as can be roused only by an institution peculiarly adapted to the time and fitted to serve some important function in the body politic. It is not sufficient, therefore, to have traced the rise of the spoils system: we cannot claim to have any adequate understanding of its history until we have discovered the cause of its strength by discovering the need which it fulfilled.

The true cause for the introduction of the spoils system was the triumph of democracy. If the people as a whole are to exert any tangible influence on the conduct of government, they must be organized. Unorganized they may effect a revolution, but they cannot thereby control administration. The division of the people into parties is not sufficient to secure this pervasive influence; it gives them an opportunity to vote on special questions and at stated intervals, but not to select the questions or to vote when the issue is fresh in the public mind. If the majority is to mould the policy of the party, if the demos is to be kept constantly awake and brought out to vote after the excitement of the hour has passed away, it is necessary that the party be organized. There must be drilling and training, hard work with the awkward squad, and occasional dress parade.

This work requires the labor of many men: there must be captains of hundreds and the captains of tens, district chiefs and ward heelers. Now, some men labor for love and some for glory; but glory comes only to the leaders of ten thousands, to the very few — it cannot serve as a general inducement, and even those who love must live. It is an essential idea of democracy that these leaders shall be of the people; they must not be gentlemen of wealth and leisure, but they must — the mass of them at any rate — belong to the class that makes its own living. If, then, they are to devote their time to politics, politics must be made to pay. It is here that the function of the spoils system becomes evident; the civil service becomes the pay-roll of the party leader; offices are apportioned according to the rank and

merits of his subordinates, and, if duties are too heavy or new positions are needed, new offices may be created. To apply these facts to America, the spoils system paid for the party organization which enabled the democracy of Pennsylvania to rule after 1800 and which established “a government of the people” in the United States in 1829.

An interesting illustration of the interrelation of democracy and these, its two concomitants, is to be found in the history of the old South before the war. There democracy did indeed exist, but without party organization or the spoils system, and the aristocracy habitually controlled the government. It is to be noticed, however, that when in a party convention the leaders of the South met the leaders of the North, the latter often had to yield; for they knew that although the platform might be a little distasteful to the rank and file of their supporters, party organization and discipline would prevent the dissatisfaction from reaching the polls — the party would stick together. In the South, on the other hand, very many men formed their own political opinions and acted upon them, while many more followed some particular leader, irrespective of party.

The armor in which democracy won its early victories in this country, and to which it still clings in great part, may now seem crude and heavy and inapt to the wearer; but we should not forget that at the time of its introduction it was the very best that had been devised; that by it, for the first time in history, a numerous and widely scattered people was enabled itself to direct its whole force to its own advancement; and present appreciation of the evils of the spoils system should not blind us to the fact that in the period of its establishment it served a purpose that could probably have been performed in no other way, and that was fully worth the cost.


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412 he won, he rode away, and little Julie wept and sighed and finally died of heartbreak. In her lovesick illness she had for constant company a slave, an old mulatress known to most as Maman Dragonne, but to Julie simply as grand'tante, great-aunt. She had nursed our little Julie at the breast, and all her life she fostered and attended her. To her little white 'mamselle' she was all gentleness and kindness, but to others she was fierce and frightful, for she was a 'conjon woman,' adept at obeah, the black magic of the Congo, and among the blacks she ruled as queen by force of fear, while the whites were wont to treat her with respect and, it was more than merely whispered, retain her services upon occasion. She could sell protection to the duelist, and he who bore her charm would surely conquer on the field of honor; she brewed love-drafts which turned the hearts and heads of the most capricious coquettes or the most constant wives, as occasion warranted; by merely staring fixedly at someone she could cause him to take sick and die, and—here we commence to tread upon our own terrain—she was said to have the power of changing to a snake at will

"Very good. You follow? When poor young Julie died of heartbreak it was old Maman Dragonne—the little white one's grand'tante—who watched beside her bed. It is said she stood beside her mistress' coffin and called a curse upon the fickle lover; swore he would come back and die beside the body of the sweetheart he deserted. She also made a prophecy. Julie should have many loves, but her body should not know corruption nor her spirit rest until she could find one to keep his promise and return to her with words of love upon his lips. Those who failed her should die horribly, but he who kept his pledge would bring her rest and peace. This augury she made while she stood beside her mistress' coffin just before they sealed it in the tomb in old Saint Denis Cemetery. Then she disappeared."

"You mean she ran away?" I asked.

"I mean she disappeared, vanished, evanesced, evaporated. She was never seen again, not even by the people who stood next to her when she pronounced her prophecy."

"But——"

"No buts, my friend, if you will be so kind. Years later, when the British stormed New Orleans, Lieutenant Merriwell was there with General Andrew Jackson. He survived the battle like a man whose life is charmed, though all around him comrades fell and three horses were shot under him. Then, when the strife was done, he went to the grand banquet tendered to the victors. While gayety was at its height he abruptly left the table. Next morning he was found upon the grass before the tomb of Julie d'Ayen. He was dead. He died from snake-bite.

"The years marched on and stories spread about the town, stories of a strange and lovely belle dame sans merci, a modern Circe who lured young gallants to their doom. Time and again some gay young blade of New Orleans would boast a conquest. Passing late at night through Royal Street, he would have a flower dropped to him as he walked underneath a balcony. He would meet a lovely girl dressed in the early Empire style, and be surprized at the ease with which he pushed his suit; then—upon the trees in Chartres Street appeared his funeral notices. He was dead, invariably he was dead of snake-bite. Parbleu, it got to be a saying that he who died mysteriously must have met the Lady of the Moonlight as he walked dirough Royal Street!"

He paused and poured a thimbleful of


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 wolves from their lair, drive them within reach. Sand grouse were plentiful, half running, half flying before us as we advanced, and when we were well in the desert we saw eagles in large numbers, and farther north the marmots abounded, in appearance and ways much like prairie dogs.

At first there were herds on every side. I was struck by the number of white and grey ponies, and was told that horses are bred chiefly for the market in China, and this is the Chinese preference. Cattle and sheep are numbered by thousands, but I believe these fine pasture lands could maintain many more. Occasionally we saw camels turned loose for the summer grazing; they are all of the two-humped Bactrian sort, and can endure the most intense winter cold, but the heat of the summer tells upon them severely, and when used in the hot season, it is generally only at night.

From time to time we passed long baggage trains, a hundred or more two-wheeled carts, each drawn by a bullock attached to the tail of the wagon in front. They move at snail's pace, perhaps two miles an hour, and take maybe eight weeks to make the trip across the desert. Once we met the Russian parcels-post, a huge heavily laden cart drawn by a camel and guarded by Cossacks mounted on camels, their uniforms and smart white visored caps looking very comical on the top of their shambling steeds. Most

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 of the caravans were in charge of Chinese, and they thronged about us if a chance offered to inspect the strange trap; especially the light spider wheels aroused their interest. They tried to lift them, measured the rim with thumb and finger, investigated the springs, their alert curiosity showing an intelligence that I missed in the Mongols, to whom we were just a sort of travelling circus, honours being easy between the buggy, and Jack and me.

We were now in the Gobi. The rich green of the grassland had given way to a sparse vegetation of scrub and tufts of coarse grass and weeds, and the poor horses were hard put to get enough, even though they grazed all night. The country, which was more broken and seamed with gullies and rivers of sand, Sha Ho, had taken on a hard, sunbaked, repellent look, brightened only by splendid crimson and blue thistles. The wells were farther apart, and sometimes they were dry, and there were anxious hours when we were not sure of water for ourselves, still less for the horses. One well near a salt lake was rather brackish. This lake is a landmark in the entire region round; it seems to be slowly shrinking, and many caravans camp here to collect the salt, which is taken south. The weather, too, had changed; the days were hotter and dryer, but the nights were cool and refreshing always.

For eleven days we saw no houses but the two

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The New International Encyclopædia/Frémont, John Charles

FRÉMONT, (1813-90). A distinguished American explorer and soldier, the son of a French emigrant to America. He was born in Savannah, Ga., January 21, 1813, and was educated in Charleston College, from which he received a degree in 1836. Soon afterwards he passed the necessary examination, and was appointed professor of mathematics in the United States Navy. In 1838 he was commissioned second lieutenant in the topographical engineers. In October, 1841, he married Jessie, the second daughter of Senator Thomas H. Benton (q.v.). In 1842 a geographical survey of all the territories of the United States was proposed by him, and, although his idea was not entirely carried out, he was sent at the head of a party of twenty-eight men to explore the Rocky Mountains. In his accomplishment of this task he reached the Wind River Mountains, and ascended the highest peak, later known as Frémont's Peak — 13,570 feet above sea-level. His next enterprise was the exploration of the territory between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast, a region then almost unknown. Early in 1843 he started with thirty-nine men, and after a journey of 1700 miles, came to Great Salt Lake. Thence he proceeded northward to the tributaries of the Columbia River, following the valley to Fort

In November he started upon his return, but finding himself and party in danger of death from cold and starvation, he turned westward, and after great hardship succeeded in crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and in March reached Sutter's Fort in California, not far from the place where four years later gold was discovered. He returned safely by a more southerly route, reaching Kansas in July, 1844.

In 1845 Frémont went on another exploring expedition, his last under direction of the Government, spending the summer along the continental divide, and in the winter again crossing the Sierras. He asked permission of the Mexican authorities at Monterey to continue his explorations, but they refused and ordered him to leave the country. War between Mexico and the United States was then imminent, and the authorities seemed to have been fearful of Frémont's influence upon the inhabitants of California, many of whom were Americans. Frémont, refusing to leave, fortified himself and his sixty-four men on a small mountain about thirty miles from Monterey; but when the Mexicans prepared to besiege the place, he retired and proceeded to Oregon. Near Klamath Lake he was overtaken by a courier, Lieutenant Gillespie, who had been sent by the Government with a secret message to its agent in California, and who seems to have instructed Frémont, on behalf of the Administration, to coöperate in its plan for the peaceable acquisition of California. Over the exact nature of these instructions, however, there has been much controversy. Frémont immediately returned to California; but, instead of conciliating the native Californians and encouraging them to remain neutral in case of war with Mexico, he seems to have fomented a revolt, known as the ‘Bear Flag War.’ Sonoma was captured and independence decided upon; but when it became known that the United States was at war with Mexico and that Commodore Sloat had seized Monterey, the American flag supplanted the Bear flag. Frémont then coöperated with Commodore Stockton in establishing the power of the United States in California, and was by him made military commandant and civil Governor. Toward the end of this year (1846), General Kearny arrived with a force of dragoons. Both he and Stockton had orders to establish a government; and friction immediately ensued.

Frémont prepared to obey Stockton, and continued as Governor in defiance of Kearny's orders. For this he was tried by court-martial at Washington, the trial lasting from November 2, 1847, to January 31, 1848, was convicted of ‘mutiny,’ ‘disobedience of the lawful command of a superior officer,’ and ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline,’ and was sentenced to dismissal from the service. President Polk approved of the conviction for disobedience, but remitted the penalty, and Frémont resigned.

In October, 1848, with a party of thirty-three. Frémont started on an independent overland journey in search of a practical route to California by way of the Rio Grande. His guide lost the trail in the Rocky Mountains, and, after untold sufferings, the surviving members of the party were obliged to retreat to the Rio Grande. From there Frémont proceeded to California by the Gila route, reaching Sacramento in the spring of 1849. He then settled in California, and from September, 1850, to March, 1851, represented

the State in the United States Senate. Still faithful to the route he had attempted in 1848, in 1853 he made his fifth and last exploration, crossing the Rockies and again succeeding in reaching California. In these last two expeditions his father-in-law. Senator Benton, was interested, and the discovery of practical routes for highways or railroads was the object of the explorations.

In 1856 the Republicans nominated Frémont for the Presidency. His nomination was due to his availability, to the renown gained by his explorations, and to his known opposition to the extension of slavery. In the ensuing election he met with defeat, receiving only 114 electoral votes, while Buchanan received 174. Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War Frémont was appointed major-general, and was placed in command of the Western Department, with headquarters at Saint Louis. On August 30, 1861, he issued a proclamation confiscating the property “of all persons in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proved to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field,” and freeing all slaves of such persons. Soon afterwards he established ‘a bureau of abolition’ to carry out the order respecting manumission. This ill-advised action greatly embarrassed the Administration, and on September 11 President Lincoln annulled the order as unauthorized and premature. Frémont's total incapacity for the command of a department soon became evident, and, acting upon the report of Secretary of War Cameron and Adjutant-General Thomas, whom he had commissioned to make an investigation, President Lincoln removed him from command in November. A few months later, however, Frémont was placed in command of the Mountain Department of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. After the battle at Cross Keys, June 8, 1862, he declined to serve, on the ground that he outranked General Pope, who was then in command of the Army of Virginia. On May 31, 1864, he was nominated for the Presidency by a small faction of the Republican Party, constituted in great part of members of the Radical wing. Finding but a slender support, he withdrew his name in September. He subsequently became interested in the construction of railroads, and in 1873 was prosecuted by the French Government for alleged participation in the swindles connected with the proposed transcontinental railway from Norfolk to San Francisco, and was sentenced on default to fine and imprisonment. He was Governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1882, and was appointed a major-general on the retired list by act of Congress in 1890. He died July 13, 1890. Consult: Frémont, Memoirs of My Life, Including Five Journeys of Western Exploration (Chicago, 1887); Mrs. Frémont, Souvenirs of My Time (Boston, 1887); Campaign Memoirs by Bigelow (New York, 1856) and Upham ( Boston, 1856).


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 telegraph stations, save once early in the morning when we came without warning upon a lamassery that seemed to start up out of the ground; the open desert hides as well as reveals. It was a group of flat-roofed, whitewashed buildings, one larger than the rest, all wrapped in silence. There was no sign of life as we passed except a red lama who made a bright spot against the white wall, and a camel tethered in a corner, and it looked very solitary and desolate, set down in the middle of the great, empty, dun-coloured plain.

I had now separated from my travelling companions, cheering the friendly Mongols with some of my bountiful supply of cigarettes. As they rode off they gave me the Mongol greeting, "Peace go with you." I should have been glad to have kept on the red lama to Urga, for he had been very helpful in looking after my wants, and had befriended poor Jack, who was quite done up for a while by the hot desert sands; but I let him go well pleased with a little bottle of boracic acid solution for his sore eyes. The Mongols, like so many Eastern peoples, suffer much from inflammation of the eyes, the result of dirt, and even more of the acrid argol smoke filling the yurts so that often I was compelled to take flight. I expect the stern old Jesuit would say of them as he did of the Red Indian, "They pass their lives in smoke, eternity in flames."

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Rh brandy in his coffee. "You see?" he asked.

"No, I'm shot if I do!" I answered. "I can't see the connection between——"

"Night and breaking dawn, perhaps?" he asked sarcastically. "If two and two make four, my friend, and even you will not deny they do, then these things I have told you give an explanation of our young friend's trouble. This girl he met was most indubitably Julie, poor little Julie d'Ayen on whose tombstone it is carved: 'Ici repose malheureusement—here lies unhappily.' The so mysterious snake which menaces young Monsieur Minton is none other than the aged Maman Dragonne—grand'tante, as Julie called her."

"But Ned's already failed to keep his tryst," I objected. "Why didn't this snake-woman sting him in the hotel, or——"

"Do you recall what Julie said when first the snake appeared?" he interrupted. 'Not this one, grand'tante!' And again, in the old cemetery when the serpent actually struck at him, she threw herself before him and received the blow. It could not permanently injure her; to earthly injuries the dead are proof, but the shock of it caused her to swoon, it seems. Monsieur," he bowed to Ned, "you are more fortunate than any of those others. Several times you have been close to death, but each time you escaped. You have been given chance and chance again to keep your pledged word to the dead, a thing no other faithless lover of the little Julie ever had. It seems, Monsieur, this dead girl truly loves you."

"How horrible!" I muttered.

"You said it, Doctor Trowbridge!" Ned seconded. "It looks as if I'm in a spot, all right."

"Mais non," de Grandin contradicted. "Escape is obvious, my friend."

"How, in heaven's name?"

"Keep your promised word; go back to her."

"Good Lord, I can't do that! Go back to a corpse, take her in my arms—kiss her?"

"Certainement, why not?"

"Why—why, she's dead!"

"Is she not beautiful?"

"She's lovely and alluring as a siren's song. I think she's the most exquisite thing I've ever seen, but—v" he rose and walked unsteadily across the room. "If it weren't for Nella," he said slowly, "I might not find it hard to follow your advice. Julie's sweet and beautiful, and artless and affectionate as a child; kind, too, the way she stood between me and that awful snake-thing, but—oh, it's out of the question!"

"Then we must expand the question to accommodate it, my friend. For the safety of the living—for Mademoiselle Nella's sake—and for the repose of the dead, you must keep the oath you swore to little Julie d'Ayen. You must go back to New Orleans and keep your rendezvous."

dead of old Saint Denis lay in dreamless sleep beneath the palely argent rays of the fast-waxing moon. The oven-like tombs were gay with hardly-wilted flowers; for two days before was All Saints' Day, and no grave in all New Orleans is so lowly, no dead so long interred, that pious hands do not bear blossoms of remembrance to them on that feast of memories.

De Grandin had been busily engaged all afternoon, making mysterious trips to the old Negro quarter in company with a patriarchal scion of Indian and Negro ancestry who professed ability to guide him to the city's foremost practitioner of voodoo; returning to the hotel only


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 For about eight days we were crossing the desert, one day much like another. Sometimes the track was all up and down: we topped a swell of ground only to see before us another exactly like it. Then for many miles together the land was as flat and as smooth as a billiard table, no rocks, no roll; and we chased a never-ending line of telegraph poles over a never-ending waste of sand. Another day we were traversing from dawn till sundown an evil-looking land strewn with boulders and ribs of rock, bleak, desolate, forbidding.

Nowhere were there signs of life, nothing growing, nothing moving. For days together we saw no yurts, and more than one day passed without our meeting any one. Once there appeared suddenly on the white track before us a solitary figure, looking very pitiful in the great plain. When it came near it fell on its face in the sand at our feet, begging for food. It was a Chinese returning home from Urga, walking all the seven hundred miles across the desert to Kalgan. We helped him as best we could, but he was not the only one.

An old red lama, mounted on a camel and bound for Urga, kept near us for two or three days, sleeping at night with my men by the cart, and sometimes taking shelter under my tent at noon, where he sat quietly by the hour smoking my cigarettes. He was a nice old fellow with pleasant ways, nearly choking

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 himself in efforts to make me understand how wonderful I was, travelling all alone, and what splendid sights I should behold in Urga.

And so time passed; tiring, monotonous days, refreshing, glorious nights, and then toward the end of a long, weary afternoon I saw for a moment, faintly outlined in the blank northern horizon, a cloud? a mountain? a rock? I hardly dared trust my eyes, and I looked again and again. Yes, it was a mountain, a mountain of rocks just as I was told it would loom up in front of me for a moment, and then disappear; and it disappeared, and I rejoiced, for at its base the desert ended; beyond lay a land of grass and streams.

We camped that evening just off the trail in a little grassy hollow. In the night rain fell, tapping gently on my tent wall, and for hours there mingled with the sound of the falling rain the dull clang of bells, as a long bullock train crawled along in the dark on its way to Urga.

The next day rose cloudless as before. My landmark could no longer be seen, but I knew it was not far off, "a great rock in a weary land," and already the air was fresher and the country seemed to have put on a tinge of green.

In the afternoon a little cavalcade of wild, picturesque-looking men dashed down upon us in true Mongol style, trailing the lasso poles as they galloped. With a gay greeting they turned their horses about,

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 and kept pace with us while they satisfied their curiosity. This was my first sight of the northern Mongol, who differs little from his brother of the south, save that he is less touched by Chinese influence. In dress he is more picturesque, and the tall, peaked hat generally worn recalled old-time pictures of the invading Mongol hordes.

The great mountain had again come in sight, crouching like a huge beast of prey along the boulder-strewn plain. But where was the famous lamassery that lay at its foot? Threading our way through a wilderness of rock, heaped up in sharp confusion, we came out on a little ridge, and there before us lay Tuerin,—not a house but a village, built in and out among the rocks. It was an extraordinary sight to stumble upon, here on the edge of the uninhabited desert. A little apart from the rest were four large temples crowned with gilt balls and fluttering banners, and leading off from them were neat rows of small white plastered cottages with red timbers, the homes of the two thousand lamas who live here. The whole thing had the look of a seaside camp-meeting resort. A few herds of ponies were grazing near by, but there was no tilled land, and these hundreds of lamas are supported in idleness by contributions extorted from the priest-ridden people. A group of them, rather repulsive-looking men, came out to meet us, or else to keep us off. As it was growing

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