When a new president comes into office,
Congress adjourns of course on the third of March, and his
inauguration is made on the fourth; the senate is immediately convened
to act on his nominations, and though not a man of them leaves
Washington, each is supposed to go home and return again in the course
of the ten or twelve hours that intervene between the adjournment and
their reassembling. For this ideal journey the senators are allowed
their mileages, as if the journey was actually made. In the case of
those who come from a distance, the sum often amounts, individually,
to one thousand or fifteen hundred dollars."
"Why, Mr Slick," said he, "that ain't honest."
"Honest," said I, "who the plague ever said it was? but what can you
expect from red republicans? Well, snooping means taking things on the
sly after a good rumage; and stool-pidgeoning means plundering under
cover of law; for instance, if a judge takes a bribe, or a fellow is
seized by a constable, and the stolen property found on him is given
up, the merciful officer seizes the goods and lets him run, and that
is all that ever is heard of it--that is stool-pidgeoning. But now,"
sais I, "sposin' we take a survey of the place here, for in a general
way I don't affection politics, and as for party leaders, whether
English reformers or American democrats, critters that are dyed in the
wool, I hate the whole caboodle of them.
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