and others who have contributed, or whose
friends have contributed, to the election of
the new president; all these have claims,
which are in many cases acknowledged
and rewarded by snug government berths.
The old principle that " To the victors
belong the spoils" has got to be of late
enlarged so as to read, " To the new
president's relatives and personal friends belong
the spoils;" so that even if office-holders
belong to the same party with the president,
they must give way to those personally
known to, liked by, or connected with him.
The clerks are appointed on the
recommendations of senators and representatives
of leading party men in the various states,
and of favourites who have the president's
ear. No qualifications for office are asked
for; there is no question of the efficiency
of the clerk who has to give way for a
successor. The clerk receives his commission,
and enters without more ado upon the
duties of his office. He is obliged to pass
no examination, being simply an object of
that patronage which is accorded to
congress-men, and which is one of those evils
in the American system which some wise
American legislators are labouring hard to
abolish.

The new clerk revels in his new position.
He is like the hard toiler who is refreshed
by his coveted reward. He exults in the
prospect of a four years' life of ease on the
very stage of the great political drama.
To the clerk who has been a farmer, the
memory of potato digging becomes a
disagreeable reminiscence smilingly dismissed;
to the ex-lawyer, the brain worry over law-
calf forms food for self-pity for the past,
and self-gratulation in the present. He
walks Pennsylvania avenue with a buoyant,
exultant step, and reflects with pride that
he is now a privileged servant of Uncle
Sam, as the American calls his indulgent
government. Straightway has he
telegraphed for his wife and children, who
have been browsing upon sunny expectation
in some western wild; and they come
hastening on, the wife and mother fully
persuaded that the domestic millennium
has come, and uncertain whether she is
most anxious to see the new official or the
capital of her country. The next step is
to procure accommodation in a Washington
boarding-house. And "Washington
boarding-houses are sui generis. They are
plentiful, yet expensive; fashionable, yet
vastly uncomfortable; and unite under
their roofs probably as miscellaneous a
group of guests as any cosmopolite city in
the universe. The keepers of these
boarding-houses are almost always the widows
of clerks; or clerks who have been turned
out of office, and have not been able to
resist the fascination of residing still at the
capital; or clerks whose family extravagances
have forced them to this secondary
mode of eking out a subsistence. The
guests, too, of nine out of every ten
boarding-houses, are clerks of higher or lower
departmental rank; old clerks, appointed
by Madison in 1813, and garrulous over
the taking of Washington by the British;
fancy young clerks, who apparently spend
a large portion of their incomes in yellow
neckties and extraordinary canes; married
clerks, with irrepressible wives, who are
always coming in from calls upon
secretaries' ladies; fat bachelor clerks, who
are such irresistibly good fellows, that no
administration has ever found it in its
heart to turn them out; and poor, shabby,
disappointed, saddened, silent clerks, who
were once independent men, and held their
heads up among their fellows, but have
drifted into the ledger nonentities and
ambitionless machines which you now see
them. Besides the clerks, the Washington
boarding-house has invariably a sprinkling
of senators and congress-men; and peculiarly
lucky boarding-houses now and then allure
to their board and beneath their mahogany
the stately legs of a cabinet secretary.
These democratically mingle with the rest,
and are the recipients of small diurnal
favours on the part of the landlady and of
her clerkly guests in the shape of the second
joint of the turkey, the cleanest cut of the
roast, and the first layer of the buckwheat
cakes. Then there are waifs and strays of
fashionable folk, who go to the capital in
search of winter gaieties, and office-seekers
who are never wanting to the transient
population of the metropolis, and who
regard the clerks who are at the table as
prospective " outs" invariably, and under
all circumstances look upon themselves as
possible "ins."

Such is the society in which our newly-
made clerk finds himself, and into which
he introduces his wife and children.
Having received his commission in due form
(sealed with a very big red seal, and signed
with a very big black signature), he is
instructed to repair to one of the judges,
who, in due form, swears him into office.
He is next told to wait upon the head
of his department. In order to appear
worthily before that awful personage, who
is vaguely known as the secretary, he
arrays himself in his best, not forgetting
to undergo an elaborate toilette from the