A Trip to Washington
New York Ledger
April 10, 1869
April 10, 1869
I'VE BEEN TO WASHINGTON and I didn't want office either. Had I, I think my patient would soon have oozed out, in the stifling atmosphere of that room in the White House, where clamorous lobbyists sty with distended eyes, watching the chance of their possible entrance to the President's presence -- sat there, too, for weary hours, a spectacle to gods and men; of human beings willing to sacrifice self-respect and time, and what little money they had let in their purses, for the gambler's chance. Anything, everything, but the open and above-board, and sure and independent, and old fashioned way of getting a living!
So I thought as the living stream poured in, and I went out, thankful that I desired nothing in the gift of the President of the United States of America. How any man living can wish to be the President passes my solving, I said, asI stepped out into the clear, fresh, bracing air, and shook my shoulders, as if they had really dropped a burden of my own under that much coveted roof. I can very well conceive that a pure patriot might wish the office, because he sincerely believed himself able to serve his country in it, and therefore accepted its crown of thorns; but lacking this motive, that a man in the meridian of life, or descending its down-hill path, and consequently with the full knowledge of this life's emptiness, should stretch out even one hand to grasp such a distracting position, I can never understand.
The good dame "who went to sleep with six gallons of milk on her mind" every night, was a fool to do it. A step-mother's life under the harrow were paradise to it; only the life of a country clergyman who writes three sermons a week, and attends weddings at sixpence a piece, and hoes his own potatoes, and feeds the pigs, and is on hand for church and vestry meetings during the week, and keep the run of all the new-born babies and their middle names, and is always, in a highly devotional frame of mind, is a parallel case.
I should like to have taken all those lobbyists I saw in the White House with me the afternoon of that day to "Arlington Heights," and bade them look there at the thousands of head-stones, gleaming white like the billows of the sea in the sunlight, far as the eye could reach, labelled "unknown," "unknown," telling the simple tragic story of our national struggle more effectually than any sculptured monuments could have done. I would like to have shown them this, to see if for one moment it had power to paralyze those eager hands outstretched for bubbles.
So I thought as the living stream poured in, and I went out, thankful that I desired nothing in the gift of the President of the United States of America. How any man living can wish to be the President passes my solving, I said, asI stepped out into the clear, fresh, bracing air, and shook my shoulders, as if they had really dropped a burden of my own under that much coveted roof. I can very well conceive that a pure patriot might wish the office, because he sincerely believed himself able to serve his country in it, and therefore accepted its crown of thorns; but lacking this motive, that a man in the meridian of life, or descending its down-hill path, and consequently with the full knowledge of this life's emptiness, should stretch out even one hand to grasp such a distracting position, I can never understand.
The good dame "who went to sleep with six gallons of milk on her mind" every night, was a fool to do it. A step-mother's life under the harrow were paradise to it; only the life of a country clergyman who writes three sermons a week, and attends weddings at sixpence a piece, and hoes his own potatoes, and feeds the pigs, and is on hand for church and vestry meetings during the week, and keep the run of all the new-born babies and their middle names, and is always, in a highly devotional frame of mind, is a parallel case.
I should like to have taken all those lobbyists I saw in the White House with me the afternoon of that day to "Arlington Heights," and bade them look there at the thousands of head-stones, gleaming white like the billows of the sea in the sunlight, far as the eye could reach, labelled "unknown," "unknown," telling the simple tragic story of our national struggle more effectually than any sculptured monuments could have done. I would like to have shown them this, to see if for one moment it had power to paralyze those eager hands outstretched for bubbles.
Fanny Fern
To cite this project: Fanny Fern, "A Visit to Washington," Fanny Fern Archive, Ed. Haley Jones (2020) http://fannyfernarchive.org.
