te very well, but such
knowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country,
and toil on and suffer for twenty-five hundred dollars a year. What they
write has to be written over again by other clerks sometimes; but when a
man has done his best for his country, should his country complain? Then
there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting,
and waiting for a vacancy--waiting patiently for a chance to help their
country out--and while they, are waiting, they only get barely two
thousand dollars a year for it. It is sad it is very, very sad. When a
member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employment
wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon his
country, and gives him a clerkship in a department. And there that man
has to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nation
that never thinks of him, never sympathizes with him--and all for two
thousand or three thousand dollars a year. When I shall have completed
my list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statement
of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see that
there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half
enough pay.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

The following I find in a Sandwich Island paper which some friend has
sent me from that tranquil far-off retreat. The coincidence between my
own experience and that here set down by the late Mr. Benton is so
remarkable that I cannot forbear publishing and commenting upon the
paragraph. The Sandwich Island paper says:

How touching is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his
mother's influence:--'My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have
never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to
gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games
that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking,
and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever
usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having
complied with her pious and correct wishes. When I was seven years of
age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total
abstinence; and that I have adhered to it through all time I owe to my
mother.'

I never saw anything so curious. It is almost an exact epitome of my own
moral career--after simply substituting a grandmother for a mo