Appendix 123 



the officers of the Government had been as conscientious and 

 scrupulous in the discharge of their duties as he has been 

 since his appointment, there would be no ground for re- 

 proaches against those who have control of the Government.' 7 



Mr. Downing was annoyed by this continual carping and 

 bickering, and anxious to have the matter definitely ar- 

 ranged, he requested the President to summon the Cabinet. 

 The Secretaries assembled, and Mr. Downing \vas presented. 

 He explained the case as he understood it, unrolled his plans, 

 stated his duties, and the time he devoted to them, and the 

 salary he received. He then added, that he wished the 

 arrangement to be clearly understood. If the President and 

 Cabinet thought that his requirements were extravagant, 

 he was perfectly willing to roll up his plans, and return home. 

 If they approved them, he would gladly remain, but upon 

 the express condition that he was to be relieved from the 

 annoyances of the quarrel. The President and Cabinet 

 agreed that his plans were the best, and his demands reason- 

 able; and the work went on in peace from that time. 



The year 1852 opened upon Downing, in the garden where 

 he had played and dreamed alone, while the father tended 

 the trees; and to which he had clung, with indefeasible 

 instinct, when the busy mother had suggested that her 

 delicate boy would thrive better as a drygoods clerk. He 

 was just past his thirty-sixth birthday, and the Fishkill 

 mountains, that had watched the boy departing for the 

 academy where he was to show no sign of his power, now 

 beheld him, in the bloom of manhood, honored at home and 

 abroad - - no man, in fact, more honored at home than he. 

 Yet the honor sprang from the work that had been achieved 

 in that garden. It was there he had thought, and studied, 

 and observed. It was to that home he returned from his 

 little excursions, to ponder upon the new things he had seen 

 and heard, to try them by the immutable principles of taste, 

 and to test them by rigorous proofs. It was from that home 

 that he looked upon the landscape which, as it allured his 

 youth, now satisfied his manhood. The mountains, upon 

 whose shoreward slope his wife was born under the blossom- 



