332 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



at the bidding of a superior officer, to feel that the office 

 you fill, on which depends your very means of living for 

 yourself and family, is held at the arbitrary will of another, 

 who may, if he please, make a servile conformity of your 

 views with his own, on political, or what you may deem 

 moral questions, the condition by which you retain your 

 place. You who, at home, had never seen the man who 

 dared claim to be your superior, are forced to submit to 

 the iron rule of caste, to send your card to the secretary, 

 whom you once knew, perhaps, as an equal, and wait an 

 hour with the colored servant in the hall, to be told at last 

 to call another day to be slipped over, or shaken oft by 

 the member whom you helped to elect, and who now had 

 no further use for you, and consume your energies in en 

 deavoring to keep the toe of your boot from proximity with 

 that part of his person where his honor holds its seat to 

 be assessed to support party presses whose principles you 

 may despise. In short, you have sold your birthright for a 

 mess of pottage. 



&quot; But the half is not yet told, for even the mess of pot 

 tage is not sufficient for your wants. Your salary is at 

 starvation point. You must pay two hundred dollars for a 

 house, with two parlors, and a basement for servants, with 

 out a cellar, without a closet, without a pump or aqueduct, 

 without a sink, or clothes yard, or garden. Your wife, with 

 the aid of a servant, cannot do the work so easily as she 

 did it alone when at the North. All the water comes in 

 buckets from the city pump a dozen rods off; the slops are 

 poured into the street,, your clothing is crammed into 

 wardrobes, your supplies must be procured daily at market, 

 in contemptible quantities in short, everything, except the 

 parlors, which are for show, and to make you seem re 

 spectable, must be richly carpeted and curtained, every 

 thing is adapted to the idea that labor is degrading, and 



