I know thousands and thousands
of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century;
but I am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter
if you failed to call them "Governor" in it. I know acres and acres
of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days,
but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not
raise if you addressed them as "Mr." instead of "Hon." The first thing
a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude,
and get itself photographed. Each member frames his copy and takes
it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous
place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire
what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around
to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure
in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated
with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "It's me!"
Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room
in Washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on
to read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?
--keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see
if he is being observed and admired?--those same old letters
which he fetches in every morning? Have you seen it? Have you
seen him show off? It is THE sight of the national capital.
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