Except one; a pathetic one. That is the ex-Congressman: the poor
fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory
and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought
to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself
away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers,
and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed,
ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise;
dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety,
hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed,
the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates.
Have you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that
is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor";
and works it hard and gets what he can out of it. That is the saddest
figure I know of.
Yes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily
scoff at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we
only had his chance--ah! "Senator" is not a legitimate title.
A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you
or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington,
there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to
that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it
--which you may do quite unrebuked. Then those same Senators smile
at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the South!
Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may.
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