er being tost on
every sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blasts,
had finally drifted into this quiet nook; where, with little to
disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential
election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. Though
by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity,
they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. Two
or three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic,
or perhaps bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the
Custom-House, during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid
winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go
lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure and
convenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to
the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of
these venerable servants of the republic. They were allowed, on my
representation, to rest from their arduous labors, and soon
afterwards--as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for their
country's service, as I verily believe it was--withdrew to a better
world. It is a pious consolation to me, that, through my interference,
a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil and
corrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, every
Custom-House officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor
the back entrance of the Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.

The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for their
venerable brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a politician, and
though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither received nor held his
office with any reference to political services. Had it been
otherwise,--had an active politician been put into this influential
post, to assume the easy task of making head against a Whig Collector,
whose infirmities withheld him from the personal administration of his
office,--hardly a man of the old corps would have drawn the breath of
official life, within a month after the exterminating angel had come
up the Custom-House steps. According to the received code in such
matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, to
bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine.
It was plain enough to discern, that the old fellows dreaded some such
discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me, to