t is dwindling away; or exhaling,
without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at
every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the
fact there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was
led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the
character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In some
other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it
here to say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, can
hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many
reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and
another, the very nature of his business, which--though, I trust, an
honest one--is of such a sort that he does not share in the united
effort of mankind.

An effect--which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every
individual who has occupied the position--is, that, while he leans on
the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from
him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of
his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an
unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do
not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable.
The ejected officer--fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him
forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world--may return to
himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom
happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own
ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter
along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his
own infirmity,--that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,--he
forever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support
external to himself. His pervading and continual hope--a hallucination
which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of
impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the
convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after
death--is, that finally, and in no long time, by some happy
coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This
faith, more than anything else, steals the pith and availability out
of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil
and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the
mud, when, in a little while h