Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle’s pocket?  It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease.  Uncle Sam’s gold—­meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—­has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the devil’s wages.  Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.

Here was a fine prospect in the distance.  Not that the Surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by continuance in office or ejectment.  Yet my reflections were not the most comfortable.  I began to grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the remainder.  I endeavoured to calculate how much longer I could stay in the Custom-House, and yet go forth a man.  To confess the truth, it was my greatest apprehension—­as it would never be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual as myself; and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign—­it was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old Inspector.  Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this venerable friend—­to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade?  A dreary look-forward, this, for a man who felt it to be the best definition of happiness to live throughout the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities.  But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm.  Providence had meditated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.

A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship—­to adopt the tone of “P.  P. “—­was the election of General Taylor to the Presidency.  It is essential, in order to form a complete estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the incumbent at the in-coming of a hostile administration.  His position is then one of the most singularly irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good on either hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst event may very probably be the best.  But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control of individuals who neither love