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John Ford regrets to inform his late partners that their tender of house, of furniture," however, seemed too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was writing on; a more eloquent renunciation of their offer became frivolous and idiotic from a caricature of Union Mills, label and all, that appeared suddenly on the other side of the leaf; and when he at last indited a satisfactory and impassioned exposition of his feelings, the legible addendum of "Oh, ain't you glad you're out of the wilderness!" the forgotten first line of a popular song, which no scratching would erase seemed too like an ironical postscript to be thought of for a moment.
The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system, with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there a theory which, I regret to say, still obtains.*
For salt they scraped the staves of an old pork-barrel which had been left at Macrae's camp the previous winter, and for coffee they drank burned rice water. At last, however, salt and rice both failed, and they were reduced to an unvarying and often scanty diet of boiled fish, without coffee, bread, or salt.
It was the pathetic savagery and haggardness of the young girl that had moved the woodmen to let her off with her booty; and now, the boss declared, if Gillsey were dismissed without his wages as was customary, in addition to other punishment the family would surely starve, cut off from the camp pork-barrel. It was decided to give the culprit his wages up to date.
Looking and prying about, we discovered an old pair of brass snuffers, and a pair of hand-made wrought-iron shears. The old things were pretty rusty, and I could see that Westbury did not value them highly, but I would not have traded them for the pork-barrel and the ham-barrel and all the other barrels and benches reserved from Uncle Joe's collection.
One night he found an empty pork-barrel out behind the barn, its staves fairly saturated with salt, and hour after hour he scraped away upon it, perfectly content. Another time, to his great satisfaction, he discovered a large piece of bacon rind among some scraps that the mossback's wife had thrown away.
I gave her the second when she came to me about the twentieth of the month and kissed me on the ear and sent a tickly little whisper after it to the effect that the household appropriation for the month was exhausted and the pork-barrel and the meal-sack and the chicken-coop were in the same enfeebled condition.
In a shanty of the composite order of architecture it having a foundation of stone, succeeded by logs, a gable of coffin misfits and cracker-boxes, and a roof of bark and canvas Buffle and three other miners were playing "old sledge." The table was an empty pork-barrel; the seats were respectively, a block of wood, a stone, and a raisin-box, with a well-stuffed knapsack for the tallest man.
The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system, with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there a theory which, I regret to say, still obtains.
The scattered and ineffective "pork-barrel" appropriations of Congress are dictated not by intelligent consideration for the public weal, but by the desire to throw a sop to this and that section of the country, and thereby win votes.
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