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Both President Lincoln and President Garfield were killed by assassins of types unfortunately not uncommon in history; President Lincoln falling a victim to the terrible passions aroused by four years of civil war, and President Garfield to the revengeful vanity of a disappointed office-seeker.
This position was held to firmly. John Adams wrote an office-seeker, "I must caution you, my dear Sir, against having any dependence on my influence or that of any other person. No man, I believe, has influence with the President. He seeks information from all quarters, and judges more independently than any man I ever knew.
No Bostonian had ever gone there. One announced one's self as an adventurer and an office-seeker, a person of deplorably bad judgment, and the charges were true. The chances of ending in the gutter were, at best, even. The risk was the greater in Adams's case, because he had no very clear idea what to do when he got there.
"And they say more; once give 'em the upper hand and they're confident of beating us and the Courthouse will be to let. As for judges and lawyers, they'll starve, or go into some better business. How well Judge Lyman relished this mode of presenting the case, was not very apparent; he was too good a politician and office-seeker, to show any feeling on the subject, and thus endanger a vote.
The old system, by which a good public servant was turned out to make room for a hungry office-seeker of the successful political party, was firmly established. Men and women were not appointed to office because they knew anything about the work they were to do, but because they were cousins of a Congressman's wife, or political heelers who had helped to get the Congressman elected.
"Well, prove it to me with another," was the quick rejoinder, as he held out his case, and in another minute a match again crackled. "There is only one thing worse than a bad smoke, and that is an office-seeker," chuckled the President. Bok couldn't prove that the cigars were bad, naturally. So smoke that cigar he did, to the bitter end, and it was bitter!
I have slept with one eye open ever since I came to Washington; I never close both, except when an office-seeker is looking for me. I then laid before the President the 'rebel mail. He carefully examined the address of each letter, making occasional remarks.
Ludlow had regularly drawn a salary, which his subordinates earned, and divided his abundant leisure between the diversions peculiar to Mrs. Tommy Kidder's coterie and schemes for the recovery of his senatorial seat. In the latter business he met with a defeat more telling than he had yet experienced. But Ludlow was an office-seeker of resource.
I nodded sympathetically, trying to convey my sense of the mistake the congregation had made in its choice of both elders and precentor. "Ye wud say, to luik at me, that I'm no' an office-seeker, an' ye're richt. But I haud an office for a' that." This time I smiled as if light had come to me, and as one who has been reassured in his belief in an overruling Providence.
He began now, with the instinctive sagacity of the true office-seeker, to perceive the possibility, perhaps probability, that the power of dispensing office and patronage was about to change hands, and he inwardly trembled for his own safety.
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