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The Consul


The Consul
Richard Harding Davis
This page copyright й 2001 Blackmask Online.
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Etext scanned by Aaron Cannon of Paradise, California
For over forty years, in one part of the world or another, old man Marshall had,
served his country as a United States consul. He had been appointed by Lincoln.
For a quarter of a century that fact was his distinction. It was now his
epitaph. But in former years, as each new administration succeeded the old, it
had again and again saved his official head. When victorious and voracious
place-hunters, searching the map of the world for spoils, dug out his
hiding-place and demanded his consular sign as a reward for a younger and more
aggressive party worker, the ghost of the dead President protected him. In the
State Department, Marshall had become a tradition. "You can't touch Him!" the
State Department would say; "why, HE was appointed by Lincoln!" Secretly, for
this weapon against the hungry headhunters, the department was infinitely
grateful. Old man Marshall was a consul after its own heart. Like a soldier, he
was obedient, disciplined; wherever he was sent, there, without question, he
would go. Never against exile, against ill-health, against climate did he make
complaint. Nor when he was moved on and down to make way for some ne'er-do-well
with influence, with a brother-in- law in the Senate, with a cousin owning a
newspaper, with rich relatives who desired him to drink himself to death at the
expense of the government rather than at their own, did old man Marshall point
to his record as a claim for more just treatment.
And it had been an excellent record. His official reports, in a quaint, stately
hand, were models of English; full of information, intelligent, valuable, well
observed. And those few of his countrymen, who stumbled upon him in the out-of-
the-world places to which of late he had been banished, wrote of him to the
department in terms of admiration and awe. Never had he or his friends
petitioned for promotion, until it was at last apparent that, save for his
record and the memory of his dead patron, he had no friends. But, still in the
department the tradition held and, though he was not advanced, he was not
dismissed.
"If that old man's been feeding from the public trough ever since the Civil
War," protested a "practical" politician, "it seems to me, Mr. Secretary, that
he's about had his share. Ain't it time he give some one else a bite? Some of us
that has, done the work, that has borne the brunt----"
"This place he now holds," interrupted the Secretary of State suavely, "is one
hardly commensurate with services like yours. I can't pronounce the name of it,
and I'm not sure just where it is, but I see that, of the last six consuls we
sent there, three resigned within a month and the other three died of
yellow-fever. Still, if you. insist----"
The practical politician reconsidered hastily. "I'm not the sort," he protested,
"to turn out a man appointed by our martyred President. Besides, he's so old
now, if the fever don't catch him, he'll die of old age, anyway."