The Consul | Page 3

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Etext scanned by Aaron Cannon of Paradise, California.

The Consul
by Richard Harding Davis

THE CONSUL
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