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Office-Seeking has become a legitimatized branch of our every-day business, as much so as in former times “reduced gentlemen” took to keeping school or posting books. In former times, men took to politics to give zest to a life already replete with pecuniary indulgences, as those in the “sere and yellow leaf” are wont to take to religion as a solacing comfort against things that are past, and pave the way to a very desirable futurity. But now, politicians are of no peculiar class or condition of citizens; the success of a champion depends not so much upon the matter, as upon the manner, not upon the capital he may have in real estate, bank funds or public stocks, but upon the fundamental principle of “confidence,” gutta percha lungs and unmistakable amplitude of–brass and bravado! If any man doubts the fact, let him look around him, and calculate the matter. Why is it that lawyers are so particularly felicitous in running for, securing, and usurping most of all the important or profitable offices under government? Lungs–gutta percha lungs and everlasting impudence, does it. A man might as well try to bail out the Mississippi with a tea-spoon, or shoot shad with a fence-rail, as to hope for a seat in Congress, merely upon the possession of patriotic principles, or double-concentrated and refined integrity. Why, if George Washington was a Virginia farmer to-day, his chance for the Presidency wouldn’t be a circumstance to that of Rufus Choate’s, while there is hardly a lawyer attached to the Philadelphia bar that would not beat the old gentleman out of his top boots in running for the Senate! But we’ll cut “wise saws” for a modern instance; let us attend a small “caucus” where incipient Demostheneses, Ciceros, and Mark Antonies most do congregate, and see things “workin’.” It is night, a ward meeting of the unterrified, meat-axe, non-intervention–hats off–hit him again–butt-enders, have called a meeting to caucus for the coming fall contest. “Owing to the inclemency of the weather,” and other causes too tedious to mention, of some eight hundred of the unterrified, non-intervention–Cuban annexation–Wilmot proviso, compromise, meat-axe, hats off–hit him again–butt-enders –only eighty attend the call. Of these eighty faithful, some forty odd are on the wing for office; one at least wants to work his way up to the gubernatorial chair, five to the Senate, ten to the “Assembly,” fifteen to the mayoralty, and the balance to the custom house.

Now, before the “curtain rises,” little knots of the anxious multitude are seen here and there about the corners of the adjacent neighborhood and in the recesses of the caucus chamber, their heads together–caucusing on a small scale.

“Flambang, who’d you think of puttin’ up to-night for the Senate, in our ward?” asks a cadaverous, but earnest unterrified, of a brother in the same cause.

“Well, I swan, I don’t know; what do you think of Jenkins?”

“Jenkins?” leisurely responded the first speaker; “Jenkins is a pooty good sort of a man, but he ain’t known; made himself rather unpop’ler by votin’ agin that grand junction railroad to the north pole bill, afore the Legislature, three years ago; besides he’s served two years in the Legislature, and been in the custom house two years; talks of going to California or somewhere else, next spring–so I-a, I-a–don’t think much of Jenkins, anyhow!”

“Well, then,” says Flambang, “there’s Dr. Rhubarb; what do you think of him? He’s a sound unterrified, good man.”

“A–ye-e-e-s, the doctor’s pooty good sort of a man, but I don’t think its good policy to run doctors for office. If they are defeated it sours their minds equal to cream of tartar; it spiles their practice, and ‘tween you and I, Flambang, if they takes a spite at a man that didn’t vote for ’em, and he gets sick, they’re called in; how easy it is for ’em to poison us! “