And by George I didn't get it." "Flint-Picker ?" "Yes.

Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century.
The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol.
They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been overlooked and forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the same." Washington said musingly after a pause: "How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--" "Three dollars a week.

It's human life, Washington--just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer." There was another meditative silence.

Then Washington said, with earnest compassion in his voice-- "And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get absolutely nothing for it." "Nothing ?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his amazement to expand.

"Nothing, Washington?
I ask you this: to be a perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing ?" It was Washington's turn to be amazed.