Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1884 — No Fun Being President. [ARTICLE]

No Fun Being President.

» R is not an *njoyabl* traat nomottmon to be *• editor « a paper, and mould public opinion at so much per mould, and get complimentary tickets to the sleight-of-hand performances, but with its care and worry, its heartaches and apprehensions, it is more comforting on the whole than being President ’ When we were a boy, and sat in the front row among the pale-haired boys with checked gingham skirts at the Sun-dny-school, and the teacher told us to live uprightly and learn a hundred verses of the Scriptures each week so that we could .be President, we thought that unniffl> d, calm, and universal approbation waited upon the man who successfully rose to be the executive of a great Nation. With years, and accumulated wisdom, however, we have changed our mind. Now we sit at our desk and write burning words for the press that will live and keep warm long after we are turned to dust and ash<s. We write heavj editorials on the pork outlook, amFsadly compose exhaustive treatises on the chinch-bug, while men in other walks of life go out into the health-promoting mountains, and catch trout and woodticks. Our lot is not, perhaps, a joyous one. We swelter through the long July days with our suspenders hanging in limp fggtoons down over our chair, while we wMB the death-dealing pen, but we do not want to be President. Our salary is smaller, it is true, but when we get through our work in the, middle of the night, and put on our plug hat and steal home through the allpervading darkness, we thank our stars, as we split the kindling and.bed down the family mule, that on the morrow, although we may be licked by the man we wrote up to-day, our official record can not be attacked. There is a nameless joy that settles down upon us as we retire to our simple couch on the floor, and pull thfe cellar door over us to keep us warm, which the world can neither give nor take away. We plod along, trom day to day, slicing great wads of mental pabulum from our bulging intellect, never murmuring nor complaining when lawyers and physicians put on their broad brim chip hats and go out to the breezy canyons and the shady glens to regain their health. We just plug along from day to day, eating a hard boiled egg from one hand while we write a scathing criticism on the qfic transit gloria cucumber with the other. No, we do not crave the proud position of President, nor do we hanker to climb to an altitude where forty or fifty millions of civilized people can distinctly see whether we eat custard pie with a knife or not. Once in a while, however, in the still ■ ness of the night, we kick the covers off, and moan in our dreams as we imagine that we are President, and we wake with the cold, damp sweat (or perspiration, at* the case may be) standing out of every pore, only to find that we are not President after all, by an overwhelming ma jority, and we get up and steal aw av t< the rainwater barrel and take a drink and go back to a dreamless, suorele.sleep, —Laramie Boomerang.