Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1894 — LIVE ON THEIR HOPES. [ARTICLE]

LIVE ON THEIR HOPES.

The Old. Ragged. and Forlorn Who Haunt the National Capital. The pathetic side of Washington—with its place-hunters, with its starving beggars, with its trembling and its aged, who, day by day, come and go in vain at the doors of the departments, for the audience that never is to come — is something to touch a heart of stone. You see old men going about the streets, mumbling to themselves, and fumbling packages of papers in their overcoat pockets: you see feeble, decrepit women, who ought to be in some sheltering heme, dragging themselves aimlessly here and there, waiting the pleasure of those busy men, who will see their callers—some day. There is another class of waiters and watchers in Washington who never give up hope. Year after year for ten. twenty —yes, fifty-year'. they have been turning up, in expectation of the settlement of claims by Congress—and there is as small a chance of ever seeing them iis posed of to-day as there was years when they were first filed! Some of these men are to be found in the adjacent towns, whither they have Been'driven in search of cheaper Others live in Washington, undjar the very shadow of the dome of the great building whence they one day expect victory.