Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1905 — WANT TO BE CONSULS. [ARTICLE]

WANT TO BE CONSULS.

Tremendous Crush of Applicants for Foreign Bertha. Never before since the government began lias there been such a crush of applicants for consular posts as has been witnessed at the White House since the inauguration, says a Washington correspondent. Some of the men applying for consular billets present remarkable reasons for their desire to take office under this government in foreign countries. One of them, on his way to the White House to see the President, stopped at the State Department and filed a formal application for a post in Spain which he had been informed was soon to be vacant. “Do you speak Spanish?” the young man, a citizen of central Illinois, was asked at the State Department. “Nope—don’t know a word of the lingo,” was the applicant s reply. “That’s one of the main reasons why I want the job—want to learn Spanish.” Another applicant for consular preferment, this one from lowa, told the State Department people, upon whom he called to make preliminary inquiries, that he wanted tlie consulship—held down by a very eonqietpiit man who is not going to be disturbed—at a German city near which a famous spa is located, lie was asked why lie had fixed his mind upon just that place. “Well,” he replied, quite offhand, like a man sure of his ground, “I’m all run down with the rheumatiz, and I’m informed that them Dutch baths fix a? rheumatic feller up in no time. I want to git near ’em so's I can git boiled out.” Not less engaging was the reason offered by a young Michigan man for desiring a consular bertli in an Italian city of the second grade, this place also being occupied by a man who is going to be let alone. “You see,” he explained at the State Department, “a sister of mine married a Dago up in Detroit three or four years ago—Dago who paints, or sculpts, or something of that sort. He took her to this town in Italy—the place where I want to go—soon after they were married. The folk at liome have heard from various sources —not from Sis herself, because she never writes a word about it —that he isn’t treating her on the square, neglects her, and all that. I want to be appointed to that Italian town so’s I can be near Sis, and if I find that she's getting tlie worst of it, so’s I can punch the nose off the Dago. I guess that’s a pretty good reason, isn’t it ?” A Swede gave as a reason for wanting a consular office in his native land that he had a rich uncle there and wished to be near him when he died. “He may loaf me and leave me somet'ang fa his will.” The usual crowd of colored applicants for tlie Liberian post have come to Washington. One of them, a jolly, very fat and very black man from Arkansas, gave a singular reason for his desire to be appointed to the post on the east coast of Africa. “Ali'in dun tiuhd o’ desc liyuh nigguhs in dis country whut wants tuh be w'ite folks,” he said. “All wants tuh mix up wif sho’ ’nough nigguh nigguhs, dat doan’ want tuh be nothin’ else, fo’ uh change."