The Arkansas Advocate

AMUSING.
LETTER FROM MRS. ROYALL.
Washington City, May, 1831.

Dear Mr. ____

How do you do? I am dying to hear from you and your charming little city—how does it come on? all alive and bustling, no doubt, filled with cotton bags and blue skins. How is my dear friend Mr. H—? the rascally printers have spelt his name wrong in my book, besides making a thousand other blunders—will you be so good as to correct them in your paper. What have you done with that vagabond ____, who met me in the court house? (It is a pretty building.) The vagabond! to insult a lone woman, the widow of a Revolutionary hero! Remember me to all my kind friends in Macon—I shall never forget them.

Dont get angry with me! Dont abuse me for not writing oftener. You know how full my hands always are—aye, more than full, so that I haven't a moment to devote to friendship—Business and politics claim every instant of my time. Haven't I the whole world to regulate? isn't every government under the sun in confusion? aint the sun itself abusing his trust? dont the seasons all stand in need of Reform? and who can better regulate these matters than Anne Royall? What would Christendom and the masons do but for me? To-day I must tickle the three tails of the Grand Turk—to-morrow comb the moustachios of the valiant Russ—next day tune the fiddle for Monsier of France—then restuff the easy chair of John Bull, then send a new whip top to the emperor of Austria—then give the starving fighting Poles bread and butter, make up a pair of small clothes for Belgium, and whittle a toothpick for king Ferdinand! by which time his holiness the Pope must have his linen smoothed again.—

So you see I cant be idle; I've a thousand letters to read every day, and a thousand answers to write—so many applications for office, and so many complaints against postmasters, contractors, collectors, and the like! I shall go distracted, stark mad—fifty clerks could not do half my business, if I dare trust them to do it, which I dare not.

We are all in a pretty pickle here at present—the wheels of government stick in the mud, the officers like young steers pull against each other; they dont gee together at all. Not long ago I was sent for from New York in as great a hurry as ever midwife was. I hastened to the capital—I found it in confusion. The rascally hirelings, while their master was laid up with an attack of bilious colic, and wasn't expected to live an hour, instead of sympathising at his bedside, were rumaging his desks and pigeon holes! they cant deny it, the varlets! I caught them in the very act!—You know the result, they were exposed and turned away, as they should have been long ago.

V— was in real distress: Do Mrs. Royall, says he, deliver me from the hands of these Philistines! (the cringing fellow, only a year ago he refused to buy a Black book.) Deliver yourself, says I. I had no hand in bringing them upon you. Shake not your greasy locks at me! Don't say I did it! says I to him. Dear Mrs. R. says he, can't you help me? and he looked so piteously my bowels moved for him, so I promised to see what could be done.—

I shall send him to do penance among the anti-Reformers in England. Some of the others wont fare so well; Branch I have sent home to be devoured by his own dogs; Ingham is turned out to grass; Eaton I shall keep for a pointer a while longer. B-a--, through my intercession is still under consideration, I wish to give him a further trial. But I must take care how I blab—cabinet secrets must not be divulged to every body; you know; you see what a scrape Calhoun and Crawford are in from that same cause; but I rely on your discretion.

What is Gov. T-- doing among the wiregrass? has he abandoned his tory friends in the South state? has he ever told you what a blessing I gave him about them same nullifiers? the— poor dear deluded man! I told him he ought to have a dishclout fastened to his tail the balance of his life; then he gave such a look out of his two eyes, that it went to my heart. Hayne and McDuffie have bit their own noses off—they wouldn't be governed by me, though I was the first to put them on the trail.—Having accomplished my ends, I tried to call off my dogs; but they had got off a wrong scent and are now lost.

I have just had a long talk with the : the Cherokees shall positively remove in less than a year; there would be no difficulty about it if Gov. G and his foppish colonels and brutal guards would keep about their own business. The smoke of their oppressions has gone up; and verily I fear it will be answered upon the heads— of the innocent. I shall go to Georgia and put in for a draw in the next land lottery. G. will give me three chances at least, in return for the many favors I have shown him, besides what I have done for Georgia and the South

Is your post office any better attended to than formerly? let me know if it is not, and it shall be. The post office is particularly under my guardianship, and shan't be neglected.

P. S. What do they say of my Southern Tour? How do the blue skins admire their own likenesses? Give my love to all. Adieu.

ANNE ROYALL.