The Spirit Of Democracy

A Dutchman Sold.

Saturday morning, at the hour of the drawing of the Louisville lottery, two Teuton clerks in the Adjutant General's office, were wending their way, with the usual stolid indifference of Dutchmen, to work. Each had a ticket in the lottery aforesaid, and each expected to draw the first prize, with its attendant supply of lager, pretzels, blood puddings, etc.

The A. G. O. has never been at a loss for ways, and one projected and sent a telegram soon after nine to the building on New York Avenue, near Seventeenth Street, addressed to our friend Hartz, informing him that he had drawn the first prize.

At the time of its receipt the corpulent German was pasting. Seizing the telegram, he opened it with more nervousness than Wood displayed at his hanging, and, reading its contents, plunged his paste-brush into the paste-pot, withdrew it, and chucking it up against the ceiling, exclaimed:

"Gentlemen, I do not more pasting in this building. Ain't it! I am so rich like der Teufel. Don't it!"

Snatching his hat, he rushed to the War Department building proper, to see the officer in charge; but meeting the placid Dave, he was informed that some general service clerks were passing in review, and that the major could not be seen. Chafing with the delay, he wanted to go in "de four o'clock drain," he exclaimed; "I must got der furlough to gone and got the monish what I draws in their lottery. Dave, I must got den days or I goes de building out!"

In his frenzy he rushed to the room of Max, the "imperturbable," to get some sympathy, but only to receive the cold shoulder, and to bear what no man could endure—the gibes and sneers of poor government clerks. Striking his heart with his hand, he exclaimed, with true Dutch emphasis:

"Don't it! you boor glerks ish gelous mit me because you don't draw notings mit your dickets," and, leaving the room, he turned half a dozen somersaults toward the west door, striking the light-haired messenger in the back of the neck, and, with a Dutch tam-o-shanter: "How you was been, hey? I don't vas see you dis long time. I am orth $75,000. Ain't it? Gome and ret some lager."

Cranmer (not the one that was burned for principle), reinforced with several temperance clerks, attracted by the noise (otherwise they never leave their rooms), and the graduated first-floor physicians, suffered themselves to be borne to a neighboring restaurant to allay, if possible, the nervous state of friend Hartz by drinking moderately to the health of a fortunate fellow-clerk.

Armstrong, M. D., seeing the palpable necessity for some safety-valve to keep down to reasonable pressure the spirits of his Teutonic patient, and prevent utter exhaustion, recommended he draw a keg of lager by a string of sausages from the War Department to the navy yard, and he would see him before the evening train left; fee, $10,000.

When last seen, he was opposite a restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue looking quite rational, and exclaiming:

"Shentlemen, I am worth sebenty bibe thousand dollar. Don't it? Bock is alive and doing vell."