“Flint-Picker?”

“Yes.  Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century.  The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol.  They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn’t been repealed—­been overlooked and forgotten, you see—­and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the same.”

Washington said musingly after a pause: 

“How strange it seems—­to start for Minister to England at twenty thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at—­”

“Three dollars a week.  It’s human life, Washington—­just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome:  you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer.”

There was another meditative silence.  Then Washington said, with earnest compassion in his voice—­

“And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get absolutely nothing for it.”

“Nothing?” The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his amazement to expand.  “Nothing, Washington?  I ask you this:  to be a perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?”

It was Washington’s turn to be amazed.  He was stricken dumb; but the wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face were more eloquent than any words could have been.  The Colonel’s wounded spirit was healed and he resumed his seat pleased and content.  He leaned forward and said impressively: 

“What was due to a man who had become forever conspicuous by an experience without precedent in the history of the world?—­a man made permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James all the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda—­salary payable in guano—­which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before they got down to my name in the list of applicants.  Certainly something august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable experience was my due, and I got it.  By the common voice of this community, by acclamation of the people, that mighty utterance which brushes aside laws and legislation, and from whose decrees there is no appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body representing the multifarious sovereignties and civilizations of the globe near the republican court of the United States of America.  And they brought me home with a torchlight procession.”

“It is wonderful, Colonel, simply wonderful.”

“It’s the loftiest official position in the whole earth.”