EVERYBODY BOTHERED

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 19, 1881

EVERYBODY BOTHERED.

"Man never is, but always to be, blest." Each individual finds, on attaining to the object of his ambition, that he is still hampered by restrictions and worried by obstacles, and that the bed he had fancied to be of roses is thickly sprinkled with thorns. The patriot who, after long suffering, succeeds in attaining the mightiness of a position on the police force, soon finds that the policeman's lot is not a happy one altogether. The able attorney who becomes a member of the City Hall Commission is fretted by the difficulty of keeping "my men" in positions. The politician who gains a place in the Legislature soon discovers that he cannot be happy till he gets to Congress; the congressman sighs to become Governor; the governor lays pipes toward the United States Senate; the senator looks toward the Cabinet; the cabinet member intrigues for the presidency; the president plans for another term. Nobody is satisfied. The Czar is scared of his life all the time. Emperor William and Bismarck are in little less trepidation. The kings of Spain and Italy never feel safe. The king of Greece is preparing to skip out, if necessary. And now comes said Pasha, Prime Minister of the Porte, and talks in this discouraged way to a delegation of bankers who have been urging peace and industry as necessary for Turkey:—

"I quite understand that European capitalists are frightened away from here, since every offer based on concession of an industrial nature, is rejected. I myself have always seen clearly that the regeneration of Turkey is bound up with two conditions—peace and productive labor. But there are elements at work stronger than I. Whenever I support a petition for a concession, I notice that I am suspected of having been bribed; and important local reforms cease to be recommended, because one does not care to be suspected of being subject to foreign influence. I find the same hindrances in the arrangement of political questions. When ignorant eunuchs obtain a voice in the State Councils, ministers cannot govern."—Alta.