That it was Civil Service
Reform, and of course he would be promoted soon.
"Had Gashwiler procured the appointment?"
No. He believed it was ME. I had told his story to Assistant-
secretary Blank, who had, in turn related it to Bureau-director
Dash--both good fellows--but this was all they could do. Yes, it
was a foothold. But he must go now.
Nevertheless, I followed him up and down, and, cheered up with a
rose-colored picture of his wife and family, and my visit there,
and promising to come and see him the next time I came to
Washington, I left him with his self-imposed yoke.
With a new administration, Civil Service Reform came in, crude and
ill-digested, as all sudden and sweeping reforms must be; cruel to
the individual, as all crude reforms will ever be; and among the
list of helpless men and women, incapacitated for other work by
long service in the dull routine of federal office, who were
decapitated, the weak, foolish, emaciated head of Expectant Dobbs
went to the block. It afterward appeared that the gifted Gashwiler
was responsible for the appointment of twenty clerks, and that the
letter of poor Dobbs, in which he dared to refer to the now
powerless Gashwiler, had sealed his fate.
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