Just The Man We Said He Was

Minister Sill is no "mudsill," but i true born minister plenipotentiary jf the greatest government on earth, Eully capable of keeping the dignity jf the United States on its legs and disposed to do so. Frank G. Carjenter, a writer of interesting Corean sketches, in the course of a ialf-page letter in the Free Press of ast Sunday, relates among other things, how Minister Sill struck his gait soon after reaching the royal capital. It appears that the Corean officials, in order to impress foreigners with the tremendous importance and consequence of Asia's little vermiform appendix, and to diminish their rank in the eyes of the people, constructed a back eutrance to the palace, through which they proposed to shove the representatives of other nations, instead of marching them through the king's highway. But it so feil out when the gaudily appareled under-strappers of his weasel-eyed majesty, attempted to poke the gentleman from Ypsilanti into the palace through the cow-lane, that he got up in his chariot and kicked; kicked like a Pittsfield steer on the way to a county fair. He informed the gilded gillies of a giracrack royalty that he was no back-door, kitchen consul, to come around by way of the hog-yard and crawl in at the cat-hole, but a representative of one of the most bang-up governnients on the face of the earth, and by all the powers of Washtenaw and the great Grover, he would come in at the front door, through the king's gate, or not at all; and he bade the chief lackey to go and teil His Royal ' Nibs to put that in his opium pipe and smoke it. Then he sat down and crossed his legs on the dashboard of his divan and waiced in state for the effect of his message. It worked like a galvanic shock on a corpse, and verv soon a number of the king's servants, with the sovereign's special chair, came galloping toward the American minister with their elegantly tattooed silk shirts worn outside their pantaloons, and he was immediately transferred to the sovereign's equipage, and with erect posture and silk hat tilted back at the regulation Ypsilanti slant, came spinning through the front gate into the presence of his majesty, who accorded him the highest honors. America was there, with both feet. It is with no small pride that we record this information. But it was just as we expected. Minister Sill is the kind of man we took him for. The Coreans should have understood by the looks of the minister that he was not the kind of tongs to piek his way into the palace by the woodshed route, lined with slop buckets and coal scuttles. Hurrah for Minister Sill!