Tarry at home travels . n such order, as you can see, isbad. I remember I once had a letter from Wash-ington to ask me if I could tell them where Kohlsmaps were — a collection of considerable valuewhich Mr. J. G. Kohl had made for them. I saidI would show them the first time I was in Wash-ington, and then I took one of the gentlemenof the Department which wanted to know —took him in a cab to a house which the Depart-ment had occupied in the war, and went up intoa particular hallway where was the originalchest in which Kohls maps were to be have to be certain permanent people whorem
Tarry at home travels . n such order, as you can see, isbad. I remember I once had a letter from Wash-ington to ask me if I could tell them where Kohlsmaps were — a collection of considerable valuewhich Mr. J. G. Kohl had made for them. I saidI would show them the first time I was in Wash-ington, and then I took one of the gentlemenof the Department which wanted to know —took him in a cab to a house which the Depart-ment had occupied in the war, and went up intoa particular hallway where was the originalchest in which Kohls maps were to be have to be certain permanent people whoremember such traditions of the Department. Sometimes such people drop into the habits THE NEW WASHINGTON 401 of all chancelleries and adopt that infamous ruleof feudal governments that it is better not to doa thing than to do it. I love to tell the stories on the other side whichshow that with us the Sovereign is the People,that the Sovereign is in the saddle, and that theSovereign pokes about in Washington as Haroun-. CoxNECTicuT Avenue, \;;tiix. al-Rashid did in Bagdad. The late CommodoreGreen told me that, coming home from the WestIndies when he was a youngster, he said in theoffice of the chief of his bureau that he thought 2d 402 TARRY AT HOME TRAVELS it was time that the longitudes should be read-justed by electric telegraph. If you will thinkof it, this gives you absolute precision, far greaterthan stellar observations can give. The chiefof the bureau spoke of this to the Secretary ofthe Navy. The Secretary of the Navy sent thenext morning for the young lieutenant, and atonce asked him how he would take the longitudes,and, seeing that he had a head on his shoulders,gave him a small vessel for voyages in the Gulfof Mexico and all the men he wanted. From this beginning began the system of tele-graphic longitudes which has gone so far thatnow every hydrographic bureau in the world usesthe longitudes which Uncle Sam has calculatedfrom our own observations in ever
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