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285 Hayes’s Reformer in Hong Kong 20 Hayes’s Reformer in Hong Kong Eventually Mosby accepted a Republican appointment, consul in Hong Kong, and went into exile in “far Cathay,” leaving his heart behind with his children in Virginia. Three were under twelve years of age; Ada, the youngest, was seven. They were beautiful, and he loved them dearly; but he would not see them for nearly seven years, except Beverly, who came to Hong Kong as his vice consul for the last two and one-half years. He left them in the care of his mother in Virginia and wrote to them frequently and sent gifts and money for their education and living expenses. When he returned they were nearly grown; Ada was fourteen. The consulate was on the water’s edge, and after dinner he would sit on the veranda and watch small launches coming and going to ships anchored in the harbor, flying the flags of every trading nation. He felt shut up on the small island, and, when he was lonely and homesick, his gentle side suffered. “I am anxious to see my children who are all that makes life dear to me,” he wrote. And to the gentle Mosby it seemed amazing that conflict followed him here: “It seems that I am fated like Ulysses always to be in a storm, never to see sunshine & rest. I thought that if there was a spot on this earth where peace could be found it wd. be on an island on the China coast & here I expected repose for a short time from strife. But my doom has followed me until I begin to think that the curse of unrest has been pronounced on me as it was on Salathiel.”1 In anguish,the gentle side of his personality identified with Ulysses, the hero of Homer’s Odyssey who wandered for ten years; and with Salathiel, the Wandering Jew in medieval legend. Salathiel was living in Jerusalem along the Way of the Cross, and, when Jesus came by carrying 286 Gray Ghost the cross and stopped to rest, Salathiel chased him away. Therefore, in the story, Christ condemned him to live until the Second Coming, maturing to the age of one hundred and perpetually reverting back to age thirty, always a vagrant and stranger, wandering alone on the earth. Buttheconflictsideof Mosby’spersonalityprevailed,andhecharged into battle against corruption. Engrossed in strife, he identified with Hercules; he was cleansing the consular service of decades of corruption like Hercules flushed thirty years of filth from the floor of the Augean stables. Suddenly, the island did not seem so small, and he came to enjoy the jackdaw that sang on his windowsill each morning, the mild climate, the diverse people, the New England sea captains that he had dinner with on their ships,and most of all the absorbing contention with a welldefined enemy.“I never enjoyed better health than I have here,”he wrote. “I take a sea bath every night & sleep as sound as a log.”2 Declaring war on the consuls who had banded together in China to steal from sailors, embezzle government funds, and bully the weak and defenseless,Mosby achieved reforms that touched the soul of the American reform ideal. The State Department, Mosby’s employer, protected the Consular Ring; but the more powerful the opponent,the more Mosby enjoyed the fight. Refusing to be intimidated, he defied the Department and with the quiet, behind-the-scenes support of Hayes swept the China coast. Before it was over, Mosby’s work caused the resignation or recall of the assistant secretary of state for Consular Affairs in Washington, the minister to China in Peking, the consul general in Shanghai, and the consul in Bangkok, and their replacement with honest, first-rate men. “While the Democratic orators in Virginia have been talking reform I have been acting it,” he wrote.3 It had been relatively easy obtaining the appointment because he had become a friend of Hayes. He visited the White House, and they talked about the Civil War. Mosby hosted the president’s tour of Montpelier , James Madison’s home. Hayes rewarded Mosby with patronage, but to support his family he had to ask for a salaried position. He asked for employment as a lawyer in the attorney general’s office, but there were no openings.Hayes offered him the consulate at Canton,which was not very desirable, and Mosby turned it down.Then on August 22, 1878, Hayes...

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