He said: "If you have got any business here, sir, state it--and in as few
words as possible."
I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so
abruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the
circumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point. I now
went into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extravagant length
of his report. I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly
constructed; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no
sentiment no heroes, no plot, no pictures--not even wood-cuts. Nobody
would read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin his
reputation by getting out a thing like that. If he ever hoped to succeed
in literature he must throw more variety into his writings. He must
beware of dry detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac was
derived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrums
distributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of it
more than all the internal revenue he could put into it. I said these
things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fell
into a violent passion. He even said I was an ass. He abused me in the
most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling with
his business he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take my
hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office,
and I did go. It was just like a new author. They always think they
know more than anybody else when they are getting out their first book.
Nobody can tell them anything.
During the whole time that I was connected with the government it seemed
as if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting
myself into trouble. And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what
I conceived to be for the good of my country. The sting of my wrongs may
have driven me to unjust and harmful conclusions, but it surely seemed to
me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of
the Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the very
beginning to drive me from the Administration. I never attended but one
Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the government. That was
sufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seem
disposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of the
Cabinet had arrived. He said they had, and I entered. They were all
there; but nobody offered me a seat. They stared at me as if I had been
an intruder. The President said:
"Well, sir, who are you?"
I handed him my card, and he read: "The HON. MARK TWAIN, Clerk of the
Senate Committee on Conchology." Then he looked at me from head to foot,
as if he had never heard of me before. The Secretary of the Treasury
said:
"This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and
conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac."
The Secretary of War said: "It is the same visionary that came to me
yesterday with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death,
and massacre the balance."
The Secretary of the Navy said: "I recognize this youth as the person who
has been interfering with my business time and again during the week. He
is distressed about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasure
excursion, as he terms it. His proposition about some insane pleasure
excursion on a raft is too absurd to repeat."
I said: "Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit
upon every act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition to
debar me from all voice in the counsels of the nation. No notice
whatever was sent to me to-day. It was only by the merest chance that I
learned that there was going to be a Cabinet meeting. But let these
things pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet meeting or is it
not?"
The President said it was.
"Then," I said, "let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away
valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings with each other's official
conduct."
The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said,
"Young man, you are laboring under a mistake. The clerks of the
Congressional committees are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are the
doorkeepers of the Capitol, strange as it may seem. Therefore, much as
we could desire your more than human wisdom in our deliberations, we
cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it. The counsels of the nation must
proceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full well it may, be
it balm to your sorrowing spirit that by deed and voice you did what in
you lay to avert it. You have my blessing. Farewell."
These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the
servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in
the Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative,
when one of the Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a
passion and said:
"Where have you been all day?"
I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a
Cabinet meeting.
"To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at a
Cabinet meeting?"
I said I went there to consult--allowing for the sake of argument that he
was in any wise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and
ended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on
bomb-shells, egg-shells, clamshells, and I don't know what all, connected
with conchology, and nobody had been able to find me.
This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel's
back. I said, "Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six
dollars a day? If that is the idea, let me recommend the Senate
Committee on Conchology to hire somebody else. I am the slave of no
faction! Take back your degrading commission. Give me liberty, or give
me death!"
From that hour I was no longer connected with the government. Snubbed by
the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman
of a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast
far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my
bleeding country in the hour of her peril.
But I had done the state some service, and I sent in my bill:
The United States of America in account with
the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, Dr.
To consultation with Secretary of War ............ $50
To consultation with Secretary of Navy ........... $50
To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury ... $50
Cabinet consultation ...................No charge.
To mileage to and from Jerusalem, via Egypt,
Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz,
14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile ............. $2,800
To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee
on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day ........... $36