Sketches New and Old

by Mark Twain

  THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION [Written about 1867]

  WASHINGTON, December, 1867.

  I have resigned. The government appears to go on much the same, butthere is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of theSenate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position.I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members ofthe government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of thenation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect.If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during thesix days that I was connected with the government in an officialcapacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me clerk ofthat Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to playbilliards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I hadmet with that courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was mydue. But I did not. Whenever I observed that the head of a departmentwas pursuing a wrong course, I laid down everything and went and tried toset him right, as it was my duty to do; and I never was thanked for it ina single instance. I went, with the best intentions in the world, to theSecretary of the Navy, and said:

  "Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything butskirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic. Now, thatmay be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light.If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home. There is nouse in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion. It is tooexpensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the navalofficers--pleasure excursions that are in reason--pleasure excursionsthat are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippion a raft--"

  You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I hadcommitted a crime of some kind. But I didn't mind. I said it was cheap,and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, fora tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.

  Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him Iwas connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity. Isaid that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question,coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would informhim that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then therewas a fine storm! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, andgive my attention strictly to my own business in future. My firstimpulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others besideshimself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.

  I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me atall until he learned that I was connected with the government. If I hadnot been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in.I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told himI had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations ofGeneral Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of hismethod of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I said he fought tooscattering. He ought to get the Indians more together--get them togetherin some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for bothparties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing soconvincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approveof the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap andeducation. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but theyare more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian mayrecover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish himsome time or other. It undermines his constitution; it strikes at thefoundation of his being. "Sir," I said, "the time has come whenblood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and aspelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!"

  The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and Isaid I was. He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk ofthe Senate Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest forcontempt of court, and restrained of my liberty for the best part of theday.

  I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government getalong the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called onthe Secretary of the Treasury. He said:

  "What will you have?"

  The question threw me off my guard. I said, "Rum punch."

  He said: "If you have got any business here, sir, state it--and in as fewwords as possible."

  I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject soabruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under thecircumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point. I nowwent into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extravagant lengthof his report. I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardlyconstructed; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, nosentiment--no heroes, no plot, no pictures--not even wood-cuts. Nobodywould read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin hisreputation by getting out a thing like that. If he ever hoped to succeedin literature he must throw more variety into his writings. He mustbeware of dry detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac wasderived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrumsdistributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of itmore than all the internal revenue he could put into it. I said thesethings in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fellinto a violent passion. He even said I was an ass. He abused me in themost vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling withhis business he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take myhat 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 theyknow 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 seemedas if I could not do anything in an official capacity without gettingmyself into trouble. And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but whatI conceived to be for the good of my country. The sting of my wrongs mayhave driven me to unjust and harmful conclusions, but it surely seemed tome that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary ofthe Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the verybeginning to drive me from the Administration. I never attended but oneCabinet meeting while I was connected with the government. That wassufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seemdisposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of theCabinet had arrived. He said they had, and I entered. They were allthere; but nobody offered me a seat. They stared at me as if I had beenan intruder. The President said:

  "Well, sir, who are you?"

  I handed him my card, and he read: "The HON. MARK TWAIN, Clerk of theSenate 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 Treasurysaid:

  "This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry andconundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac."

  The Secretary of War said: "It is the same visionary that came to meyesterday 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 whohas been interfering with my business time and again during the week. Heis distressed about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasureexcursion, as he terms it. His proposition about some insane pleasureexcursion on a raft is too absurd to repeat."

  I said: "Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discreditupon every act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition todebar me from all voice in the counsels of the nation. No noticewhatever was sent to me to-day. It was only by the merest chance that Ilearned that there was going to be a Cabinet meeting. But let thesethings pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet meeting or is itnot?"

  The President said it was.

  "Then," I said, "let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter awayvaluable time in unbecoming fault-findings wit
h each other's officialconduct."

  The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said,"Young man, you are laboring under a mistake. The clerks of theCongressional committees are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are thedoorkeepers of the Capitol, strange as it may seem. Therefore, much aswe could desire your more than human wisdom in our deliberations, wecannot lawfully avail ourselves of it. The counsels of the nation mustproceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full well it may, beit balm to your sorrowing spirit that by deed and voice you did what inyou lay to avert it. You have my blessing. Farewell."

  These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But theservants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den inthe Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative,when one of the Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in apassion and said:

  "Where have you been all day?"

  I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to aCabinet meeting.

  "To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at aCabinet meeting?"

  I said I went there to consult--allowing for the sake of argument that hewas in any wise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, andended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report onbomb-shells, egg-shells, clamshells, and I don't know what all, connectedwith conchology, and nobody had been able to find me.

  This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel'sback. I said, "Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for sixdollars a day? If that is the idea, let me recommend the SenateCommittee on Conchology to hire somebody else. I am the slave of nofaction! Take back your degrading commission. Give me liberty, or giveme death!"

  From that hour I was no longer connected with the government. Snubbed bythe department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairmanof a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, castfar from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook mybleeding 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

  Total .......................... $2,986

  --[Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never goback when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than Ican understand.]

  Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-sixdollars for clerkship salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing meto the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply markedin the margin "Not allowed." So, the dread alternative is embraced atlast. Repudiation has begun! The nation is lost.

  I am done with official life for the present. Let those clerks who arewilling to be imposed on remain. I know numbers of them in thedepartments who are never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting,whose advice is never asked about war, or finance, or commerce, by theheads of the nation, any more than if they were not connected with thegovernment, and who actually stay in their offices day after day andwork! They know their importance to the nation, and they unconsciouslyshow it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance at therestaurant--but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts oflittle scraps from the newspapers into a scrapbook--sometimes as many aseight or ten scraps a day. He doesn't do it well, but he does it as wellas he can. It is very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect.Yet he only gets eighteen hundred dollars a year. With a brain like his,that young man could amass thousands and thousands of dollars in someother pursuit, if he chose to do it. But no--his heart is with hiscountry, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrapbook left.And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but suchknowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country,and toil on and suffer for twenty-five hundred dollars a year. What theywrite has to be written over again by other clerks sometimes; but when aman has done his best for his country, should his country complain? Thenthere are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting,and waiting for a vacancy--waiting patiently for a chance to help theircountry out--and while they are waiting, they only get barely twothousand dollars a year for it. It is sad--it is very, very sad. When amember of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employmentwherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon hiscountry, and gives him a clerkship in a department. And there that manhas to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nationthat never thinks of him, never sympathizes with him--and all for twothousand or three thousand dollars a year. When I shall have completedmy list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statementof what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see thatthere are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get halfenough pay.