FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION. ' 267 



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 tp 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 commit- 

 tees are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are the doorkeepers of the Capitol, 



