Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0149/01496.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 15KB | 308 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01496}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
The Facts In The Case Of The Great Beef Contract}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{beef
contract
general
office
sherman
sir
day
government
bill
mackenzie}
$Date{1893}
$Log{}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        The Facts In The Case Of The Great Beef Contract
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

The Facts In The Case Of The Great Beef Contract

     In as few words as possible I wish to lay before the nation what share,
howsoever small, I have had in this matter - this matter which has so
exercised the public mind, engendered so much ill-feeling, and so filled the
newspapers of both continents with distorted statements and extravagant
comments.

     The origin of this distressful thing was this - and I assert here that
every fact in the following resume can be amply proved by the official records
of the General Government: -

     John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung county, New Jersey,
deceased, contracted with the General Government, on or about the 10th day of
October, 1861, to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of thirty barrels
of beef.

     Very well.

     He started after Sherman with the beef, but when he got to Washington
Sherman had gone to Manassas; so he took the beef and followed him there,
but arrived too late; he followed him to Nashville, and from Nashville to
Chattanooga, and from Chattanooga to Atlanta - but he never could overtake
him.  At Atlanta he took a fresh start and followed him clear through his
march to the sea.  He arrived too late again by a few days; but hearing
that Sherman was going out in the Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land,
he took shipping for Beirut, calculating to head off the other vessel.
When he arrived in Jerusalem with his beef, he learned that Sherman had not
sailed in the Quaker City, but had gone to the Plains to fight the Indians.
He returned to America, and started for the Rocky Mountains.  After sixty-
eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had got within four
miles of Sherman's headquarters, he was tomahawked and scalped, and the
Indians got the beef.  They got all of it but one barrel.  Sherman's army
captured that, and so even in death, the bold navigator partly fulfilled
his contract.  In his will, which he had kept like a journal, he bequeathed
the contract to his son Bartholomew W.  Bartholomew W. made out the
following bill, and then died: -
The United States

In account with John Wilson Mackenzie, of New Jersey, deceased.........Dr.

To thirty barrels of beef for General Sherman, at $100,.............$3,000
To traveling expenses and transportation............................14,000
                                                                   -------
                                               Total...............$17,000
                                    Rec'd Pay't.

     He died then; but he left the contract to Wm. J. Martin, who tried to
collect it, but died before he got through.  He left it to Barker J. Allen,
and he tried to collect it also.  He did not survive.  Barker J. Allen left it
to Anson G. Rogers, who attempted to collect it, and got along as far as the
Ninth Auditor's Office, when Death the great Leveller, came all unsummoned,
and foreclosed on him also.  He left the bill to a relative of his in
Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins by name, who lasted four weeks and two days,
and made the best time on record, coming within one of reaching the Twelfth
Auditor.  In his will he gave the contract bill to his uncle, by the name of
O-be-Joyful Johnson.  It was too undermining for Joyful. His last words were:
"Weep not for me - I am willing to go." And so he was, poor soul.  Seven
people inherited the contract after that, but they all died.  So it came into
my hands at last.  It fell to me through a relative by the name of Hubbard -
Bethlehem Hubbard of Indiana.  He had had a grudge against me for a long time;
but in his last moments he sent for me, and forgave me everything, and,
weeping gave me the beef contract.

     This ends the history of it up to the time that I succeeded to the
property.  I will now endeavor to set myself straight before the nation in
everything that concerns my share in the matter.  I took this beef contract,
and the bill for mileage and transportation, to the President of the United
States.

     He said, "Well, sir, what can I do for you?"

     I said, "Sire, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861, John Wilson
Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung county, New Jersey, deceased, contracted with
the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of third
barrels of beef - "

     He stopped me there, and dismissed me from his presence - kindly, but
firmly.  The next day I called on the Secretary of State.

     He said, "Well, sir?"

     I said, "Your Royal Highness: on or about the 10th of October, 1861, John
Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung county, New Jersey, deceased,
contracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum
total of thirty barrels of beef - "

     "That will do, sir - that will do; this office has nothing to do with
contracts for beef."

     I was bowed out.  I thought the matter all over, and finally, the
following day, I visited the Secretary of the Navy, who said, "Speak quickly,
sir; do not keep me waiting."

     I said.  "Your Royal Highness: on or about the 10th of October, 1861,
John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung county, New jersey, deceased,
contracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum
total of thirty barrels of beef - "

     Well, it was as far as I could get.  He had nothing to do with beef
contracts for General Sherman either.  I began to think it was a curious kind
of a Government.  It looks somehow as if they wanted to get out of paying for
that beef.  The following day I went to the Secretary of the Interior.

     I said, "Your Imperial Highness, on or about the 10th day of October - "

     "That is sufficient, sir.  I have heard of you before.  Go, take your
infamous beef contract out of this establishment.  The Interior Department has
nothing whatever to do with subsistence for the army."

     I went away.  But I was exasperated now.  I said I would haunt them; I
would infest every department of this iniquitous Government till that contract
business was settled.  I would collect that bill, or fall, as fell my
predecessors, trying.  I assailed the Postmaster General; I besieged the
Agricultural Department; I waylaid the Speaker of the House of
Representatives.  They had nothing to do with army contracts for beef.  I
moved upon the Commissioner of the Patent Office.

     I said, "Your August Excellency, on or about - "

     "Perdition!  have you got here with your incendiary beef contract, at
last?  We have nothing to do with beef contracts for the army, my dear sir."

     "Oh, that is all very well - but somebody has got to pay for that beef.
It has got to be paid now, too, or I'll confiscate this old Patent Office and
everything in it."

     "But, my dear sir - "

     "I don't make any difference, sir.  The Patent Office is liable for that
beef, I reckon; and liable or not liable, the Patent Office has got to pay for
it."

     Never mind the details.  It ended in a fight.  The Patent office won. But
I found out something to my advantage.  I was told that the Treasury
Department was the proper place for me to go.  I went there.  I waited two
hours and a half, and then I was admitted to the First Lord of the Treasury.

     I said, "Most noble, grave, and reverend Signor, on or about the 10th day
of October, 1861, John Wilson Macken - "

     "That is sufficient, sir.  I have heard of you.  Go to the First Auditor
of the Treasury."

     I did so.  He sent me to the Second Auditor.  The Second Auditor sent me
to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef
Division.  This began to look like business.  He examined his books and all
his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract. I went to the
Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division.  He examined his books and his
loose papers, but with no success.  I was encouraged. During that week I got
as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division; the next week I got through
the Claims Department; the third week I began and completed the Mislaid
Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the Dead Reckoning Department.  I
finished that in three days.  There was only one place left for it now.  I
laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds and Ends.  To his clerk, rather - he
was not there himself.  There were sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room,
writing in books, and there were seven well-favored young clerks showing them
how.  The young women smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled
back at them, and all went merry as a marriage bell.  Two or three clerks that
were reading the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and
nobody said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from
Fourth-Assistant- Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the very
day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I passed out
of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division.  I had got so accomplished by
this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment I entered an office
till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than two, or maybe three
times.

     So I stood there till I had changed four different times.  Then I said to
one of the clerks who was reading -

     "Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?"

     "What do you mean, sir?  whom do you mean?  If you mean the Chief of the
Bureau, he is out."

     "Will he visit the harem to-day?"

     The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper.
But I knew the ways of those clerks.  I knew I was safe if he got through
before another New York mail arrived.  He only had two more papers left.
After awhile he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I wanted.

     "Renowned and honored Imbecile: On or about - "

     "You are the beef contract man.  Give me your papers."

     He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends. Finally
he found the North-West Passage, as I regarded it - he found the long-lost
record of that beef contract - he found the rock upon which so many of my
ancestors had split before they ever got to it.  I was deeply moved.  And yet
I rejoiced - for I had survived.  I said with emotion, "Give it to me.  The
Government will settle now." He waved me back, and said there was something
yet to be done first.

     "Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie?" said he.

     "Dead."

     "When did he die?"

     "He didn't die at all - he was killed."

     "How?"

     "Tomahawked."

     "Who Tomahawked him?"

     "Why, an indian, of course.  You didn't suppose it was the superintendent
of a Sunday-school, did you?"

     "No. An Indian, was it?"

     "The same."

     "Name of the Indian?"

     "His name?  I don't know his name."

     "Must have his name.  Who saw the tomahawking done!"

     "I don't know."

     "You were not present yourself, then?"

     "Which you can see by my hair.  I was absent."

     "Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?"

     "Because he certainly died at that time, and I have every reason to
believe that he has been dead ever since.  I know he has, in fact."

     "We must have proofs.  Have you got the Indian?"

     "Of course not."

     "Well, you must get him.  Have you got the tomahawk?"

     "I never thought of such a thing."

     "You must get the tomahawk.  You must produce the Indian and the
tomahawk.  If Mackenzie's death can be proven by these, you can then go before
the commission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting your bill
under such headway that your children may possibly live to receive the money
and enjoy it.  But that man's death must be proven. However, I may as well
tell you that the Government will never pay that transportation and those
traveling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie.  It may possibly pay for the
barrel of beef that Sherman's soldiers captured, if you can get a relief bill
through Congress making an appropriotion for that purpose; but it will not pay
for the twenty-nine barrels the Indians ate."

     "Then there is only a hundred dollars due me, and that isn't certain!
After all Mackenzie's travels in Europe, Asia, and America with that beef;
after all his trials and tribulations and transportation; after the slaughter
of all those innocents that tried to collect that bill!  Young man, why didn't
the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division tell me this?"

     "He didn't know anything about the genuiness of you claim."

     "Why didn't the Second tell me?  why didn't the Third?  why didn't all
those divisions and departments tell me?"

     "None of them knew.  We do things by routine here.  You have followed the
routine and found out what you wanted to know.  It is the best way.  It is the
only way.  It is very regular, and very slow, but it is very certain."

     "Yes, certain death.  It has been, to the most of our tribe.  I begin to
feel that I, too, am called.  Young man, you love the bright creature yonder
with the gentle blue eyes and the steel pens behind her ears - I see it in
your soft glances; you wish to marry her - but you are poor.  Here, hold out
your hand - here is the beef contract; go, take her and be happy! Heaven bless
you, my children!"

     This is all I know about the great beef contract, that has created so
much talk in the community.  The clerk to whom I bequeathed it died.  I know
nothing further about the contract, or any one connected with it.  I only know
that if a man lives long enough he can trace a thing through the
Circumlocution Office of Washington, and find out, after much labor and
trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if the
business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously systematized as it
would be if it were a great private mercantile institution.