"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 wtih 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.

F

The Case of George Fisher.*

HIS is history. It is not a wild extravaganza,

TH

like "John Williamson Mackenzie's Great Beef Contract," but is a plain statement of facts and circumstances with which the Congress of the United States has interested itself from time to time during the long period of half a century.

I will not call this matter of George Fisher's a great deathless and unrelenting swindle upon the Government and people of the United States-for it has been so decided, and I hold that it is a grave and solemn wrong for a writer to cast slurs or call names when such is the case-but will simply present the evidence and let the reader deduce his own verdict. Then we shall do nobody injustice, and our consciences shall be clear.

*Some years ago, when this was first published, few people believed it, but considered it a mere extravaganza. In these latter days it seems bard to realize that there was ever a time when the robbing of our government was a novelty. The very man who showed me where to find the documents for this case was at that very time spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Washington for a mail steamship concern, in the effort to procure a subsidy for the company-a fact which was a long time in coming to the surface, but leaked out at last and underwent Congressional investigation.