Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

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 genuineness of your 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.

THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER

–[Some years ago, about 1867, when this was first published, few people

believed it, but considered it a mere extravaganza. In these latter days

it seems hard 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.]

This is history. It is not a wild extravaganza, like “John Wilson

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 never 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.

On or about the 1st day of September, 1813, the Creek war being then in

progress in Florida, the crops, herds, and houses of Mr. George Fisher,

a citizen, were destroyed, either by the Indians or by the United States

troops in pursuit of them. By the terms of the law, if the Indians

destroyed the property, there was no relief for Fisher; but if the troops

destroyed it, the Government of the United States was debtor to Fisher

for the amount involved.

George Fisher must have considered that the Indians destroyed the

property, because, although he lived several years afterward, he does not

appear to have ever made any claim upon the government.

In the course of time Fisher died, and his widow married again.

And by and by, nearly twenty years after that dimly remembered raid upon

Fisher’s corn-fields, the widow Fisher’s new husband petitioned Congress

for pay for the property, and backed up the petition with many

depositions and affidavits which purported to prove that the troops,

and not the Indians, destroyed the property; that the troops, for some