your official salaries--you can't get good men for nothing.
Salaries cost pretty lively. And then there's your big high-sounding
millionaire names stuck into your advertisements as stockholders--another
card, that--and they are stockholders, too, but you have to give them the
stock and non-assessable at that--so they're an expensive lot. Very,
very expensive thing, take it all around, is a big internal improvement
concern--but you see that yourself, Mr. Bryerman--you see that, yourself,
sir."

"But look here. I think you are a little mistaken about it's ever having
cost anything for Congressional votes. I happen to know something about
that. I've let you say your say--now let me say mine. I don't wish to
seem to throw any suspicion on anybody's statements, because we are all
liable to be mistaken. But how would it strike you if I were to say that
I was in Washington all the time this bill was pending? and what if I
added that I put the measure through myself? Yes, sir, I did that little
thing. And moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never
promised one. There are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as
others which other people don't happen to think about, or don't have the
knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them. My dear sir,
I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head--for never a cent
was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part of this Navigation Company."

The president smiled blandly, even sweetly, all through this harangue,
and then said:

"Is that so?"

"Every word of it."

"Well it does seem to alter the complexion of things a little. You are
acquainted with the members down there, of course, else you could not
have worked to such advantage?"

"I know them all, sir. I know their wives, their children, their babies
--I even made it a point to be on good terms with their lackeys. I know
every Congressman well--even familiarly."

"Very good. Do you know any of their signatures? Do you know their
handwriting?"

"Why I know their handwriting as well as I know my own--have had
correspondence enough with them, I should think. And their signatures
--why I can tell their initials, even."

The president went to a private safe, unlocked it and got out some
letters and certain slips of paper. Then he said:

"Now here, for instance; do you believe that that is a genuine letter?
Do you know this signature here?--and this one? Do you know