ay 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
appropriation 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 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 th