Page:Sketches by Mark Twain.djvu/150

148 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 had 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 a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I wanted.

"Renowned and honoured 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 me. The