When the great official report of the expedition appeared, the above sentence bore this comment: 

“Then there are lower animals than Man!  This remarkable passage can mean nothing else.  Man himself is extinct, but they may still exist.  What can they be?  Where do they inhabit?  One’s enthusiasm bursts all bounds in the contemplation of the brilliant field of discovery and investigation here thrown open to science.  We close our labors with the humble prayer that your Majesty will immediately appoint a commission and command it to rest not nor spare expense until the search for this hitherto unsuspected race of the creatures of God shall be crowned with success.”

The expedition then journeyed homeward after its long absence and its faithful endeavors, and was received with a mighty ovation by the whole grateful country.  There were vulgar, ignorant carpers, of course, as there always are and always will be; and naturally one of these was the obscene Tumble-Bug.  He said that all he had learned by his travels was that science only needed a spoonful of supposition to build a mountain of demonstrated fact out of; and that for the future he meant to be content with the knowledge that nature had made free to all creatures and not go prying into the august secrets of the Deity.

My late senatorial secretaryship—­[Written about 1867.]

I am not a private secretary to a senator any more I now.  I held the berth two months in security and in great cheerfulness of spirit, but my bread began to return from over the waters then—­that is to say, my works came back and revealed themselves.  I judged it best to resign.  The way of it was this.  My employer sent for me one morning tolerably early, and, as soon as I had finished inserting some conundrums clandestinely into his last great speech upon finance, I entered the presence.  There was something portentous in his appearance.  His cravat was untied, his hair was in a state of disorder, and his countenance bore about it the signs of a suppressed storm.  He held a package of letters in his tense grasp, and I knew that the dreaded Pacific mail was in.  He said: 

“I thought you were worthy of confidence.”

I said, “Yes, sir.”

He said, “I gave you a letter from certain of my constituents in the State of Nevada, asking the establishment of a post-office at Baldwin’s Ranch, and told you to answer it, as ingeniously as you could, with arguments which should persuade them that there was no real necessity for as office at that place.”

I felt easier.  “Oh, if that is all, sir, I did do that.”

“Yes, you did.  I will read your answer for your own humiliation: 

         &nb
sp;                              ’Washington, Nov. 24
     ’Messrs. Smith, Jones, and others.