I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so abruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the circumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point.  I now went into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extravagant length of his report.  I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly constructed; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no sentiment no heroes, no plot, no pictures—­not even wood-cuts.  Nobody would read it, that was a clear case.  I urged him not to ruin his reputation by getting out a thing like that.  If he ever hoped to succeed in literature he must throw more variety into his writings.  He must beware of dry detail.  I said that the main popularity of the almanac was derived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrums distributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of it more than all the internal revenue he could put into it.  I said these things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fell into a violent passion.  He even said I was an ass.  He abused me in the most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling with his business he would throw me out of the window.  I said I would take my hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office, and I did go.  It was just like a new author.  They always think they know more than anybody else when they are getting out their first book.  Nobody can tell them anything.

During the whole time that I was connected with the government it seemed as if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting myself into trouble.  And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what I conceived to be for the good of my country.  The sting of my wrongs may have driven me to unjust and harmful conclusions, but it surely seemed to me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the very beginning to drive me from the Administration.  I never attended but one Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the government.  That was sufficient for me.  The servant at the White House door did not seem disposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of the Cabinet had arrived.  He said they had, and I entered.  They were all there; but nobody offered me a seat.  They stared at me as if I had been an intruder.  The President said: 

“Well, sir, who are you?”

I handed him my card, and he read:  “The Hon.  Mark Twain, Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology.”  Then he looked at me from head to foot, as if he had never heard of me before.  The Secretary of the Treasury said: 

“This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac.”

The Secretary of War said:  “It is the same visionary that came to me yesterday with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death, and massacre the balance.”