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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 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
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