Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I

was connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity. I

said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question,

coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would inform

him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there

was a fine storm! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and

give my attention strictly to my own business in future. My first

impulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others besides

himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.

I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at

all until he learned that I was connected with the government. If I had

not been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in.

I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him

I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of

General Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his

method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I said he fought too

scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together--get them together

in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for both

parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so

convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve

of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and

education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they

are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may

recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him

330

Sketches New and Old