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." The Secretary of the Navy said: "I recognize this youth as the person who has been interfering with my business time and again during the week.