information upon the subject, from time to time, as you may desire it and the Post-office Department be enabled to furnish it to me.
"'Very truly, etc.
"'Mark Twain,
"'For James W. N**, U. S. Senator.'
"There—now what do you think of that?"
"Well, I don't know, sir. It—well, it appears to me—to be dubious enough."
"Du—leave the house! I am a ruined man. Those Humboldt savages never will forgive me for tangling their brains up with this inhuman letter. I have lost the respect of the Methodist Church, the Board of Aldermen——"
"Well, I haven't anything to say about that, because I may have missed it a little in their cases, but I was too many for the Baldwin's Ranch people, General!"
"Leave the house! Leave it for ever and for ever, too!"
I regarded that as a sort of covert intimation that my services could be dispensed with, and so I resigned. I never will be a private secretary to a senator again. You can't please that kind of people. They don't know anything. They can't appreciate a party's efforts.
