第58章

1.Get the House and Senate journals printed; and, 2.For this work, pay one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand" for composition, and one dollar and fifty cents per "token" for press-work, in greenbacks.

It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirely impossible to do more than one of them.When greenbacks had gone down to forty cents on the dollar, the prices regularly charged everybody by printing establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand"and one dollar and fifty cents per "token," in gold.The "instructions"commanded that the Secretary regard a paper dollar issued by the government as equal to any other dollar issued by the government.Hence the printing of the journals was discontinued.Then the United States sternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the "instructions," and warned him to correct his ways.Wherefore he got some printing done, forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits of the high prices of things in the Territory, and called attention to a printed market report wherein it would be observed that even hay was two hundred and fifty dollars a ton.The United States responded by subtracting the printing-bill from the Secretary's suffering salary--and moreover remarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his "instructions" requiring him to purchase hay!

Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U.S.

Treasury Comptroller's understanding.The very fires of the hereafter could get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it.In the days Ispeak of he never could be made to comprehend why it was that twenty thousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all commodities ranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other Territories, where exceeding cheapness was the rule.He was an officer who looked out for the little expenses all the time.The Secretary of the Territory kept his office in his bedroom, as I before remarked; and he charged the United States no rent, although his "instructions" provided for that item and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I would have done with more than lightning promptness if I had been Secretary myself).But the United States never applauded this devotion.Indeed, Ithink my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person in its employ.

Those "instructions" (we used to read a chapter from them every morning, as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chapters in Sunday school every Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the sun and had much valuable religious matter in them along with the other statistics)those "instructions" commanded that pen-knives, envelopes, pens and writing-paper be furnished the members of the legislature.So the Secretary made the purchase and the distribution.The knives cost three dollars apiece.There was one too many, and the Secretary gave it to the Clerk of the House of Representatives.The United States said the Clerk of the House was not a "member" of the legislature, and took that three dollars out of the Secretary's salary, as usual.

White men charged three or four dollars a "load" for sawing up stove-wood.The Secretary was sagacious enough to know that the United States would never pay any such price as that; so he got an Indian to saw up a load of office wood at one dollar and a half.He made out the usual voucher, but signed no name to it--simply appended a note explaining that an Indian had done the work, and had done it in a very capable and satisfactory way, but could not sign the voucher owing to lack of ability in the necessary direction.The Secretary had to pay that dollar and a half.He thought the United States would admire both his economy and his honesty in getting the work done at half price and not putting a pretended Indian's signature to the voucher, but the United States did not see it in that light.

The United States was too much accustomed to employing dollar-and-a-half thieves in all manner of official capacities to regard his explanation of the voucher as having any foundation in fact.

But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make a cross at the bottom of the voucher--it looked like a cross that had been drunk a year--and then I "witnessed" it and it went through all right.

The United States never said a word.I was sorry I had not made the voucher for a thousand loads of wood instead of one.

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.

That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legislature.

They levied taxes to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars and ordered expenditures to the extent of about a million.Yet they had their little periodical explosions of economy like all other bodies of the kind.A member proposed to save three dollars a day to the nation by dispensing with the Chaplain.And yet that short-sighted man needed the Chaplain more than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat with his feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer.

The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private tollroad franchises all the time.When they adjourned it was estimated that every citizen owned about three franchises, and it was believed that unless Congress gave the Territory another degree of longitude there would not be room enough to accommodate the toll-roads.The ends of them were hanging over the boundary line everywhere like a fringe.

The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such important proportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenly acquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful silver mines.