Mark Twain

“ Young man, you love the bright creature yonder with the gentle blue eyes and the steel pens behind her ears -- I see it in your soft glances; you wish to marry her -- but you are poor. Here, hold out your hand -- here is the beef contract ”

“ This is all that I know about the great beef contract, that has created so much talk in the community. The clerk to whom I bequeathed it died. I know nothing further about the contract or any one connected with it. I only know that if a man lives long enough, he can trace a thing through the Circumlocution Office of Washington, and find out, after much labor and trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if the business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously systematized as it would be if it were a great private mercantile institution. ”

“ But that man's death must be proven. However, I may as well tell you that the Government will never pay that transportation and those travelling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie. It may possibly pay for the barrel of beef that Sherman's soldiers captured, if you can get a relief bill through Congress making an appropriation for that purpose; but it will not pay for the twenty-nine barrels the Indians ate. ”