Sketches New and Old. Mark Twain

the first volume of the Court of Claims Reports.

      It is my belief that as long as the continent of America holds together, the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, will still make pilgrimages to Washington from the swamps of Florida, to plead for just a little more cash on their bill of damages (even when they received the last of that sixty-seven thousand dollars, they said it was only one fourth what the government owed them on that fruitful corn-field), and as long as they choose to come they will find Garrett Davises to drag their vampire schemes before Congress. This is not the only hereditary fraud (if fraud it is – which I have before repeatedly remarked is not proven) that is being quietly handed down from generation to generation of fathers and sons, through the persecuted Treasury of the United States.

      Примечания

      1

      Written about 1870.

      2

      Written about 1870.

      3

      Written about 1865.

      4

      Pronounced Cal-e-va-ras.

      5

      Being a letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a complimentary membership upon the author. Written about 1870.

      6

      Written about 1878.

      7

      Written about 1869.

      8

      Written about 1869.

      9

      Written about 1867.

      10

      Some years ago, about 1867, when this was first published, few people believed it, but considered it a mere extravaganza. In these latter days it seems hard to realize that there was ever a time when the robbing of our government was a novelty. The very man who showed me where to find the documents for this case was at that very time spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Washington for a mail steamship concern, in the effort to procure a subsidy for the company – a fact which was a long time in coming to the surface, but leaked out at last and underwent Congressional investigation.