Veto Message

To the House of Representatives:

I return without approval House bill No. 3016, entitled "An act granting a pension to Mary F. Harkins."

The husband of this beneficiary was discharged from the military service in 1865, and was pensioned for a gunshot wound in the right foot at the rate of $6 per month.

He died in 1882, seventeen years after his discharge, "from rupture of the heart, caused by the bursting and parting of the fibers of the right ventricle."

The claim is now made that the death was the result of the wound in the foot.

An application to the Pension Bureau was rejected on the ground that the death cause was not the result of the wound.

I am satisfied that this was a just conclusion.

GROVER CLEVELAND