Mark Twain, A Biography, 1907-1910 by Albert Bigelow Paine (page 4)

in the language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect thing which so marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of his soul. It was thoroughly in keeping with his entire career that he should, with this rare dramatic touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph which he omitted may be printed now:

December 27. Did I know jean’s value? No, I only thought I did. I knew a ten-thousandth fraction of it, that was all. It is always so, with us, it has always been so. We are like the poor ignorant private soldier-dead, now, four hundred years–who picked up the great Sancy diamond on the field of the lost battle and sold it for a franc. Later he knew what he had done.

Shall I ever be cheerful again, happy again? Yes. And soon. For I know my temperament. And I know that the temperament is master of the man, and that he is its fettered and helpless slave and must in all things do as it commands. A man’s temperament is born in him, and no circumstances can ever change it.

My temperament has never allowed my spirits to remain depressed long at a time.

That was a feature of Jean’s temperament, too. She inherited it from me. I think she got the rest of it from her mother.

Jean Clemens had two natural endowments: the gift of justice and a genuine passion for all nature. In a little paper found in her desk she had written:

I know a few people who love the country as I do, but not many. Most of my acquaintances are enthusiastic over the spring and summer months, but very few care much for it the year round. A few people are interested in the spring foliage and the development of the wild flowers–nearly all enjoy the autumn colors–while comparatively few pay much attention to the coming and going of the birds, the changes in their plumage and songs, the apparent springing into life on some warm April day of the chipmunks and woodchucks, the skurrying of baby rabbits, and again in the fall the equally sudden disappearance of some of the animals and the growing shyness of others. To me it is all as fascinating as a book–more so, since I have never lost interest in it.

It is simple and frank, like Thoreau. Perhaps, had she exercised it, there was a third gift–the gift of written thought.

Clemens remained at Stormfield ten days after Jean was gone. The weather was fiercely cold, the landscape desolate, the house full of tragedy. He kept pretty closely to his room, where he had me bring the heaps of letters, a few of which he answered personally; for the others he prepared a simple card of acknowledgment. He was for the most part in gentle mood during these days, though he would break out now and then, and rage at the hardness of a fate that had laid an unearned burden of illness on Jean and shadowed her life.

They were days not wholly without humor–none of his days could be altogether without that, though it was likely to be of a melancholy sort.

Many of the letters offered orthodox comfort, saying, in effect: “God does not willingly punish us.”

When he had read a number of these he said:

“Well, why does He do it then? We don’t invite it. Why does He give Himself the trouble?”

I suggested that it was a sentiment that probably gave comfort to the writer of it.

“So it does,” he said, “and I am glad of it–glad of anything that gives comfort to anybody.”

He spoke of the larger God–the God of the great unvarying laws, and by and by dropped off to sleep, quite peacefully, and indeed peace came more and more to him each day with the thought that Jean and Susy and their mother could not be troubled any more. To Mrs. Gabrilowitsch he wrote:

REDDING, CONN, December 29, 1909.

O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad she is out of it & safe–safe!

I am not melancholy; I shall never be melancholy again, I think.

You see, I was in such distress when I came to realize that you were gone far away & no one stood between her & danger but me–& I could die at any moment, & then–oh then what would become of her! For she was wilful, you know, & would not have been governable.

You can’t imagine what a darling she was that last two or three days; & how fine, & good, & sweet, & noble–& joyful, thank Heaven! –& how intellectually brilliant. I had never been acquainted with Jean before. I recognized that.

But I mustn’t try to write about her–I can’t. I have already poured my heart out with the pen, recording that last day or two. I will send you that–& you must let no one but Ossip read it.

Good-by. I love you so! And Ossip. FATHER.

CCXC

THE RETURN TO BERMUDA

I don’t think he attempted any further writing for print. His mind was busy with ideas, but he was willing to talk, rather than to write, rather even than to play billiards, it seemed, although we had a few quiet games–the last we should ever play together. Evenings he asked for music, preferring the Scotch airs, such as “Bonnie Doon” and “The Campbells are Coming.” I remember that once, after playing the latter for him, he told, with great feeling, how the Highlanders, led by Gen. Colin Campbell, had charged at Lucknow, inspired by that stirring air. When he had retired I usually sat with him, and he drifted into literature, or theology, or science, or history–the story of the universe and man.

One evening he spoke of those who had written but one immortal thing and stopped there. He mentioned “Ben Bolt.”

“I met that man once,” he said. “In my childhood I sang ‘Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,’ and in my old age, fifteen years ago, I met the man who wrote it. His name was Brown.–[Thomas Dunn English. Mr. Clemens apparently remembered only the name satirically conferred upon him by Edgar Allan Poe, “Thomas Dunn Brown.”]–He was aged, forgotten, a mere memory. I remember how it thrilled me to realize that this was the very author of ‘Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.’ He was just an accident. He had a vision and echoed it. A good many persons do that–the thing they do is to put in compact form the thing which we have all vaguely felt. ‘Twenty Years Ago’ is just like it ‘I have wandered through the village, Tom, and sat beneath the tree’–and Holmes’s ‘Last Leaf’ is another: the memory of the hallowed past, and the gravestones of those we love. It is all so beautiful–the past is always beautiful.”

He quoted, with great feeling and effect:

The massy marbles rest
On the lips that we have pressed In their bloom,
And the names we love to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.

He continued in this strain for an hour or more. He spoke of humor, and thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics. These he declared were God’s jokes.

“Why,” he said, “humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”

“Your own case is an example,” I answered. “Without it, whatever your reputation as a philosopher, you could never have had the wide-spread affection that is shown by the writers of that great heap of letters.”

“Yes,” he said, gently, “they have liked to be amused.”

I tucked him in for the night, promising to send him to Bermuda, with Claude to take care of him, if he felt he could undertake the journey in two days more.

He was able, and he was eager to go, for he longed for that sunny island, and for the quiet peace of the Allen home. His niece, Mrs. Loomis, came up to spend the last evening in Stormfield, a happy evening full of quiet talk, and next morning, in the old closed carriage that had been his wedding-gift, he was driven to the railway station. This was on January 4, 1910.

He was to sail next day, and that night, at Mr. Loomis’s, Howells came in, and for an hour or two they reviewed some of the questions they had so long ago settled, or left forever unsettled, and laid away. I remember that at dinner Clemens spoke of his old Hartford butler, George, and how he had once brought George to New York and introduced him at the various publishing houses as his friend, with curious and sometimes rather embarrassing results.

The talk drifted to sociology and to the labor-unions, which Clemens defended as being the only means by which the workman could obtain recognition of his rights.

Howells in his book mentions this evening, which he says “was made memorable to me by the kind, clear, judicial sense with which he explained and justified the labor-unions as the sole present help of the weak against the strong.”

They discussed dreams, and then in a little while Howells rose to go. I went also, and as we walked to his near-by apartment he spoke of Mark Twain’s supremacy. He said:

“I turn to his books for cheer when I am down-hearted. There was never anybody like him; there never will be.”

Clemens sailed next morning. They did not meet again.

CCXCI

LETTERS FROM BERMUDA

Stormfield was solemn and empty without Mark Twain; but he wrote by every steamer, at first with his own hand, and during the last week by the hand of one of his enlisted secretaries–some member of the Allen family usually Helen. His letters were full of brightness and pleasantry– always concerned more or less with business matters, though he was no longer disturbed by them, for Bermuda was too peaceful and too far away, and, besides, he had faith in the Mark Twain Company’s ability to look after his affairs. I cannot do better, I believe, than to offer some portions of these letters here.

He reached Bermuda on the 7th of January, 1910, and on the 12th he wrote:

Again I am living the ideal life. There is nothing to mar it but the bloody-minded bandit Arthur,–[A small playmate of Helen’s of whom Clemens pretended to be fiercely jealous. Once he wrote a memorandum to Helen: “Let Arthur read this book. There is a page in it that is poisoned.”]–who still fetches and carries Helen. Presently he will be found drowned. Claude comes to Bay House twice a day to see if I need any service. He is invaluable. There was a military lecture last night at the Officers’ Mess Prospect; as the lecturer honored me with a special urgent invitation, and said he wanted to lecture to me particularly, I naturally took Helen and her mother into the private carriage and went.

As soon as we landed at the door with the crowd the Governor came to me& was very cordial. I “met up” with that charming Colonel Chapman [we had known him on the previous visit] and other officers of the regiment & had a good time.

A few days later he wrote:

Thanks for your letter & for its contenting news of the situation in that foreign & far-off & vaguely remembered country where you & Loomis & Lark and other beloved friends are.

I had a letter from Clara this morning. She is solicitous & wants me well & watchfully taken care of. My, my, she ought to see Helen & her parents & Claude administer that trust. Also she says, “I hope to hear from you or Mr. Paine very soon.”

I am writing her & I know you will respond to your part of her prayer. She is pretty desolate now after Jean’s emancipation–the only kindness that God ever did that poor, unoffending child in all her hard life.

Send Clara a copy of Howells’s gorgeous letter.

The “gorgeous letter” mentioned was an appreciation of his recent Bazar article, “The Turning-Point in My Life,” and here follows:

January 18, 1910.

DEAR CLEMENS,–While your wonderful words are warm in my mind yet I want to tell you what you know already: that you never wrote anything greater, finer, than that turning-point paper of yours.

I shall feel it honor enough if they put on my tombstone “He was born in the same century and general section of Middle Western country with Dr. S. L. Clemens, Oxon., and had his degree three years before him through a mistake of the University.”

I hope you are worse. You will never be riper for a purely intellectual life, and it is a pity to have you lagging along with a worn-out material body on top of your soul.

Yours ever,
W. D. HOWELLS.

On the margin of this letter Clemens had written:

I reckon this spontaneous outburst from the first critic of the day is good to keep, ain’t it, Paine?

January 24th he wrote again of his contentment:

Life continues here the same as usual. There isn’t a fault in it- good times, good home, tranquil contentment all day & every day without a break. I know familiarly several very satisfactory people & meet them frequently: Mr. Hamilton, the Sloanes, Mr. & Mrs. Fells, Miss Waterman, & so on. I shouldn’t know how to go about bettering my situation.

On February 5th he wrote that the climate and condition of his health might require him to stay in Bermuda pretty continuously, but that he wished Stormfield kept open so that he might come to it at any time. And he added:

Yesterday Mr. Allen took us on an excursion in Mr. Hamilton’s big motor-boat. Present: Mrs. Allen, Mr. & Mrs. & Miss Sloane, Helen, Mildred Howells, Claude, & me. Several hours’ swift skimming over ravishing blue seas, a brilliant sun; also a couple of hours of picnicking & lazying under the cedars in a secluded place.

The Orotava is arriving with a6o passengers-I shall get letters by her, no doubt.

P. S.-Please send me the Standard Unabridged that is on the table in my bedroom. I have no dictionary here.

There is no mention in any of these letters of his trouble; but he was having occasional spasms of pain, though in that soft climate they would seem to have come with less frequency, and there was so little to disturb him, and much that contributed to his peace. Among the callers at the Bay House to see him was Woodrow Wilson, and the two put in some pleasant hours at miniature golf, “putting” on the Allen lawn. Of course a catastrophe would come along now and then–such things could not always be guarded against. In a letter toward the end of February he wrote: It is 2.30 in the morning & I am writing because I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep because a professional pianist is coming to-morrow afternoon to play for me. My God! I wouldn’t allow Paderewski or Gabrilowitsch to do that. I would rather have a leg amputated. I knew he was coming, but I never dreamed it was to play for me. When I heard the horrible news 4 hours ago, be d—d if I didn’t come near screaming. I meant to slip out and be absent, but now I can’t. Don’t pray for me. The thing is just as d—d bad as it can be already.

Clemens’s love for music did not include the piano, except for very gentle melodies, and he probably did not anticipate these from a professional player. He did not report the sequel of the matter; but it is likely that his imagination had discounted its tortures. Sometimes his letters were pure nonsense. Once he sent a sheet, on one side of which was written:

BAY HOUSE,
March s, 1910.
Received of S. L. C.
Two Dollars and Forty Cents
in return for my promise to believe everything he says hereafter.
HELEN S. ALLEN.

and on the reverse:

FOR SALE

The proprietor of the hereinbefore mentioned Promise desires to part with it on account of ill health and obliged to go away somewheres so as to let it recipricate, and will take any reasonable amount for it above 2 percent of its face because experienced parties think it will not keep but only a little while in this kind of weather & is a kind of proppity that don’t give a cuss for cold storage nohow.

Clearly, however serious Mark Twain regarded his physical condition, he did not allow it to make him gloomy. He wrote that matters were going everywhere to his satisfaction; that Clara was happy; that his household and business affairs no longer troubled him; that his personal surroundings were of the pleasantest sort. Sometimes he wrote of what he was reading, and once spoke particularly of Prof. William Lyon Phelps’s Literary Essays, which he said he had been unable to lay down until he had finished the book.–[To Phelps himself he wrote: “I thank you ever so much for the book, which I find charming–so charming, indeed, that I read it through in a single night, & did not regret the lost night’s sleep. I am glad if I deserve what you have said about me; & even if I don’t I am proud & well contented, since you think I deserve it.”]

So his days seemed full of comfort. But in March I noticed that he generally dictated his letters, and once when he sent some small photographs I thought he looked thinner and older. Still he kept up his merriment. In one letter he said:

While the matter is in my mind I will remark that if you ever send me another letter which is not paged at the top I will write you with my own hand, so that I may use with utter freedom & without embarrassment the kind of words which alone can describe such a criminal, to wit, – – – -; you will have to put into words those dashes because propriety will not allow me to do it myself in my secretary’s hearing. You are forgiven, but don’t let it occur again.

He had still made no mention of his illness; but on the 25th of March he wrote something of his plans for coming home. He had engaged passage on the Bermudian for April 23d, he said; and he added:

But don’t tell anybody. I don’t want it known. I may have to go sooner if the pain in my breast does not mend its ways pretty considerable. I don’t want to die here, for this is an unkind place for a person in that condition. I should have to lie in the undertaker’s cellar until the ship would remove me & it is dark down there & unpleasant.

The Colliers will meet me on the pier, & I may stay with them a week or two before going home. It all depends on the breast pain. I don’t want to die there. I am growing more and more particular about the place.

But in the same letter he spoke of plans for the summer, suggesting that we must look into the magic-lantern possibilities, so that library entertainments could be given at Stormfield. I confess that this letter, in spite of its light tone, made me uneasy, and I was tempted to sail for Bermuda to bring him home. Three days later he wrote again:

I have been having a most uncomfortable time for the past four days with that breast pain, which turns out to be an affection of the heart, just as I originally suspected. The news from New York is to the effect that non-bronchial weather has arrived there at last; therefore, if I can get my breast trouble in traveling condition I may sail for home a week or two earlier than has been proposed.

The same mail that brought this brought a letter from Mr. Allen, who frankly stated that matters had become very serious indeed. Mr. Clemens had had some dangerous attacks, and the physicians considered his condition critical.

These letters arrived April 1st. I went to New York at once and sailed next morning. Before sailing I consulted with Dr. Quintard, who provided me with some opiates and instructed me in the use of the hypodermic needle. He also joined me in a cablegram to the Gabrilowitsches, then in Italy, advising them to sail without delay.

CCXCII

THE VOYAGE HOME

I sent no word to Bermuda that I was coming, and when on the second morning I arrived at Hamilton, I stepped quickly ashore from the tender and hurried to Bay House. The doors were all open, as they usually are in that summer island, and no one was visible. I was familiar with the place, and, without knocking, I went through to the room occupied by Mark Twain. As I entered I saw that he was alone, sitting in a large chair, clad in the familiar dressing-gown.

Bay House stands upon the water, and the morning light, reflected in at the window, had an unusual quality. He was not yet shaven, and he seemed unnaturally pale and gray; certainly he was much thinner. I was too startled, for the moment, to say anything. When he turned and saw me he seemed a little dazed.

“Why,” he said, holding out his hand, “you didn’t tell us you were coming.”

“No,” I said, “it is rather sudden. I didn’t quite like the sound of your last letters.”

“But those were not serious,” he protested. “You shouldn’t have come on my account.”

I said then that I had come on my own account; that I had felt the need of recreation, and had decided to run down and come home with him.

“That’s–very–good,” he said, in his slow, gentle fashion. “Now I’m glad to see you.”

His breakfast came in and he ate with an appetite.

When he had been shaved and freshly propped tip in his pillows it seemed to me, after all, that I must have been mistaken in thinking him so changed. Certainly he was thinner, but his color was fine, his eyes were bright; he had no appearance of a man whose life was believed to be in danger. He told me then of the fierce attacks he had gone through, how the pains had torn at him, and how it had been necessary for him to have hypodermic injections, which he amusingly termed “hypnotic injunctions” and “subcutaneous applications,” and he had his humor out of it, as of course he must have, even though Death should stand there in person.

From Mr. and Mrs. Allen and from the physician I learned how slender had been his chances and how uncertain were the days ahead. Mr. Allen had already engaged passage on the Oceana for the 12th, and the one purpose now was to get him physically in condition for the trip.

How devoted those kind friends had been to him! They had devised every imaginable thing for his comfort. Mr. Allen had rigged an electric bell which connected with his own room, so that he could be aroused instantly at any hour of the night. Clemens had refused to have a nurse, for it was only during the period of his extreme suffering that he needed any one, and he did not wish to have a nurse always around. When the pains were gone he was as bright and cheerful, and, seemingly, as well as ever.

On the afternoon of my arrival we drove out, as formerly, and he discussed some of the old subjects in quite the old way. He had been rereading Macaulay, he said, and spoke at considerable length of the hypocrisy and intrigue of the English court under James II. He spoke, too, of the Redding Library. I had sold for him that portion of the land where Jean’s farm-house had stood, and it was in his mind to use the money for some sort of a memorial to Jean. I had written, suggesting that perhaps he would like to put up a small library building, as the Adams lot faced the corner where Jean had passed every day when she rode to the station for the mail. He had been thinking this over, he said, and wished the idea carried out. He asked me to write at once to his lawyer, Mr. Lark, and have a paper prepared appointing trustees for a memorial library fund.

The pain did not trouble him that afternoon, nor during several succeeding days. He was gay and quite himself, and he often went out on the lawn; but we did not drive out again. For the most part, he sat propped up in his bed, reading or smoking, or talking in the old way; and as I looked at him he seemed so full of vigor and the joy of life that I could not convince myself that he would not outlive us all. I found that he had been really very much alive during those three months–too much for his own good, sometimes–for he had not been careful of his hours or his diet, and had suffered in consequence.

He had not been writing, though he had scribbled some playful valentines and he had amused himself one day by preparing a chapter of advice–for me it appeared–which, after reading it aloud to the Allens and receiving their approval, he declared he intended to have printed for my benefit. As it would seem to have been the last bit of continued writing he ever did, and because it is characteristic and amusing, a few paragraphs may be admitted. The “advice” is concerning deportment on reaching the Gate which St. Peter is supposed to guard–

Upon arrival do not speak to St. Peter until spoken to. It is not your place to begin.

Do not begin any remark with “Say.”

When applying for a ticket avoid trying to make conversation. If you must talk let the weather alone. St. Peter cares not a damn for the weather. And don’t ask him what time the 4.30 train goes; there aren’t any trains in heaven, except through trains, and the less information you get about them the better for you.

You can ask him for his autograph–there is no harm in that–but be careful and don’t remark that it is one of the penalties of greatness. He has heard that before.

Don’t try to kodak him. Hell is full of people who have made that mistake.

Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit you would stay out and the dog would go in.
You will be wanting to slip down at night and smuggle water to those poor little chaps (the infant damned), but don’t you try it. You would be caught, and nobody in heaven would respect you after that.

Explain to Helen why I don’t come. If you can.

There were several pages of this counsel. One paragraph was written in shorthand. I meant to ask him to translate it; but there were many other things to think of, and I did not remember.

I spent most of each day with him, merely sitting by the bed and reading while he himself read or dozed. His nights were wakeful–he found it easier to sleep by day–and he liked to think that some one was there. He became interested in Hardy’s Jude, and spoke of it with high approval, urging me to read it. He dwelt a good deal on the morals of it, or rather on the lack of them. He followed the tale to the end, finishing it the afternoon before we sailed. It was his last continuous reading. I noticed, when he slept, that his breathing was difficult, and I could see from day to day that he did not improve; but each evening he would be gay and lively, and he liked the entire family to gather around, while he became really hilarious over the various happenings of the day. It was only a few days before we sailed that the very severe attacks returned. The night of the 8th was a hard one. The doctors were summoned, and it was only after repeated injections of morphine that the pain had been eased. When I returned in the early morning he was sitting in his chair trying to sing, after his old morning habit. He took my hand and said:

“Well, I had a picturesque night. Every pain I had was on exhibition.”

He looked out the window at the sunlight on the bay and green dotted islands. “‘Sparkling and bright in the liquid light,'” he quoted. “That’s Hoffman. Anything left of Hoffman?”

“No,” I said.

“I must watch for the Bermudian and see if she salutes,” he said, presently. “The captain knows I am here sick, and he blows two short whistles just as they come up behind that little island. Those are for me.”

He said he could breathe easier if he could lean forward, and I placed a card-table in front of him. His breakfast came in, and a little later he became quite gay. He drifted to Macaulay again, and spoke of King James’s plot to assassinate William II., and how the clergy had brought themselves to see that there was no difference between killing a king in battle and by assassination. He had taken his seat by the window to watch for the Bermudian. She came down the bay presently, her bright red stacks towering vividly above the green island. It was a brilliant morning, the sky and the water a marvelous blue. He watched her anxiously and without speaking. Suddenly there were two white puffs of steam, and two short, hoarse notes went up from her.

“Those are for me,” he said, his face full of contentment. “Captain Fraser does not forget me.”

There followed another bad night. My room was only a little distance away, and Claude came for me. I do not think any of us thought he would survive it; but he slept at last, or at least dozed. In the morning he said:

“That breast pain stands watch all night and the short breath all day. I am losing enough sleep to supply a worn-out army. I want a jugful of that hypnotic injunction every night and every morning.”

We began to fear now that he would not be able to sail on the 12th; but by great good-fortune he had wonderfully improved by the 12th, so much so that I began to believe, if once he could be in Stormfield, where the air was more vigorous, he might easily survive the summer. The humid atmosphere of the season increased the difficulty of his breathing.

That evening he was unusually merry. Mr. and Mrs. Allen and Helen and myself went in to wish him good night. He was loath to let us leave, but was reminded that he would sail in the morning, and that the doctor had insisted that he must be quiet and lie still in bed and rest. He was never one to be very obedient. A little later Mrs. Allen and I, in the sitting-room, heard some one walking softly outside on the veranda. We went out there, and he was marching up and down in his dressing-gown as unconcerned as if he were not an invalid at all. He hadn’t felt sleepy, he said, and thought a little exercise would do him good. Perhaps it did, for he slept soundly that night–a great blessing.

Mr. Allen had chartered a special tug to come to Bay House landing in the morning and take him to the ship. He was carried in a little hand-chair to the tug, and all the way out he seemed light-spirited, anything but an invalid: The sailors carried him again in the chair to his state-room, and he bade those dear Bermuda friends good-by, and we sailed away.

As long as I remember anything I shall remember the forty-eight hours of that homeward voyage. It was a brief two days as time is measured; but as time is lived it has taken its place among those unmeasured periods by the side of which even years do not count.

At first he seemed quite his natural self, and asked for a catalogue of the ship’s library, and selected some memoirs of the Countess of Cardigan for his reading. He asked also for the second volume of Carlyle’s French Revolution, which he had with him. But we ran immediately into the more humid, more oppressive air of the Gulf Stream, and his breathing became at first difficult, then next to impossible. There were two large port- holes, which I opened; but presently he suggested that it would be better outside. It was only a step to the main-deck, and no passengers were there. I had a steamer-chair brought, and with Claude supported him to it and bundled him with rugs; but it had grown damp and chilly, and his breathing did not improve. It seemed to me that the end might come at any moment, and this thought was in his mind, too, for once in the effort for breath he managed to say:

“I am going–I shall be gone in a moment.”

Breath came; but I realized then that even his cabin was better than this. I steadied him back to his berth and shut out most of that deadly dampness. He asked for the “hypnotic ‘injunction” (for his humor never left him), and though it was not yet the hour prescribed I could not deny it. It was impossible for him to lie down, even to recline, without great distress. The opiate made him drowsy, and he longed for the relief of sleep; but when it seemed about to possess him the struggle for air would bring him upright.

During the more comfortable moments he spoke quite in the old way, and time and again made an effort to read, and reached for his pipe or a cigar which lay in the little berth hammock at his side. I held the match, and he would take a puff or two with satisfaction. Then the peace of it would bring drowsiness, and while I supported him there would come a few moments, perhaps, of precious sleep. Only a few moments, for the devil of suffocation was always lying in wait to bring him back for fresh tortures. Over and over again this was repeated, varied by him being steadied on his feet or sitting on the couch opposite the berth. In spite of his suffering, two dominant characteristics remained–the sense of humor, and tender consideration for another.

Once when the ship rolled and his hat fell from the hook, and made the circuit of the cabin floor, he said:

“The ship is passing the hat.”

Again he said:

“I am sorry for you, Paine, but I can’t help it–I can’t hurry this dying business. Can’t you give me enough of the hypnotic injunction to put an end to me?”

He thought if I could arrange the pillows so he could sit straight up it would not be necessary to support him, and then I could sit on the couch and read while he tried to doze. He wanted me to read Jude, he said, so we could talk about it. I got all the pillows I could and built them up around him, and sat down with the book, and this seemed to give him contentment. He would doze off a little and then come up with a start, his piercing, agate eyes searching me out to see if I was still there. Over and over–twenty times in an hour–this was repeated. When I could deny him no longer I administered the opiate, but it never completely possessed him or gave him entire relief.

As I looked at him there, so reduced in his estate, I could not but remember all the labor of his years, and all the splendid honor which the world had paid to him. Something of this may have entered his mind, too, for once, when I offered him some of the milder remedies which we had brought, he said:

“After forty years of public effort I have become just a target for medicines.”

The program of change from berth to the floor, from floor to the couch, from the couch back to the berth among the pillows, was repeated again and again, he always thinking of the trouble he might be making, rarely uttering any complaint; but once he said:

“I never guessed that I was not going to outlive John Bigelow.” And again:

“This is such a mysterious disease. If we only had a bill of particulars we’d have something to swear at.”

Time and again he picked up Carlyle or the Cardigan Memoirs, and read, or seemed to read, a few lines; but then the drowsiness would come and the book would fall. Time and again he attempted to smoke, or in his drowse simulated the motion of placing a cigar to his lips and puffing in the old way.

Two dreams beset him in his momentary slumber–one of a play in which the title-role of the general manager was always unfilled. He spoke of this now and then when it had passed, and it seemed to amuse him. The other was a discomfort: a college assembly was attempting to confer upon him some degree which he did not want. Once, half roused, he looked at me searchingly and asked:

“Isn’t there something I can resign and be out of all this? They keep trying to confer that degree upon me and I don’t want it.” Then realizing, he said: “I am like a bird in a cage: always expecting to get out, and always beaten back by the wires.” And, somewhat later: “Oh, it is such a mystery, and it takes so long.”

Toward the evening of the first day, when it grew dark outside, he asked:

“How long have we been on this voyage?”

I answered that this was the end of the first day.

“How many more are there?” he asked.

“Only one, and two nights.”

“We’ll never make it,” he said. “It’s an eternity.”

“But we must on Clara’s account,” I told him, and I estimated that Clara would be more than half-way across the ocean by now.

“It is a losing race,” he said; “no ship can outsail death.”

It has been written–I do not know with what proof–that certain great dissenters have recanted with the approach of death–have become weak, and afraid to ignore old traditions in the face of the great mystery. I wish to write here that Mark Twain, as he neared the end, showed never a single tremor of fear or even of reluctance. I have dwelt upon these hours when suffering was upon him, and death the imminent shadow, in order to show that at the end he was as he had always been, neither more nor less, and never less than brave.

Once, during a moment when he was comfortable and quite himself, he said, earnestly:

“When I seem to be dying I don’t want to be stimulated back to life. I want to be made comfortable to go.”

There was not a vestige of hesitation; there was no grasping at straws, no suggestion of dread.

Somehow those two days and nights went by. Once, when he was partially relieved by the opiate, I slept, while Claude watched; and again, in the fading end of the last night, when we had passed at length into the cold, bracing northern air, and breath had come back to him, and with it sleep.

Relatives, physicians, and news-gatherers were at the dock to welcome him. He was awake, and the northern air had brightened him, though it was the chill, I suppose, that brought on the pains in his breast, which, fortunately, he had escaped during the voyage. It was not a prolonged attack, and it was, blessedly, the last one.

An invalid-carriage had been provided, and a compartment secured on the afternoon express to Redding–the same train that had taken him there two years before. Dr. Robert H. Halsey and Dr. Edward Quintard attended him, and he made the journey really in cheerful comfort, for he could breathe now, and in the relief came back old interests. Half reclining on the couch, he looked through the afternoon papers. It happened curiously that Charles Harvey Genung, who, something more than four years earlier, had been so largely responsible for my association with Mark Twain, was on the same train, in the same coach, bound for his country-place at New Hartford.

Lounsbury was waiting with the carriage, and on that still, sweet April evening we drove him to Stormfield much as we had driven him two years before. Now and then he mentioned the apparent backwardness of the season, for only a few of the trees were beginning to show their green. As we drove into the lane that led to the Stormfield entrance, he said:

“Can we see where you have built your billiard-room?”

The gable showed above the trees, and I pointed it out to him.

“It looks quite imposing,” he said.

I think it was the last outside interest he ever showed in anything. He had been carried from the ship and from the train, but when we drew up to Stormfield, where Mrs. Paine, with Katie Leary and others of the household, was waiting to greet him, he stepped from the carriage alone with something of his old lightness, and with all his old courtliness, and offered each one his hand. Then, in the canvas chair which we had brought, Claude and I carried him up-stairs to his room and delivered him to the physicians, and to the comforts and blessed air of home. This was Thursday evening, April 14, 1910.

CCXCIII

THE RETURN TO THE INVISIBLE

There would be two days more before Ossip and Clara Gabrilowitsch could arrive. Clemens remained fairly bright and comfortable during this interval, though he clearly was not improving. The physicians denied him the morphine, now, as he no longer suffered acutely. But he craved it, and once, when I went in, he said, rather mournfully:

“They won’t give me the subcutaneous any more.”

It was Sunday morning when Clara came. He was cheerful and able to talk quite freely. He did not dwell upon his condition, I think, but spoke rather of his plans for the summer. At all events, he did not then suggest that he counted the end so near; but a day later it became evident to all that his stay was very brief. His breathing was becoming heavier, though it seemed not to give him much discomfort. His articulation also became affected. I think the last continuous talking he did was to Dr. Halsey on the evening of April 17th–the day of Clara’s arrival. A mild opiate had been administered, and he said he wished to talk himself to sleep. He recalled one of his old subjects, Dual Personality, and discussed various instances that flitted through his mind–Jekyll and Hyde phases in literature and fact. He became drowsier as he talked. He said at last:

“This is a peculiar kind of disease. It does not invite you to read; it does not invite you to be read to; it does not invite you to talk, nor to enjoy any of the usual sick-room methods of treatment. What kind of a disease is that? Some kinds of sicknesses have pleasant features about them. You can read and smoke and have only to lie still.”

And a little later he added:

“It is singular, very singular, the laws of mentality–vacuity. I put out my hand to reach a book or newspaper which I have been reading most glibly, and it isn’t there, not a suggestion of it.”

He coughed violently, and afterward commented:

“If one gets to meddling with a cough it very soon gets the upper hand and is meddling with you. That is my opinion–of seventy-four years’ growth.”

The news of his condition, everywhere published, brought great heaps of letters, but he could not see them. A few messages were reported to him. At intervals he read a little. Suetonius and Carlyle lay on the bed beside him, and he would pick them up as the spirit moved him and read a paragraph or a page. Sometimes, when I saw him thus-the high color still in his face, and the clear light in his eyes–I said: “It is not reality. He is not going to die.” On Tuesday, the 19th, he asked me to tell Clara to come and sing to him. It was a heavy requirement, but she somehow found strength to sing some of the Scotch airs which he loved, and he seemed soothed and comforted. When she came away he bade her good-by, saying that he might not see her again.

But he lingered through the next day and the next. His mind was wandering a little on Wednesday, and his speech became less and less articulate; but there were intervals when he was quite clear, quite vigorous, and he apparently suffered little. We did not know it, then, but the mysterious messenger of his birth-year, so long anticipated by him, appeared that night in the sky.–[The perihelion of Halley’s Comet for 1835 was November 16th; for 1910 it was April 20th.]

On Thursday morning, the 21st, his mind was generally clear, and it was said by the nurses that he read a little from one of the volumes on his bed, from the Suetonius, or from one of the volumes of Carlyle. Early in the forenoon he sent word by Clara that he wished to see me, and when I came in he spoke of two unfinished manuscripts which he wished me to “throw away,” as he briefly expressed it, for he had not many words left now. I assured him that I would take care of them, and he pressed my hand. It was his last word to me.

Once or twice that morning he tried to write some request which he could not put into intelligible words.

And once he spoke to Gabrilowitsch, who, he said, could understand him better than the others. Most of the time he dozed.

Somewhat after midday, when Clara was by him, he roused up and took her hand, and seemed to speak with less effort.

“Good-by,” he said, and Dr. Quintard, who was standing near, thought he added: “If we meet”–but the words were very faint. He looked at her for a little while, without speaking, then he sank into a doze, and from it passed into a deeper slumber, and did not heed us any more.

Through that peaceful spring afternoon the life-wave ebbed lower and lower. It was about half past six, and the sun lay just on the horizon when Dr. Quintard noticed that the breathing, which had gradually become more subdued, broke a little. There was no suggestion of any struggle. The noble head turned a little to one side, there was a fluttering sigh, and the breath that had been unceasing through seventy-four tumultuous years had stopped forever.

He had entered into the estate envied so long. In his own words–the words of one of his latest memoranda:

“He had arrived at the dignity of death–the only earthly dignity that is not artificial–the only safe one. The others are traps that can beguile to humiliation.

“Death–the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all–the soiled and the pure–the rich and the poor–the loved and the unloved.”

CCXCIV

THE LAST RITES

It is not often that a whole world mourns. Nations have often mourned a hero–and races–but perhaps never before had the entire world really united in tender sorrow for the death of any man.

In one of his aphorisms he wrote: “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” And it was thus that Mark Twain himself had lived.

No man had ever so reached the heart of the world, and one may not even attempt to explain just why. Let us only say that it was because he was so limitlessly human that every other human heart, in whatever sphere or circumstance, responded to his touch. From every remote corner of the globe the cables of condolence swept in; every printed sheet in Christendom was filled with lavish tribute; pulpits forgot his heresies and paid him honor. No king ever died that received so rich a homage as his. To quote or to individualize would be to cheapen this vast offering.

We took him to New York to the Brick Church, and Dr. Henry van Dyke spoke only a few simple words, and Joseph Twichell came from Hartford and delivered brokenly a prayer from a heart wrung with double grief, for Harmony, his wife, was nearing the journey’s end, and a telegram that summoned him to her death-bed came before the services ended.

Mark Twain, dressed in the white he loved so well, lay there with the nobility of death upon him, while a multitude of those who loved him passed by and looked at his face for the last time. The flowers, of which so many had been sent, were banked around him; but on the casket itself lay a single laurel wreath which Dan Beard and his wife had woven from the laurel which grows on Stormfield hill. He was never more beautiful than as he lay there, and it was an impressive scene to see those thousands file by, regard him for a moment gravely, thoughtfully, and pass on. All sorts were there, rich and poor; some crossed themselves, some saluted, some paused a little to take a closer look; but no one offered even to pick a flower. Howells came, and in his book he says:

I looked a moment at the face I knew so well; and it was patient with the patience I had so often seen in it: something of a puzzle, a great silent dignity, an assent to what must be from the depths of a nature whose tragical seriousness broke in the laughter which the unwise took for the whole of him.

That night we went with him to Elmira, and next day–a somber day of rain–he lay in those stately parlors that had seen his wedding-day, and where Susy had lain, and Mrs. Clemens, and Jean, while Dr. Eastman spoke the words of peace which separate us from our mortal dead. Then in the quiet, steady rain of that Sunday afternoon we laid him beside those others, where he sleeps well, though some have wished that, like De Soto, he might have been laid to rest in the bed of that great river which must always be associated with his name.

CCXCV

MARK TWAIN’S RELIGION

There is such a finality about death; however interesting it may be as an experience, one cannot discuss it afterward with one’s friends. I have thought it a great pity that Mark Twain could not discuss, with Howells say, or with Twichell, the sensations and the particulars of the change, supposing there be a recognizable change, in that transition of which we have speculated so much, with such slender returns. No one ever debated the undiscovered country more than he. In his whimsical, semi-serious fashion he had considered all the possibilities of the future state– orthodox and otherwise–and had drawn picturesquely original conclusions. He had sent Captain Stormfield in a dream to report the aspects of the early Christian heaven. He had examined the scientific aspects of the more subtle philosophies. He had considered spiritualism, transmigration, the various esoteric doctrines, and in the end he had logically made up his mind that death concludes all, while with that less logical hunger which survives in every human heart he had never ceased to expect an existence beyond the grave. His disbelief and his pessimism were identical in their structure. They were of his mind; never of his heart.

Once a woman said to him:

“Mr. Clemens, you are not a pessimist, you only think you are.” And she might have added, with equal force and truth:

“You are not a disbeliever in immortality; you only think you are.”

Nothing could have conveyed more truly his attitude toward life and death. His belief in God, the Creator, was absolute; but it was a God far removed from the Creator of his early teaching. Every man builds his God according to his own capacities. Mark Twain’s God was of colossal proportions–so vast, indeed, that the constellated stars were but molecules in His veins–a God as big as space itself.

Mark Twain had many moods, and he did not always approve of his own God; but when he altered his conception, it was likely to be in the direction of enlargement–a further removal from the human conception, and the problem of what we call our lives.

In 1906 he wrote:–[See also 1870, chap. lxxviii; 1899, chap. ccv; and various talks, 1906-07, etc.]
Let us now consider the real God, the genuine God, the great God, the sublime and supreme God, the authentic Creator of the real universe, whose remotenesses are visited by comets only comets unto which incredible distant Neptune is merely an out post, a Sandy Hook to homeward-bound specters of the deeps of space that have not glimpsed it before for generations–a universe not made with hands and suited to an astronomical nursery, but spread abroad through the illimitable reaches of space by the flat of the real God just mentioned, by comparison with whom the gods whose myriads infest the feeble imaginations of men are as a swarm of gnats scattered and lost in the infinitudes of the empty sky.

At an earlier period-the date is not exactly fixable, but the stationery used and the handwriting suggest the early eighties–he set down a few concisely written pages of conclusions–conclusions from which he did not deviate materially in after years. The document follows:

I believe in God the Almighty.

I do not believe He has ever sent a message to man by anybody, or delivered one to him by word of mouth, or made Himself visible to mortal eyes at any time in any place.

I believe that the Old and New Testaments were imagined and written by man, and that no line in them was authorized by God, much less inspired by Him.

I think the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works: I perceive that they are manifested toward me in this life; the logical conclusion is that they will be manifested toward me in the life to come, if there should be one.

I do not believe in special providences. I believe that the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws: If one man’s family is swept away by a pestilence and another man’s spared it is only the law working: God is not interfering in that small matter, either against the one man or in favor of the other.

I cannot see how eternal punishment hereafter could accomplish any good end, therefore I am not able to believe in it. To chasten a man in order to perfect him might be reasonable enough; to annihilate him when he shall have proved himself incapable of reaching perfection might be reasonable enough; but to roast him forever for the mere satisfaction of seeing him roast would not be reasonable–even the atrocious God imagined by the Jews would tire of the spectacle eventually.

There may be a hereafter and there may not be. I am wholly indifferent about it. If I am appointed to live again I feel sure it will be for some more sane and useful purpose than to flounder about for ages in a lake of fire and brimstone for having violated a confusion of ill-defined and contradictory rules said (but not evidenced) to be of divine institution. If annihilation is to follow death I shall not be aware of the annihilation, and therefore shall not care a straw about it.

I believe that the world’s moral laws are the outcome of the world’s experience. It needed no God to come down out of heaven to tell men that murder and theft and the other immoralities were bad, both for the individual who commits them and for society which suffers from them.

If I break all these moral laws I cannot see how I injure God by it, for He is beyond the reach of injury from me–I could as easily injure a planet by throwing mud at it. It seems to me that my misconduct could only injure me and other men. I cannot benefit God by obeying these moral laws–I could as easily benefit the planet by withholding my mud. (Let these sentences be read in the light of the fact that I believe I have received moral laws only from man- none whatever from God.) Consequently I do not see why I should be either punished or rewarded hereafter for the deeds I do here.

If the tragedies of life shook his faith in the goodness and justice and the mercy of God as manifested toward himself, he at any rate never questioned that the wider scheme of the universe was attuned to the immutable law which contemplates nothing less than absolute harmony. I never knew him to refer to this particular document; but he never destroyed it and never amended it, nor is it likely that he would have done either had it been presented to him for consideration even during the last year of his life.

He was never intentionally dogmatic. In a memorandum on a fly-leaf of Moncure D. Conway’s Sacred Anthology he wrote:

RELIGION

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. MARK TWAIN, 19th Cent. A.D.

And in another note:

I would not interfere with any one’s religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one’s religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion maybe. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life hence it is a valuable possession to him.

Mark Twain’s religion was a faith too wide for doctrines–a benevolence too limitless for creeds. From the beginning he strove against oppression, sham, and evil in every form. He despised meanness; he resented with every drop of blood in him anything that savored of persecution or a curtailment of human liberties. It was a religion identified with his daily life and his work. He lived as he wrote, and he wrote as he believed. His favorite weapon was humor–good-humor–with logic behind it. A sort of glorified truth it was truth wearing a smile of gentleness, hence all the more quickly heeded.

“He will be remembered with the great humorists of all time,” says Howells, “with Cervantes, with Swift, or with any others worthy of his company; none of them was his equal in humanity.”

Mark Twain understood the needs of men because he was himself supremely human. In one of his dictations he said:

I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small or a large way. When it is small, as compared with the same ingredient in somebody else, there is still enough of it for all the purposes of examination.

With his strength he had inherited the weaknesses of our kind. With him, as with another, a myriad of dreams and schemes and purposes daily flitted by. With him, as with another, the spirit of desire led him often to a high mountain-top, and was not rudely put aside, but lingeringly–and often invited to return. With him, as with another, a crowd of jealousies and resentments, and wishes for the ill of others, daily went seething and scorching along the highways of the soul. With him, as with another, regret, remorse, and shame stood at the bedside during long watches of the night; and in the end, with him, the better thing triumphed–forgiveness and generosity and justice–in a word, Humanity. Certain of his aphorisms and memoranda each in itself constitutes an epitome of Mark Twain’s creed. His paraphrase, “When in doubt tell the truth,” is one of these, and he embodied his whole attitude toward Infinity when in one of his stray pencilings he wrote:

Why, even poor little ungodlike man holds himself responsible for the welfare of his child to the extent of his ability. It is all that we require of God.

CCXCVI

POSTSCRIPT

Every life is a drama–a play in all its particulars; comedy, farce, tragedy–all the elements are there. To examine in detail any life, however conspicuous or obscure, is to become amazed not only at the inevitable sequence of events, but at the interlinking of details, often far removed, into a marvelously intricate pattern which no art can hope to reproduce, and can only feebly imitate.

The biographer may reconstruct an episode, present a picture, or reflect a mood by which the reader is enabled to feel something of the glow of personality and know, perhaps, a little of the substance of the past. In so far as the historian can accomplish this his work is a success. At best his labor will be pathetically incomplete, for whatever its detail and its resemblance to life, these will record mainly but an outward expression, behind which was the mighty sweep and tumult of unwritten thought, the overwhelming proportion of any life, which no other human soul can ever really know.

Mark Twain’s appearance on the stage of the world was a succession of dramatic moments. He was always exactly in the setting. Whatever he did, or whatever came to him, was timed for the instant of greatest effect. At the end he was more widely observed and loved and honored than ever before, and at the right moment and in the right manner he died.

How little one may tell of such a life as his! He traveled always such a broad and brilliant highway, with plumes flying and crowds following after. Such a whirling panorama of life, and death, and change! I have written so much, and yet I have put so much aside–and often the best things, it seemed afterward, perhaps because each in its way was best and the variety infinite. One may only strive to be faithful–and I would have made it better if I could.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX A

LETTER FROM ORION CLEMENS TO MISS WOOD CONCERNING HENRY CLEMENS

(See Chapter xxvi)

KEOKUK, Iowa, October 3, 1858.

MISS WOOD,–My mother having sent me your kind letter, with a request that myself and wife should write to you, I hasten to do so.

In my memory I can go away back to Henry’s infancy; I see his large, blue eyes intently regarding my father when he rebuked him for his credulity in giving full faith to the boyish idea of planting his marbles, expecting a crop therefrom; then comes back the recollection of the time when, standing we three alone by our father’s grave, I told them always to remember that brothers should be kind to each other; afterward I see Henry returning from school with his books for the last time. He must go into my printing-office. He learned rapidly. A word of encouragement or a word of discouragement told upon his organization electrically. I could see the effects in his day’s work. Sometimes I would say, “Henry!” He would stand full front with his eyes upon mine–all attention. If I commanded him to do something, without a word he was off instantly, probably in a run. If a cat was to be drowned or shot Sam (though unwilling yet firm) was selected for the work. If a stray kitten was to be fed and taken care of Henry was expected to attend to it, and he would faithfully do so. So they grew up, and many was the grave lecture commenced by ma, to the effect that Sam was misleading and spoiling Henry. But the lectures were never concluded, for Sam would reply with a witticism, or dry, unexpected humor, that would drive the lecture clean out of my mother’s mind, and change it to a laugh. Those were happier days. My mother was as lively as any girl of sixteen. She is not so now. And sister Pamela I have described in describing Henry; for she was his counterpart. The blow falls crushingly on her. But the boys grew up–Sam a rugged, brave, quick-tempered, generous-hearted fellow, Henry quiet, observing, thoughtful, leaning on Sam for protection; Sam and I too leaning on him for knowledge picked up from conversation or books, for Henry seemed never to forget anything, and devoted much of his leisure hours to reading.

Henry is gone! His death was horrible! How I could have sat by him, hung over him, watched day and night every change of expression, and ministered to every want in my power that I could discover. This was denied to me, but Sam, whose organization is such as to feel the utmost extreme of every feeling, was there. Both his capacity of enjoyment and his capacity of suffering are greater than mine; and knowing how it would have affected me to see so sad a scene, I can somewhat appreciate Sam’s sufferings. In this time of great trouble, when my two brothers, whose heartstrings have always been a part of my own, were suffering the utmost stretch of mortal endurance, you were there, like a good angel, to aid and console, and I bless and thank you for it with my whole heart. I thank all who helped them then; I thank them for the flowers they sent to Henry, for the tears that fell for their sufferings, and when he died, and all of them for all the kind attentions they bestowed upon the poor boys. We thank the physicians, and we shall always gratefully remember the kindness of the gentleman who at so much expense to himself enabled us to deposit Henry’s remains by our father.

With many kind wishes for your future welfare, I remain your earnest friend,
Respectfully,
ORION CLEMENS.

APPENDIX B

MARK TWAIN’S BURLESQUE OF CAPTAIN ISAIAH SELLERS

(See Chapter xxvii)

The item which served as a text for the “Sergeant Fathom” communication was as follows:

VICKSBURG, May 4, 1859.

My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is higher this far up than it has been since 1815. My opinion is that the water will be four feet deep in Canal Street before the first of next June. Mrs. Turner’s plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all under water, and it has not been since 1815. I. SELLERS.–[Captain Sellers, as in this case, sometimes signed his own name to his
communications.]

THE BURLESQUE

INTRODUCTORY

Our friend Sergeant Fathom, one of the oldest cub pilots on the river, and now on the Railroad Line steamer Trombone, sends us a rather bad account concerning the state of the river. Sergeant Fathom is a “cub” of much experience, and although we are loath to coincide in his view of the matter, we give his note a place in our columns, only hoping that his prophecy will not be verified in this instance. While introducing the Sergeant, “we consider it but simple justice (we quote from a friend of his) to remark that he is distinguished for being, in pilot phrase, ‘close,’ as well as superhumanly ‘safe.'” It is a well-known fact that he has made fourteen hundred and fifty trips in the New Orleans and St. Louis trade without causing serious damage to a steamboat. This astonishing success is attributed to the fact that he seldom runs his boat after early candle-light. It is related of the Sergeant that upon one occasion he actually ran the chute of Glasscock’s Island, down- stream, in the night, and at a time, too, when the river was scarcely more than bank full. His method of accomplishing this feat proves what we have just said of his “safeness”–he sounded the chute first, and then built a fire at the head of the island to run by. As to the Sergeant’s “closeness,” we have heard it whispered that he once went up to the right of the “Old Hen,”–[Glasscock’s Island and the “Old Hen” were phenomenally safe places.]–but this is probably a pardonable little exaggeration, prompted by the love and admiration in which he is held by various ancient dames of his acquaintance (for albeit the Sergeant may have already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect, his step is firm, his hair retains its sable hue, and, more than all, he hath a winning way about him, an air of docility and sweetness, if you will, and a smoothness of speech, together with an exhaustless fund of funny sayings; and, lastly, an overflowing stream, without beginning, or middle, or end, of astonishing reminiscences of the ancient Mississippi, which, taken together, form a ‘tout ensemble’ which is sufficient excuse for the tender epithet which is, by common consent, applied to him by all those ancient dames aforesaid, of “che-arming creature!”). As the Sergeant has been longer on the river, and is better acquainted with it than any other “cub” extant, his remarks are entitled to far more consideration, and are always read with the deepest interest by high and low, rich and poor, from “Kiho” to Kamschatka, for let it be known that his fame extends to the uttermost parts of the earth:

THE COMMUNICATION

R.R. Steamer Trombone, VICKSBURG, May 8, 1859.

The river from New Orleans up to Natchez is higher than it has been since the niggers were executed (which was in the fall of 1813) and my opinion is that if the rise continues at this rate the water will be on the roof of the St. Charles Hotel before the middle of January. The point at Cairo, which has not even been moistened by the river since 1813, is now entirely under water.

However, Mr. Editor, the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley should not act precipitately and sell their plantations at a sacrifice on account of this prophecy of mine, for I shall proceed to convince them of a great fact in regard to this matter, viz.: that the tendency of the Mississippi is to rise less and less high every year (with an occasional variation of the rule), that such has been the case for many centuries, and eventually that it will cease to rise at all. Therefore, I would hint to the planters, as we say in an innocent little parlor game commonly called “draw,” that if they can only “stand the rise” this time they may enjoy the comfortable assurance that the old river’s banks will never hold a “full” again during their natural lives.

In the summer of 1763 I came down the river on the old first Jubilee. She was new then, however; a singular sort of a single-engine boat, with a Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, forecastle on her stern, wheels in the center, and the jackstaff “nowhere,” for I steered her with a window- shutter, and when we wanted to land we sent a line ashore and “rounded her to” with a yoke of oxen.

Well, sir, we wooded off the top of the big bluff above Selmathe only dry land visible–and waited there three weeks, swapping knives and playing “seven up” with the Indians, waiting for the river to fall. Finally, it fell about a hundred feet, and we went on. One day we rounded to, and I got in a horse-trough, which my partner borrowed from the Indians up there at Selma while they were at prayers, and went down to sound around No. 8, and while I was gone my partner got aground on the hills at Hickman. After three days’ labor we finally succeeded in sparring her off with a capstan bar, and went on to Memphis. By the time we got there the river had subsided to such an extent that we were able to land where the Gayoso House now stands. We finished loading at Memphis, and loaded part of the stone for the present St. Louis Court House (which was then in process of erection), to be taken up on our return trip.

You can form some conception, by these memoranda, of how high the water was in 1763. In 1775 it did not rise so high by thirty feet; in 1790 it missed the original mark at least sixty-five feet; in 1797, one hundred and fifty feet; and in 1806, nearly two hundred and fifty feet. These were “high-water” years. The “high waters” since then have been so insignificant that I have scarcely taken the trouble to notice them. Thus, you will perceive that the planters need not feel uneasy. The river may make an occasional spasmodic effort at a flood, but the time is approaching when it will cease to rise altogether.

In conclusion, sir, I will condescend to hint at the foundation of these arguments: When me and De Soto discovered the Mississippi I could stand at Bolivar Landing (several miles above “Roaring Waters Bar”) and pitch a biscuit to the main shore on the other side, and in low water we waded across at Donaldsonville. The gradual widening and deepening of the river is the whole secret of the matter.

Yours, etc.
SERGEANT FATHOM.

APPENDIX C

I

MARK TWAIN’S EMPIRE CITY HOAX
(See Chapter xli)

THE LATEST SENSATION

A Victim to Jeremy Diddling Trustees–He Cuts his Throat from Ear to Ear, Scalps his Wife, and Dashes Out the Brains of Six Helpless Children!

From Abram Curry, who arrived here yesterday afternoon from Carson, we learn the following particulars concerning a bloody massacre which was committed in Ormsby County night before last. It seems that during the past six months a man named P. Hopkins, or Philip Hopkins, has been residing with his family in the old log-house just at the edge of the great pine forest which lies between Empire City and Dutch Nick’s. The family consisted of nine children–five girls and four boys–the oldest of the group, Mary, being nineteen years old, and the youngest, Tommy, about a year and a half. Twice in the past two months Mrs. Hopkins, while visiting Carson, expressed fears concerning the sanity of her husband, remarking that of late he had been subject to fits of violence, and that during the prevalence of one of these he had threatened to take her life. It was Mrs. Hopkins’s misfortune to be given to exaggeration, however, and but little attention was given to what she said.

About 10 o’clock on Monday evening Hopkins dashed into Carson on horseback, with his throat cut from ear to ear, and bearing in his hand a reeking scalp, from which the warm, smoking blood was still dripping, and fell in a dying condition in front of the Magnolia saloon. Hopkins expired, in the course of five minutes, without speaking. The long, red hair of the scalp he bore marked it as that of Mrs. Hopkins. A number of citizens, headed by Sheriff Gasherie, mounted at once and rode down to Hopkins’s house, where a ghastly scene met their eyes. The scalpless corpse of Mrs. Hopkins lay across the threshold, with her head split open and her right hand almost severed from the wrist. Near her lay the ax with which the murderous deed had been committed. In one of the bedrooms six of the children were found, one in bed and the others scattered about the floor. They were all dead. Their brains had evidently been dashed out with a club, and every mark about them seemed to have been made with a blunt instrument. The children must have struggled hard for their lives, as articles of clothing and broken furniture were strewn about the room in the utmost confusion. Julia and Emma, aged respectively fourteen and seventeen, were found in the kitchen, bruised and insensible, but it is thought their recovery is possible. The eldest girl, Mary, must have sought refuge, in her terror, in the garret, as her body was found there frightfully mutilated, and the knife with which her wounds had been inflicted still sticking in her side. The two girls Julia and Emma, who had recovered sufficiently to be able to talk yesterday morning, declare that their father knocked them down with a billet of wood and stamped on them. They think they were the first attacked. They further state that Hopkins had shown evidence of derangement all day, but had exhibited no violence. He flew into a passion and attempted to murder them because they advised him to go to bed and compose his mind.

Curry says Hopkins was about forty-two years of age, and a native of western Pennsylvania; he was always affable and polite, and until very recently no one had ever heard of his ill-treating his family. He had been a heavy owner in the best mines of Virginia and Gold Hill, but when the San Francisco papers exposed our game of cooking dividends in order to bolster up our stocks he grew afraid and sold out, and invested an immense amount in the Spring Valley Water Company, of San Francisco. He was advised to do this by a relative of his, one of the editors of the San Francisco Bulletin, who had suffered pecuniarily by the dividend- cooking system as applied to the Daney Mining Company recently. Hopkins had not long ceased to own in the various claims on the Comstock lead, however, when several dividends were cooked on his newly acquired property, their water totally dried up, and Spring Valley stock went down to nothing. It is presumed that this misfortune drove him mad, and resulted in his killing himself and the greater portion of his family. The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company to go on borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover of which the cunning financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving the crash to come upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to expose the villainy at work. We hope the fearful massacre detailed above may prove the saddest result of their silence.

II

NEWS-GATHERING WITH MARK TWAIN

Alfred Doten’s son gives the following account of a reporting trip made by his father and Mark Twain, when the two were on Comstock papers:

My father and Mark Twain were once detailed to go over to Como and write up some new mines that had been discovered over there. My father was on the Gold Hill News. He and Mark had not met before, but became promptly acquainted, and were soon calling each other by their first names.

They went to a little hotel at Carson, agreeing to do their work there together next morning. When morning came they set out, and suddenly on a corner Mark stopped and turned to my father, saying:

“By gracious, Alf! Isn’t that a brewery?”

“It is, Mark. Let’s go in.”

They did so, and remained there all day, swapping yarns, sipping beer, and lunching, going back to the hotel that night.

The next morning precisely the same thing occurred. When they were on the same corner, Mark stopped as if he had never been there before, and sand:

“Good gracious, Alf ! Isn’t that a brewery?”

“It is, Mark. Let’s go in.”

So again they went in, and again stayed all day.

This happened again the next morning, and the next. Then my father became uneasy. A letter had come from Gold Hill, asking him where his report of the mines was. They agreed that next morning they would really begin the story; that they would climb to the top of a hill that overlooked the mines, and write it from there.

But the next morning, as before, Mark was surprised to discover the brewery, and once more they went in. A few moments later, however, a man who knew all about the mines–a mining engineer connected with them–came in. He was a godsend. My father set down a valuable, informing story, while Mark got a lot of entertaining mining yarns out of him.

Next day Virginia City and Gold Hill were gaining information from my father’s article, and entertainment from Mark’s story of the mines.

APPENDIX D

FROM MARK TWAIN’S FIRST LECTURE, DELIVERED OCTOBER 2, 1866

(See Chapter liv)

HAWAIIAN IMPORTANCE TO AMERICA

After a full elucidation of the sugar industry of the Sandwich Islands, its profits and possibilities, he said:

I have dwelt upon this subject to show you that these islands have a genuine importance to America–an importance which is not generally appreciated by our citizens. They pay revenues into the United States Treasury now amounting to over a half a million a year.

I do not know what the sugar yield of the world is now, but ten years ago, according to the Patent Office reports, it was 800,000 hogsheads. The Sandwich Islands, properly cultivated by go-ahead Americans, are capable of providing one-third as much themselves. With the Pacific Railroad built, the great China Mail Line of steamers touching at Honolulu–we could stock the islands with Americans and supply a third of the civilized world with sugar–and with the silkiest, longest-stapled cotton this side of the Sea Islands, and the very best quality of rice …. The property has got to fall to some heir, and why not the United States?

NATIVE PASSION FOR FUNERALS

They are very fond of funerals. Big funerals are their main weakness. Fine grave clothes, fine funeral appointments, and a long procession are things they take a generous delight in. They are fond of their chief and their king; they reverence them with a genuine reverence and love them with a warm affection, and often look forward to the happiness they will experience in burying them. They will beg, borrow, or steal money enough, and flock from all the islands, to be present at a royal funeral on Oahu. Years ago a Kanaka and his wife were condemned to be hanged for murder. They received the sentence with manifest satisfaction because it gave an opening for a funeral, you know. All they care for is a funeral. It makes but little difference to them whose it is; they would as soon attend their own funeral as anybody else’s. This couple were people of consequence, and had landed estates. They sold every foot of ground they had and laid it out in fine clothes to be hung in. And the woman appeared on the scaffold in a white satin dress and slippers and fathoms of gaudy ribbon, and the man was arrayed in a gorgeous vest, blue claw- hammer coat and brass buttons, and white kid gloves. As the noose was adjusted around his neck, he blew his nose with a grand theatrical flourish, so as to show his embroidered white handkerchief. I never, never knew of a couple who enjoyed hanging more than they did.

VIEW FROM HALEAKALA

It is a solemn pleasure to stand upon the summit of the extinct crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet above the sea, and gaze down into its awful crater, 27 miles in circumference and ago feet deep, and to picture to yourself the seething world of fire that once swept up out of the tremendous abyss ages ago.

The prodigious funnel is dead and silent now, and even has bushes growing far down in its bottom, where the deep-sea line could hardly have reached in the old times, when the place was filled with liquid lava. These bushes look like parlor shrubs from the summit where you stand, and the file of visitors moving through them on their mules is diminished to a detachment of mice almost; and to them you, standing so high up against the sun, ten thousand feet above their heads, look no larger than a grasshopper.

This in the morning; but at three or four in the afternoon a thousand little patches of white clouds, like handfuls of wool, come drifting noiselessly, one after another, into the crater, like a procession of shrouded phantoms, and circle round and round the vast sides, and settle gradually down and mingle together until the colossal basin is filled to the brim with snowy fog and all its seared and desolate wonders are hidden from sight.

And then you may turn your back to the crater and look far away upon the broad valley below, with its sugar-houses glinting like white specks in the distance, and the great sugar-fields diminished to green veils amid the lighter-tinted verdure around them, and abroad upon the limitless ocean. But I should not say you look down; you look up at these things.

You are ten thousand feet above them, but yet you seem to stand in a basin, with the green islands here and there, and the valleys and the wide ocean, and the remote snow-peak of Mauna Loa, all raised up before and above you, and pictured out like a brightly tinted map hung at the ceiling of a room.

You look up at everything; nothing is below you. It has a singular and startling effect to see a miniature world thus seemingly hung in mid-air.

But soon the white clouds come trooping along in ghostly squadrons and mingle together in heavy masses a quarter of a mile below you and shut out everything-completely hide the sea and all the earth save the pinnacle you stand on. As far as the eye can reach, it finds nothing to rest upon but a boundless plain of clouds tumbled into all manner of fantastic shapes-a billowy ocean of wool aflame with the gold and purple and crimson splendors of the setting sun! And so firm does this grand cloud pavement look that you can hardly persuade yourself that you could not walk upon it; that if you stepped upon it you would plunge headlong and astonish your friends at dinner ten thousand feet below.

Standing on that peak, with all the world shut out by that vast plain of clouds, a feeling of loneliness comes over a man which suggests to his mind the last man at the flood, perched high upon the last rock, with nothing visible on any side but a mournful waste of waters, and the ark departing dimly through the distant mists and leaving him to storm and night and solitude and death!

NOTICE OF MARK TWAIN’S LECTURE

“THE TROUBLE IS OVER”

“The inimitable Mark Twain, delivered himself last night of his first lecture on the Sandwich Islands, or anything else.

“Some time before the hour appointed to open his head the Academy of Music (on Pine Street) was densely crowded with one of the most fashionable audiences it was ever my privilege to witness during my long residence in this city. The Elite of the town were there, and so was the Governor of the State, occupying one of the boxes, whose rotund face was suffused with a halo of mirth during the whole entertainment. The audience promptly notified Mark by the usual sign–stamping–that the auspicious hour had arrived, and presently the lecturer came sidling and swinging out from the left of the stage. His very manner produced a generally vociferous laugh from the assemblage. He opened with an apology, by saying that he had partly succeeded in obtaining a band, but at the last moment the party engaged backed out. He explained that he had hired a man to play the trombone, but he, on learning that he was the only person engaged, came at the last moment and informed him that he could not play. This placed Mark in a bad predicament, and wishing to know his reasons for deserting him at that critical moment, he replied, ‘That he wasn’t going to make a fool of himself by sitting up there on the stage and blowing his horn all by himself.’ After the applause subsided, he assumed a very grave countenance and commenced his remarks proper with the following well-known sentence: ‘When, in the course of human events,’ etc. He lectured fully an hour and a quarter, and his humorous sayings were interspersed with geographical, agricultural, and statistical remarks, sometimes branching off and reaching beyond, soaring, in the very choicest language, up to the very pinnacle of descriptive power.”

APPENDIX E

FROM “THE JUMPING FROG” BOOK (MARK TWAIN’S FIRST PUBLISHED VOLUME)

(See Chapters lviii and lix)

I

ADVERTISEMENT

“Mark Twain” is too well known to the public to require a formal introduction at my hands. By his story of the Frog he scaled the heights of popularity at a single jump and won for himself the ‘sobriquet’ of The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope. He is also known to fame as The Moralist of the Main; and it is not unlikely that as such he will go down to posterity. It is in his secondary character, as humorist, however, rather than in the primal one of moralist, that I aim to present him in the present volume. And here a ready explanation will be found for the somewhat fragmentary character of many of these sketches; for it was necessary to snatch threads of humor wherever they could be found–very often detaching them from serious articles and moral essays with which they were woven and entangled. Originally written for newspaper publication, many of the articles referred to events of the day, the interest of which has now passed away, and contained local allusions, which the general reader would fail to understand; in such cases excision became imperative. Further than this, remark or comment is unnecessary. Mark Twain never resorts to tricks of spelling nor rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too rich and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But there are few who can resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard, good sense which form the staple of his writing.
J. P.

II

FROM ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

“MORAL STATISTICIAN”–I don’t want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. . . .

Of course you can save money by denying yourself all these vicious little enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use in accumulating cash? It won’t do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good-humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue-officers a true statement of your income. Now you all know all these things yourself, don’t you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a clean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as “ornery” and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your ceaseless and villainous “moral statistics”? Now, I don’t approve of dissipation, and I don’t indulge in it, either; but I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don’t want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars and then came back, in my absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor-stove.

III

FROM “A STRANGE DREAM”

(Example of Mark Twain’s Early Descriptive Writing)

. . . In due time I stood, with my companion, on the wall of the vast caldron which the natives, ages ago, named ‘Hale mau mau’–the abyss wherein they were wont to throw the remains of their chiefs, to the end that vulgar feet might never tread above them. We stood there, at dead of night, a mile above the level of the sea, and looked down a thousand feet upon a boiling, surging, roaring ocean of fire!–shaded our eyes from the blinding glare, and gazed far away over the crimson waves with a vague notion that a supernatural fleet, manned by demons and freighted with the damned, might presently sail up out of the remote distance; started when tremendous thunder-bursts shook the earth, and followed with fascinated eyes the grand jets of molten lava that sprang high up toward the zenith and exploded in a world of fiery spray that lit up the somber heavens with an infernal splendor.

“What is your little bonfire of Vesuvius to this?”

My ejaculation roused my companion from his reverie, and we fell into a conversation appropriate to the occasion and the surroundings. We came at last to speak of the ancient custom of casting the bodies of dead chieftains into this fearful caldron; and my comrade, who is of the blood royal, mentioned that the founder of his race, old King Kamehameha the First–that invincible old pagan Alexander–had found other sepulture than the burning depths of the ‘Hale mau mau’. I grew interested at once; I knew that the mystery of what became of the corpse of the warrior king hail never been fathomed; I was aware that there was a legend connected with this matter; and I felt as if there could be no more fitting time to listen to it than the present. The descendant of the Kamehamehas said:

The dead king was brought in royal state down the long, winding road that descends from the rim of the crater to the scorched and chasm-riven plain that lies between the ‘Hale mau mau’ and those beetling walls yonder in the distance. The guards were set and the troops of mourners began the weird wail for the departed. In the middle of the night came a sound of innumerable voices in the air and the rush of invisible wings; the funeral torches wavered, burned blue, and went out. The mourners and watchers fell to the ground paralyzed by fright, and many minutes elapsed before any one dared to move or speak; for they believed that the phantom messengers of the dread Goddess of Fire had been in their midst. When at last a torch was lighted the bier was vacant–the dead monarch had been spirited away!

APPENDIX F

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
(See Chapter lx)

NEW YORK “HERALD” EDITORIAL ON THE RETURN OF THE “QUAKER CITY” PILGRIMAGE, NOVEMBER 19, 1867

In yesterday’s Herald we published a most amusing letter from the pen of that most amusing American genius, Mark Twain, giving an account of that most amusing of all modern pilgrimages–the pilgrimage of the ‘Quaker City’. It has been amusing all through, this Quaker City affair. It might have become more serious than amusing if the ship had been sold at Jaffa, Alexandria, or Yalta, in the Black Sea, as it appears might have happened. In such a case the passengers would have been more effectually sold than the ship. The descendants of the Puritan pilgrims have, naturally enough, some of them, an affection for ships; but if all that is said about this religious cruise be true they have also a singularly sharp eye to business. It was scarcely wise on the part of the pilgrims, although it was well for the public, that so strange a genius as Mark Twain should have found admission into the sacred circle. We are not aware whether Mr. Twain intends giving us a book on this pilgrimage, but we do know that a book written from his own peculiar standpoint, giving an account of the characters and events on board ship and of the scenes which the pilgrims witnessed, would command an almost unprecedented sale. There are varieties of genius peculiar to America. Of one of these varieties Mark Twain is a striking specimen. For the development of his peculiar genius he has never had a more fitting opportunity. Besides, there are some things which he knows, and which the world ought to know, about this last edition of the Mayflower.

APPENDIX G

MARK TWAIN AT THE CORRESPONDENTS CLUB, WASHINGTON

(See Chapter lxiii)

WOMAN

A EULOGY OF THE FAIR SEX

The Washington Correspondents Club held its anniversary on Saturday night. Mr. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, responded to the toast, “Woman, the pride of the professions and the jewel of ours.” He said:

Mr. President,–I do not know why I should have been singled out to receive the greatest distinction of the evening–for so the office of replying to the toast to woman has been regarded in every age. [Applause.] I do not know why I have received this distinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club. But, be this as it may, Mr. President, I am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen any one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a heartier good–will to do the subject justice, than I. Because, Sir, I love the sex. [Laughter.] I love all the women, sir, irrespective of age or color. [Laughter.]

Human intelligence cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. She sews on our buttons [laughter]; she mends our clothes [laughter]; she ropes us in at the church fairs; she confides in us; she tells us whatever she can find out about the private affairs of the neighbors; she gives good advice, and plenty of it; she gives us a piece of her mind sometimes– and sometimes all of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our children. (Ours as a general thing.)–[this last sentence appears in Twain’s published speeches and may have been added later. D.W.]

In all relations of life, sir, it is but just and a graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick. [Great laughter.]
Wheresoever you place woman, sir–in whatsoever position or estate–she is an ornament to that place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [Here Mr. Twain paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that the applause should come in at this point. It came in. Mr. Twain resumed his eulogy.] Look at the noble names of history! Look at Cleopatra! Look at Desdemona! Look at Florence Nightingale! Look at Joan of Arc! Look at Lucretia Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed. “Well,” said Mr. Twain, scratching his head, doubtfully, “suppose we let Lucretia slide.”] Look at Joyce Heth! Look at Mother Eve! I repeat, sir, look at the illustrious names of history! Look at the Widow Machree! Look at Lucy Stone! Look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton! Look at George Francis Train! [Great laughter.] And, sir, I say with bowed head and deepest veneration, look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not lie–could not lie. [Applause.] But he never had any chance. It might have been different with him if he had belonged to a newspaper correspondents’ club. [Laughter, groans, hisses, cries of “put him out.” Mark looked around placidly upon his excited audience, and resumed.]

I repeat, sir, that in whatsoever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart she has few equals and no superior [laughter]; as a cousin she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper she is precious; as a wet nurse she has no equal among men! [Laughter.]

What, sir, would the people of this earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir. (Mighty scarce.)–[another line added later in the published ‘Speeches’. D.W.] Then let us cherish her, let us protect her, let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy–ourselves, if we get a chance. [Laughter.]

But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautiful; worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and every one of us has personally known, loved, and honored the very best one of them all–his own mother! [Applause.]

APPENDIX H

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR LECTURE OF JULY 2, 1868

(See Chapter lxvi)

THE PUBLIC TO MARK TWAIN-CORRESPONDENCE

SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.

MR. MARK TWAIN–DEAR SIR,–Hearing that you are about to sail for New York in the P. M. S. S. Company’s steamer of the 6th July, to publish a book, and learning with the deepest concern that you propose to read a chapter or two of that book in public before you go, we take this method of expressing our cordial desire that you will not. We beg and implore you do not. There is a limit to human endurance.

We are your personal friends. We have your welfare at heart. We desire to see you prosper. And it is upon these accounts, and upon these only, that we urge you to desist from the new atrocity you contemplate. Yours truly,

60 names including: Bret Harte, Maj.-Gen. Ord, Maj.-Gen. Halleck, The Orphan Asylum, and various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on Foot and Horseback, and 1500 in the Steerage.

(REPLY)

SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th

TO THE 1,500 AND OTHERS,–It seems to me that your course is entirely unprecedented. Heretofore, when lecturers, singers, actors, and other frauds have said they were about to leave town, you have always been the very first people to come out in a card beseeching them to hold on for just one night more, and inflict just one more performance on the public, but as soon as I want to take a farewell benefit you come after me, with a card signed by the whole community and the board of aldermen, praying me not to do it. But it isn’t of any use. You cannot move me from my fell purpose. I will torment the people if I want to. I have a better right to do it than these strange lecturers and orators that come here from abroad. It only costs the public a dollar apiece, and if they can’t stand it what do they stay here for? Am I to go away and let them have peace and quiet for a year and a half, and then come back and only lecture them twice? What do you take me for?

No, gentlemen, ask of me anything else and I will do it cheerfully; but do not ask me not to afflict the people. I wish to tell them all I know about VENICE. I wish to tell them about the City of the Sea–that most venerable, most brilliant, and proudest Republic the world has ever seen. I wish to hint at what it achieved in twelve hundred years, and what it lost in two hundred. I wish to furnish a deal of pleasant information, somewhat highly spiced, but still palatable, digestible, and eminently fitted for the intellectual stomach. My last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but I have submitted this discourse to several able critics, and they have pronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold it?

Let me talk only just this once, and I will sail positively on the 6th of July, and stay away until I return from China–two years. Yours truly, MARK TWAIN.

(FURTHER REMONSTRANCE)

SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.