If it isn't
innocently
and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge.
funny, I am no judge.
Twain - Speeches
?
Project Gutenberg's Mark Twain's Speeches, by Mark Twain (Samuel
Clemens)
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Title: Mark Twain's Speeches
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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Language: English
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MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
by Mark Twain
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
THE STORY OF A SPEECH
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES
BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS
DEDICATION SPEECH
DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE
GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS
A NEW GERMAN WORD
UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM
THE WEATHER
THE BABIES
OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES
EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS
THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE
POETS AS POLICEMEN
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED
DALY THEATRE
THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN
DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT
COLLEGE GIRLS
GIRLS
THE LADIES
WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB
VOTES FOR WOMEN
WOMAN-AN OPINION
ADVICE TO GIRLS
TAXES AND MORALS
TAMMANY AND CROKER
MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES
THEORETICAL MORALS
LAYMAN'S SERMON
UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY
PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP
COURAGE
THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE
ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE
HENRY M. STANLEY
DINNER TO MR. JEROME
HENRY IRVING
DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE
INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY
DINNER TO WHITELAW REID
ROGERS AND RAILROADS
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
READING-ROOM OPENING
LITERATURE
DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE
THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
SPELLING AND PICTURES
BOOKS AND BURGLARS
AUTHORS' CLUB
BOOKSELLERS
"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE"
MORALS AND MEMORY
QUEEN VICTORIA
JOAN OF ARC
ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC.
OSTEOPATHY
WATER-SUPPLY
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
CATS AND CANDY
OBITUARY POETRY
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
BILLIARDS
THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG
AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS
STATISTICS
GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE
CHARITY AND ACTORS
RUSSIAN REPUBLIC
RUSSIAN SUFFERERS
WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS
ROBERT FULTON FUND
FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN
COPYRIGHT
IN AID OF THE BLIND
DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH
MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH
BUSINESS
CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR
ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE
WELCOME HOME
AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH
SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
TO THE WHITEFRIARS
THE ASCOT GOLD CUP
THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
INDEPENDENCE DAY
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ABOUT LONDON
PRINCETON
THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN"
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
INTRODUCTION
These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those
who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard
them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have
noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of
the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author.
He was a most consummate actor, with this difference from other actors,
that he was the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies to
which his voice and action gave the color of life. Representation is the
art of other actors; his art was creative as well as representative; it
was nothing at second hand.
I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he quite failed; some burst
or spurt redeemed him when he seemed flagging short of the goal, and,
whoever else was in the running, he came in ahead. His near-failures
were the error of a rare trust to the spontaneity in which other
speakers confide, or are believed to confide, when they are on
their feet. He knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's
spontaneity was for the silence and solitude of the closet where he
mused his words to an imagined audience; that this was the use of
orators from Demosthenes and Cicero up and down. He studied every word
and syllable, and memorized them by a system of mnemonics peculiar
to himself, consisting of an arbitrary arrangement of things on a
table--knives, forks, salt-cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever
was at hand--which stood for points and clauses and climaxes, and were
at once indelible diction and constant suggestion. He studied every tone
and every gesture, and he forecast the result with the real audience
from its result with that imagined audience. Therefore, it was beautiful
to see him and to hear him; he rejoiced in the pleasure he gave and the
blows of surprise which he dealt; and because he had his end in mind, he
knew when to stop.
I have been talking of his method and manner; the matter the reader has
here before him; and it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just.
W. D. HOWELLS.
PREFACE
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF "MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES"
If I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of
sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals,
should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for
making him sick, I would say that he deserved to be made sick for not
knowing any better how to utilize the blessings this world affords.
And if I sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and he, instead of
seasoning his graver reading with a chapter of it now and then, when his
mind demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several
chapters of it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and
he will have nobody to blame but himself if he is. There is no more sin
in publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a
candy-store with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the customer
whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive
from them the benefits which they will afford him if he uses their
possibilities judiciously.
Respectfully submitted,
THE AUTHOR.
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
THE STORY OF A SPEECH
An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine
years later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner
given by the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the
seventieth anniversary o f the birth of John Greenleaf
Whittier, at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877.
This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant
reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly
into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and
contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded
of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just
succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose
spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly Californiaward. I started an
inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow
and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'.
I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin
in the foot-hills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at
the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door
to me. When he heard my 'nom de guerre' he looked more dejected than
before. He let me in--pretty reluctantly, I thought--and after the
customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, I took a pipe.
This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he
spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering,
"You're the fourth--I'm going to move. " "The fourth what? " said I. "The
fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours--I'm going
to move. " "You don't tell me! " said I; "who were the others? " "Mr.
Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes--consound the
lot! "
You can easily believe I was interested. I supplicated--three hot
whiskeys did the rest--and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he:
"They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in of
course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but
that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson
was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as
a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double chins
all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a
prizefighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig
made of hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down his face, like a finger
with the end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see that.
And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin, then he
took me by the buttonhole, and says he:
"'Through the deep caves of thought
I hear a voice that sings,
Build thee more stately mansions,
O my soul! '
"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want to. '
Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that
way. However, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when Mr. Emerson
came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole
and says:
"'Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes. '
"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel. ' You
see it sort of riled me--I warn't used to the ways of littery swells.
But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Longfellow and
buttonholes me, and interrupts me. Says he:
"'Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis--'
"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you'll
be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get
this grub ready, you'll do me proud. ' Well, sir, after they'd filled up
I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it, and then he fires up all of a
sudden and yells:
"Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
For I would drink to other days. '
"By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I don't deny it, I was
getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I, 'Looky
here, my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the court knows
herself, you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry. ' Them's the
very words I said to him. Now I don't want to sass such famous littery
people, but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't nothing
onreasonable 'bout me; I don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on
my tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it's
different, 'and if the court knows herself,' I says, 'you'll take
whiskey straight or you'll go dry. ' Well, between drinks they'd swell
around the cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they
got out a greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a
corner--on trust. I began to notice some pretty suspicious things. Mr.
Emerson dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says:
"'I am the doubter and the doubt--'
and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout.
Says he:
"'They reckon ill who leave me out;
They know not well the subtle ways I keep.
I pass and deal again! '
Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one!
Well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a
sudden I see by Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. He had already
corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. So now he kind of
lifts a little in his chair and says:
"'I tire of globes and aces!
Too long the game is played! '
--and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as
pie and says:
"'Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught,'
--and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! Emerson claps
his hand on his bowie, Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went
under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes
rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the
first man that draws, I'll lay down on him and smother him! ' All quiet
on the Potomac, you bet!
"They were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow.
Emerson says, 'The nobbiest thing I ever wrote was "Barbara Frietchie. "'
Says Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my "Biglow Papers. "' Says Holmes,
'My "Thanatopsis" lays over 'em both. ' They mighty near ended in a
fight. Then they wished they had some more company--and Mr. Emerson
pointed to me and says:
"'Is yonder squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed? '
He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot--so I let it pass. Well, sir,
next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so
they made me stand up and sing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" till
I dropped-at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That's what I've
been through, my friend. When I woke at seven, they were leaving, thank
goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on, and his'n under his
arm. Says I, 'Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with
them? ' He says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em; because:
"'Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time. '
"As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours--and I'm
going to move; I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere. "
I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious
singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these
were impostors. "
The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he,
"Ah! impostors, were they? Are you? "
I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not travelled on my
'nom de guerre' enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved
to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated
the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since
I believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular
fact on an occasion like this.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From Mark Twain's Autobiography.
January 11, 1906.
Answer to a letter received this morning:
DEAR MRS. H. ,--I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that
curious passage in my life. During the first year or, two after it
happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were
so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled,
established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my
mind--and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have
lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse,
vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and
your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to
look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to
delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy
of it.
It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am
not able to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C. , of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing
but death terminates. The C. 's were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice
and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break
of mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those
people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it
almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C. 's were indignant
about the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They
poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty
attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about
the Boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the
matter. That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief,
beyond imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year
or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of
it--which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought
of it I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy
a thing. Well, the C. 's comforted me, but they did not persuade me to
continue to think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to
get it out of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H. 's
letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought
of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if
possibly she might be right.
If it isn't innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C. , of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing
but death terminates. The C. 's were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice
and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break
of mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those
people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it
almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C. 's were indignant
about the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They
poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty
attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about
the Boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the
matter. That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief,
beyond imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year
or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of
it--which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought
of it I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy
a thing. Well, the C. 's comforted me, but they did not persuade me to
continue to think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to
get it out of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H. 's
letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought
of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if
possibly she might be right. At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and
I wrote to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth.
I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering--dimly I can
see a hundred people--no, perhaps fifty--shadowy figures sitting at tables
feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. I don't know who
they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and
facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling; Mr.
Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face;
Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face;
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all
good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being
turned toward the light first one way and then another--a charming man,
and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting
still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion
to other people). I can see those figures with entire distinctness
across this abyss of time.
One other feature is clear--Willie Winter (for these past thousand years
dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying that high
post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then than he is now,
and he showed 'it. It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter
at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet
where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did not read a
charming poem written for the occasion. He did it this time, and it was
up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen
to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of
heart and brain.
Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday--because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening--the gay oration above quoted from the
Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had
perfectly memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and
self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic guests;
that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened; as did
everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered
myself of--we'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. I was
expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the
case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the dialogue: "The old
miner said, 'You are the fourth, I'm going to move. ' 'The fourth what? '
said I. He answered, 'The fourth littery man that has been here in
twenty-four hours. I am going to move. ' 'Why, you don't tell me;' said
I. 'Who were the others? ' 'Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, consound the lot--'"
Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered
what the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty--I
struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description
of the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always
hoping--but with a gradually perishing hope that somebody--would laugh, or
that somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't know enough
to give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and so I
went on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to
the end, in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with
horror. It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if
I had been making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the
Trinity; there is no milder way, in which to describe the petrified
condition and the ghastly expression of those people.
When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat.
I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what
the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I
shall never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near
me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp.
There was no use--he understood the whole size of the disaster. He had
good intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. It
was an atmosphere that would freeze anything. If Benvenuto Cellini's
salamander had been in that place he would not have survived to be put
into Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful pause. There was an
awful silence, a desolating silence. Then the next man on the list had
to get up--there was no help for it. That was Bishop--Bishop had just
burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had
appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a place which would make any novel
respectable and any author noteworthy. In this case the novel itself was
recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was
away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest,
consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may
say our American millions were standing, from Maine to Texas and from
Alaska to Florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands
ready to applaud, when Bishop should get up on that occasion, and for
the first time in his life speak in public. It was under these damaging
conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. I had
spoken several times before, and that is the reason why I was able to
go on without dying in my tracks, as I ought to have done--but Bishop
had had no experience. He was up facing those awful deities--facing those
other people, those strangers--facing human beings for the first time in
his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away in
his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard
from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that
dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head
like the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there
wasn't any fog left. He didn't go on--he didn't last long. It was not
many sentence's after his first before he began to hesitate, and break,
and lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down
in a limp and mushy pile.
Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than
one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man hadn't
strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied,
paralyzed; it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try.
Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells mournfully, and
without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported us out of
the room. It was very kind--he was most generous. He towed us tottering
away into some room in that building, and we sat down there. I don't
know what my remark was now, but I know the nature of it. It was the
kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can
help your case. But Howells was honest--he had to say the heart-breaking
things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this
shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that
had ever happened in anybody's history--and then he added, "That is, for
you--and consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in
your case, you deserve to suffer. You have committed this crime, and you
deserve to have all you are going to get. But here is an innocent man.
Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him.
He can never hold his head up again. The world can never look upon
Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse. "
That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which
pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two
whenever it forced its way into my mind.
Now then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived
this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an
idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last.
It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with
humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it
anywhere. What could have been the matter with that house? It is
amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and
those deities the loudest of them all. Could the fault have been with
me? Did I lose courage when I saw those great men up there whom I was
going to describe in such a strange fashion? If that happened, if I
showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can't be successfully
funny if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I can't account for
it, but if I had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back
here now on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same old
speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they'd run all
over that stage. Oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in the
speech at all.
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY,
PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881
On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response,
President Rollins said:
"This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly
born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors.
He is not technically, therefore, of New England descent.
Under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself,
however, he has done the best he could--he has had all his
children born there, and has made of himself a New England
ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this, and better
even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New
England ascent. To ascend there in any thing that's reasonable
is difficult; for--confidentially, with the door shut--we all
know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly
land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that
Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent--become
a man of mark. "
I rise to protest. I have kept still for years; but really I think there
is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want
to celebrate those people for? --those ancestors of yours of 1620--the
Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to celebrate them for? Your
pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating
the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth
rock on the 22d of December. So you are celebrating their landing. Why,
the other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever;
the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf.
Celebrating their lauding! What was there remarkable about it, I would
like to know? What can you be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had been
at sea three or four months. It was the very middle of winter: it was
as cold as death off Cape Cod there. Why shouldn't they come ashore? If
they hadn't landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact:
It would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the
world would not willingly let die. If it had been you, gentlemen, you
probably wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be
celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise,
but only transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the
Pilgrims--to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and
customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance--a circumstance
to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like
this for two hundred and sixty years--hang it, a horse would have known
enough to land; a horse--Pardon again; the gentleman on my right assures
me that it was not merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are
celebrating, but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an
inconsistency here--one says it was the landing, the other says it was
the Pilgrims. It is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable
and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston.
Well, then, what do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They
were a mighty hard lot--you know it. I grant you, without the slightest
unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just
than were the people of Europe of that day; I grant you that they are
better than their predecessors. But what of that? --that is nothing.
People always progress. You are better than your fathers and
grandfathers were (this is the first time I have ever aimed a
measureless slander at the departed, for I consider such things
improper). Yes, those among you who have not been in the penitentiary,
if such there be, are better than your fathers and grandfathers were;
but is that any sufficient reason for getting up annual dinners and
celebrating you? No, by no means--by no means. Well, I repeat, those
Pilgrims were a hard lot. They took good care of themselves, but they
abolished everybody else's ancestors. I am a border-ruffian from the
State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me, you
have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the
combination which makes the perfect man. But where are my ancestors?
Whom shall I celebrate? Where shall I find the raw material?
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian--an early Indian.
Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. Not one drop of
my blood flows in that Indian's veins today. I stand here, lone and
forlorn, without an ancestor. They skinned him! I do not object to that,
if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemen--alive! They skinned him
alive--and before company! That is what rankles. Think how he must have
felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed. If he had
been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to his
feelings, because he would have been considered "dressed. " But he
was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most
undressed men that ever was. I ask you to put yourselves in his place.
I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it in the
interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; I ask it
that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising
swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true New
England Society ought to present. Cease to come to these annual orgies
in this hollow modern mockery--the surplusage of raiment. Come in
character; come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity,
come in the free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors
provided for mine.
Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marmaduke
Stevenson, et al. Your tribe chased them out of the country for their
religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your
ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of
the sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire
that highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on
this broad continent to worship according to the dictates of his own
conscience--and they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous
Quakers to interfere with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains
of political slavery, and gave the vote to every man in this wide land,
excluding none! --none except those who did not belong to the orthodox
church. Your ancestors--yes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless,
they gave us religious liberty to worship as they required us to
worship, and political liberty to vote as the church required; and so
I the bereft one, I the forlorn one, am here to do my best to help you
celebrate them right.
The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an ancestress of mine. Your people
were pretty severe with her you will confess that. But, poor thing! I
believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took her into
their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that when she died
she went to the same place which your ancestors went to. It is a great
pity, for she was a good woman. Roger Williams was an ancestor of mine.
I don't really remember what your people did with him. But they banished
him to Rhode Island, anyway. And then, I believe, recognizing that this
was really carrying harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took
pity on him and burned him. They were a hard lot! All those Salem
witches were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them.
Yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal
with them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our
family from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine
years. The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your
progenitors was an ancestor of mine--for I am of a mixed breed, an
infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel. I'm not one of your sham
meerschaums that you can color in a week. No, my complexion is the
patient art of eight generations. Well, in my own time, I had acquired
a lot of my kin--by purchase, and swapping around, and one way and
another--and was getting along very well. Then, with the inborn
perversity of your lineage, you got up a war, and took them all away
from me. And so, again am I bereft, again am I forlorn; no drop of my
blood flows in the veins of any living being who is marketable.
Clemens)
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Title: Mark Twain's Speeches
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: August 19, 2006 [EBook #3188]
Last Updated: August 19, 2016
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES ***
Produced by David Widger
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
by Mark Twain
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
THE STORY OF A SPEECH
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES
BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS
DEDICATION SPEECH
DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE
GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS
A NEW GERMAN WORD
UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM
THE WEATHER
THE BABIES
OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES
EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS
THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE
POETS AS POLICEMEN
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED
DALY THEATRE
THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN
DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT
COLLEGE GIRLS
GIRLS
THE LADIES
WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB
VOTES FOR WOMEN
WOMAN-AN OPINION
ADVICE TO GIRLS
TAXES AND MORALS
TAMMANY AND CROKER
MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES
THEORETICAL MORALS
LAYMAN'S SERMON
UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY
PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP
COURAGE
THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE
ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE
HENRY M. STANLEY
DINNER TO MR. JEROME
HENRY IRVING
DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE
INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY
DINNER TO WHITELAW REID
ROGERS AND RAILROADS
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
READING-ROOM OPENING
LITERATURE
DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE
THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
SPELLING AND PICTURES
BOOKS AND BURGLARS
AUTHORS' CLUB
BOOKSELLERS
"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE"
MORALS AND MEMORY
QUEEN VICTORIA
JOAN OF ARC
ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC.
OSTEOPATHY
WATER-SUPPLY
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
CATS AND CANDY
OBITUARY POETRY
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
BILLIARDS
THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG
AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS
STATISTICS
GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE
CHARITY AND ACTORS
RUSSIAN REPUBLIC
RUSSIAN SUFFERERS
WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS
ROBERT FULTON FUND
FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN
COPYRIGHT
IN AID OF THE BLIND
DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH
MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH
BUSINESS
CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR
ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE
WELCOME HOME
AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH
SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
TO THE WHITEFRIARS
THE ASCOT GOLD CUP
THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
INDEPENDENCE DAY
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ABOUT LONDON
PRINCETON
THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN"
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
INTRODUCTION
These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those
who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard
them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have
noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of
the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author.
He was a most consummate actor, with this difference from other actors,
that he was the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies to
which his voice and action gave the color of life. Representation is the
art of other actors; his art was creative as well as representative; it
was nothing at second hand.
I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he quite failed; some burst
or spurt redeemed him when he seemed flagging short of the goal, and,
whoever else was in the running, he came in ahead. His near-failures
were the error of a rare trust to the spontaneity in which other
speakers confide, or are believed to confide, when they are on
their feet. He knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's
spontaneity was for the silence and solitude of the closet where he
mused his words to an imagined audience; that this was the use of
orators from Demosthenes and Cicero up and down. He studied every word
and syllable, and memorized them by a system of mnemonics peculiar
to himself, consisting of an arbitrary arrangement of things on a
table--knives, forks, salt-cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever
was at hand--which stood for points and clauses and climaxes, and were
at once indelible diction and constant suggestion. He studied every tone
and every gesture, and he forecast the result with the real audience
from its result with that imagined audience. Therefore, it was beautiful
to see him and to hear him; he rejoiced in the pleasure he gave and the
blows of surprise which he dealt; and because he had his end in mind, he
knew when to stop.
I have been talking of his method and manner; the matter the reader has
here before him; and it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just.
W. D. HOWELLS.
PREFACE
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF "MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES"
If I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of
sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals,
should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for
making him sick, I would say that he deserved to be made sick for not
knowing any better how to utilize the blessings this world affords.
And if I sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and he, instead of
seasoning his graver reading with a chapter of it now and then, when his
mind demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several
chapters of it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and
he will have nobody to blame but himself if he is. There is no more sin
in publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a
candy-store with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the customer
whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive
from them the benefits which they will afford him if he uses their
possibilities judiciously.
Respectfully submitted,
THE AUTHOR.
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
THE STORY OF A SPEECH
An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine
years later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner
given by the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the
seventieth anniversary o f the birth of John Greenleaf
Whittier, at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877.
This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant
reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly
into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and
contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded
of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just
succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose
spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly Californiaward. I started an
inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow
and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'.
I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin
in the foot-hills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at
the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door
to me. When he heard my 'nom de guerre' he looked more dejected than
before. He let me in--pretty reluctantly, I thought--and after the
customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, I took a pipe.
This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he
spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering,
"You're the fourth--I'm going to move. " "The fourth what? " said I. "The
fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours--I'm going
to move. " "You don't tell me! " said I; "who were the others? " "Mr.
Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes--consound the
lot! "
You can easily believe I was interested. I supplicated--three hot
whiskeys did the rest--and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he:
"They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in of
course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but
that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson
was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as
a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double chins
all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a
prizefighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig
made of hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down his face, like a finger
with the end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see that.
And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin, then he
took me by the buttonhole, and says he:
"'Through the deep caves of thought
I hear a voice that sings,
Build thee more stately mansions,
O my soul! '
"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want to. '
Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that
way. However, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when Mr. Emerson
came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole
and says:
"'Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes. '
"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel. ' You
see it sort of riled me--I warn't used to the ways of littery swells.
But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Longfellow and
buttonholes me, and interrupts me. Says he:
"'Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis--'
"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you'll
be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get
this grub ready, you'll do me proud. ' Well, sir, after they'd filled up
I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it, and then he fires up all of a
sudden and yells:
"Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
For I would drink to other days. '
"By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I don't deny it, I was
getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I, 'Looky
here, my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the court knows
herself, you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry. ' Them's the
very words I said to him. Now I don't want to sass such famous littery
people, but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't nothing
onreasonable 'bout me; I don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on
my tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it's
different, 'and if the court knows herself,' I says, 'you'll take
whiskey straight or you'll go dry. ' Well, between drinks they'd swell
around the cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they
got out a greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a
corner--on trust. I began to notice some pretty suspicious things. Mr.
Emerson dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says:
"'I am the doubter and the doubt--'
and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout.
Says he:
"'They reckon ill who leave me out;
They know not well the subtle ways I keep.
I pass and deal again! '
Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one!
Well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a
sudden I see by Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. He had already
corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. So now he kind of
lifts a little in his chair and says:
"'I tire of globes and aces!
Too long the game is played! '
--and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as
pie and says:
"'Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught,'
--and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! Emerson claps
his hand on his bowie, Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went
under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes
rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the
first man that draws, I'll lay down on him and smother him! ' All quiet
on the Potomac, you bet!
"They were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow.
Emerson says, 'The nobbiest thing I ever wrote was "Barbara Frietchie. "'
Says Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my "Biglow Papers. "' Says Holmes,
'My "Thanatopsis" lays over 'em both. ' They mighty near ended in a
fight. Then they wished they had some more company--and Mr. Emerson
pointed to me and says:
"'Is yonder squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed? '
He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot--so I let it pass. Well, sir,
next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so
they made me stand up and sing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" till
I dropped-at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That's what I've
been through, my friend. When I woke at seven, they were leaving, thank
goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on, and his'n under his
arm. Says I, 'Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with
them? ' He says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em; because:
"'Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time. '
"As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours--and I'm
going to move; I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere. "
I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious
singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these
were impostors. "
The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he,
"Ah! impostors, were they? Are you? "
I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not travelled on my
'nom de guerre' enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved
to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated
the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since
I believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular
fact on an occasion like this.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From Mark Twain's Autobiography.
January 11, 1906.
Answer to a letter received this morning:
DEAR MRS. H. ,--I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that
curious passage in my life. During the first year or, two after it
happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were
so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled,
established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my
mind--and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have
lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse,
vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and
your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to
look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to
delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy
of it.
It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am
not able to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C. , of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing
but death terminates. The C. 's were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice
and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break
of mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those
people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it
almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C. 's were indignant
about the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They
poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty
attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about
the Boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the
matter. That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief,
beyond imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year
or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of
it--which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought
of it I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy
a thing. Well, the C. 's comforted me, but they did not persuade me to
continue to think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to
get it out of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H. 's
letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought
of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if
possibly she might be right.
If it isn't innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C. , of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing
but death terminates. The C. 's were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice
and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break
of mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those
people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it
almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C. 's were indignant
about the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They
poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty
attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about
the Boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the
matter. That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief,
beyond imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year
or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of
it--which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought
of it I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy
a thing. Well, the C. 's comforted me, but they did not persuade me to
continue to think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to
get it out of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H. 's
letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought
of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if
possibly she might be right. At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and
I wrote to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth.
I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering--dimly I can
see a hundred people--no, perhaps fifty--shadowy figures sitting at tables
feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. I don't know who
they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and
facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling; Mr.
Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face;
Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face;
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all
good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being
turned toward the light first one way and then another--a charming man,
and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting
still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion
to other people). I can see those figures with entire distinctness
across this abyss of time.
One other feature is clear--Willie Winter (for these past thousand years
dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying that high
post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then than he is now,
and he showed 'it. It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter
at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet
where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did not read a
charming poem written for the occasion. He did it this time, and it was
up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen
to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of
heart and brain.
Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday--because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening--the gay oration above quoted from the
Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had
perfectly memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and
self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic guests;
that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened; as did
everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered
myself of--we'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. I was
expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the
case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the dialogue: "The old
miner said, 'You are the fourth, I'm going to move. ' 'The fourth what? '
said I. He answered, 'The fourth littery man that has been here in
twenty-four hours. I am going to move. ' 'Why, you don't tell me;' said
I. 'Who were the others? ' 'Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, consound the lot--'"
Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered
what the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty--I
struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description
of the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always
hoping--but with a gradually perishing hope that somebody--would laugh, or
that somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't know enough
to give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and so I
went on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to
the end, in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with
horror. It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if
I had been making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the
Trinity; there is no milder way, in which to describe the petrified
condition and the ghastly expression of those people.
When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat.
I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what
the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I
shall never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near
me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp.
There was no use--he understood the whole size of the disaster. He had
good intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. It
was an atmosphere that would freeze anything. If Benvenuto Cellini's
salamander had been in that place he would not have survived to be put
into Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful pause. There was an
awful silence, a desolating silence. Then the next man on the list had
to get up--there was no help for it. That was Bishop--Bishop had just
burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had
appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a place which would make any novel
respectable and any author noteworthy. In this case the novel itself was
recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was
away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest,
consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may
say our American millions were standing, from Maine to Texas and from
Alaska to Florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands
ready to applaud, when Bishop should get up on that occasion, and for
the first time in his life speak in public. It was under these damaging
conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. I had
spoken several times before, and that is the reason why I was able to
go on without dying in my tracks, as I ought to have done--but Bishop
had had no experience. He was up facing those awful deities--facing those
other people, those strangers--facing human beings for the first time in
his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away in
his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard
from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that
dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head
like the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there
wasn't any fog left. He didn't go on--he didn't last long. It was not
many sentence's after his first before he began to hesitate, and break,
and lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down
in a limp and mushy pile.
Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than
one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man hadn't
strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied,
paralyzed; it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try.
Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells mournfully, and
without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported us out of
the room. It was very kind--he was most generous. He towed us tottering
away into some room in that building, and we sat down there. I don't
know what my remark was now, but I know the nature of it. It was the
kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can
help your case. But Howells was honest--he had to say the heart-breaking
things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this
shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that
had ever happened in anybody's history--and then he added, "That is, for
you--and consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in
your case, you deserve to suffer. You have committed this crime, and you
deserve to have all you are going to get. But here is an innocent man.
Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him.
He can never hold his head up again. The world can never look upon
Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse. "
That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which
pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two
whenever it forced its way into my mind.
Now then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived
this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an
idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last.
It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with
humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it
anywhere. What could have been the matter with that house? It is
amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and
those deities the loudest of them all. Could the fault have been with
me? Did I lose courage when I saw those great men up there whom I was
going to describe in such a strange fashion? If that happened, if I
showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can't be successfully
funny if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I can't account for
it, but if I had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back
here now on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same old
speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they'd run all
over that stage. Oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in the
speech at all.
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY,
PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881
On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response,
President Rollins said:
"This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly
born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors.
He is not technically, therefore, of New England descent.
Under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself,
however, he has done the best he could--he has had all his
children born there, and has made of himself a New England
ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this, and better
even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New
England ascent. To ascend there in any thing that's reasonable
is difficult; for--confidentially, with the door shut--we all
know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly
land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that
Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent--become
a man of mark. "
I rise to protest. I have kept still for years; but really I think there
is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want
to celebrate those people for? --those ancestors of yours of 1620--the
Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to celebrate them for? Your
pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating
the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth
rock on the 22d of December. So you are celebrating their landing. Why,
the other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever;
the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf.
Celebrating their lauding! What was there remarkable about it, I would
like to know? What can you be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had been
at sea three or four months. It was the very middle of winter: it was
as cold as death off Cape Cod there. Why shouldn't they come ashore? If
they hadn't landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact:
It would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the
world would not willingly let die. If it had been you, gentlemen, you
probably wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be
celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise,
but only transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the
Pilgrims--to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and
customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance--a circumstance
to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like
this for two hundred and sixty years--hang it, a horse would have known
enough to land; a horse--Pardon again; the gentleman on my right assures
me that it was not merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are
celebrating, but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an
inconsistency here--one says it was the landing, the other says it was
the Pilgrims. It is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable
and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston.
Well, then, what do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They
were a mighty hard lot--you know it. I grant you, without the slightest
unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just
than were the people of Europe of that day; I grant you that they are
better than their predecessors. But what of that? --that is nothing.
People always progress. You are better than your fathers and
grandfathers were (this is the first time I have ever aimed a
measureless slander at the departed, for I consider such things
improper). Yes, those among you who have not been in the penitentiary,
if such there be, are better than your fathers and grandfathers were;
but is that any sufficient reason for getting up annual dinners and
celebrating you? No, by no means--by no means. Well, I repeat, those
Pilgrims were a hard lot. They took good care of themselves, but they
abolished everybody else's ancestors. I am a border-ruffian from the
State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me, you
have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the
combination which makes the perfect man. But where are my ancestors?
Whom shall I celebrate? Where shall I find the raw material?
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian--an early Indian.
Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. Not one drop of
my blood flows in that Indian's veins today. I stand here, lone and
forlorn, without an ancestor. They skinned him! I do not object to that,
if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemen--alive! They skinned him
alive--and before company! That is what rankles. Think how he must have
felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed. If he had
been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to his
feelings, because he would have been considered "dressed. " But he
was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most
undressed men that ever was. I ask you to put yourselves in his place.
I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it in the
interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; I ask it
that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising
swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true New
England Society ought to present. Cease to come to these annual orgies
in this hollow modern mockery--the surplusage of raiment. Come in
character; come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity,
come in the free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors
provided for mine.
Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marmaduke
Stevenson, et al. Your tribe chased them out of the country for their
religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your
ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of
the sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire
that highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on
this broad continent to worship according to the dictates of his own
conscience--and they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous
Quakers to interfere with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains
of political slavery, and gave the vote to every man in this wide land,
excluding none! --none except those who did not belong to the orthodox
church. Your ancestors--yes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless,
they gave us religious liberty to worship as they required us to
worship, and political liberty to vote as the church required; and so
I the bereft one, I the forlorn one, am here to do my best to help you
celebrate them right.
The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an ancestress of mine. Your people
were pretty severe with her you will confess that. But, poor thing! I
believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took her into
their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that when she died
she went to the same place which your ancestors went to. It is a great
pity, for she was a good woman. Roger Williams was an ancestor of mine.
I don't really remember what your people did with him. But they banished
him to Rhode Island, anyway. And then, I believe, recognizing that this
was really carrying harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took
pity on him and burned him. They were a hard lot! All those Salem
witches were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them.
Yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal
with them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our
family from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine
years. The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your
progenitors was an ancestor of mine--for I am of a mixed breed, an
infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel. I'm not one of your sham
meerschaums that you can color in a week. No, my complexion is the
patient art of eight generations. Well, in my own time, I had acquired
a lot of my kin--by purchase, and swapping around, and one way and
another--and was getting along very well. Then, with the inborn
perversity of your lineage, you got up a war, and took them all away
from me. And so, again am I bereft, again am I forlorn; no drop of my
blood flows in the veins of any living being who is marketable.
