They were
sheltered
and
happy two days ago.
happy two days ago.
Twain - Speeches
I have been cruelly deceived, and it serves
me right for trusting a Scotchman. Yes, I do understand figures, and I
can count. I have counted the words in MacAlister's drivel (I certainly
cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four
hundred and thirty-nine. I also carefully counted the lies--there were
exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. Therefore, I leave
MacAlister to his fate.
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors,
because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is
dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well
myself.
GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR
ADDRESS AT A FAIR HELD AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK, IN
OCTOBER, 1900, IN AID OF THE ORPHANS AT GALVESTON
I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy this place first and
would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a
text for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is
proverbial with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not
come here, and has not furnished me with a text, and I am here without
a text. I have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome
faces, and--but I won't continue that, for I could go on forever about
attractive faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. But, after all,
compliments should be in order in a place like this.
I have been in New York two or three days, and have been in a condition
of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being
to regulate the moral and political situation on this planet--put it on
a sound basis--and when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it
requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when
you have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position
of corking. When I am situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as
though I were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please
consider I am playing a part for want of something better, and this is
not unfamiliar to me; I have often done this before.
When I was here about eight years ago I was coming up in a car of the
elevated road. Very few people were in that car, and on one end of it
there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about
fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye--a beautiful
eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who
had a vocation. He had with him a very fine little child of about four
or five years. I was watching the affection which existed between those
two. I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It was really a pretty
child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I was admiring her
he began to notice me.
I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody
else would do--admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get
four times as much of his admiration. Things went on very pleasantly. I
was making my way into his heart.
By-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off,
he got up, crossed over, and he said: "Now I am going to say something
to you which I hope you will regard as a compliment. " And then he went
on to say: "I have never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of
him, and any friend of mine will tell you that when I have once seen a
portrait of a man I place it in my eye and store it away in my memory,
and I can tell you now that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his
brother. Now," he said, "I hope you take this as a compliment. Yes,
you are a very good imitation; but when I come to look closer, you are
probably not that man. "
I said: "I will be frank with you. In my desire to look like that
excellent character I have dressed for the character; I have been
playing a part. "
He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you look very well on
the outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the
original. "
So when I come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say I
always play a part. But I will say before I sit down that when it comes
to saying anything here I will express myself in this way: I am heartily
in sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers
in this calamity, and in your desire to help those who were rendered
homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the fact that I am
not playing a part.
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE
After the address at the Robert Fulton Fund meeting, June 19,
1906, Mr. Clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the
San Francisco earthquake.
I haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of San Francisco
has grown up since my day. When I was there she had one hundred and
eighteen thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were
Chinese. I was a reporter on the Virginia City Enterprise in Nevada in
1862, and stayed there, I think, about two years, when I went to San
Francisco and got a job as a reporter on The Call. I was there three or
four years.
I remember one day I was walking down Third Street in San Francisco. It
was a sleepy, dull Sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring. Suddenly
as I looked up the street about three hundred yards the whole side of
a house fell out. The street was full of bricks and mortar. At the same
time I was knocked against the side of a house, and stood there stunned
for a moment.
I thought it was an earthquake. Nobody else had heard anything about it
and no one said earthquake to me afterward, but I saw it and I wrote
it. Nobody else wrote it, and the house I saw go into the street was the
only house in the city that felt it. I've always wondered if it wasn't a
little performance gotten up for my especial entertainment by the nether
regions.
CHARITY AND ACTORS
ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR IN THE METROPOLITAN
OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, MAY 6, 1907
Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair
open. Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr. Clemens, said:
"We intend to make this a banner week in the history of the
Fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he
actor, singer, dancer, or workman. We have spent more than
$40,000 during the past year. Charity covers a multitude of
sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. At the
opening of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin Booth
and Joseph Jefferson. In their place we have to-day that
American institution and apostle of wide humanity--Mark Twain. "
As Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues. This is
true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over. Mr. Frohman
has told you something of the object and something of the character of
the work. He told me he would do this--and he has kept his word! I had
expected to hear of it through the newspapers. I wouldn't trust anything
between Frohman and the newspapers--except when it's a case of charity!
You should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and
many a year. When you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your
heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse. You are all under
obligation to him. This is your opportunity to be his benefactor--to help
provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities.
At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. If you offer a
twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive
$19 in change. There is to be no robbery here. There is to be no creed
here--no religion except charity. We want to raise $250,000--and that is a
great task to attempt.
The President has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in
Washington. Now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash.
By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open. I call
the ball game. Let the transmuting begin!
RUSSIAN REPUBLIC
The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in Russia was
launched on the evening of April 11, 1906, at the Club A house, 3 Fifth
Avenue, with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal spokesmen. Mr.
Clemens made an introductory address, presenting Mr. Gorky.
If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of
the Tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go
ahead and do it. We need not discuss the methods by which that purpose
is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or
averted for a while, but if it must come--
I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot
in Russia, to make that country free. I am certain that it will be
successful, as it deserves to be. Any such movement should have and
deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for
funds as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just and powerful
meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us.
Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free
ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying
to do the same thing in Russia.
The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no
difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm
blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off.
If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free.
RUSSIAN SUFFERERS
On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casino
for the benefit of the Russian sufferers. After the
performance Mr. Clemens spoke.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an
audience like this our rude English tongue, after we have heard that
divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue.
It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always
been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is. How expressive it
seems to be. How full of grace it is.
And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid
it is. And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to
understand it.
Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame
Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her.
I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but I have
always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself--her fiery self. I have
wanted to know that beautiful character.
Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I always
feel young when I come in the presence of young people.
I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years ago--when
Madame Bernhardt came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was going
to play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely
women--a widow and her daughter--neighbors of ours, highly cultivated
ladies they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were
very poor, and they said "Well, we must not spend six dollars on a
pleasure of the mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if
it must go at all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat. "
And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great
pleasure of seeing Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors
equally highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those
good-hearted Joneses sent that six dollars--deprived themselves of it--and
sent it to those poor Smiths to buy bread with. And those Smiths took it
and bought tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt.
Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also.
Now, I was going to make a speech--I supposed I was, but I am not. It
is late, late; and so I am going to tell a story; and there is this
advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing
you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted
sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what
that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but,
dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone
of that story, and you are bound to get it--it flashes, it flames, it is
the jewel in the toad's head--you don't overlook that.
Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost
opportunity--oh, the lost opportunity. Anybody in this house who has
reached the turn of life--sixty, or seventy, or even fifty, or along
there--when he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned
all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that
is.
You younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those
words--the lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived
and felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity.
Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that,
whose lament is that.
I was in a village which is a suburb of New Bedford several years
ago--well, New Bedford is a suburb of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the
other way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great
centre of the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth
century, and I was up there at Fair Haven some years ago with a friend
of mine.
There was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we
were there in the afternoon. This great building was filled, like this
great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and I started
down the centre aisle. He saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said
"Now, look at that bronzed veteran--at that mahogany-faced man. Now, tell
me, do you see anything about that man's face that is emotional? Do you
see anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there
are fires that can be started? Would you ever imagine that that is a
human volcano? "
"Why, no," I said, "I would not. He looks like a wooden Indian in front
of a cigar store. "
"Very well," said my friend, "I will show you that there is emotion even
in that unpromising place. I will just go to that man and I will just
mention in the most casual way an incident in his life. That man is
getting along toward ninety years old. He is past eighty. I will mention
an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. Now, just watch the effect, and
it will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't know when I do
say that thing--but you just watch the effect. "
He went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark
or two. I could not catch up. They were so casual I could not recognize
which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old
man was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with
profanity of the most exquisite kind. You never heard such accomplished
profanity. I never heard it also delivered with such eloquence.
I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then--more than if I had been
uttering it myself. There is nothing like listening to an artist--all
his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and
earthquake.
Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell you about that. About
sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had
just come home from a three years' whaling voyage. He came into that
village of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief
mate, he was going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and
happy about it.
"Then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that
town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the
Father Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region.
Therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for
miles and miles around that had not taken the pledge.
"So you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond
of his grog. And he was just an outcast, because when they found he
would not join Father Mathew's Society they ostracized him, and he went
about that town three weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness--the only
human being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it
privately.
"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your
fellow-man, may you never know it. Then he recognized that there
was something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the
fellowship of your fellow-man. And at last he gave it up, and at nine
o'clock one night he went down to the Father Mathew Temperance Society,
and with a broken heart he said: 'Put my name down for membership in
this society. '
"And then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning
they came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his
was ready to sail on a three years' voyage. In a minute he was on board
that ship and gone.
"And he said--well, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to
repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and
so that whole voyage of three years was a three years' agony to that man
because he saw all the time the mistake he had made.
"He felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the
crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it,
and there was the torturous Smell of it.
"He went through the whole, three years of suffering, and at last coming
into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow
two feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his
crew torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had
his reward. He really did get to shore at last, and jumped and ran
and bought a jug and rushed to the society's office, and said to the
secretary:
"'Take my name off your membership books, and do it right away! I have
got a three years' thirst on. '
"And the secretary said: 'It is not necessary. You were blackballed! '"
WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS
ADDRESS AT THE CELEBRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S 92ND BIRTHDAY
ANNIVERSARY, CARNEGIE HALL, FEBRUARY 11, 1901, TO RAISE FUNDS
FOR THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY AT CUMBERLAND GAP, TENN.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The remainder of my duties as presiding chairman
here this evening are but two--only two. One of them is easy, and the
other difficult. That is to say, I must introduce the orator, and then
keep still and give him a chance. The name of Henry Watterson carries
with it its own explanation. It is like an electric light on top of
Madison Square Garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out
of the darkness. You mention the name of Henry Watterson, and your
minds are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and
achievements. A journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel.
Yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel.
It is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any
collusion or prearrangement, that he and I, both of whom were rebels
related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this
evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence
to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy. I don't
know as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact,
nevertheless. Colonel Watterson and I were both rebels, and we are blood
relations. I was a second lieutenant in a Confederate company for a
while--oh, I could have stayed on if I had wanted to. I made myself felt,
I left tracks all around the country. I could have stayed on, but it was
such weather. I never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in all my
life.
The Colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, I suppose, to
destroy the Union. He did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would
have done so. I had a plan, and I fully intended to drive General Grant
into the Pacific Ocean--if I could get transportation. I told Colonel
Watterson about it. I told him what he had to do. What I wanted him to
do was to surround the Eastern army and wait until I came up. But he was
insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a
second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that.
And what was the consequence? The Union was preserved. This is the first
time I believe that that secret has ever been revealed.
No one outside of the family circle, I think, knew it before; but there
the facts are. Watterson saved the Union; yes, he saved the Union. And
yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made
toward granting him a pension. That is the way things are done. It is
a case where some blushing ought to be done. You ought to blush, and I
ought to blush, and he--well, he's a little out of practice now.
ROBERT FULTON FUND
ADDRESS MADE ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 19, 1906
Mr. Clemens had been asked to address the association by Gen.
Frederick D. Grant, president. He was offered a fee of $1,000,
but refused it, saying:
"I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keep
the $1,000, and add it to the Memorial Fund as my contribution
to erect a monument in New York to the memory of the man who
applied steam to navigation. "
At this meeting Mr. Clemens made this formal announcement from
the platform:
"This is my last appearance on the paid platform. I shall not
retire from the gratis platform until I am buried, and courtesy
will compel me to keep still and not disturb the others. Now,
since I must, I shall say good-bye. I see many faces in this
audience well known to me. They are all my friends, and I feel
that those I don't know are my friends, too. I wish to
consider that you represent the nation, and that in saying
good-bye to you I am saying good-bye to the nation. In the
great name of humanity, let me say this final word: I offer an
appeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers,
mothers, and helpless little children.
They were sheltered and
happy two days ago. Now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless,
and homeless, the victims of a great disaster. So I beg of
you, I beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses and
remember San Francisco, the smitten city. "
I wish to deliver a historical address. I've been studying the history
of---er--a--let me see--a [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over to
Gen. Fred D. Grant, who sat at the head of the platform. He leaned
over in a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and
continued]. Oh yes! I've been studying Robert Fulton. I've been studying
a biographical sketch of Robert Fulton, the inventor of--er--a--let's
see--ah yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the Morse
sewing--machine. Also, I understand he invented the air--diria--pshaw! I
have it at last--the dirigible balloon. Yes, the dirigible--but it is a
difficult word, and I don't see why anybody should marry a couple of
words like that when they don't want to be married at all and are likely
to quarrel with each other all the time. I should put that couple
of words under the ban of the United States Supreme Court, under its
decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and drown 'em.
I used to know Fulton. It used to do me good to see him dashing through
the town on a wild broncho.
And Fulton was born in---er--a--Well, it doesn't make much difference where
he was born, does it? I remember a man who came to interview me once,
to get a sketch of my life. I consulted with a friend--a practical
man--before he came, to know how I should treat him.
"Whenever you give the interviewer a fact," he said, "give him another
fact that will contradict it. Then he'll go away with a jumble that
he can't use at all. Be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiot--just be
natural. " That's what my friend told me to do, and I did it.
"Where were you born? " asked the interviewer.
"Well-er-a," I began, "I was born in Alabama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich
Islands; I don't know where, but right around there somewhere. And you
had better put it down before you forget it. "
"But you weren't born in all those places," he said.
"Well, I've offered you three places. Take your choice. They're all at
the same price. "
"How old are you? " he asked.
"I shall be nineteen in June," I said.
"Why, there's such a discrepancy between your age and your looks," he
said.
"Oh, that's nothing," I said, "I was born discrepantly. "
Then we got to talking about my brother Samuel, and he told me my
explanations were confusing.
"I suppose he is dead," I said. "Some said that he was dead and some
said that he wasn't. "
"Did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not? " asked the
reporter.
"There was a mystery," said I. "We were twins, and one day when we were
two weeks old--that is, he was one week old, and I was one week old--we
got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. We never could tell
which. One of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand.
There it is on my hand. This is the one that was drowned. There's no
doubt about it.
"Where's the mystery? " he said.
"Why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin? " I
answered. I didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation
confused him. To me it is perfectly plain.
But, to get back to Fulton. I'm going along like an old man I used to
know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an
awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because
he switched off into something else. He used to tell about how his
grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. The old
man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it
up. The ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an
invitation.
Just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would
recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. She used
to loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she
received company. The eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was
loose. And whenever she winked it would turn over.
Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about
how he believed accidents never happened.
"There was an Irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he
said, "and a Dutchman was standing on the ground below. The Irishman
fell on the Dutchman and killed him. Accident? Never! If the Dutchman
hadn't been there the Irishman would have been killed. Why didn't the
Irishman fall on a dog which was next to the Dutchman? Because the dog
would have seen him coming. "
Then he'd get off from the Dutchman to an uncle named Reginald Wilson.
Reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the
machinery's belt. He went excursioning around the factory until he was
properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best
three-ply carpet. His wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a
monument to his memory. It read:
Sacred to the memory
of
sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet
containing the mortal remainders of
REGINALD WILSON
Go thou and do likewise
And so on he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather
until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether
something else happened.
FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN
ADDRESS DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 23, 1907
Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, said:
"The people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate
recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the
progress of the world and the happiness of mankind. " As Mr.
Clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder
and louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for silence.
It was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the
applause ceased before Mr. Clemens could speak. He attempted
it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered
again loudly.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am but human, and when you, give me a reception
like that I am obliged to wait a little while I get my voice. When you
appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I
do feel it.
We are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of American history,
and not only in American history, but in the world's history.
Indeed it was--the application of steam by Robert Fulton.
It was a world event--there are not many of them. It is peculiarly
an American event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in
effect. We should regard this day as a very great American holiday. We
have not many that are exclusively American holidays. We have the Fourth
of July, which we regard as an American holiday, but it is nothing of
the kind. I am waiting for a dissenting voice. All great efforts that
led up to the Fourth of July were made, not by Americans, but by English
residents of America, subjects of the King of England.
They fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the
blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which
are incorporated in the Declaration of Independence; but they were not
Americans. They signed the Declaration of Independence; no American's
name is signed to that document at all. There never was an American such
as you and I are until after the Revolution, when it had all been fought
out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the Constitution, and the
recognition of the Independence of America by all powers.
While we revere the Fourth of July--and let us always revere it, and the
liberties it conferred upon us--yet it was not an American event, a great
American day.
It was an American who applied that steam successfully. There are not
a great many world events, and we have our full share. The telegraph,
telephone, and the application of steam to navigation--these are great
American events.
To-day I have been requested, or I have requested myself, not to confine
myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things,
and to introduce one of the nation's celebrants.
Admiral Harrington here is going to tell you all that I have left
untold. I am going to tell you all that I know, and then he will follow
up with such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he
knows.
No doubt you have heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the
influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat
is suffering neglect.
You probably do not know a great deal about that boat. It was the
most important steamboat in the world. I was there and saw it. Admiral
Harrington was there at the time. It need not surprise you, for he is
not as old as he looks. That little boat was interesting in every way.
The size of it. The boat was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet
long. The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two hundred feet.
You see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the
breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults
again]--the Admiral says it was a flat boat. Then her tonnage--you know
nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her
tonnage. We know the speed she made. She made four miles---and sometimes
five miles. It was on her initial trip, on, August 11, 1807, that she
made her initial trip, when she went from [consults Admiral] Jersey
City--to Chicago. That's right. She went by way of Albany. Now comes
the tonnage of that boat. Tonnage of a boat means the amount of
displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can shove
in a day. The tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey he
can displace in a day.
Robert Fulton named the 'Clermont' in honor of his bride, that is,
Clermont was the name of the county-seat.
I feel that it surprises you that I know so much. In my remarks of
welcome of Admiral Harrington I am not going to give him compliments.
Compliments always embarrass a man. You do not know anything to say. It
does not inspire you with words. There is nothing you can say in answer
to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and
they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not said enough.
The Admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated
together a great deal in a friendly way in the time of Pocahontas.
That incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father,
Powhatan's club, was gotten up by the Admiral and myself to advertise
Jamestown.
At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the facilities of
advertising that you have.
I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations--in public
service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and then--but it was
a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. I do not think it is at all a
necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington's public history. You know that
it is in the histories. I am not here to tell you anything about his
public life, but to expose his private life.
I am something of a poet. When the great poet laureate, Tennyson, died,
and I found that the place was open, I tried to get it--but I did not
get it. Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very
difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. When I was
down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood and Par-am. I
made this rhyme:
"The people of Johnswood are pious and good;
The people of Par-am they don't care a----. "
I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but as long as such men
as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country
will never cease. I will say that the same high qualities, the same
moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of
conduct, of observation, and expression have caused Admiral Harrington
to be mistaken for me--and I have been mistaken for him.
A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have the honor and
privilege of introducing to you Admiral Harrington.
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE,
NOVEMBER 11, 1893
In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said:
"To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings.
The place where last we met about the table has vanished, and
to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all
our own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be
spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for
full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future
that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the
bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters;
for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to
genius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being who
has not heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long years
ago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit
and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad
to educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the
American joke. The world has looked on and applauded while he
has broken many images. He has led us in imagination all over
the globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike the
Mississippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we have
laughed at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process of
reasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are
actually dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the
foot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping
bitter tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in the
flesh. What name is there in literature that can be likened to
his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this
table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only
parallel! "
MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,--I have
seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously phrased
or so well deserved. I return thanks for them from a full heart and an
appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence: While I am
charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I have
reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a deep
reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to me.
To be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and if
I read your countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad to see this club
in such palatial quarters. I remember it twenty years ago when it was
housed in a stable.
Now when I was studying for the ministry there were two or three things
that struck my attention particularly. At the first banquet mentioned
in history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was
invited to stand up and have his say. They were all there, his brethren,
David and Goliath, and--er, and if he had had such experience as I have
had he would have waited until those other people got through talking.
He got up and testified to all his failings. Now if he had waited before
telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he
might not have given himself away as he did, and I think that I would
give myself away if I should go on. I think I'd better wait until the
others hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make
an explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I'll
deny it happened.
Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech, replying
to a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner, Charles
A. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others, each
welcoming the guest of honor.
I don't see that I have a great deal to explain. I got off very well,
considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. I don't
see that Mr. Low said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana.
However, I will say that I never heard so many lies told in one evening
as were told by Mr. McKelway--and I consider myself very capable; but
even in his case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding how
much he hadn't found out. By accident he missed the very things that I
didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism.
I have been on the continent of Europe for two and a half years. I have
met many Americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others
making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find
that nearly all preserved their Americanism. I have found they all like
to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the Stars
and Stripes. I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth
and glorified monarchical institutions.
I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years I met
only one person who had fallen a victim to the shams--I think we may call
them shams--of nobilities and of heredities. She was entirely lost in
them. After I had listened to her for a long time, I said to her:
"At least you must admit that we have one merit. We are not like the
Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country
to leave it. Thank God, we don't! "
COPYRIGHT
With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and
a number of other authors, Mr.
me right for trusting a Scotchman. Yes, I do understand figures, and I
can count. I have counted the words in MacAlister's drivel (I certainly
cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four
hundred and thirty-nine. I also carefully counted the lies--there were
exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. Therefore, I leave
MacAlister to his fate.
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors,
because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is
dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well
myself.
GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR
ADDRESS AT A FAIR HELD AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK, IN
OCTOBER, 1900, IN AID OF THE ORPHANS AT GALVESTON
I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy this place first and
would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a
text for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is
proverbial with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not
come here, and has not furnished me with a text, and I am here without
a text. I have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome
faces, and--but I won't continue that, for I could go on forever about
attractive faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. But, after all,
compliments should be in order in a place like this.
I have been in New York two or three days, and have been in a condition
of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being
to regulate the moral and political situation on this planet--put it on
a sound basis--and when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it
requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when
you have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position
of corking. When I am situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as
though I were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please
consider I am playing a part for want of something better, and this is
not unfamiliar to me; I have often done this before.
When I was here about eight years ago I was coming up in a car of the
elevated road. Very few people were in that car, and on one end of it
there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about
fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye--a beautiful
eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who
had a vocation. He had with him a very fine little child of about four
or five years. I was watching the affection which existed between those
two. I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It was really a pretty
child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I was admiring her
he began to notice me.
I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody
else would do--admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get
four times as much of his admiration. Things went on very pleasantly. I
was making my way into his heart.
By-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off,
he got up, crossed over, and he said: "Now I am going to say something
to you which I hope you will regard as a compliment. " And then he went
on to say: "I have never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of
him, and any friend of mine will tell you that when I have once seen a
portrait of a man I place it in my eye and store it away in my memory,
and I can tell you now that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his
brother. Now," he said, "I hope you take this as a compliment. Yes,
you are a very good imitation; but when I come to look closer, you are
probably not that man. "
I said: "I will be frank with you. In my desire to look like that
excellent character I have dressed for the character; I have been
playing a part. "
He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you look very well on
the outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the
original. "
So when I come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say I
always play a part. But I will say before I sit down that when it comes
to saying anything here I will express myself in this way: I am heartily
in sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers
in this calamity, and in your desire to help those who were rendered
homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the fact that I am
not playing a part.
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE
After the address at the Robert Fulton Fund meeting, June 19,
1906, Mr. Clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the
San Francisco earthquake.
I haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of San Francisco
has grown up since my day. When I was there she had one hundred and
eighteen thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were
Chinese. I was a reporter on the Virginia City Enterprise in Nevada in
1862, and stayed there, I think, about two years, when I went to San
Francisco and got a job as a reporter on The Call. I was there three or
four years.
I remember one day I was walking down Third Street in San Francisco. It
was a sleepy, dull Sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring. Suddenly
as I looked up the street about three hundred yards the whole side of
a house fell out. The street was full of bricks and mortar. At the same
time I was knocked against the side of a house, and stood there stunned
for a moment.
I thought it was an earthquake. Nobody else had heard anything about it
and no one said earthquake to me afterward, but I saw it and I wrote
it. Nobody else wrote it, and the house I saw go into the street was the
only house in the city that felt it. I've always wondered if it wasn't a
little performance gotten up for my especial entertainment by the nether
regions.
CHARITY AND ACTORS
ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR IN THE METROPOLITAN
OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, MAY 6, 1907
Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair
open. Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr. Clemens, said:
"We intend to make this a banner week in the history of the
Fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he
actor, singer, dancer, or workman. We have spent more than
$40,000 during the past year. Charity covers a multitude of
sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. At the
opening of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin Booth
and Joseph Jefferson. In their place we have to-day that
American institution and apostle of wide humanity--Mark Twain. "
As Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues. This is
true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over. Mr. Frohman
has told you something of the object and something of the character of
the work. He told me he would do this--and he has kept his word! I had
expected to hear of it through the newspapers. I wouldn't trust anything
between Frohman and the newspapers--except when it's a case of charity!
You should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and
many a year. When you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your
heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse. You are all under
obligation to him. This is your opportunity to be his benefactor--to help
provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities.
At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. If you offer a
twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive
$19 in change. There is to be no robbery here. There is to be no creed
here--no religion except charity. We want to raise $250,000--and that is a
great task to attempt.
The President has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in
Washington. Now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash.
By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open. I call
the ball game. Let the transmuting begin!
RUSSIAN REPUBLIC
The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in Russia was
launched on the evening of April 11, 1906, at the Club A house, 3 Fifth
Avenue, with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal spokesmen. Mr.
Clemens made an introductory address, presenting Mr. Gorky.
If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of
the Tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go
ahead and do it. We need not discuss the methods by which that purpose
is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or
averted for a while, but if it must come--
I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot
in Russia, to make that country free. I am certain that it will be
successful, as it deserves to be. Any such movement should have and
deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for
funds as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just and powerful
meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us.
Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free
ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying
to do the same thing in Russia.
The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no
difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm
blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off.
If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free.
RUSSIAN SUFFERERS
On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casino
for the benefit of the Russian sufferers. After the
performance Mr. Clemens spoke.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an
audience like this our rude English tongue, after we have heard that
divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue.
It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always
been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is. How expressive it
seems to be. How full of grace it is.
And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid
it is. And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to
understand it.
Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame
Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her.
I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but I have
always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself--her fiery self. I have
wanted to know that beautiful character.
Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I always
feel young when I come in the presence of young people.
I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years ago--when
Madame Bernhardt came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was going
to play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely
women--a widow and her daughter--neighbors of ours, highly cultivated
ladies they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were
very poor, and they said "Well, we must not spend six dollars on a
pleasure of the mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if
it must go at all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat. "
And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great
pleasure of seeing Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors
equally highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those
good-hearted Joneses sent that six dollars--deprived themselves of it--and
sent it to those poor Smiths to buy bread with. And those Smiths took it
and bought tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt.
Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also.
Now, I was going to make a speech--I supposed I was, but I am not. It
is late, late; and so I am going to tell a story; and there is this
advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing
you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted
sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what
that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but,
dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone
of that story, and you are bound to get it--it flashes, it flames, it is
the jewel in the toad's head--you don't overlook that.
Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost
opportunity--oh, the lost opportunity. Anybody in this house who has
reached the turn of life--sixty, or seventy, or even fifty, or along
there--when he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned
all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that
is.
You younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those
words--the lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived
and felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity.
Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that,
whose lament is that.
I was in a village which is a suburb of New Bedford several years
ago--well, New Bedford is a suburb of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the
other way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great
centre of the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth
century, and I was up there at Fair Haven some years ago with a friend
of mine.
There was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we
were there in the afternoon. This great building was filled, like this
great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and I started
down the centre aisle. He saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said
"Now, look at that bronzed veteran--at that mahogany-faced man. Now, tell
me, do you see anything about that man's face that is emotional? Do you
see anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there
are fires that can be started? Would you ever imagine that that is a
human volcano? "
"Why, no," I said, "I would not. He looks like a wooden Indian in front
of a cigar store. "
"Very well," said my friend, "I will show you that there is emotion even
in that unpromising place. I will just go to that man and I will just
mention in the most casual way an incident in his life. That man is
getting along toward ninety years old. He is past eighty. I will mention
an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. Now, just watch the effect, and
it will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't know when I do
say that thing--but you just watch the effect. "
He went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark
or two. I could not catch up. They were so casual I could not recognize
which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old
man was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with
profanity of the most exquisite kind. You never heard such accomplished
profanity. I never heard it also delivered with such eloquence.
I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then--more than if I had been
uttering it myself. There is nothing like listening to an artist--all
his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and
earthquake.
Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell you about that. About
sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had
just come home from a three years' whaling voyage. He came into that
village of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief
mate, he was going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and
happy about it.
"Then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that
town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the
Father Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region.
Therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for
miles and miles around that had not taken the pledge.
"So you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond
of his grog. And he was just an outcast, because when they found he
would not join Father Mathew's Society they ostracized him, and he went
about that town three weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness--the only
human being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it
privately.
"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your
fellow-man, may you never know it. Then he recognized that there
was something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the
fellowship of your fellow-man. And at last he gave it up, and at nine
o'clock one night he went down to the Father Mathew Temperance Society,
and with a broken heart he said: 'Put my name down for membership in
this society. '
"And then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning
they came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his
was ready to sail on a three years' voyage. In a minute he was on board
that ship and gone.
"And he said--well, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to
repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and
so that whole voyage of three years was a three years' agony to that man
because he saw all the time the mistake he had made.
"He felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the
crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it,
and there was the torturous Smell of it.
"He went through the whole, three years of suffering, and at last coming
into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow
two feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his
crew torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had
his reward. He really did get to shore at last, and jumped and ran
and bought a jug and rushed to the society's office, and said to the
secretary:
"'Take my name off your membership books, and do it right away! I have
got a three years' thirst on. '
"And the secretary said: 'It is not necessary. You were blackballed! '"
WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS
ADDRESS AT THE CELEBRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S 92ND BIRTHDAY
ANNIVERSARY, CARNEGIE HALL, FEBRUARY 11, 1901, TO RAISE FUNDS
FOR THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY AT CUMBERLAND GAP, TENN.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The remainder of my duties as presiding chairman
here this evening are but two--only two. One of them is easy, and the
other difficult. That is to say, I must introduce the orator, and then
keep still and give him a chance. The name of Henry Watterson carries
with it its own explanation. It is like an electric light on top of
Madison Square Garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out
of the darkness. You mention the name of Henry Watterson, and your
minds are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and
achievements. A journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel.
Yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel.
It is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any
collusion or prearrangement, that he and I, both of whom were rebels
related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this
evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence
to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy. I don't
know as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact,
nevertheless. Colonel Watterson and I were both rebels, and we are blood
relations. I was a second lieutenant in a Confederate company for a
while--oh, I could have stayed on if I had wanted to. I made myself felt,
I left tracks all around the country. I could have stayed on, but it was
such weather. I never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in all my
life.
The Colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, I suppose, to
destroy the Union. He did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would
have done so. I had a plan, and I fully intended to drive General Grant
into the Pacific Ocean--if I could get transportation. I told Colonel
Watterson about it. I told him what he had to do. What I wanted him to
do was to surround the Eastern army and wait until I came up. But he was
insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a
second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that.
And what was the consequence? The Union was preserved. This is the first
time I believe that that secret has ever been revealed.
No one outside of the family circle, I think, knew it before; but there
the facts are. Watterson saved the Union; yes, he saved the Union. And
yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made
toward granting him a pension. That is the way things are done. It is
a case where some blushing ought to be done. You ought to blush, and I
ought to blush, and he--well, he's a little out of practice now.
ROBERT FULTON FUND
ADDRESS MADE ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 19, 1906
Mr. Clemens had been asked to address the association by Gen.
Frederick D. Grant, president. He was offered a fee of $1,000,
but refused it, saying:
"I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keep
the $1,000, and add it to the Memorial Fund as my contribution
to erect a monument in New York to the memory of the man who
applied steam to navigation. "
At this meeting Mr. Clemens made this formal announcement from
the platform:
"This is my last appearance on the paid platform. I shall not
retire from the gratis platform until I am buried, and courtesy
will compel me to keep still and not disturb the others. Now,
since I must, I shall say good-bye. I see many faces in this
audience well known to me. They are all my friends, and I feel
that those I don't know are my friends, too. I wish to
consider that you represent the nation, and that in saying
good-bye to you I am saying good-bye to the nation. In the
great name of humanity, let me say this final word: I offer an
appeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers,
mothers, and helpless little children.
They were sheltered and
happy two days ago. Now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless,
and homeless, the victims of a great disaster. So I beg of
you, I beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses and
remember San Francisco, the smitten city. "
I wish to deliver a historical address. I've been studying the history
of---er--a--let me see--a [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over to
Gen. Fred D. Grant, who sat at the head of the platform. He leaned
over in a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and
continued]. Oh yes! I've been studying Robert Fulton. I've been studying
a biographical sketch of Robert Fulton, the inventor of--er--a--let's
see--ah yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the Morse
sewing--machine. Also, I understand he invented the air--diria--pshaw! I
have it at last--the dirigible balloon. Yes, the dirigible--but it is a
difficult word, and I don't see why anybody should marry a couple of
words like that when they don't want to be married at all and are likely
to quarrel with each other all the time. I should put that couple
of words under the ban of the United States Supreme Court, under its
decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and drown 'em.
I used to know Fulton. It used to do me good to see him dashing through
the town on a wild broncho.
And Fulton was born in---er--a--Well, it doesn't make much difference where
he was born, does it? I remember a man who came to interview me once,
to get a sketch of my life. I consulted with a friend--a practical
man--before he came, to know how I should treat him.
"Whenever you give the interviewer a fact," he said, "give him another
fact that will contradict it. Then he'll go away with a jumble that
he can't use at all. Be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiot--just be
natural. " That's what my friend told me to do, and I did it.
"Where were you born? " asked the interviewer.
"Well-er-a," I began, "I was born in Alabama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich
Islands; I don't know where, but right around there somewhere. And you
had better put it down before you forget it. "
"But you weren't born in all those places," he said.
"Well, I've offered you three places. Take your choice. They're all at
the same price. "
"How old are you? " he asked.
"I shall be nineteen in June," I said.
"Why, there's such a discrepancy between your age and your looks," he
said.
"Oh, that's nothing," I said, "I was born discrepantly. "
Then we got to talking about my brother Samuel, and he told me my
explanations were confusing.
"I suppose he is dead," I said. "Some said that he was dead and some
said that he wasn't. "
"Did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not? " asked the
reporter.
"There was a mystery," said I. "We were twins, and one day when we were
two weeks old--that is, he was one week old, and I was one week old--we
got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. We never could tell
which. One of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand.
There it is on my hand. This is the one that was drowned. There's no
doubt about it.
"Where's the mystery? " he said.
"Why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin? " I
answered. I didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation
confused him. To me it is perfectly plain.
But, to get back to Fulton. I'm going along like an old man I used to
know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an
awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because
he switched off into something else. He used to tell about how his
grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. The old
man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it
up. The ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an
invitation.
Just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would
recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. She used
to loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she
received company. The eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was
loose. And whenever she winked it would turn over.
Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about
how he believed accidents never happened.
"There was an Irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he
said, "and a Dutchman was standing on the ground below. The Irishman
fell on the Dutchman and killed him. Accident? Never! If the Dutchman
hadn't been there the Irishman would have been killed. Why didn't the
Irishman fall on a dog which was next to the Dutchman? Because the dog
would have seen him coming. "
Then he'd get off from the Dutchman to an uncle named Reginald Wilson.
Reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the
machinery's belt. He went excursioning around the factory until he was
properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best
three-ply carpet. His wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a
monument to his memory. It read:
Sacred to the memory
of
sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet
containing the mortal remainders of
REGINALD WILSON
Go thou and do likewise
And so on he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather
until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether
something else happened.
FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN
ADDRESS DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 23, 1907
Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, said:
"The people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate
recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the
progress of the world and the happiness of mankind. " As Mr.
Clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder
and louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for silence.
It was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the
applause ceased before Mr. Clemens could speak. He attempted
it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered
again loudly.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am but human, and when you, give me a reception
like that I am obliged to wait a little while I get my voice. When you
appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I
do feel it.
We are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of American history,
and not only in American history, but in the world's history.
Indeed it was--the application of steam by Robert Fulton.
It was a world event--there are not many of them. It is peculiarly
an American event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in
effect. We should regard this day as a very great American holiday. We
have not many that are exclusively American holidays. We have the Fourth
of July, which we regard as an American holiday, but it is nothing of
the kind. I am waiting for a dissenting voice. All great efforts that
led up to the Fourth of July were made, not by Americans, but by English
residents of America, subjects of the King of England.
They fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the
blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which
are incorporated in the Declaration of Independence; but they were not
Americans. They signed the Declaration of Independence; no American's
name is signed to that document at all. There never was an American such
as you and I are until after the Revolution, when it had all been fought
out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the Constitution, and the
recognition of the Independence of America by all powers.
While we revere the Fourth of July--and let us always revere it, and the
liberties it conferred upon us--yet it was not an American event, a great
American day.
It was an American who applied that steam successfully. There are not
a great many world events, and we have our full share. The telegraph,
telephone, and the application of steam to navigation--these are great
American events.
To-day I have been requested, or I have requested myself, not to confine
myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things,
and to introduce one of the nation's celebrants.
Admiral Harrington here is going to tell you all that I have left
untold. I am going to tell you all that I know, and then he will follow
up with such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he
knows.
No doubt you have heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the
influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat
is suffering neglect.
You probably do not know a great deal about that boat. It was the
most important steamboat in the world. I was there and saw it. Admiral
Harrington was there at the time. It need not surprise you, for he is
not as old as he looks. That little boat was interesting in every way.
The size of it. The boat was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet
long. The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two hundred feet.
You see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the
breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults
again]--the Admiral says it was a flat boat. Then her tonnage--you know
nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her
tonnage. We know the speed she made. She made four miles---and sometimes
five miles. It was on her initial trip, on, August 11, 1807, that she
made her initial trip, when she went from [consults Admiral] Jersey
City--to Chicago. That's right. She went by way of Albany. Now comes
the tonnage of that boat. Tonnage of a boat means the amount of
displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can shove
in a day. The tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey he
can displace in a day.
Robert Fulton named the 'Clermont' in honor of his bride, that is,
Clermont was the name of the county-seat.
I feel that it surprises you that I know so much. In my remarks of
welcome of Admiral Harrington I am not going to give him compliments.
Compliments always embarrass a man. You do not know anything to say. It
does not inspire you with words. There is nothing you can say in answer
to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and
they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not said enough.
The Admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated
together a great deal in a friendly way in the time of Pocahontas.
That incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father,
Powhatan's club, was gotten up by the Admiral and myself to advertise
Jamestown.
At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the facilities of
advertising that you have.
I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations--in public
service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and then--but it was
a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. I do not think it is at all a
necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington's public history. You know that
it is in the histories. I am not here to tell you anything about his
public life, but to expose his private life.
I am something of a poet. When the great poet laureate, Tennyson, died,
and I found that the place was open, I tried to get it--but I did not
get it. Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very
difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. When I was
down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood and Par-am. I
made this rhyme:
"The people of Johnswood are pious and good;
The people of Par-am they don't care a----. "
I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but as long as such men
as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country
will never cease. I will say that the same high qualities, the same
moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of
conduct, of observation, and expression have caused Admiral Harrington
to be mistaken for me--and I have been mistaken for him.
A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have the honor and
privilege of introducing to you Admiral Harrington.
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE,
NOVEMBER 11, 1893
In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said:
"To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings.
The place where last we met about the table has vanished, and
to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all
our own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be
spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for
full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future
that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the
bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters;
for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to
genius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being who
has not heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long years
ago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit
and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad
to educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the
American joke. The world has looked on and applauded while he
has broken many images. He has led us in imagination all over
the globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike the
Mississippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we have
laughed at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process of
reasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are
actually dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the
foot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping
bitter tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in the
flesh. What name is there in literature that can be likened to
his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this
table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only
parallel! "
MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,--I have
seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously phrased
or so well deserved. I return thanks for them from a full heart and an
appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence: While I am
charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I have
reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a deep
reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to me.
To be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and if
I read your countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad to see this club
in such palatial quarters. I remember it twenty years ago when it was
housed in a stable.
Now when I was studying for the ministry there were two or three things
that struck my attention particularly. At the first banquet mentioned
in history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was
invited to stand up and have his say. They were all there, his brethren,
David and Goliath, and--er, and if he had had such experience as I have
had he would have waited until those other people got through talking.
He got up and testified to all his failings. Now if he had waited before
telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he
might not have given himself away as he did, and I think that I would
give myself away if I should go on. I think I'd better wait until the
others hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make
an explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I'll
deny it happened.
Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech, replying
to a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner, Charles
A. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others, each
welcoming the guest of honor.
I don't see that I have a great deal to explain. I got off very well,
considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. I don't
see that Mr. Low said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana.
However, I will say that I never heard so many lies told in one evening
as were told by Mr. McKelway--and I consider myself very capable; but
even in his case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding how
much he hadn't found out. By accident he missed the very things that I
didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism.
I have been on the continent of Europe for two and a half years. I have
met many Americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others
making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find
that nearly all preserved their Americanism. I have found they all like
to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the Stars
and Stripes. I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth
and glorified monarchical institutions.
I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years I met
only one person who had fallen a victim to the shams--I think we may call
them shams--of nobilities and of heredities. She was entirely lost in
them. After I had listened to her for a long time, I said to her:
"At least you must admit that we have one merit. We are not like the
Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country
to leave it. Thank God, we don't! "
COPYRIGHT
With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and
a number of other authors, Mr.
