It might
have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash.
have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash.
Twain - Speeches
He made a speech, the serious parts of which created
a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the Senators
and Representatives in roars of laughter.
I have read this bill. At least I have read such portions as I could
understand. Nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and
thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised legislator.
I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill
which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the
author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any
reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let
the grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my
daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long
been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it.
It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in
the United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are
all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the
Copyright law I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster
culture added, and anything else.
I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required
by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier
Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall
not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to
use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shalt not
steal," but I am trying to use more polite language.
The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one
class, the people who create the literature of the land. They always
talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine,
great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their
enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it.
I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit.
I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the
possession of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to real
estate.
Doctor Hale has suggested that a man might just as well, after
discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the
Government step in and take it away.
What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has
had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes
a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the
88,000,000 of people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely
takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the
publisher double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of
his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they
rear families in affluence.
And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation
after generation forever, for they never die. In a few weeks or months
or years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monument. I hope I shall
not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself.
But I shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of
my copyright. My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I
can use, but my children can use it. I can get along; I know a lot of
trades. But that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I
can because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know
anything and can't do anything. I hope Congress will extend to them the
charity which they have failed to get from me.
Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous--strenuous about
race-suicide--should come to me and try to get me to use my large
political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this
Congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I
should try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to
him, "Leave it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself.
Only one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit. If
they have reached that limit let them go right on. Let them have all the
liberty they want. In restricting that family to twenty-two children you
are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year
in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while. "
It is the very same with copyright. One author per year produces a book
which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all. This nation
can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is
demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to
take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per
year.
I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee
of the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the
Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had
all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000
that can outlive the forty-two year limit. Therefore why put a limit at
all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children.
If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books
that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with Cooper; you can
follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe,
and there you have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson, and
you have to stand still and look further. You find Howells and T.
B. Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you
question if you can name twenty persons in the United States who--in a
whole century have written books that would live forty-two years. Why,
you could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. Add
the wives and children and you could put the result on, two or three
more benches.
One hundred persons--that is the little, insignificant crowd whose
bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit
to anybody? You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of
the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have
gone to the wife and children.
When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman
asked me what limit I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity. " I could see
some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for
the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such
thing as property in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before
Queen Anne's time; they had perpetual copyright. He said, "What is a
book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be
no property in it. "
I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet
that had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.
He said real estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who
travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see nothing
at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party who knows
what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. To him it
means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on that
harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has another
idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey and his
last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece
of land the size of Pennsylvania.
That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to
Cairo Railway would be built.
Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an
idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad
is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which
represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that
did not exist before.
So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that
is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be
under any limitation at all. We don't ask for that. Fifty years from now
we shall ask for it.
I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. I do seem
to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that
I have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous, liberal
nature; I can't help it. I feel the same sort of charity to everybody
that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock
in the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with
life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving,
weaving, weaving around. He watched his chance, and by and by when the
steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on
the portico.
And the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched
the door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He
got to the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so
unsteady that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the
top and raised his foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe
hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom
step, with his arm around the newel-post, and he said:
"God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this. "
IN AID OF THE BLIND
ADDRESS AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION FOR
PROMOTING THE INTERESTS OF THE BLIND AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA,
MARCH 29, 1906
If you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my
conduct I will offer the explanation that I never presided at a meeting
of any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out of my line. I
supposed I could do anything anybody else could, but I recognize that
experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that experience. I don't
feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to impress an
audience. I shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a meeting like
this, and I shall just take the humble place of the Essex band.
There was a great gathering in a small New England town, about
twenty-five years ago. I remember that circumstance because there was
something that happened at that time. It was a great occasion. They
gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns
around. It was an extraordinary occasion.
The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and
tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. It praised the orators,
the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this
in honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives
toward the end. Having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and
glorification, he found he still had one band left over. He had to
say something about it, and he said: "The Essex band done the best it
could. "
I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am going to get through as
well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. I have got
all the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and
intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has
called the meeting. But they are too voluminous. I could not pack those
statistics into my head, and I had to give it up. I shall have to just
reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. There are
too many statistics and figures for me. I never could do anything
with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished
anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only
mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in
that, as soon as I reach nine times seven--
[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. He was trying to
figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned
to St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr. McKelway whispered the
answer, and the speaker resumed:]
I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right
with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage
a statistic.
"This association for the--"
[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again he was obliged to turn to Mr.
McKelway. ]
Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. It's a long name. If
I could I would write it out for you and let you take it home and
study it, but I don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Carnegie is down in
Virginia somewhere. Well, anyway, the object of that association which
has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands
of very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will
push it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give
them a little of your assistance out of your pockets.
The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work
for them to do so that they may earn, their own bread. Now it is dismal
enough to be blind--it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be
largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to
do with their hands. The time passes so heavily that it is never day
or night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with
folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ
their minds, it is drearier and drearier.
And then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and
so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could
have something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the
same time earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which
is the result of the labor of one's own hands. They need that cheer and
pleasure. It is the only way you can turn their night into day, to
give them happy hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the
blessed sun. That you can do in the way I speak of.
Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to
miss the light. Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years
old--their lives are unendingly dreary. But they can be taught to use
their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. That
association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
has taught its blind to make many things. They make them better than
most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes.
The goods they make are readily salable. People like them. And so they
are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. They pass
their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did.
What this association needs and wants is $15,000. The figures are set
down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would
not be here. And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you
will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank
which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or
some time. Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and
that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.
I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything
better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part
with it. It is always for good objects, of course. This is the plan:
When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object,
and you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like
as not. Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is
to split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year,
or fifty, or whatever the sum maybe. Let him contribute ten or twenty a
year. He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him
to contribute a large amount. When you get used to it you would rather
contribute than borrow money.
I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897
when I was in London and said: "The gentleman who has been so liberal in
taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her
in his will, and now they don't know what to do. " They were proposing
to raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of
$2400 or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her
wonderful teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton
and said: "Go on, get up your fund. It will be slow, but if you want
quick work, I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking
people to contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop
out whenever they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any
difficulty, people wouldn't feel the burden of it. And he wrote back
saying he had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in a
single afternoon. We would like to do something just like that to-night.
We will take as many checks as you care to give. You can leave your
donations in the big room outside.
I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall never forget that
experience. I have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or
four hours, and the sufferings that I endured and the mishaps and the
accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when I
feel for the blind and always shall feel. I once went to Heidelberg
on an excursion. I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph
Twichell, of Hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact.
I always travel with clergymen when I can. It is better for them, it is
better for me. And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather
and without a lightning rod is a good one. The Reverend Twichell is one
of those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients
for a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. In
that old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years.
We went to the inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colossal
bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of. It was as big as this room.
I didn't take much notice of the place. I didn't really get my bearings.
I noticed Twichell got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind in
which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on
your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and I was way up
north at the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between.
We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience
loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep.
It was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you
hear various kinds of noises now and then. A mouse away off in the
southwest. You throw things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse. But
I couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I
would give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those
tinkling fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance.
I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle, but I didn't think
of it until it was too late. It was the darkest place that ever was.
There has never been darkness any thicker than that. It just lay in
cakes.
I thought that before dressing I would accumulate my clothes. I pawed
around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor
except one sock. I couldn't get on the track of that sock.
It might
have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. But I didn't think of
that. I went excursioning on my hands and knees. Presently I thought,
"I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed again. " That is what I
tried to do during the next three hours. I had lost the bearings of that
bed. I was going in the wrong direction all the time. By-and-by I came
in collision with a chair and that encouraged me.
It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there was only a chair
here and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this
territory, and I thought maybe after I found that chair I might find the
next one. Well, I did. And I found another and another and another. I
kept going around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions,
and finally when I banged into another chair I almost lost my temper.
And I raised up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibition, right in
front of a mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high.
I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. And when I saw
myself in the mirror I was frightened out of my wits. I don't allow any
ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and smashed at it. A million
pieces. Then I reflected. That's the way I always do, and it's
unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has
clear judgment. And I had judgment, and I would have had to pay for that
mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was Twichell who broke it.
Then I got down, on my hands and knees and went on another exploring
expedition.
As far as I could remember there were six chairs in that Oklahoma, and
one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your
head when rushing madly along. In the course of time I collided with
thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out
there. It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse
condition when I got through with it. I went on and on, and at last got
to a place where I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. I knew
that wasn't in the middle of the room. Up to that time I was afraid I
had gotten out of the city.
I was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher
of water about a foot high, and it was at the head of Twichell's bed,
but I didn't know it. I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at it,
but it didn't help any and came right down in Twichell's face and nearly
drowned him. But it woke him up. I was grateful to have company on any
terms. He lit a match, and there I was, way down south when I ought to
have been back up yonder. My bed was out of sight it was so far away.
You needed a telescope to find it. Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed
him off and we got sociable.
But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedometer on my leg. Twichell and
I were in a pedometer match. Twichell had longer legs than I. The only
way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. I always walk in my
sleep, and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him. After all, I
never found that sock. I never have seen it from that day to this. But
that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. That was one of the
most serious occasions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of it
without somebody thinking it isn't serious. You try it and see how
serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that night.
[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He then introduced Joseph
H. Choate, saying:]
It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate. I don't have to
really introduce him. I don't have to praise him, or to flatter him.
I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly
acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has
ever produced. And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five
years more. He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly.
He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his
countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher
in his countrymen's esteem and affection, I would say that word whether
it was true or not.
DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH
ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE
MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL, JANUARY 21, 1909
The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars.
GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,--I am glad to be among my own kind to-night. I
was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally as
deadly a profession. It wasn't so very long ago that I became a member
of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record is
one that can't be scoffed at.
As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have
always had a good deal to do with burglars--not officially, but through
their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a
burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got
anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September--we
got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been
sorry ever since. They did us a great service they scared off all the
servants in the place.
I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the
Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the
country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from
all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them
back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of
lives which otherwise would have been lost.
I have been practising now for seven months. When I settled on my farm
in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled--and
since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled
still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression
on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you.
I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I
organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School. I
am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.
Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country
district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division
of responsibility. I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a
sexton, and an undertaker. The combination is air-tight, and once a man
is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him.
These four of us--three in the regular profession and the fourth an
undertaker--are all good men. There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding
undertaker. Bill is there in every respect. He is a little lukewarm on
general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. Like my old
Southern, friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere.
Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor. Ruggles is one of the best
men I have got. He also is not much on general medicine, but he is a
fine horse-doctor. Ferguson doesn't make any money off him.
You see, the combination started this way. When I got up to Redding and
had become a doctor, I looked around to see what my chances were for
aiding in the great work. The first thing I did was to determine what
manner of doctor I was to be. Being a Connecticut farmer, I naturally
consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath.
Then I got circulating about, and got in touch with Ferguson and
Ruggles. Ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying
that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he
couldn't see where it helped horses.
Well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community,
and it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and
that was race-suicide. And driving about the country-side I was told
by my fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable
disease. But it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to
stop it or we'll have to move.
We've had some funny experiences up there in Redding. Not long ago a
fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face. We asked
him what was the matter. We always hold consultations on every case, as
there isn't business enough for four. He said he didn't know, but that
he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis. We
treated him for that, and I never saw a man die more peacefully.
That same afternoon my dog Tige treed an African gentleman. We
chained up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had
appendicitis. We asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes,
that he'd like to know if there was anything in it. So we cut him open
and found nothing in him but darkness. So we diagnosed his case as
infidelity, because he was dark inside. Tige is a very clever dog, and
aids us greatly.
The other day a patient came to me and inquired if I was old Doctor
Clemens--
As a practitioner I have given a great deal of my attention to Bright's
disease. I have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable.
Listen:
Rule 1. When approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise President--I
mean an all-wise Providence--well, anyway, it's the same thing--has seen
fit to afflict with disease--well, the rule is simple, even if it is
old-fashioned.
Rule 2. I've forgotten just what it is, but--
Rule 3. This is always indispensable: Bleed your patient.
MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH
ADDRESS DELIVERED JUNE 4, 1902, AT COLUMBIA, MO.
When the name of Samuel L. Clemens was called the humorist
stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently
hesitated. There was a dead silence for a moment. Suddenly
the entire audience rose and stood in silence. Some one began
to spell out the word Missouri with an interval between the
letters. All joined in. Then the house again became silent.
Mr. Clemens broke the spell:
As you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], I
guess, I suppose I had better stand too.
[Then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech. As the great humorist
spoke of his recent visit to Hannibal, his old home, his voice
trembled. ]
You cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said]. In fact,
when I found myself shaking hands with persons I had not seen for fifty
years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when
I last saw them, I experienced emotions that I had never expected, and
did not know were in me. I was profoundly moved and saddened to think
that this was the last time, perhaps, that I would ever behold those
kind old faces and dear old scenes of childhood.
[The humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the
audience was in a continual roar of laughter. He was particularly amused
at the eulogy on himself read by Gardiner Lathrop in conferring the
degree. ] He has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said Mr.
Clemens] by telling the truth about me.
I have seen it stated in print that as a boy I had been guilty of
stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons. I read a story to this effect
very closely not long ago, and I was convinced of one thing, which was
that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal,
and that I had not acted right in doing so. I wish now, however, to make
an honest statement, which is that I do not believe, in all my checkered
career, I stole a ton of peaches.
One night I stole--I mean I removed--a watermelon from a wagon while the
owner was attending to another customer. I crawled off to a secluded
spot, where I found that it was green. It was the greenest melon in
the Mississippi Valley. Then I began to reflect. I began to be sorry. I
wondered what George Washington would have done had he been in my place.
I thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which
comes to a man with a good resolution, and I took up that watermelon and
took it back to its owner. I handed him the watermelon and told him to
reform. He took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good
one in place of the green melon, I forgave him.
I told him that I would still be a customer of his, and that I cherished
no ill-feeling because of the incident--that would remain green in my
memory.
BUSINESS
The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual banquet,
March 30, 1901, at the Y. M. C. A. Building. Mr. James G.
Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank, made the first speech of
the evening, after which Mr. Clemens was introduced by Mr.
Bailey as the personal friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the
types of successful business men.
MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker
as myself all the rest of the night. I took exception to the introducing
of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great
financier present. I am a financier. But my methods are not the same as
Mr. Cannon's.
I cannot say that I have turned out the great business man that I
thought I was when I began life. But I am comparatively young yet, and
may learn. I am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was
that I got the big-head early in the game. I want to explain to you a
few points of difference between the principles of business as I see
them and those that Mr. Cannon believes in.
He says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your
employer. That's all right--as a theory. What is the matter with loyalty
to yourself? As nearly as I can understand Mr. Cannon's methods, there
is one great drawback to them. He wants you to work a great deal.
Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more-restful.
My idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and the employee
the idle one. The employer should be the worried man, and the employee
the happy one. And why not? He gets the salary. My plan is to get
another man to do the work for me. In that there's more repose. What I
want is repose first, last, and all the time.
Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success;
they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness. Well, diligence is all
right. Let it go as a theory. Honesty is the best policy--when there is
money in it. But truthfulness is one of the most dangerous--why, this man
is misleading you.
I had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this. I was
acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening,
which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. It only reached me
this morning. I was mortified at the discourtesy into which I had been
brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by
my hosts. As I had accepted your invitation, of course I had to send
regrets to my other friends.
When I started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking
over my shoulder. Women always want to know what is going on.
a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the Senators
and Representatives in roars of laughter.
I have read this bill. At least I have read such portions as I could
understand. Nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and
thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised legislator.
I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill
which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the
author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any
reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let
the grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my
daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long
been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it.
It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in
the United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are
all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the
Copyright law I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster
culture added, and anything else.
I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required
by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier
Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall
not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to
use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shalt not
steal," but I am trying to use more polite language.
The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one
class, the people who create the literature of the land. They always
talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine,
great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their
enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it.
I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit.
I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the
possession of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to real
estate.
Doctor Hale has suggested that a man might just as well, after
discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the
Government step in and take it away.
What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has
had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes
a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the
88,000,000 of people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely
takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the
publisher double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of
his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they
rear families in affluence.
And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation
after generation forever, for they never die. In a few weeks or months
or years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monument. I hope I shall
not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself.
But I shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of
my copyright. My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I
can use, but my children can use it. I can get along; I know a lot of
trades. But that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I
can because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know
anything and can't do anything. I hope Congress will extend to them the
charity which they have failed to get from me.
Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous--strenuous about
race-suicide--should come to me and try to get me to use my large
political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this
Congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I
should try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to
him, "Leave it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself.
Only one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit. If
they have reached that limit let them go right on. Let them have all the
liberty they want. In restricting that family to twenty-two children you
are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year
in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while. "
It is the very same with copyright. One author per year produces a book
which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all. This nation
can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is
demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to
take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per
year.
I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee
of the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the
Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had
all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000
that can outlive the forty-two year limit. Therefore why put a limit at
all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children.
If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books
that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with Cooper; you can
follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe,
and there you have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson, and
you have to stand still and look further. You find Howells and T.
B. Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you
question if you can name twenty persons in the United States who--in a
whole century have written books that would live forty-two years. Why,
you could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. Add
the wives and children and you could put the result on, two or three
more benches.
One hundred persons--that is the little, insignificant crowd whose
bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit
to anybody? You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of
the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have
gone to the wife and children.
When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman
asked me what limit I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity. " I could see
some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for
the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such
thing as property in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before
Queen Anne's time; they had perpetual copyright. He said, "What is a
book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be
no property in it. "
I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet
that had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.
He said real estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who
travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see nothing
at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party who knows
what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. To him it
means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on that
harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has another
idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey and his
last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece
of land the size of Pennsylvania.
That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to
Cairo Railway would be built.
Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an
idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad
is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which
represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that
did not exist before.
So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that
is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be
under any limitation at all. We don't ask for that. Fifty years from now
we shall ask for it.
I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. I do seem
to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that
I have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous, liberal
nature; I can't help it. I feel the same sort of charity to everybody
that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock
in the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with
life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving,
weaving, weaving around. He watched his chance, and by and by when the
steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on
the portico.
And the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched
the door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He
got to the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so
unsteady that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the
top and raised his foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe
hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom
step, with his arm around the newel-post, and he said:
"God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this. "
IN AID OF THE BLIND
ADDRESS AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION FOR
PROMOTING THE INTERESTS OF THE BLIND AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA,
MARCH 29, 1906
If you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my
conduct I will offer the explanation that I never presided at a meeting
of any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out of my line. I
supposed I could do anything anybody else could, but I recognize that
experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that experience. I don't
feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to impress an
audience. I shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a meeting like
this, and I shall just take the humble place of the Essex band.
There was a great gathering in a small New England town, about
twenty-five years ago. I remember that circumstance because there was
something that happened at that time. It was a great occasion. They
gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns
around. It was an extraordinary occasion.
The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and
tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. It praised the orators,
the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this
in honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives
toward the end. Having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and
glorification, he found he still had one band left over. He had to
say something about it, and he said: "The Essex band done the best it
could. "
I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am going to get through as
well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. I have got
all the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and
intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has
called the meeting. But they are too voluminous. I could not pack those
statistics into my head, and I had to give it up. I shall have to just
reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. There are
too many statistics and figures for me. I never could do anything
with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished
anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only
mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in
that, as soon as I reach nine times seven--
[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. He was trying to
figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned
to St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr. McKelway whispered the
answer, and the speaker resumed:]
I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right
with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage
a statistic.
"This association for the--"
[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again he was obliged to turn to Mr.
McKelway. ]
Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. It's a long name. If
I could I would write it out for you and let you take it home and
study it, but I don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Carnegie is down in
Virginia somewhere. Well, anyway, the object of that association which
has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands
of very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will
push it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give
them a little of your assistance out of your pockets.
The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work
for them to do so that they may earn, their own bread. Now it is dismal
enough to be blind--it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be
largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to
do with their hands. The time passes so heavily that it is never day
or night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with
folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ
their minds, it is drearier and drearier.
And then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and
so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could
have something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the
same time earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which
is the result of the labor of one's own hands. They need that cheer and
pleasure. It is the only way you can turn their night into day, to
give them happy hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the
blessed sun. That you can do in the way I speak of.
Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to
miss the light. Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years
old--their lives are unendingly dreary. But they can be taught to use
their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. That
association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
has taught its blind to make many things. They make them better than
most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes.
The goods they make are readily salable. People like them. And so they
are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. They pass
their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did.
What this association needs and wants is $15,000. The figures are set
down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would
not be here. And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you
will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank
which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or
some time. Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and
that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.
I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything
better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part
with it. It is always for good objects, of course. This is the plan:
When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object,
and you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like
as not. Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is
to split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year,
or fifty, or whatever the sum maybe. Let him contribute ten or twenty a
year. He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him
to contribute a large amount. When you get used to it you would rather
contribute than borrow money.
I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897
when I was in London and said: "The gentleman who has been so liberal in
taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her
in his will, and now they don't know what to do. " They were proposing
to raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of
$2400 or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her
wonderful teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton
and said: "Go on, get up your fund. It will be slow, but if you want
quick work, I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking
people to contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop
out whenever they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any
difficulty, people wouldn't feel the burden of it. And he wrote back
saying he had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in a
single afternoon. We would like to do something just like that to-night.
We will take as many checks as you care to give. You can leave your
donations in the big room outside.
I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall never forget that
experience. I have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or
four hours, and the sufferings that I endured and the mishaps and the
accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when I
feel for the blind and always shall feel. I once went to Heidelberg
on an excursion. I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph
Twichell, of Hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact.
I always travel with clergymen when I can. It is better for them, it is
better for me. And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather
and without a lightning rod is a good one. The Reverend Twichell is one
of those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients
for a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. In
that old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years.
We went to the inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colossal
bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of. It was as big as this room.
I didn't take much notice of the place. I didn't really get my bearings.
I noticed Twichell got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind in
which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on
your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and I was way up
north at the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between.
We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience
loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep.
It was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you
hear various kinds of noises now and then. A mouse away off in the
southwest. You throw things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse. But
I couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I
would give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those
tinkling fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance.
I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle, but I didn't think
of it until it was too late. It was the darkest place that ever was.
There has never been darkness any thicker than that. It just lay in
cakes.
I thought that before dressing I would accumulate my clothes. I pawed
around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor
except one sock. I couldn't get on the track of that sock.
It might
have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. But I didn't think of
that. I went excursioning on my hands and knees. Presently I thought,
"I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed again. " That is what I
tried to do during the next three hours. I had lost the bearings of that
bed. I was going in the wrong direction all the time. By-and-by I came
in collision with a chair and that encouraged me.
It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there was only a chair
here and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this
territory, and I thought maybe after I found that chair I might find the
next one. Well, I did. And I found another and another and another. I
kept going around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions,
and finally when I banged into another chair I almost lost my temper.
And I raised up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibition, right in
front of a mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high.
I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. And when I saw
myself in the mirror I was frightened out of my wits. I don't allow any
ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and smashed at it. A million
pieces. Then I reflected. That's the way I always do, and it's
unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has
clear judgment. And I had judgment, and I would have had to pay for that
mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was Twichell who broke it.
Then I got down, on my hands and knees and went on another exploring
expedition.
As far as I could remember there were six chairs in that Oklahoma, and
one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your
head when rushing madly along. In the course of time I collided with
thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out
there. It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse
condition when I got through with it. I went on and on, and at last got
to a place where I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. I knew
that wasn't in the middle of the room. Up to that time I was afraid I
had gotten out of the city.
I was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher
of water about a foot high, and it was at the head of Twichell's bed,
but I didn't know it. I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at it,
but it didn't help any and came right down in Twichell's face and nearly
drowned him. But it woke him up. I was grateful to have company on any
terms. He lit a match, and there I was, way down south when I ought to
have been back up yonder. My bed was out of sight it was so far away.
You needed a telescope to find it. Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed
him off and we got sociable.
But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedometer on my leg. Twichell and
I were in a pedometer match. Twichell had longer legs than I. The only
way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. I always walk in my
sleep, and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him. After all, I
never found that sock. I never have seen it from that day to this. But
that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. That was one of the
most serious occasions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of it
without somebody thinking it isn't serious. You try it and see how
serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that night.
[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He then introduced Joseph
H. Choate, saying:]
It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate. I don't have to
really introduce him. I don't have to praise him, or to flatter him.
I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly
acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has
ever produced. And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five
years more. He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly.
He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his
countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher
in his countrymen's esteem and affection, I would say that word whether
it was true or not.
DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH
ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE
MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL, JANUARY 21, 1909
The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars.
GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,--I am glad to be among my own kind to-night. I
was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally as
deadly a profession. It wasn't so very long ago that I became a member
of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record is
one that can't be scoffed at.
As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have
always had a good deal to do with burglars--not officially, but through
their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a
burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got
anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September--we
got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been
sorry ever since. They did us a great service they scared off all the
servants in the place.
I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the
Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the
country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from
all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them
back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of
lives which otherwise would have been lost.
I have been practising now for seven months. When I settled on my farm
in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled--and
since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled
still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression
on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you.
I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I
organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School. I
am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.
Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country
district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division
of responsibility. I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a
sexton, and an undertaker. The combination is air-tight, and once a man
is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him.
These four of us--three in the regular profession and the fourth an
undertaker--are all good men. There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding
undertaker. Bill is there in every respect. He is a little lukewarm on
general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. Like my old
Southern, friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere.
Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor. Ruggles is one of the best
men I have got. He also is not much on general medicine, but he is a
fine horse-doctor. Ferguson doesn't make any money off him.
You see, the combination started this way. When I got up to Redding and
had become a doctor, I looked around to see what my chances were for
aiding in the great work. The first thing I did was to determine what
manner of doctor I was to be. Being a Connecticut farmer, I naturally
consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath.
Then I got circulating about, and got in touch with Ferguson and
Ruggles. Ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying
that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he
couldn't see where it helped horses.
Well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community,
and it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and
that was race-suicide. And driving about the country-side I was told
by my fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable
disease. But it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to
stop it or we'll have to move.
We've had some funny experiences up there in Redding. Not long ago a
fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face. We asked
him what was the matter. We always hold consultations on every case, as
there isn't business enough for four. He said he didn't know, but that
he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis. We
treated him for that, and I never saw a man die more peacefully.
That same afternoon my dog Tige treed an African gentleman. We
chained up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had
appendicitis. We asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes,
that he'd like to know if there was anything in it. So we cut him open
and found nothing in him but darkness. So we diagnosed his case as
infidelity, because he was dark inside. Tige is a very clever dog, and
aids us greatly.
The other day a patient came to me and inquired if I was old Doctor
Clemens--
As a practitioner I have given a great deal of my attention to Bright's
disease. I have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable.
Listen:
Rule 1. When approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise President--I
mean an all-wise Providence--well, anyway, it's the same thing--has seen
fit to afflict with disease--well, the rule is simple, even if it is
old-fashioned.
Rule 2. I've forgotten just what it is, but--
Rule 3. This is always indispensable: Bleed your patient.
MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH
ADDRESS DELIVERED JUNE 4, 1902, AT COLUMBIA, MO.
When the name of Samuel L. Clemens was called the humorist
stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently
hesitated. There was a dead silence for a moment. Suddenly
the entire audience rose and stood in silence. Some one began
to spell out the word Missouri with an interval between the
letters. All joined in. Then the house again became silent.
Mr. Clemens broke the spell:
As you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], I
guess, I suppose I had better stand too.
[Then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech. As the great humorist
spoke of his recent visit to Hannibal, his old home, his voice
trembled. ]
You cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said]. In fact,
when I found myself shaking hands with persons I had not seen for fifty
years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when
I last saw them, I experienced emotions that I had never expected, and
did not know were in me. I was profoundly moved and saddened to think
that this was the last time, perhaps, that I would ever behold those
kind old faces and dear old scenes of childhood.
[The humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the
audience was in a continual roar of laughter. He was particularly amused
at the eulogy on himself read by Gardiner Lathrop in conferring the
degree. ] He has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said Mr.
Clemens] by telling the truth about me.
I have seen it stated in print that as a boy I had been guilty of
stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons. I read a story to this effect
very closely not long ago, and I was convinced of one thing, which was
that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal,
and that I had not acted right in doing so. I wish now, however, to make
an honest statement, which is that I do not believe, in all my checkered
career, I stole a ton of peaches.
One night I stole--I mean I removed--a watermelon from a wagon while the
owner was attending to another customer. I crawled off to a secluded
spot, where I found that it was green. It was the greenest melon in
the Mississippi Valley. Then I began to reflect. I began to be sorry. I
wondered what George Washington would have done had he been in my place.
I thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which
comes to a man with a good resolution, and I took up that watermelon and
took it back to its owner. I handed him the watermelon and told him to
reform. He took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good
one in place of the green melon, I forgave him.
I told him that I would still be a customer of his, and that I cherished
no ill-feeling because of the incident--that would remain green in my
memory.
BUSINESS
The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual banquet,
March 30, 1901, at the Y. M. C. A. Building. Mr. James G.
Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank, made the first speech of
the evening, after which Mr. Clemens was introduced by Mr.
Bailey as the personal friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the
types of successful business men.
MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker
as myself all the rest of the night. I took exception to the introducing
of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great
financier present. I am a financier. But my methods are not the same as
Mr. Cannon's.
I cannot say that I have turned out the great business man that I
thought I was when I began life. But I am comparatively young yet, and
may learn. I am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was
that I got the big-head early in the game. I want to explain to you a
few points of difference between the principles of business as I see
them and those that Mr. Cannon believes in.
He says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your
employer. That's all right--as a theory. What is the matter with loyalty
to yourself? As nearly as I can understand Mr. Cannon's methods, there
is one great drawback to them. He wants you to work a great deal.
Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more-restful.
My idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and the employee
the idle one. The employer should be the worried man, and the employee
the happy one. And why not? He gets the salary. My plan is to get
another man to do the work for me. In that there's more repose. What I
want is repose first, last, and all the time.
Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success;
they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness. Well, diligence is all
right. Let it go as a theory. Honesty is the best policy--when there is
money in it. But truthfulness is one of the most dangerous--why, this man
is misleading you.
I had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this. I was
acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening,
which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. It only reached me
this morning. I was mortified at the discourtesy into which I had been
brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by
my hosts. As I had accepted your invitation, of course I had to send
regrets to my other friends.
When I started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking
over my shoulder. Women always want to know what is going on.
