Whose
property
is my body?
Twain - Speeches
He maybe peddling
etchings. Has he a Russia leather case? " But Sylvester was too
frightened to remember. I said; "I am going down to make it hot for that
upstart! "
I went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way. When I got to
the parlor I was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid
courtesy. And when I looked in the door, sure enough he had a Russia
leather case in his hand. But I didn't happen to notice that it was our
Russia leather case.
And if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of
etchings spread out before him. But I didn't happen to notice that
they were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some
unguessed purpose.
Very curtly I asked the gentleman his business. With a surprised, timid
manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at Onteora, and
they had asked him to call. Fine lie, I thought, and I froze him.
He seemed to be kind of non-plussed, and sat there fingering the
etchings in the case until I told him he needn't bother, because we had
those. That pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarrassed
way, to pick up another from the floor. But I stopped him. I
said, "We've got that, too. " He seemed pitifully amazed, but I was
congratulating myself on my great success.
Finally the gentleman asked where Mr. Winton lived; he'd met him in the
mountains, too. So I said I'd show him gladly. And I did on the spot.
And when he was gone I felt queer, because there were all his etchings
spread out on the floor.
Well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in. I showed her the
card, and told her all exultantly. To my dismay she nearly fainted. She
told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had
forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way. And she pushed me out
of the door, and commanded me to get over to the Wintons in a hurry and
get him back.
I came into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Winton was sitting up very
stiff in a chair, beating me at my own game. Well, I began to put
another light on things. Before many seconds Mrs. Winton saw it was
time to change her temperature. In five minutes I had asked the man to
luncheon, and she to dinner, and so on.
We made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the
time of his life. Why, I don't believe we let him get sober the whole
time.
I trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons I
have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher
things, and elevate you to plans far above the old--and--and--
And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had a better time with you
to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago.
QUEEN VICTORIA
ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES CLUB, AT
DELMONICO'S, MONDAY, MAY 25, 1908, IN HONOR OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S
BIRTHDAY
Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how
he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a
friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five
yards and attributed the shot to Mark twain. The duel did not
take place. Mr. Clemens continued as follows:
It also happened that I was the means of stopping duelling in Nevada,
for a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and
the Governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me I
should go to prison for the full term. That's why I left Nevada, and I
have not been there since.
You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country
in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was
consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of
lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed
and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will
still be formed in the generations that are to come--a life which finds
its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and
out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre
across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished
at their source.
As a woman the Queen was all that the most exacting standards could
require. As a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had
no peer in her time among either, monarchs or commoners. As a monarch
she was without reproach in her great office. We may not venture,
perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any
monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other.
It is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified.
In those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and
conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will
still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political
glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to
a place in that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call
tradition. Which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live
always. And with it her character--a fame rare in the history of thrones,
dominions, principalities, and powers, since it will not rest upon
harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and freely
vouchsafed. She mended broken hearts where she could, but she broke
none.
What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we shall
not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember
the wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and
supported her--Prince Albert's. We need not talk any idle talk here
to-night about either possible or impossible war between the two
countries; there will be no war while we remain sane and the son of
Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. In conclusion, I believe I may
justly claim to utter the voice of my country in saying that we hold him
in deep honor, and also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy
reign.
JOAN OF ARC
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS, GIVEN AT
THE ALDINE ASSOCIATION CLUB, DECEMBER 22, 1905
Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young woman attired
as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle,
courtesied reverently and tendered Mr. Clemens a laurel wreath
on a satin pillow. He tried to speak, but his voice failed
from excess of emotion. "I thank you! " he finally exclaimed,
and, pulling himself together, he began his speech.
Now there is an illustration [pointing to the retreating Joan of
Arc]. That is exactly what I wanted--precisely what I wanted--when I was
describing to myself Joan of Arc, after studying her history and her
character for twelve years diligently.
That was the product--not the conventional Joan of Arc. Wherever you find
the conventional Joan of Arc in history she is an offence to anybody who
knows the story of that wonderful girl.
Why, she was--she was almost supreme in several details. She had a
marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was
absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words,
her everything--she was only eighteen years old.
Now put that heart into such a breast--eighteen years old--and give it
that masterly intellect which showed in the face, and furnish it
with that almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to have? The
conventional Joan of Arc? Not by any means. That is impossible. I cannot
comprehend any such thing as that.
You must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we
just saw. And her spirit must look out of the eyes. The figure should
be--the figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get
in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture!
I hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the
conventional, you have got it at second-hand. Certainly, if you had
studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but
when you have the common convention you stick to that.
You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a Joan
of Arc--that lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but
whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely because
she was a girl he can not see the divinity in her, and so he paints a
peasant, a coarse and lubberly figure--the figure of a cotton-bale, and
he clothes that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant region just like
a fish woman, her hair cropped short like a Russian peasant, and that
face of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the
glories which are in the spirit and in her heart that expression in that
face is always just the fixed expression of a ham.
But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has Sir
Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist, the illustrator, does not often
get the idea of the man whose book he is illustrating. Here is a very
remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr. Beard, who illustrated a
book of mine. You may never have heard of it. I will tell you about it
now--A Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Now, Beard got everything that I put into that book and a little more
besides. Those pictures of Beard's in that book--oh, from the first
page to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the
servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and
the insolence of priest-craft and king-craft--those creatures that make
slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off. Beard
put it all in that book. I meant it to be there. I put a lot of it there
and Beard put the rest.
That publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he
saved them. He did not waste any on the illustrations. He had a very
good artist--Williams--who had never taken a lesson in drawing. Everything
he did was original. The publisher hired the cheapest wood-engraver he
could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of that. You can
see that if Williams had had a chance he would have made some very good
pictures. He had a good heart and good intentions.
I had a character in the first book he illustrated--The Innocents Abroad.
That was a boy seventeen or eighteen years old--Jack Van Nostrand--a New
York boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature. He and I
tried to get Williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of Jack
that would be worthy of Jack.
Jack was a most singular combination. He was born and reared in New York
here. He was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined
in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he
expressed a feeling he did it in Bowery slang, and it was a most curious
combination--that delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness. There
was no coarseness inside of Jack at all, and Jack, in the course of
seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that
was marvellous--ignorance of various things, not of all things. For
instance, he did not know anything about the Bible. He had never been
in Sunday-school. Jack got more out of the Holy Land than anybody else,
because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of
surprises to him.
I said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning
that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that
"The song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't
sing. It sounded absurd, but it was charged on Jack as a fact, and as
he went along through that country he had a proper foil in an old
rebel colonel, who was superintendent and head engineer in a large
Sunday-school in Wheeling, West Virginia. That man was full of
enthusiasm wherever he went, and would stand and deliver himself of
speeches, and Jack would listen to those speeches of the colonel and
wonder.
Jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the
first overland stage-coach. That man's name who ran that line of
stages--well, I declare that name is gone. Well, names will go.
Halliday--ah, that's the name--Ben Halliday, your uncle [turning to
Mr. Carnegie]. That was the fellow--Ben Halliday--and Jack was full of
admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages made--and it
was good speed--one hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and
night, and it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of
the Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a
speech), so he called us up to him. He called up five sinners and three
saints. It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified me. And he
said: "Here are the Fords of the Jordan--a monumental place. At this very
point, when Moses brought the children of Israel through--he brought
the children of Israel from Egypt through the desert you see there--he
guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty
years, and brought them to this spot safe and sound. There you see--there
is the scene of what Moses did. "
And Jack said: "Moses who? "
"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that! Moses, the great
law-giver! Moses, the great patriot! Moses, the great warrior! Moses,
the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these people through these
three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed them safe and
sound. "
Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years.
Ben Halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty--six hours. "
Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. Jack was
not ignorant on all subjects. That boy was a deep student in the history
of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to
the marrow. There was a subject that interested him all the time.
Other subjects were of no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable
innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into the picture.
Yes, Williams wanted to do it. He said: "I will make him as innocent
as a virgin. " He thought a moment, and then said, "I will make him as
innocent as an unborn virgin;" which covered the ground.
I was reminded of Jack because I came across a letter to-day which is
over thirty years old that Jack wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption.
He was very long and slim, poor creature; and in a year or two after
he got back from that excursion, to the Holy Land he went on a ride on
horseback through Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two.
He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine; and he said:
"I have ridden horseback"----this was three years after--"I have ridden
horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you
never see anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle
station--ten miles apart, twenty miles apart. Now you tell Clemens that
in all that stretch of four hundred miles I have seen only two books--the
Bible and 'Innocents Abroad'. Tell Clemens the Bible was in a very good
condition. "
I say that he had studied, and he had, the real Saxon liberty, the
acquirement of our liberty, and Jack used to repeat some verses--I don't
know where they came from, but I thought of them to-day when I saw that
letter--that that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted
lines from that unknown poet:
"For he had sat at Sidney's feet
And walked with him in plain apart,
And through the centuries heard the beat
Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart. "
And he was that kind of a boy. He should have lived, and yet he should
not have lived, because he died at that early age--he couldn't have been
more than twenty--he had seen all there was to see in the world that was
worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is
valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion,
is the only valuable thing in it. He had arrived at that point where
presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the
realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived at that point.
ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC.
DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD,
OF LONDON
GENTLEMEN,--I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished
guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has
extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band
of brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's arms company making
the destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance
citizens paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson
perpetuating their memory with his stately monuments, and our
fire-insurance comrades taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to
assist in welcoming our guest--first, because he is an Englishman, and I
owe a heavy debt of hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen;
and secondly, because he is in sympathy with insurance, and has been
the means of making many other men cast their sympathies in the same
direction.
Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance
line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a
director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better
man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a kindlier
aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I
look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an advertisement.
I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care for
politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a
charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.
There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen
an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple
boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with
tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my
experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that
comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest
pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right.
And I have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into another
splintered customer's face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden
leg.
I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity
which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY is an
institution, which is peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to
prosper who gives it his custom. No man can take out a policy in it and
not get crippled before the year is out. Now there was one indigent
man who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had
grown disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smile--said life
was but a weariness. Three weeks ago I got him to insure with us, and
now he is the brightest, happiest spirit in this land--has a good steady
income and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around
on a shutter.
I will say in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is
none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I
can say the same far the rest of the speakers.
(The speaker was a director of the company named. )
OSTEOPATHY
On February 27, 1901, Mr. Clemens appeared before the Assembly
Committee in Albany, New York, in favor of the Seymour bill
legalizing the practice of osteopathy.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--Dr. Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave
me the character. I have heard my character discussed a thousand times
before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did
not get more than half of them.
I was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in
here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way.
What remarkable names those diseases have! It makes me envious of the
man that has them all. I have had many diseases, and am thankful for all
I have had.
One of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in
Sweden, a treatment which I took. It is, I suppose, a kindred thing.
There is apparently no great difference between them. I was a year and
a half in London and Sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, Mr.
Kildren.
I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a
certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't.
The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed with power. It stands
between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor I must
employ. When my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by
the State. Now then, it doesn't seem logical that the State shall depart
from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and
take the other position in the matter of smaller consequence--the health
of the body.
The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the State.
Oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the State you create the
same condition as prevailed in the Garden of Eden.
You want the thing that you can't have. I didn't care much about the
osteopaths, but as soon as I found they were going to drive them out I
got in a state of uneasiness, and I can't sleep nights now.
I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden about the prohibited apple.
Adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it, just
as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it.
Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I
experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I
choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.
I was the subject of my mother's experiment. She was wise. She made
experiments cautiously. She didn't pick out just any child in the
flock. No, she chose judiciously. She chose one she could spare, and she
couldn't spare the others. I was the choice child of the flock; so I had
to take all of the experiments.
In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure.
Mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through.
A bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect. Then I was
rubbed down with flannels, sheet was dipped in the water, and I was put
to bed. I perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with
me.
But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and I didn't care for
that. When they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my
conscience, the exudation of sin. It purified me spiritually, and it
remains until this day.
I have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy. I took a chance at
the latter for old times' sake, for, three times, when a boy, mother's
new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family
physician to pull me out.
The physicians think they are moved by regard for the best interests of
the public. Isn't there a little touch of self-interest back of it all?
It seems to me there is, and I don't claim to have all the virtues--only
nine or ten of them.
I was born in the "Banner State," and by "Banner State" I mean Missouri.
Osteopathy was born in the same State, and both of us are getting along
reasonably well. At a time during my younger days my attention was
attracted to a picture of a house which bore the inscription, "Christ
Disputing with the Doctors. "
I could attach no other meaning to it than that Christ was actually
quarreling with the doctors. So I asked an old slave, who was a sort of
a herb doctor in a small way--unlicensed, of course--what the meaning
of the picture was. "What had he done? " I asked. And the colored man
replied "Humph, he ain't got no license. "
WATER-SUPPLY
Mr. Clemens visited Albany on February 27 and 28, 1901. The
privileges of the floor were granted to him and he was asked to make a
short address to the Senate.
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--I do not know how to thank you sufficiently
for this high honor which you are conferring upon me. I have for the
second time now enjoyed this kind of prodigal hospitality--in the other
House yesterday, to-day in this one. I am a modest man, and diffident
about appearing before legislative bodies, and yet utterly and entirely
appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is extended to me, and I
thank you very much for it.
If I had the privilege, which unfortunately I have not got, of
suggesting things to the legislators in my individual capacity, I would
so enjoy the opportunity that I would not charge anything for it at all.
I would do that without a salary. I would give them the benefit of my
wisdom and experience in legislative bodies, and if I could have had the
privilege for a few minutes of giving advice to the other House I should
have liked to, but of course I could not undertake it, as they did not
ask me to do it--but if they had only asked me!
Now that the House is considering a measure which is to furnish a
water-supply to the city of New York, why, permit me to say I live
in New York myself. I know all about its ways, its desires, and its
residents, and--if I had the privilege--I should have urged them not to
weary themselves over a measure like that to furnish water to the city
of New York, for we never drink it.
But I will not venture to advise this body, as I only venture to advise
bodies who are, not present.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL "LADIES' DAY," PAPYRUS CLUB, BOSTON
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am perfectly
astonished--a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d--ladies and gentlemen--astonished at
the way history repeats itself. I find myself situated at this moment
exactly and precisely as I was once before, years ago, to a jot, to a
tittle--to a very hair. There isn't a shade of difference. It is the most
astonishing coincidence that ever--but wait. I will tell you the former
instance, and then you will see it for yourself. Years ago I arrived one
day at Salamanca, New York, eastward bound; must change cars there and
take the sleeper train. There were crowds of people there, and they were
swarming into the long sleeper train and packing it full, and it was a
perfect purgatory of dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and soft,
sweet, and low profanity. I asked the young man in the ticket-office if
I could have a sleeping-section, and he answered "No," with a snarl that
shrivelled me up like burned leather. I went off, smarting under this
insult to my dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly,
if I couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car;
but he cut me short with a venomous "No, you can't; every corner is
full. Now, don't bother me any more"; and he turned his back and walked
off. My dignity was in a state now which cannot be described. I was so
ruffled that--"well," I said to my companion, "If these people knew who
I am they--" But my companion cut me short there--"Don't talk such folly,"
he said; "if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help
your high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in
it? "
This did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then I
observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me.
I saw his dark countenance light up. He whispered to the uniformed
conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway
this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore.
"Can I be of any service to you? " he asked. "Will you have a place in
the sleeper? "
"Yes," I said, "and much oblige me, too. Give me anything--anything will
answer. "
"We have nothing left but the big family state-room," he continued,
"with two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at
your disposal. Here, Tom, take these satchels aboard! "
Then he touched his hat and we and the colored Tom moved along. I was
bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in
and waited. Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment,
and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles:
"Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case you kin have jes' anything you
wants. It don't make no difference what it is. "
"Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night-blazing hot? "
I asked. "You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch? "
"Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll get it myself. "
"Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle
fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably? "
"Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll
burn all night. Yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want,
and dish yer whole railroad'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for
to get it for you. Dat's so. " And he disappeared.
Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a
smile on my companion, and said, gently:
"Well, what do you say now? "
My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. The next
moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door,
and this speech followed:
"Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute. I told de conductah so.
Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you. "
"Is that so, my boy? " (Handing him a quadruple fee. ) "Who am I? "
"Jenuel McClellan," and he disappeared again.
My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well! what do you say now? "
Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while
ago--viz. , I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it?
CATS AND CANDY
The following address was delivered at a social meeting of
literary men in New York in 1874:
When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor--and
correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the name of
Jim Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very
diffident. He and I slept together--virtuously; and one bitter winter's
night a cousin Mary--she's married now and gone--gave what they call a
candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of
hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower
that came from the eaves--it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with
vines--to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting
there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to
attend this party; we were too young.
The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were
in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell,
and our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of
tom-cats--it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex--were
assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were
growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going
on, and we couldn't sleep at all.
Finally Jim said, "For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that
chimney. " So I said, "Of course you would. " He said, "Well, I would;
I have a mighty good notion to do it. " Says I, "Of course you have;
certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it. " I hoped he might
try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.
Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed
out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short
shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the
chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and
gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim
got almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels
flew up and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the
midst of the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of
candy.
There was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces
of chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up there--now
anybody in the world would have gone into profanity or something
calculated to relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off
his legs, nursed his blisters a little, and said, "I could have ketched
them cats if I had had on a good ready. "
[Does any reader know what a "ready" was in 1840? D. W. ]
OBITUARY POETRY
ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR, PHILADELPHIA, in 1895
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The--er this--er--welcome occasion gives me
an--er--opportunity to make an--er--explanation that I have long desired to
deliver myself of. I rise to the highest honors before a Philadelphia
audience. In the course of my checkered career I have, on divers
occasions, been charged--er--maliciously with a more or less serious
offence. It is in reply to one of the more--er--important of these that
I wish to speak. More than once I have been accused of writing obituary
poetry in the Philadelphia Ledger.
I wish right here to deny that dreadful assertion. I will admit that
once, when a compositor in the Ledger establishment, I did set up some
of that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no indictment can be
found against me. I did not write that poetry--at least, not all of it.
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
My friends for some years now have remarked that I am an inveterate
consumer of tobacco. That is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco
have changed. I have no doubt that you will say, when I have explained
to you what my present purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated, but I
do not so regard it.
Whenever I held a smoking-party at my house, I found that my guests had
always just taken the pledge.
Let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco.
It began, I think, when I was a lad, and took the form of a quid, which
I became expert in tucking under my tongue. Afterward I learned the
delights of the pipe, and I suppose there was no other youngster of my
age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available
for pipe-smoking.
Well, time ran on, and there came a time when I was able to gratify one
of my youthful ambitions--I could buy the choicest Havana cigars without
seriously interfering with my income. I smoked a good many, changing off
from the Havana cigars to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking.
At last it occurred to me that something was lacking in the
Havana cigar. It did not quite fulfil my youthful anticipations.
I experimented. I bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a
Connecticut wrapper. After a while I became satiated of these, and I
searched for something else, The Pittsburg stogy was recommended to me.
It certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be a merit in tobacco,
and I experimented with the stogy.
Then, once more, I changed off, so that I might acquire the subtler
flavor of the Wheeling toby. Now that palled, and I looked around New
York in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to most people vile,
but which, I am sure, would be ambrosial to me. I couldn't find any.
They put into my hands some of those little things that cost ten cents a
box, but they are a delusion.
I said to a friend, "I want to know if you can direct me to an honest
tobacco merchant who will tell me what is the worst cigar in the New
York market, excepting those made for Chinese consumption--I want real
tobacco. If you will do this and I find the man is as good as his word,
I will guarantee him a regular market for a fair amount of his cigars. "
We found a tobacco dealer who would tell the truth--who, if a cigar was
bad, would boldly say so. He produced what he called the very worst
cigars he had ever had in his shop. He let me experiment with one then
and there. The test was satisfactory.
This was, after all, the real thing. I negotiated for a box of them and
took them away with me, so that I might be sure of having them handy
when I want them.
I discovered that the "worst cigars," so called, are the best for me,
after all.
BILLIARDS
Mr. Clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of April
24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story.
The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition.
Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I
wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark. One day
a stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over
casually. When he proposed a game, I answered, "All right. "
"Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait," he
said; and when I had done so, he remarked: "I will be perfectly
fair with you. I'll play you left-handed. " I felt hurt, for he was
cross-eyed, freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to teach him a
lesson. He won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got
was the opportunity to chalk my cue.
"If you can play like that with your left hand," I said, "I'd like to
see you play with your right. "
"I can't," he said. "I'm left-handed. "
THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG
REMINISCENCES OF NEVADA
I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that Nevada had lively
newspapers in those days.
My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs, of the Union, an
excellent reporter.
Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated; but,
as a general thing, he was a wary and cautious drinker, although always
ready to damp himself a little with the enemy.
He had the advantage of me in one thing: he could get the monthly
public-school report and I could not, because the principal hated my
sheet--the 'Enterprise'.
One snowy night, when the report was due, I started out, sadly wondering
how I was to get it.
Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street, I stumbled on
Boggs, and asked him where he was going.
"After the school report. "
"I'll go along with you. "
"No, Sir. I'll excuse you. "
"Have it your own way. "
A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch,
and Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully.
He gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him start up the Enterprise
stairs.
I said:
"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't,
I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get a proof of it
after it's set up, though I don't begin to suppose I can. Good night. "
"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting around
with the boys a little while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down
to the principal's with me. "
"Now you talk like a human being. Come along. "
We ploughed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report--a short
document--and soon copied it in our office.
Meantime, Boggs helped himself to the punch.
I gave the manuscript back to him, and we started back to get an
inquest.
At four o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were
having a relaxing concert as usual (for some of the printers were good
singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity
the accordion), the proprietor of the Union strode in and asked if
anybody had heard anything of Boggs or the school report.
We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent.
We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern
in one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of
"corned" miners on the iniquity of squandering the public money on
education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were
literally starving for whiskey. "
He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours.
We dragged him away, and put him into bed.
Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me
accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass
its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the
misfortune had occurred. But we were perfectly friendly.
etchings. Has he a Russia leather case? " But Sylvester was too
frightened to remember. I said; "I am going down to make it hot for that
upstart! "
I went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way. When I got to
the parlor I was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid
courtesy. And when I looked in the door, sure enough he had a Russia
leather case in his hand. But I didn't happen to notice that it was our
Russia leather case.
And if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of
etchings spread out before him. But I didn't happen to notice that
they were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some
unguessed purpose.
Very curtly I asked the gentleman his business. With a surprised, timid
manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at Onteora, and
they had asked him to call. Fine lie, I thought, and I froze him.
He seemed to be kind of non-plussed, and sat there fingering the
etchings in the case until I told him he needn't bother, because we had
those. That pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarrassed
way, to pick up another from the floor. But I stopped him. I
said, "We've got that, too. " He seemed pitifully amazed, but I was
congratulating myself on my great success.
Finally the gentleman asked where Mr. Winton lived; he'd met him in the
mountains, too. So I said I'd show him gladly. And I did on the spot.
And when he was gone I felt queer, because there were all his etchings
spread out on the floor.
Well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in. I showed her the
card, and told her all exultantly. To my dismay she nearly fainted. She
told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had
forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way. And she pushed me out
of the door, and commanded me to get over to the Wintons in a hurry and
get him back.
I came into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Winton was sitting up very
stiff in a chair, beating me at my own game. Well, I began to put
another light on things. Before many seconds Mrs. Winton saw it was
time to change her temperature. In five minutes I had asked the man to
luncheon, and she to dinner, and so on.
We made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the
time of his life. Why, I don't believe we let him get sober the whole
time.
I trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons I
have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher
things, and elevate you to plans far above the old--and--and--
And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had a better time with you
to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago.
QUEEN VICTORIA
ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES CLUB, AT
DELMONICO'S, MONDAY, MAY 25, 1908, IN HONOR OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S
BIRTHDAY
Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how
he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a
friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five
yards and attributed the shot to Mark twain. The duel did not
take place. Mr. Clemens continued as follows:
It also happened that I was the means of stopping duelling in Nevada,
for a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and
the Governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me I
should go to prison for the full term. That's why I left Nevada, and I
have not been there since.
You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country
in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was
consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of
lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed
and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will
still be formed in the generations that are to come--a life which finds
its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and
out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre
across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished
at their source.
As a woman the Queen was all that the most exacting standards could
require. As a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had
no peer in her time among either, monarchs or commoners. As a monarch
she was without reproach in her great office. We may not venture,
perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any
monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other.
It is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified.
In those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and
conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will
still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political
glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to
a place in that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call
tradition. Which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live
always. And with it her character--a fame rare in the history of thrones,
dominions, principalities, and powers, since it will not rest upon
harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and freely
vouchsafed. She mended broken hearts where she could, but she broke
none.
What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we shall
not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember
the wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and
supported her--Prince Albert's. We need not talk any idle talk here
to-night about either possible or impossible war between the two
countries; there will be no war while we remain sane and the son of
Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. In conclusion, I believe I may
justly claim to utter the voice of my country in saying that we hold him
in deep honor, and also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy
reign.
JOAN OF ARC
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS, GIVEN AT
THE ALDINE ASSOCIATION CLUB, DECEMBER 22, 1905
Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young woman attired
as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle,
courtesied reverently and tendered Mr. Clemens a laurel wreath
on a satin pillow. He tried to speak, but his voice failed
from excess of emotion. "I thank you! " he finally exclaimed,
and, pulling himself together, he began his speech.
Now there is an illustration [pointing to the retreating Joan of
Arc]. That is exactly what I wanted--precisely what I wanted--when I was
describing to myself Joan of Arc, after studying her history and her
character for twelve years diligently.
That was the product--not the conventional Joan of Arc. Wherever you find
the conventional Joan of Arc in history she is an offence to anybody who
knows the story of that wonderful girl.
Why, she was--she was almost supreme in several details. She had a
marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was
absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words,
her everything--she was only eighteen years old.
Now put that heart into such a breast--eighteen years old--and give it
that masterly intellect which showed in the face, and furnish it
with that almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to have? The
conventional Joan of Arc? Not by any means. That is impossible. I cannot
comprehend any such thing as that.
You must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we
just saw. And her spirit must look out of the eyes. The figure should
be--the figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get
in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture!
I hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the
conventional, you have got it at second-hand. Certainly, if you had
studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but
when you have the common convention you stick to that.
You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a Joan
of Arc--that lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but
whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely because
she was a girl he can not see the divinity in her, and so he paints a
peasant, a coarse and lubberly figure--the figure of a cotton-bale, and
he clothes that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant region just like
a fish woman, her hair cropped short like a Russian peasant, and that
face of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the
glories which are in the spirit and in her heart that expression in that
face is always just the fixed expression of a ham.
But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has Sir
Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist, the illustrator, does not often
get the idea of the man whose book he is illustrating. Here is a very
remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr. Beard, who illustrated a
book of mine. You may never have heard of it. I will tell you about it
now--A Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Now, Beard got everything that I put into that book and a little more
besides. Those pictures of Beard's in that book--oh, from the first
page to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the
servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and
the insolence of priest-craft and king-craft--those creatures that make
slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off. Beard
put it all in that book. I meant it to be there. I put a lot of it there
and Beard put the rest.
That publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he
saved them. He did not waste any on the illustrations. He had a very
good artist--Williams--who had never taken a lesson in drawing. Everything
he did was original. The publisher hired the cheapest wood-engraver he
could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of that. You can
see that if Williams had had a chance he would have made some very good
pictures. He had a good heart and good intentions.
I had a character in the first book he illustrated--The Innocents Abroad.
That was a boy seventeen or eighteen years old--Jack Van Nostrand--a New
York boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature. He and I
tried to get Williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of Jack
that would be worthy of Jack.
Jack was a most singular combination. He was born and reared in New York
here. He was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined
in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he
expressed a feeling he did it in Bowery slang, and it was a most curious
combination--that delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness. There
was no coarseness inside of Jack at all, and Jack, in the course of
seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that
was marvellous--ignorance of various things, not of all things. For
instance, he did not know anything about the Bible. He had never been
in Sunday-school. Jack got more out of the Holy Land than anybody else,
because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of
surprises to him.
I said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning
that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that
"The song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't
sing. It sounded absurd, but it was charged on Jack as a fact, and as
he went along through that country he had a proper foil in an old
rebel colonel, who was superintendent and head engineer in a large
Sunday-school in Wheeling, West Virginia. That man was full of
enthusiasm wherever he went, and would stand and deliver himself of
speeches, and Jack would listen to those speeches of the colonel and
wonder.
Jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the
first overland stage-coach. That man's name who ran that line of
stages--well, I declare that name is gone. Well, names will go.
Halliday--ah, that's the name--Ben Halliday, your uncle [turning to
Mr. Carnegie]. That was the fellow--Ben Halliday--and Jack was full of
admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages made--and it
was good speed--one hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and
night, and it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of
the Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a
speech), so he called us up to him. He called up five sinners and three
saints. It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified me. And he
said: "Here are the Fords of the Jordan--a monumental place. At this very
point, when Moses brought the children of Israel through--he brought
the children of Israel from Egypt through the desert you see there--he
guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty
years, and brought them to this spot safe and sound. There you see--there
is the scene of what Moses did. "
And Jack said: "Moses who? "
"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that! Moses, the great
law-giver! Moses, the great patriot! Moses, the great warrior! Moses,
the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these people through these
three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed them safe and
sound. "
Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years.
Ben Halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty--six hours. "
Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. Jack was
not ignorant on all subjects. That boy was a deep student in the history
of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to
the marrow. There was a subject that interested him all the time.
Other subjects were of no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable
innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into the picture.
Yes, Williams wanted to do it. He said: "I will make him as innocent
as a virgin. " He thought a moment, and then said, "I will make him as
innocent as an unborn virgin;" which covered the ground.
I was reminded of Jack because I came across a letter to-day which is
over thirty years old that Jack wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption.
He was very long and slim, poor creature; and in a year or two after
he got back from that excursion, to the Holy Land he went on a ride on
horseback through Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two.
He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine; and he said:
"I have ridden horseback"----this was three years after--"I have ridden
horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you
never see anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle
station--ten miles apart, twenty miles apart. Now you tell Clemens that
in all that stretch of four hundred miles I have seen only two books--the
Bible and 'Innocents Abroad'. Tell Clemens the Bible was in a very good
condition. "
I say that he had studied, and he had, the real Saxon liberty, the
acquirement of our liberty, and Jack used to repeat some verses--I don't
know where they came from, but I thought of them to-day when I saw that
letter--that that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted
lines from that unknown poet:
"For he had sat at Sidney's feet
And walked with him in plain apart,
And through the centuries heard the beat
Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart. "
And he was that kind of a boy. He should have lived, and yet he should
not have lived, because he died at that early age--he couldn't have been
more than twenty--he had seen all there was to see in the world that was
worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is
valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion,
is the only valuable thing in it. He had arrived at that point where
presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the
realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived at that point.
ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC.
DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD,
OF LONDON
GENTLEMEN,--I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished
guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has
extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band
of brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's arms company making
the destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance
citizens paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson
perpetuating their memory with his stately monuments, and our
fire-insurance comrades taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to
assist in welcoming our guest--first, because he is an Englishman, and I
owe a heavy debt of hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen;
and secondly, because he is in sympathy with insurance, and has been
the means of making many other men cast their sympathies in the same
direction.
Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance
line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a
director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better
man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a kindlier
aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I
look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an advertisement.
I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care for
politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a
charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.
There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen
an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple
boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with
tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my
experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that
comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest
pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right.
And I have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into another
splintered customer's face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden
leg.
I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity
which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY is an
institution, which is peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to
prosper who gives it his custom. No man can take out a policy in it and
not get crippled before the year is out. Now there was one indigent
man who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had
grown disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smile--said life
was but a weariness. Three weeks ago I got him to insure with us, and
now he is the brightest, happiest spirit in this land--has a good steady
income and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around
on a shutter.
I will say in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is
none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I
can say the same far the rest of the speakers.
(The speaker was a director of the company named. )
OSTEOPATHY
On February 27, 1901, Mr. Clemens appeared before the Assembly
Committee in Albany, New York, in favor of the Seymour bill
legalizing the practice of osteopathy.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--Dr. Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave
me the character. I have heard my character discussed a thousand times
before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did
not get more than half of them.
I was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in
here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way.
What remarkable names those diseases have! It makes me envious of the
man that has them all. I have had many diseases, and am thankful for all
I have had.
One of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in
Sweden, a treatment which I took. It is, I suppose, a kindred thing.
There is apparently no great difference between them. I was a year and
a half in London and Sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, Mr.
Kildren.
I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a
certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't.
The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed with power. It stands
between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor I must
employ. When my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by
the State. Now then, it doesn't seem logical that the State shall depart
from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and
take the other position in the matter of smaller consequence--the health
of the body.
The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the State.
Oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the State you create the
same condition as prevailed in the Garden of Eden.
You want the thing that you can't have. I didn't care much about the
osteopaths, but as soon as I found they were going to drive them out I
got in a state of uneasiness, and I can't sleep nights now.
I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden about the prohibited apple.
Adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it, just
as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it.
Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I
experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I
choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.
I was the subject of my mother's experiment. She was wise. She made
experiments cautiously. She didn't pick out just any child in the
flock. No, she chose judiciously. She chose one she could spare, and she
couldn't spare the others. I was the choice child of the flock; so I had
to take all of the experiments.
In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure.
Mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through.
A bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect. Then I was
rubbed down with flannels, sheet was dipped in the water, and I was put
to bed. I perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with
me.
But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and I didn't care for
that. When they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my
conscience, the exudation of sin. It purified me spiritually, and it
remains until this day.
I have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy. I took a chance at
the latter for old times' sake, for, three times, when a boy, mother's
new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family
physician to pull me out.
The physicians think they are moved by regard for the best interests of
the public. Isn't there a little touch of self-interest back of it all?
It seems to me there is, and I don't claim to have all the virtues--only
nine or ten of them.
I was born in the "Banner State," and by "Banner State" I mean Missouri.
Osteopathy was born in the same State, and both of us are getting along
reasonably well. At a time during my younger days my attention was
attracted to a picture of a house which bore the inscription, "Christ
Disputing with the Doctors. "
I could attach no other meaning to it than that Christ was actually
quarreling with the doctors. So I asked an old slave, who was a sort of
a herb doctor in a small way--unlicensed, of course--what the meaning
of the picture was. "What had he done? " I asked. And the colored man
replied "Humph, he ain't got no license. "
WATER-SUPPLY
Mr. Clemens visited Albany on February 27 and 28, 1901. The
privileges of the floor were granted to him and he was asked to make a
short address to the Senate.
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--I do not know how to thank you sufficiently
for this high honor which you are conferring upon me. I have for the
second time now enjoyed this kind of prodigal hospitality--in the other
House yesterday, to-day in this one. I am a modest man, and diffident
about appearing before legislative bodies, and yet utterly and entirely
appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is extended to me, and I
thank you very much for it.
If I had the privilege, which unfortunately I have not got, of
suggesting things to the legislators in my individual capacity, I would
so enjoy the opportunity that I would not charge anything for it at all.
I would do that without a salary. I would give them the benefit of my
wisdom and experience in legislative bodies, and if I could have had the
privilege for a few minutes of giving advice to the other House I should
have liked to, but of course I could not undertake it, as they did not
ask me to do it--but if they had only asked me!
Now that the House is considering a measure which is to furnish a
water-supply to the city of New York, why, permit me to say I live
in New York myself. I know all about its ways, its desires, and its
residents, and--if I had the privilege--I should have urged them not to
weary themselves over a measure like that to furnish water to the city
of New York, for we never drink it.
But I will not venture to advise this body, as I only venture to advise
bodies who are, not present.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL "LADIES' DAY," PAPYRUS CLUB, BOSTON
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am perfectly
astonished--a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d--ladies and gentlemen--astonished at
the way history repeats itself. I find myself situated at this moment
exactly and precisely as I was once before, years ago, to a jot, to a
tittle--to a very hair. There isn't a shade of difference. It is the most
astonishing coincidence that ever--but wait. I will tell you the former
instance, and then you will see it for yourself. Years ago I arrived one
day at Salamanca, New York, eastward bound; must change cars there and
take the sleeper train. There were crowds of people there, and they were
swarming into the long sleeper train and packing it full, and it was a
perfect purgatory of dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and soft,
sweet, and low profanity. I asked the young man in the ticket-office if
I could have a sleeping-section, and he answered "No," with a snarl that
shrivelled me up like burned leather. I went off, smarting under this
insult to my dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly,
if I couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car;
but he cut me short with a venomous "No, you can't; every corner is
full. Now, don't bother me any more"; and he turned his back and walked
off. My dignity was in a state now which cannot be described. I was so
ruffled that--"well," I said to my companion, "If these people knew who
I am they--" But my companion cut me short there--"Don't talk such folly,"
he said; "if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help
your high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in
it? "
This did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then I
observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me.
I saw his dark countenance light up. He whispered to the uniformed
conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway
this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore.
"Can I be of any service to you? " he asked. "Will you have a place in
the sleeper? "
"Yes," I said, "and much oblige me, too. Give me anything--anything will
answer. "
"We have nothing left but the big family state-room," he continued,
"with two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at
your disposal. Here, Tom, take these satchels aboard! "
Then he touched his hat and we and the colored Tom moved along. I was
bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in
and waited. Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment,
and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles:
"Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case you kin have jes' anything you
wants. It don't make no difference what it is. "
"Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night-blazing hot? "
I asked. "You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch? "
"Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll get it myself. "
"Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle
fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably? "
"Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll
burn all night. Yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want,
and dish yer whole railroad'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for
to get it for you. Dat's so. " And he disappeared.
Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a
smile on my companion, and said, gently:
"Well, what do you say now? "
My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. The next
moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door,
and this speech followed:
"Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute. I told de conductah so.
Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you. "
"Is that so, my boy? " (Handing him a quadruple fee. ) "Who am I? "
"Jenuel McClellan," and he disappeared again.
My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well! what do you say now? "
Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while
ago--viz. , I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it?
CATS AND CANDY
The following address was delivered at a social meeting of
literary men in New York in 1874:
When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor--and
correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the name of
Jim Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very
diffident. He and I slept together--virtuously; and one bitter winter's
night a cousin Mary--she's married now and gone--gave what they call a
candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of
hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower
that came from the eaves--it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with
vines--to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting
there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to
attend this party; we were too young.
The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were
in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell,
and our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of
tom-cats--it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex--were
assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were
growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going
on, and we couldn't sleep at all.
Finally Jim said, "For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that
chimney. " So I said, "Of course you would. " He said, "Well, I would;
I have a mighty good notion to do it. " Says I, "Of course you have;
certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it. " I hoped he might
try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.
Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed
out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short
shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the
chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and
gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim
got almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels
flew up and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the
midst of the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of
candy.
There was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces
of chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up there--now
anybody in the world would have gone into profanity or something
calculated to relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off
his legs, nursed his blisters a little, and said, "I could have ketched
them cats if I had had on a good ready. "
[Does any reader know what a "ready" was in 1840? D. W. ]
OBITUARY POETRY
ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR, PHILADELPHIA, in 1895
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The--er this--er--welcome occasion gives me
an--er--opportunity to make an--er--explanation that I have long desired to
deliver myself of. I rise to the highest honors before a Philadelphia
audience. In the course of my checkered career I have, on divers
occasions, been charged--er--maliciously with a more or less serious
offence. It is in reply to one of the more--er--important of these that
I wish to speak. More than once I have been accused of writing obituary
poetry in the Philadelphia Ledger.
I wish right here to deny that dreadful assertion. I will admit that
once, when a compositor in the Ledger establishment, I did set up some
of that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no indictment can be
found against me. I did not write that poetry--at least, not all of it.
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
My friends for some years now have remarked that I am an inveterate
consumer of tobacco. That is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco
have changed. I have no doubt that you will say, when I have explained
to you what my present purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated, but I
do not so regard it.
Whenever I held a smoking-party at my house, I found that my guests had
always just taken the pledge.
Let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco.
It began, I think, when I was a lad, and took the form of a quid, which
I became expert in tucking under my tongue. Afterward I learned the
delights of the pipe, and I suppose there was no other youngster of my
age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available
for pipe-smoking.
Well, time ran on, and there came a time when I was able to gratify one
of my youthful ambitions--I could buy the choicest Havana cigars without
seriously interfering with my income. I smoked a good many, changing off
from the Havana cigars to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking.
At last it occurred to me that something was lacking in the
Havana cigar. It did not quite fulfil my youthful anticipations.
I experimented. I bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a
Connecticut wrapper. After a while I became satiated of these, and I
searched for something else, The Pittsburg stogy was recommended to me.
It certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be a merit in tobacco,
and I experimented with the stogy.
Then, once more, I changed off, so that I might acquire the subtler
flavor of the Wheeling toby. Now that palled, and I looked around New
York in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to most people vile,
but which, I am sure, would be ambrosial to me. I couldn't find any.
They put into my hands some of those little things that cost ten cents a
box, but they are a delusion.
I said to a friend, "I want to know if you can direct me to an honest
tobacco merchant who will tell me what is the worst cigar in the New
York market, excepting those made for Chinese consumption--I want real
tobacco. If you will do this and I find the man is as good as his word,
I will guarantee him a regular market for a fair amount of his cigars. "
We found a tobacco dealer who would tell the truth--who, if a cigar was
bad, would boldly say so. He produced what he called the very worst
cigars he had ever had in his shop. He let me experiment with one then
and there. The test was satisfactory.
This was, after all, the real thing. I negotiated for a box of them and
took them away with me, so that I might be sure of having them handy
when I want them.
I discovered that the "worst cigars," so called, are the best for me,
after all.
BILLIARDS
Mr. Clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of April
24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story.
The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition.
Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I
wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark. One day
a stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over
casually. When he proposed a game, I answered, "All right. "
"Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait," he
said; and when I had done so, he remarked: "I will be perfectly
fair with you. I'll play you left-handed. " I felt hurt, for he was
cross-eyed, freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to teach him a
lesson. He won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got
was the opportunity to chalk my cue.
"If you can play like that with your left hand," I said, "I'd like to
see you play with your right. "
"I can't," he said. "I'm left-handed. "
THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG
REMINISCENCES OF NEVADA
I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that Nevada had lively
newspapers in those days.
My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs, of the Union, an
excellent reporter.
Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated; but,
as a general thing, he was a wary and cautious drinker, although always
ready to damp himself a little with the enemy.
He had the advantage of me in one thing: he could get the monthly
public-school report and I could not, because the principal hated my
sheet--the 'Enterprise'.
One snowy night, when the report was due, I started out, sadly wondering
how I was to get it.
Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street, I stumbled on
Boggs, and asked him where he was going.
"After the school report. "
"I'll go along with you. "
"No, Sir. I'll excuse you. "
"Have it your own way. "
A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch,
and Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully.
He gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him start up the Enterprise
stairs.
I said:
"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't,
I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get a proof of it
after it's set up, though I don't begin to suppose I can. Good night. "
"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting around
with the boys a little while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down
to the principal's with me. "
"Now you talk like a human being. Come along. "
We ploughed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report--a short
document--and soon copied it in our office.
Meantime, Boggs helped himself to the punch.
I gave the manuscript back to him, and we started back to get an
inquest.
At four o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were
having a relaxing concert as usual (for some of the printers were good
singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity
the accordion), the proprietor of the Union strode in and asked if
anybody had heard anything of Boggs or the school report.
We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent.
We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern
in one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of
"corned" miners on the iniquity of squandering the public money on
education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were
literally starving for whiskey. "
He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours.
We dragged him away, and put him into bed.
Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me
accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass
its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the
misfortune had occurred. But we were perfectly friendly.
