I had another last summer when I was in London at the
embassy that Choate blackguards so.
embassy that Choate blackguards so.
Twain - Speeches
Now, to introduce so
illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what the man
has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the
unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have
achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his
possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story
edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the
cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements
of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is
in his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.
No, I won't do that; but when you come to regard the achievements
of these two men, Columbus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the
difficulties they encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and against
Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to discover America. Well, he didn't
need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his
grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself. Here
it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the South
American continent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to discover it.
But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was scattered
abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of
Africa as big as the United States.
It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But
I will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar
feature of Mr. Stanley's character, and that is his indestructible
Americanism--an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and
time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate English methods and
fashion, it is like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of
this untainted American citizen who has been caressed and complimented
by half of the crowned heads of Europe who could clothe his body from
his head to his heels with the orders and decorations lavished upon
him. And yet, when the untitled myriads of his own country put out their
hands in welcome to him and greet him, "Well done," through the Congress
of the United States, that is the crown that is worth all the rest to
him. He is a product of institutions which exist in no other country on
earth-institutions that bring out all that is best and most heroic in a
man. I introduce Henry M. Stanley.
DINNER TO MR. JEROME
A dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good
judgment of District-Attorney Jerome was given at Delmonico's
by over three hundred of his admirers on the evening of May 7,
1909.
Indeed, that is very sudden. I was not informed that the verdict
was going to depend upon my judgment, but that makes not the least
difference in the world when you already know all about it. It is not
any matter when you are called upon to express it; you can get up and do
it, and my verdict has already been recorded in my heart and in my head
as regards Mr. Jerome and his administration of the criminal affairs of
this county.
I agree with everything Mr. Choate has said in his letter regarding Mr.
Jerome; I agree with everything Mr. Shepard has said; and I agree with
everything Mr. Jerome has said in his own commendation. And I thought
Mr. Jerome was modest in that. If he had been talking about another
officer of this county, he could have painted the joys and sorrows of
office and his victories in even stronger language than he did.
I voted for Mr. Jerome in those old days, and I should like to vote for
him again if he runs for any office. I moved out of New York, and that
is the reason, I suppose, I cannot vote for him again. There may be some
way, but I have not found it out. But now I am a farmer--a farmer up in
Connecticut, and winning laurels. Those people already speak with such
high favor, admiration, of my farming, and they say that I am the only
man that has ever come to that region who could make two blades of grass
grow where only three grew before.
Well, I cannot vote for him. You see that. As it stands now, I cannot.
I am crippled in that way and to that extent, for I would ever so much
like to do it. I am not a Congress, and I cannot distribute pensions,
and I don't know any other legitimate way to buy a vote. But if I should
think of any legitimate way, I shall make use of it, and then I shall
vote for Mr. Jerome.
HENRY IRVING
The Dramatic and Literary Society of London gave a welcome-home
dinner to Sir Henry Irving at the Savoy Hotel, London, June 9,
1900. In proposing the toast of "The Drama" Mr. Clemens said:
I find my task a very easy one. I have been a dramatist for thirty
years. I have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the
Spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died. I
leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead.
The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It is a most difficult
thing. It requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts.
No, there is another talent that ranks with it--for anybody can write a
drama--I had four hundred of them--but to get one accepted requires real
ability. And I have never had that felicity yet.
But human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we
know that we are born to a thing we do not care what the world thinks
about it. We go on exploiting that talent year after year, as I have
done. I shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may
happen, but I am not looking for it.
In writing plays the chief thing is novelty. The world grows tired of
solid forms in all the arts. I struck a new idea myself years ago. I was
not surprised at it. I was always expecting it would happen. A person
who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence, and I
thought I had better make inquiries before I exploited my new idea of
doing a drama in the form of a dream, so I wrote to a great authority on
knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new.
I could depend upon him. He lived in my dear home in America--that dear
home, dearer to me through taxes. He sent me a list of plays in which
that old device had been used, and he said that there was also a modern
lot. He travelled back to China and to a play dated two thousand six
hundred years before the Christian era. He said he would follow it up
with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence
would have carried them back to the Flood.
That is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my
dramatic career. I have done a world of good in a silent and private
way, and have furnished Sir Henry Irving with plays and plays and plays.
What has he achieved through that influence? See where he stands now--on
the summit of his art in two worlds and it was I who put him there--that
partly put him there.
I need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon
civilization. It has made good morals entertaining. I am to be followed
by Mr. Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of the profession.
He has not written as many plays as I have, but he has lead that
God-given talent, which I lack, of working them off on the manager. I
couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence
will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great
gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work.
DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE
ADDRESS DELIVERED APRIL 29, 1901
In introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said:
"The longer the speaking goes on to-night the more I wonder how
I got this job, and the only explanation I can give for it is
that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of
articles I have sent to The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton
W. Mabie. There is one man here to-night that has a job cut
out for him that none of you would have had--a man whose humor
has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense of
humor has been an example for all five continents. He is going
to speak to you. Gentlemen, you know him best as Mark Twain. "
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--This man knows now how it feels to be the
chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man I have ever
seen in that position that did enjoy it. And I know, by side-remarks
which he made to me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was feeling
as some of the rest of us have felt under the same circumstances. He was
afraid that he would not do himself justice; but he did--to my surprise.
It is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion like this,
and it is admirable, it is fine. It is a great compliment to a man
that he shall come out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie came out of it
tonight--to my surprise. He did it well.
He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and notwithstanding that, I
have every admiration, because when everything is said concerning The
Outlook, after all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies,
that it is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is vigorous
in its mistaken criticisms of men like me. I have lived in this world a
long, long time, and I know you must not judge a man by the editorials
that he puts in his paper. A man is always better than his printed
opinions. A man always reserves to himself on the inside a purity and an
honesty and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things that
he prints are just the reverse.
Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. Even in
an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must
be better than the principles which he puts in print. And that is
the case with Mr. Mabie. Why, to see what he writes about me and the
missionaries you would think he did not have any principles. But that is
Mr. Mabie in his public capacity. Mr. Mabie in his private capacity is
just as clean a man as I am.
In this very room, a month or two ago, some people admired that
portrait; some admired this, but the great majority fastened on that,
and said, "There is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of art. " When
that portrait is a hundred years old it will suggest what were the
manners and customs in our time. Just as they talk about Mr. Mabie
to-night, in that enthusiastic way, pointing out the various virtues of
the man and the grace of his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait
talked about. They were enthusiastic, just as we men have been over the
character and the work of Mr. Mabie. And when they were through they
said that portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that
piece of humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not
rise to those perfections that exist in the man himself. Come up, Mr.
Alexander. [The reference was to James W. Alexander, who happened to be
sitting--beneath the portrait of himself on the wall. ] Now, I should come
up and show myself. But he cannot do it, he cannot do it. He was born
that way, he was reared in that way. Let his modesty be an example,
and I wish some of you had it, too. But that is just what I have been
saying--that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it
represents, and all the things that have been said about Mr. Mabie, and
certainly they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall
short of the real Mabie.
INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY
James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill Nye) were to
give readings in Tremont Temple, Boston, November, 1888. Mr.
Clemens was induced to introduce Messrs. Riley and Nye. His
appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and
when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration.
I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the
same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than
once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them
personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many
years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam.
The ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best
hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to
cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff.
In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The
sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so
fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested;
when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped
the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable
in all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary
distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the
two--between, I may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or,
in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other
always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within
certain well-defined zones of activity the one was always dynamo and
the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these
positions became exactly reversed.
For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr.
Eng Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high--in fact,
an abnormally high and fine moral sense, he had no machinery to work
it with; whereas, Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all, and
hasn't yet, was equipped with all the necessary plant for putting a
noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable
terms outside.
In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always
dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor; Mr. Eng Nye had a stately
intellect, but couldn't make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn't, but could.
That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn't think things
himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and
weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material.
Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they
could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has
remained so to this day: they must travel together, hoe, and plant, and
plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there's no result.
I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so
to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers
understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye's deep and broad and limpid
philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round
about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his
water; it's the other man's, and he is only working the pump. And when
Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches
your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry--as sweet and
as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about
his other friends, the woods and the flowers--you will remember, while
placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the
other man's--he is only turning the crank.
I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a singleminded, one-eyed
umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it--and I
judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will
now go to the bat.
DINNER TO WHITELAW REID
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR REID, GIVEN BY THE
PILGRIMS' CLUB OF NEW YORK ON FEBRUARY 19, 1908
I am very proud to respond to this toast, as it recalls the proudest day
of my life. The delightful hospitality shown me at the time of my visit
to Oxford I shall cherish until I die. In that long and distinguished
career of mine I value that degree above all other honors. When the ship
landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an English
cheer. Nothing could surpass in my life the pleasure of those four
weeks. No one could pass by me without taking my hand, even the
policemen. I've been in all the principal capitals of Christendom in my
life, and have always been an object of interest to policemen. Sometimes
there was suspicion in their eyes, but not always. With their puissant
hand they would hold up the commerce of the world to let me pass.
I noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch from Washington,
saying that Congress would immediately pass a bill restoring to our gold
coinage the motto "In God We Trust. " I'm glad of that; I'm glad of
that. I was troubled when that motto was removed. Sure enough, the
prosperities of the whole nation went down in a heap when we ceased to
trust in God in that conspicuously advertised way. I knew there would
be trouble. And if Pierpont Morgan hadn't stepped in--Bishop Lawrence may
now add to his message to the old country that we are now trusting in
God again. So we can discharge Mr. Morgan from his office with honor.
Mr. Reid said an hour or so ago something about my ruining my activities
last summer. They are not ruined, they are renewed. I am stronger
now--much stronger. I suppose that the spiritual uplift I received
increased my physical power more than anything I ever had before. I was
dancing last night at 2. 30 o'clock.
Mr. Choate has mentioned Mr. Reid's predecessors. Mr. Choate's head is
full of history, and some of it is true, too. I enjoyed hearing him tell
about the list of the men who had the place before he did. He mentioned
a long list of those predecessors, people I never heard of before, and
elected five of them to the Presidency by his own vote. I'm glad and
proud to find Mr. Reid in that high position, because he didn't look it
when I knew him forty years ago. I was talking to Reid the other day,
and he showed me my autograph on an old paper twenty years old. I didn't
know I had an autograph twenty years ago. Nobody ever asked me for it.
I remember a dinner I had long ago with Whitelaw Reid and John Hay at
Reid's expense.
I had another last summer when I was in London at the
embassy that Choate blackguards so. I'd like to live there.
Some people say they couldn't live on the salary, but I could live on
the salary and the nation together. Some of us don't appreciate what
this country can do. There's John Hay, Reid, Choate, and me. This is the
only country in the world where youth, talent, and energy can reach such
heights. It shows what we could do without means, and what people can do
with talent and energy when they find it in people like us.
When I first came to New York they were all struggling young men, and I
am glad to see that they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay when
I had no white hairs in my head and more hair than Reid has now.
Those were days of joy and hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the
Tribune. I went there once in that old building, and I looked all around
and I finally found a door ajar and looked in. It wasn't Reid or Hay
there, but it was Horace Greeley. Those were in the days when Horace
Greeley was a king. That was the first time I ever saw him and the last.
I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was
a fine presence there somewhere. He tried to smile, but he was out of
smiles. He looked at me a moment, and said:
"What in H---do you want? "
He began with that word "H. " That's a long word and a profane word. I
don't remember what the word was now, but I recognized the power of
it. I had never used that language myself, but at that moment I was
converted. It has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. If a
man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous
occasions. When you have that word at your command let trouble come.
But later Hay rose, and you know what summit Whitelaw Reid has reached,
and you see me. Those two men have regulated troubles of nations and
conferred peace upon mankind. And in my humble way, of which I am quite
vain, I was the principal moral force in all those great international
movements. These great men illustrated what I say. Look at us great
people--we all come from the dregs of society. That's what can be done in
this country. That's what this country does for you.
Choate here--he hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the
same, and he can do it so felicitously, too. I said long ago he was the
handsomest man America ever produced. May the progress of civilization
always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past!
ROGERS AND RAILROADS
AT A BANQUET GIVEN MR. H. H. ROGERS BY THE BUSINESS MEN OF
NORFOLK, VA. , CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF THE VIRGINIAN RAILWAY,
APRIL, 3, 1909
Toastmaster:
"I have often thought that when the time comes, which must come
to all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great Beyond,
and the question is propounded, 'What have you done to gain
admission into this great realm? ' if the answer could be
sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh,' it would be the surest
passport to a welcome entrance. We have here to-night one who
has made millions laugh--not the loud laughter that bespeaks
the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps
the human heart and the human mind. I refer, of course, to
Doctor Clemens. I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary
title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of
any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title. "
I thank you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me,
and I am sure I would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my
time I have made some of them cry; and before I stop entirely I hope to
make some more of them cry. I like compliments. I deal in them myself.
I have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the
chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of his to-night, and I
hope some of them are deserved.
It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an
intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with Napoleon and Caesar.
Why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life? Napoleon
and Caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves. But
I'm here!
The chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the
hands of man are the roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he
built a lot of them; and they are there yet.
Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and you can find them. But
Rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. I
like to hear my old friend complimented, but I don't like to hear it
overdone.
I didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing. I
will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and
when I shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a
railroad in which I own no stock.
They proposed that I go along with the committee and help inspect that
dump down yonder. I didn't go. I saw that dump. I saw that thing when I
was coming in on the steamer, and I didn't go because I was diffident,
sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing
again--that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like Mr. Rogers's
foot.
The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is.
It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very
competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know
lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and I know
how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done
better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made
the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to
ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant. To this day he don't
like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody. On
board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a
couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth
from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like
to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be
ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and
in bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in
case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: "A king's
crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000. " He
could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went
up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.
I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented. I am not stingy in compliments
to him myself. Why, I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to
comfort her. That is the kind of person I am. I knew she would be uneasy
about him. I knew she would be solicitous about what he might do down
here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort her. I said he was doing
well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it. He is like
I used to be. There were times when I was careless--careless in my dress
when I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you
are going away without her superintendence. Once when my wife could not
go with me (she always went with me when she could--I always did meet
that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a long time ago, in
Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not go; but, in her
anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made preparation.
She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors at the White
House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, "If I should tell you
now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before you get to
Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and you
will find it in your dress-vest pocket when you are dressing at the
Arlington--when you are dressing to see the President. " I never thought
of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it
out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "Don't wear your arctics
in the White House. "
You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness,
complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments,
although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one side of Mr.
Rogers that has not been mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will
touch upon that. There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk
papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side
of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr.
Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a right to
feel that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it,
he rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful
Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from
scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as
well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine
years of age. She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has
existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.
That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his
character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand
daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is
supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. But
the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and
its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God.
I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been
allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I
don't look at him I can tell it now.
In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which
I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will
remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back;
my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books
have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights,
and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my
creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and
persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end
of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made;
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a
borrowed one at that.
You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is
always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are
only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without
exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,
JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor. "
The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to
fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity. All
things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am among
strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of
thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well. I
built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from
the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from
under his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in
his case and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't
there to see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for
that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down
the paper Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly;
I rolled, I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers,
I carried them around at dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then
an object of interest to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all
the bites I ever received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year.
I enveloped the papers that were for the mail--we had a hundred
town subscribers and three hundred and fifty country ones; the town
subscribers paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages and
cord-wood--when they paid at all, which was merely sometimes, and then
we always stated the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we
forgot it they stopped the paper. Every man on the town list helped
edit the thing--that is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited;
dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time the
boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. We were just infested with
critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. We had one subscriber
who paid cash, and he was more trouble than all the rest. He bought
us once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. He used to modify our
politics every which way, and he made us change our religion four times
in five years. If we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to
stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction.
That man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long
primer, and sign them "Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some
other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come
in and say he had changed his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech,
because he hadn't any--and order it to be left out. We couldn't afford
"bogus" in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the
signature, credited the article to the rival paper in the next village,
and put it in. Well, we did have one or two kinds of "bogus. " Whenever
there was a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked off for
half a day, and then to make up for short matter we would "turn over
ads"--turn over the whole page and duplicate it. The other "bogus" was
deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody ever read; so we kept
a galley of it standing, and kept on slapping the same old batches of it
in, every now and then, till it got dangerous. Also, in the early days
of the telegraph we used to economize on the news. We picked out the
items that were pointless and barren of information and stood them on
a galley, and changed the dates and localities, and used them over and
over again till the public interest in them was worn to the bone. We
marked the ads, but we seldom paid any attention to the marks afterward;
so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad was equally eternal. I have seen
a "td" notice of a sheriff's sale still booming serenely along two years
after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole circumstance
become ancient history. Most of the yearly ads were patent-medicine
stereotypes, and we used to fence with them.
I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse
bills on the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we
always stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was
not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and
symbols that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi
Valley; and I can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the
summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a
hatful of handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do
a temperance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs not complex;
all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he
was satisfied. But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,
and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will
"make even" and stop.
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr.
Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. So many members
surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: "Is this genuine
popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme? "
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a most difficult thing for
any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. I don't know
what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say
a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.
If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind
chairmen say of me. In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty
as if he was envious of me. I would like to have one man come out
flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it
were true. I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking,
that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by
saying complimentary things.
I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well
as any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented. And
there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know
all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you
things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented.
The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you
live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and
pleasant. To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy.
Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But,
oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair. I have
made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am.
Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is
nothing of the sort. I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy.
Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits
of mine, and then he will make a speech.
I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as
the two put together.
When that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another
story told. At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found
him. He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all
sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but
when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he
was a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence
with which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis.
I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to
the members of my family. They don't believe them, but I like to tell
them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can.
I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am
praised any more than I am entitled to be.
READING-ROOM OPENING
On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address
preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London.
I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the
legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with
intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the
community so desires.
If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand
in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of the
healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it
taxes itself for its mental food.
A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up
through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. What would we
do without newspapers?
Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster
was made known to the entire world. This reminds me of an episode
which occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford,
Connecticut.
illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what the man
has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the
unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have
achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his
possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story
edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the
cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements
of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is
in his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.
No, I won't do that; but when you come to regard the achievements
of these two men, Columbus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the
difficulties they encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and against
Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to discover America. Well, he didn't
need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his
grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself. Here
it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the South
American continent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to discover it.
But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was scattered
abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of
Africa as big as the United States.
It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But
I will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar
feature of Mr. Stanley's character, and that is his indestructible
Americanism--an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and
time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate English methods and
fashion, it is like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of
this untainted American citizen who has been caressed and complimented
by half of the crowned heads of Europe who could clothe his body from
his head to his heels with the orders and decorations lavished upon
him. And yet, when the untitled myriads of his own country put out their
hands in welcome to him and greet him, "Well done," through the Congress
of the United States, that is the crown that is worth all the rest to
him. He is a product of institutions which exist in no other country on
earth-institutions that bring out all that is best and most heroic in a
man. I introduce Henry M. Stanley.
DINNER TO MR. JEROME
A dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good
judgment of District-Attorney Jerome was given at Delmonico's
by over three hundred of his admirers on the evening of May 7,
1909.
Indeed, that is very sudden. I was not informed that the verdict
was going to depend upon my judgment, but that makes not the least
difference in the world when you already know all about it. It is not
any matter when you are called upon to express it; you can get up and do
it, and my verdict has already been recorded in my heart and in my head
as regards Mr. Jerome and his administration of the criminal affairs of
this county.
I agree with everything Mr. Choate has said in his letter regarding Mr.
Jerome; I agree with everything Mr. Shepard has said; and I agree with
everything Mr. Jerome has said in his own commendation. And I thought
Mr. Jerome was modest in that. If he had been talking about another
officer of this county, he could have painted the joys and sorrows of
office and his victories in even stronger language than he did.
I voted for Mr. Jerome in those old days, and I should like to vote for
him again if he runs for any office. I moved out of New York, and that
is the reason, I suppose, I cannot vote for him again. There may be some
way, but I have not found it out. But now I am a farmer--a farmer up in
Connecticut, and winning laurels. Those people already speak with such
high favor, admiration, of my farming, and they say that I am the only
man that has ever come to that region who could make two blades of grass
grow where only three grew before.
Well, I cannot vote for him. You see that. As it stands now, I cannot.
I am crippled in that way and to that extent, for I would ever so much
like to do it. I am not a Congress, and I cannot distribute pensions,
and I don't know any other legitimate way to buy a vote. But if I should
think of any legitimate way, I shall make use of it, and then I shall
vote for Mr. Jerome.
HENRY IRVING
The Dramatic and Literary Society of London gave a welcome-home
dinner to Sir Henry Irving at the Savoy Hotel, London, June 9,
1900. In proposing the toast of "The Drama" Mr. Clemens said:
I find my task a very easy one. I have been a dramatist for thirty
years. I have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the
Spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died. I
leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead.
The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It is a most difficult
thing. It requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts.
No, there is another talent that ranks with it--for anybody can write a
drama--I had four hundred of them--but to get one accepted requires real
ability. And I have never had that felicity yet.
But human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we
know that we are born to a thing we do not care what the world thinks
about it. We go on exploiting that talent year after year, as I have
done. I shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may
happen, but I am not looking for it.
In writing plays the chief thing is novelty. The world grows tired of
solid forms in all the arts. I struck a new idea myself years ago. I was
not surprised at it. I was always expecting it would happen. A person
who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence, and I
thought I had better make inquiries before I exploited my new idea of
doing a drama in the form of a dream, so I wrote to a great authority on
knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new.
I could depend upon him. He lived in my dear home in America--that dear
home, dearer to me through taxes. He sent me a list of plays in which
that old device had been used, and he said that there was also a modern
lot. He travelled back to China and to a play dated two thousand six
hundred years before the Christian era. He said he would follow it up
with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence
would have carried them back to the Flood.
That is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my
dramatic career. I have done a world of good in a silent and private
way, and have furnished Sir Henry Irving with plays and plays and plays.
What has he achieved through that influence? See where he stands now--on
the summit of his art in two worlds and it was I who put him there--that
partly put him there.
I need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon
civilization. It has made good morals entertaining. I am to be followed
by Mr. Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of the profession.
He has not written as many plays as I have, but he has lead that
God-given talent, which I lack, of working them off on the manager. I
couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence
will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great
gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work.
DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE
ADDRESS DELIVERED APRIL 29, 1901
In introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said:
"The longer the speaking goes on to-night the more I wonder how
I got this job, and the only explanation I can give for it is
that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of
articles I have sent to The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton
W. Mabie. There is one man here to-night that has a job cut
out for him that none of you would have had--a man whose humor
has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense of
humor has been an example for all five continents. He is going
to speak to you. Gentlemen, you know him best as Mark Twain. "
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--This man knows now how it feels to be the
chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man I have ever
seen in that position that did enjoy it. And I know, by side-remarks
which he made to me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was feeling
as some of the rest of us have felt under the same circumstances. He was
afraid that he would not do himself justice; but he did--to my surprise.
It is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion like this,
and it is admirable, it is fine. It is a great compliment to a man
that he shall come out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie came out of it
tonight--to my surprise. He did it well.
He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and notwithstanding that, I
have every admiration, because when everything is said concerning The
Outlook, after all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies,
that it is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is vigorous
in its mistaken criticisms of men like me. I have lived in this world a
long, long time, and I know you must not judge a man by the editorials
that he puts in his paper. A man is always better than his printed
opinions. A man always reserves to himself on the inside a purity and an
honesty and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things that
he prints are just the reverse.
Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. Even in
an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must
be better than the principles which he puts in print. And that is
the case with Mr. Mabie. Why, to see what he writes about me and the
missionaries you would think he did not have any principles. But that is
Mr. Mabie in his public capacity. Mr. Mabie in his private capacity is
just as clean a man as I am.
In this very room, a month or two ago, some people admired that
portrait; some admired this, but the great majority fastened on that,
and said, "There is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of art. " When
that portrait is a hundred years old it will suggest what were the
manners and customs in our time. Just as they talk about Mr. Mabie
to-night, in that enthusiastic way, pointing out the various virtues of
the man and the grace of his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait
talked about. They were enthusiastic, just as we men have been over the
character and the work of Mr. Mabie. And when they were through they
said that portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that
piece of humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not
rise to those perfections that exist in the man himself. Come up, Mr.
Alexander. [The reference was to James W. Alexander, who happened to be
sitting--beneath the portrait of himself on the wall. ] Now, I should come
up and show myself. But he cannot do it, he cannot do it. He was born
that way, he was reared in that way. Let his modesty be an example,
and I wish some of you had it, too. But that is just what I have been
saying--that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it
represents, and all the things that have been said about Mr. Mabie, and
certainly they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall
short of the real Mabie.
INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY
James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill Nye) were to
give readings in Tremont Temple, Boston, November, 1888. Mr.
Clemens was induced to introduce Messrs. Riley and Nye. His
appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and
when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration.
I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the
same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than
once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them
personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many
years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam.
The ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best
hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to
cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff.
In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The
sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so
fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested;
when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped
the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable
in all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary
distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the
two--between, I may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or,
in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other
always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within
certain well-defined zones of activity the one was always dynamo and
the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these
positions became exactly reversed.
For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr.
Eng Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high--in fact,
an abnormally high and fine moral sense, he had no machinery to work
it with; whereas, Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all, and
hasn't yet, was equipped with all the necessary plant for putting a
noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable
terms outside.
In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always
dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor; Mr. Eng Nye had a stately
intellect, but couldn't make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn't, but could.
That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn't think things
himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and
weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material.
Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they
could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has
remained so to this day: they must travel together, hoe, and plant, and
plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there's no result.
I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so
to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers
understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye's deep and broad and limpid
philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round
about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his
water; it's the other man's, and he is only working the pump. And when
Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches
your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry--as sweet and
as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about
his other friends, the woods and the flowers--you will remember, while
placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the
other man's--he is only turning the crank.
I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a singleminded, one-eyed
umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it--and I
judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will
now go to the bat.
DINNER TO WHITELAW REID
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR REID, GIVEN BY THE
PILGRIMS' CLUB OF NEW YORK ON FEBRUARY 19, 1908
I am very proud to respond to this toast, as it recalls the proudest day
of my life. The delightful hospitality shown me at the time of my visit
to Oxford I shall cherish until I die. In that long and distinguished
career of mine I value that degree above all other honors. When the ship
landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an English
cheer. Nothing could surpass in my life the pleasure of those four
weeks. No one could pass by me without taking my hand, even the
policemen. I've been in all the principal capitals of Christendom in my
life, and have always been an object of interest to policemen. Sometimes
there was suspicion in their eyes, but not always. With their puissant
hand they would hold up the commerce of the world to let me pass.
I noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch from Washington,
saying that Congress would immediately pass a bill restoring to our gold
coinage the motto "In God We Trust. " I'm glad of that; I'm glad of
that. I was troubled when that motto was removed. Sure enough, the
prosperities of the whole nation went down in a heap when we ceased to
trust in God in that conspicuously advertised way. I knew there would
be trouble. And if Pierpont Morgan hadn't stepped in--Bishop Lawrence may
now add to his message to the old country that we are now trusting in
God again. So we can discharge Mr. Morgan from his office with honor.
Mr. Reid said an hour or so ago something about my ruining my activities
last summer. They are not ruined, they are renewed. I am stronger
now--much stronger. I suppose that the spiritual uplift I received
increased my physical power more than anything I ever had before. I was
dancing last night at 2. 30 o'clock.
Mr. Choate has mentioned Mr. Reid's predecessors. Mr. Choate's head is
full of history, and some of it is true, too. I enjoyed hearing him tell
about the list of the men who had the place before he did. He mentioned
a long list of those predecessors, people I never heard of before, and
elected five of them to the Presidency by his own vote. I'm glad and
proud to find Mr. Reid in that high position, because he didn't look it
when I knew him forty years ago. I was talking to Reid the other day,
and he showed me my autograph on an old paper twenty years old. I didn't
know I had an autograph twenty years ago. Nobody ever asked me for it.
I remember a dinner I had long ago with Whitelaw Reid and John Hay at
Reid's expense.
I had another last summer when I was in London at the
embassy that Choate blackguards so. I'd like to live there.
Some people say they couldn't live on the salary, but I could live on
the salary and the nation together. Some of us don't appreciate what
this country can do. There's John Hay, Reid, Choate, and me. This is the
only country in the world where youth, talent, and energy can reach such
heights. It shows what we could do without means, and what people can do
with talent and energy when they find it in people like us.
When I first came to New York they were all struggling young men, and I
am glad to see that they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay when
I had no white hairs in my head and more hair than Reid has now.
Those were days of joy and hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the
Tribune. I went there once in that old building, and I looked all around
and I finally found a door ajar and looked in. It wasn't Reid or Hay
there, but it was Horace Greeley. Those were in the days when Horace
Greeley was a king. That was the first time I ever saw him and the last.
I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was
a fine presence there somewhere. He tried to smile, but he was out of
smiles. He looked at me a moment, and said:
"What in H---do you want? "
He began with that word "H. " That's a long word and a profane word. I
don't remember what the word was now, but I recognized the power of
it. I had never used that language myself, but at that moment I was
converted. It has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. If a
man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous
occasions. When you have that word at your command let trouble come.
But later Hay rose, and you know what summit Whitelaw Reid has reached,
and you see me. Those two men have regulated troubles of nations and
conferred peace upon mankind. And in my humble way, of which I am quite
vain, I was the principal moral force in all those great international
movements. These great men illustrated what I say. Look at us great
people--we all come from the dregs of society. That's what can be done in
this country. That's what this country does for you.
Choate here--he hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the
same, and he can do it so felicitously, too. I said long ago he was the
handsomest man America ever produced. May the progress of civilization
always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past!
ROGERS AND RAILROADS
AT A BANQUET GIVEN MR. H. H. ROGERS BY THE BUSINESS MEN OF
NORFOLK, VA. , CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF THE VIRGINIAN RAILWAY,
APRIL, 3, 1909
Toastmaster:
"I have often thought that when the time comes, which must come
to all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great Beyond,
and the question is propounded, 'What have you done to gain
admission into this great realm? ' if the answer could be
sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh,' it would be the surest
passport to a welcome entrance. We have here to-night one who
has made millions laugh--not the loud laughter that bespeaks
the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps
the human heart and the human mind. I refer, of course, to
Doctor Clemens. I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary
title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of
any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title. "
I thank you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me,
and I am sure I would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my
time I have made some of them cry; and before I stop entirely I hope to
make some more of them cry. I like compliments. I deal in them myself.
I have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the
chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of his to-night, and I
hope some of them are deserved.
It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an
intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with Napoleon and Caesar.
Why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life? Napoleon
and Caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves. But
I'm here!
The chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the
hands of man are the roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he
built a lot of them; and they are there yet.
Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and you can find them. But
Rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. I
like to hear my old friend complimented, but I don't like to hear it
overdone.
I didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing. I
will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and
when I shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a
railroad in which I own no stock.
They proposed that I go along with the committee and help inspect that
dump down yonder. I didn't go. I saw that dump. I saw that thing when I
was coming in on the steamer, and I didn't go because I was diffident,
sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing
again--that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like Mr. Rogers's
foot.
The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is.
It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very
competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know
lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and I know
how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done
better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made
the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to
ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant. To this day he don't
like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody. On
board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a
couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth
from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like
to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be
ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and
in bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in
case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: "A king's
crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000. " He
could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went
up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.
I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented. I am not stingy in compliments
to him myself. Why, I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to
comfort her. That is the kind of person I am. I knew she would be uneasy
about him. I knew she would be solicitous about what he might do down
here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort her. I said he was doing
well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it. He is like
I used to be. There were times when I was careless--careless in my dress
when I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you
are going away without her superintendence. Once when my wife could not
go with me (she always went with me when she could--I always did meet
that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a long time ago, in
Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not go; but, in her
anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made preparation.
She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors at the White
House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, "If I should tell you
now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before you get to
Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and you
will find it in your dress-vest pocket when you are dressing at the
Arlington--when you are dressing to see the President. " I never thought
of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it
out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "Don't wear your arctics
in the White House. "
You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness,
complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments,
although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one side of Mr.
Rogers that has not been mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will
touch upon that. There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk
papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side
of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr.
Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a right to
feel that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it,
he rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful
Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from
scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as
well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine
years of age. She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has
existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.
That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his
character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand
daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is
supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. But
the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and
its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God.
I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been
allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I
don't look at him I can tell it now.
In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which
I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will
remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back;
my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books
have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights,
and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my
creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and
persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end
of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made;
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a
borrowed one at that.
You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is
always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are
only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without
exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,
JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor. "
The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to
fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity. All
things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am among
strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of
thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well. I
built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from
the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from
under his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in
his case and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't
there to see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for
that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down
the paper Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly;
I rolled, I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers,
I carried them around at dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then
an object of interest to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all
the bites I ever received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year.
I enveloped the papers that were for the mail--we had a hundred
town subscribers and three hundred and fifty country ones; the town
subscribers paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages and
cord-wood--when they paid at all, which was merely sometimes, and then
we always stated the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we
forgot it they stopped the paper. Every man on the town list helped
edit the thing--that is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited;
dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time the
boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. We were just infested with
critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. We had one subscriber
who paid cash, and he was more trouble than all the rest. He bought
us once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. He used to modify our
politics every which way, and he made us change our religion four times
in five years. If we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to
stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction.
That man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long
primer, and sign them "Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some
other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come
in and say he had changed his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech,
because he hadn't any--and order it to be left out. We couldn't afford
"bogus" in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the
signature, credited the article to the rival paper in the next village,
and put it in. Well, we did have one or two kinds of "bogus. " Whenever
there was a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked off for
half a day, and then to make up for short matter we would "turn over
ads"--turn over the whole page and duplicate it. The other "bogus" was
deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody ever read; so we kept
a galley of it standing, and kept on slapping the same old batches of it
in, every now and then, till it got dangerous. Also, in the early days
of the telegraph we used to economize on the news. We picked out the
items that were pointless and barren of information and stood them on
a galley, and changed the dates and localities, and used them over and
over again till the public interest in them was worn to the bone. We
marked the ads, but we seldom paid any attention to the marks afterward;
so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad was equally eternal. I have seen
a "td" notice of a sheriff's sale still booming serenely along two years
after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole circumstance
become ancient history. Most of the yearly ads were patent-medicine
stereotypes, and we used to fence with them.
I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse
bills on the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we
always stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was
not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and
symbols that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi
Valley; and I can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the
summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a
hatful of handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do
a temperance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs not complex;
all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he
was satisfied. But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,
and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will
"make even" and stop.
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr.
Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. So many members
surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: "Is this genuine
popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme? "
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a most difficult thing for
any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. I don't know
what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say
a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.
If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind
chairmen say of me. In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty
as if he was envious of me. I would like to have one man come out
flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it
were true. I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking,
that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by
saying complimentary things.
I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well
as any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented. And
there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know
all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you
things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented.
The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you
live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and
pleasant. To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy.
Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But,
oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair. I have
made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am.
Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is
nothing of the sort. I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy.
Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits
of mine, and then he will make a speech.
I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as
the two put together.
When that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another
story told. At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found
him. He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all
sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but
when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he
was a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence
with which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis.
I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to
the members of my family. They don't believe them, but I like to tell
them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can.
I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am
praised any more than I am entitled to be.
READING-ROOM OPENING
On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address
preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London.
I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the
legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with
intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the
community so desires.
If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand
in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of the
healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it
taxes itself for its mental food.
A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up
through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. What would we
do without newspapers?
Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster
was made known to the entire world. This reminds me of an episode
which occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford,
Connecticut.
