Louis and
Missouri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and this part of the
continent these illustrious visitors from France.
Missouri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and this part of the
continent these illustrious visitors from France.
Twain - Speeches
if you could only think what I have
suffered from a similar circumstance. Two or three years ago, in New
York, with that Society there which is made up of people from all
British Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, who were educated in
British colleges and British schools, I was there to respond to a toast
of some kind or other, and I did then what I have been in the habit of
doing, from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, I got myself
placed No, 3 in the list of speakers--then you get home early.
I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a particular train or
not get there. But see the magnanimity which is born in me, which I have
cultivated all my life. A very famous and very great British clergyman
came to me presently, and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have
got to catch a certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch that
train I shall be carried beyond midnight and break the Sabbath. Won't
you change places with me? " I said: "Certainly I will. " I did it at
once. Now, see what happened.
Talk about Sir Mortimer Durand's sufferings for a single night! I have
suffered ever since because I saved that gentleman from breaking the
Sabbath-yes, saved him. I took his place, but I lost my train, and it
was I who broke the Sabbath. Up to that time I never had broken the
Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I never have kept it.
Oh! I am learning much here to-night. I find I didn't know anything
about the American Society--that is, I didn't know its chief virtue.
I didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador
revealed it--I may say, exposed it. I was intending to go home on the
13th of this month, but I look upon that in a different light now. I am
going to stay here until the American Society pays my passage.
Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes.
We have got a double Fourth of July--a daylight Fourth and a midnight
Fourth. During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we
keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit. We devote it to
teaching our children patriotic things--reverence for the Declaration of
Independence. We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and
when night comes we dishonor it. Presently--before long--they are getting
nearly ready to begin now--on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down,
that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and
noise--all night long--and there will be more than noise there will be
people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who
will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give
to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all
sorts of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over
to rowdies to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we
cripple and kill more people than you would imagine.
We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-July night in that way one
hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night
since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five
thousand towns of America, somebody gets killed or crippled on every
Fourth-of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never
hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. They cripple
and kill more people on the Fourth of July in America than they kill and
cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk.
And, too, we burn houses. Really we destroy more property on every
Fourth-of-July night than the whole of the United States was worth one
hundred and twenty-five years ago. Really our Fourth of July is our
day of mourning, our day of sorrow. Fifty thousand people who have lost
friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July,
when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained
in their families.
I have suffered in that way myself. I have had relatives killed in that
way. One was in Chicago years ago--an uncle of mine, just as good an
uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them--yes, uncles to burn,
uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth
to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask
for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him
all over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know
about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons,
recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a
disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had
another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up
that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a
limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition
of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely
passing matters. Don't let me make you sad.
Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your
colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance. Now I
wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he had
his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution as
a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.
Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much,
and which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an
American one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first Fourth of July
in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years.
That is the day of the Great Charter--the Magna Charta--which was born at
Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the
liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King
John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of
July, of our American liberties. And the second of those Fourths of July
was not born until four centuries later, in, Charles the First's time,
in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties.
The next one was still English, in New England, where they established
that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to
remain with us--no taxation without representation. That is always going
to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us.
The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in
Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776--that is English, too. It is not
American. Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III. ,
Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the Home
Government. Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove
them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a
revolution. The revolution was brought about by circumstances which
they could not control. The Declaration of Independence was written by
a British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British
subject. There was not the name of a single American attached to the
Declaration of Independence--in fact, there was not an American in the
country in that day except the Indians out on the plains. They were
Englishmen, all Englishmen--Americans did not begin until seven years
later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then,
the American Republic was established. Since then, there have been
Americans. So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties.
We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and
that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great
American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful
tribute--Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the
black slaves free, but set the white man free also. The owner was set
free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he
was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not
want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this matter
England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty years
before, and we followed her example. We always followed her example,
whether it was good or bad.
And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation,
and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong
to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon
English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man
before the world. We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our
slaves as I have said.
It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of
them, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the
Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that
we owe these things to England. Let us be able to say to Old England,
this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our
Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us
the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights,
you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon
Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for
them.
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872
MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I
will not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in
this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an
experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and
wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It
has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into
kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has
been accomplished at last. It was a great step when the two last
misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It
is another great step when England adopts our sewing-machines without
claiming the invention--as usual. It was another when they imported one
of our sleeping-cars the other day. And it warmed my heart more than
I can tell, yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman
ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own free will and accord--and
not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the
barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. With a common origin, a common
language, a common literature, a common religion, and--common drinks,
what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a
permanent bond of brotherhood?
This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and
glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior
to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have
saved Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some
legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let
us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only
destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and
unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the
killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not
claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law
against a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are
generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion.
I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After
an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old
relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure
you hold him at--and return the basket. " Now there couldn't be anything
friendlier than that.
But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a
body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a
fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more
word of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government
which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual
is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.
And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is
the condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out
of a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and
all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for
us yet. *
*At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,
but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the
blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making
did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory
would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just
sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,
sociable time. It is known that in consequence of that remark
forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. The
depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the
banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General
Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.
More than one said that night: "And this is the sort of person
that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire! "
ABOUT LONDON
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB,
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.
Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.
It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club
which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and
fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre;
that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.
Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the
customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a
pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he
is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our
human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all
our depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and
all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ
of innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with
a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing
about "Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to
crush that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you
by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for
weeks. " We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King
"Your Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have
heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter
this. It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us
not repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.
I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
marvellous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and
gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a
horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre,
the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition. ] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII. , and
Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde
Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind. " [Cabs are not permitted in
Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage. ] It is a
great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between the
railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and of
heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend upon
parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his vehicle.
I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the edges of it
the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.
And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that
is! I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild
animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie. " I never believed before
there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you
can find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British
Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have
nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems
to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her
greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has built
other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted
in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the
world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose
prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their
monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and
Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert memorial
is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the existence of as
commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity. ]
The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding. I have
read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. I revere
that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean a book
is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in Great
Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much complained
of by publishers. ] And then every day that author goes there to gaze
at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. And what a
touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, careworn
clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons
for Sunday. You will pardon my referring to these things.
Everything in this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from
talking, even at the risk of being instructive. People here seem always
to express distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little
confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak. I collar a citizen, and I
think I am going to get some valuable information out of him. I ask him
how far it is to Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and
sixpence. Now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn.
I find myself down-town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea
where I am--being usually lost when alone--and I stop a citizen and say:
"How far is it to Charing Cross? " "Shilling fare in a cab," and off
he goes. I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it is from the
sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin. But I
am trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics and
historical reflections. I will not longer keep you from your orgies.
'Tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and I thank you for it. The name
of the Savage Club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and
the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who
came among you a stranger, and you opened your English hearts to him and
gave him welcome and a home--Artemus Ward. Asking that you will join me,
I give you his memory.
PRINCETON
Mr. Clemens spent several days in May, 1901, in Princeton, New
Jersey, as the guest of Lawrence Hutton. He gave a reading one
evening before a large audience composed of university students
and professors. Before the reading Mr. Clemens said:
I feel exceedingly surreptitious in coming down here without an
announcement of any kind. I do not want to see any advertisements
around, for the reason that I'm not a lecturer any longer. I reformed
long ago, and I break over and commit this sin only just one time this
year: and that is moderate, I think, for a person of my disposition. It
is not my purpose to lecture any more as long as I live. I never intend
to stand up on a platform any more--unless by the request of a sheriff or
something like that.
THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN"
The Countess de Rochambeau christened the St. Louis harbor-boat
'Mark Twain' in honor of Mr. Clemens, June 6, 1902. Just
before the luncheon he acted as pilot.
"Lower away lead! " boomed out the voice of the pilot.
"Mark twain, quarter five and one-half-six feet! " replied the
leadsman below.
"You are all dead safe as long as I have the wheel--but this is
my last time at the wheel. "
At the luncheon Mr. Clemens made a short address.
First of all, no--second of all--I wish to offer my thanks for the honor
done me by naming this last rose of summer of the Mississippi Valley for
me, this boat which represents a perished interest, which I fortified
long ago, but did not save its life. And, in the first place, I wish
to thank the Countess de Rochambeau for the honor she has done me in
presiding at this christening.
I believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that I should be allowed the
privilege of joining my voice with the general voice of St.
Louis and
Missouri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and this part of the
continent these illustrious visitors from France.
When La Salle came down this river a century and a quarter ago there was
nothing on its banks but savages. He opened up this great river, and by
his simple act was gathered in this great Louisiana territory. I would
have done it myself for half the money.
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY COLONEL GEORGE HARVEY AT
DELMONICO'S, DECEMBER 5, 1905, TO CELEBRATE THE SEVENTIETH
ANNIVERSARY OF MR. CLEMENS' BIRTH
Mr. Howells introduced Mr. Clemens:
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I will try not
to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our
honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. I
will not say, 'Oh King, live forever! ' but 'Oh King, live as
long as you like! '" [Amid great applause and waving of napkins
all rise and drink to Mark Twain. ]
Well, if I made that joke, it is the best one I ever made, and it is in
the prettiest language, too. --I never can get quite to that height. But
I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember it--and I shall use it when
occasion requires.
I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one
very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was
so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper
appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person
born with high and delicate instincts--why, even the cradle wasn't
whitewashed--nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth,
I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that.
Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a
village--hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri,
where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and
they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh
in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village--I--why, I was
the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and
months; and although I say it myself that shouldn't, I came the nearest
to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two
years. Well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is
so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they
examined me all around and gave their opinion. Nobody asked them, and
I shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody
did. Their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and I feel those
opinions to this day. Well, I stood that as long as--well, you know I
was born courteous, and I stood it to the limit. I stood it an hour,
and then the worm turned. I was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and I
turned. I knew very well the strength of my position; I knew that I was
the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and
I came out and said so: And they could not say a word. It was so
true: They blushed; they were embarrassed. Well, that was the first
after-dinner speech I ever made: I think it was after dinner.
It's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one.
That was my cradle-song; and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used
to swan-songs; I have sung them several times.
This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the
size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase,
seventieth birthday.
The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new
and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which
have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed
upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You
can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall
never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you
climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell
on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain
my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.
I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly
to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an
exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old
age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people
we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have
decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the
property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have put us
out of commission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound maxim,
this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.
I will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to
commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and
the hangman for seventy years. Some of the details may sound untrue, but
they are not. I am not here to deceive; I am here to teach.
We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to
harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have
been regular about going to bed and getting up--and that is one of
the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't
anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I
had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity.
It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person.
In the matter of diet--which is another main thing--I have been
persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me
until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the
best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie
after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For
thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and
no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is
all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache
in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by
that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon
you this--which I think is wisdom--that if you find you can't make seventy
by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the
Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count
your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a
cemetery.
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I
have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when
I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and
that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I
was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an
example to others, and--not that I care for moderation myself, it has
always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain
when awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know
quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to
be seventy.
I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night,
sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never
waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and
dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you
should lose the only moral you've got--meaning the chairman--if you've
got one: I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped
smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on
principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics
who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds.
To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I
have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found
that those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap
cigars--reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four
dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven,
now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes
the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people
that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is?
As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like
to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. This dryness
does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are
different. You let it alone.
Since I was seven years old I have seldom taken a dose of medicine, and
have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on
allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did;
it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it
made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine
barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The rest
of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things,
because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. I had it all.
By the time the drugstore was exhausted my health was established, and
there has never been much the matter with me since. But you know very
well it would be foolish for the average child to start for seventy on
that basis. It happened to be just the thing for me, but that was merely
an accident; it couldn't happen again in a century.
I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I
never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any
benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired. But let another
person try my way, and see where he will come out. I desire now to
repeat and emphasise that maxim: We can't reach old age by another man's
road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you.
I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other
people to try that, or for me to recommend it. Very few would succeed:
you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can't get
them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your
box. Morals are an acquirement--like music, like a foreign language, like
piety, poker, paralysis--no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I
started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this
house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that--the world
before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can
remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the
weather, the--I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral,
an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But
if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place,
and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so
on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash
once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and
how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got
that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any
exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under
this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and
served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then
she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and
character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for
business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her--ah,
pathetic skeleton, as she was--I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of
Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to
get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high,
and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it
will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match.
Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin
microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes
is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian--I mean, you take the
sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear sir, I wish you
wouldn't look at me like that.
Threescore years and ten!
It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe
no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a
time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your
term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an
honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are
not for you, nor any bugle-call but "lights out. " You pay the time-worn
duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer--and without
prejudice--for they are not legally collectable.
The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many
twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will
never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and
the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter
through the deserted streets--a desolation which would not remind you
now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you
must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you
that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more--if you shrink
at thought of these things, you need only reply, "Your invitation honors
me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I
am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke
my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all
affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70
you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay
your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. "
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suffered from a similar circumstance. Two or three years ago, in New
York, with that Society there which is made up of people from all
British Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, who were educated in
British colleges and British schools, I was there to respond to a toast
of some kind or other, and I did then what I have been in the habit of
doing, from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, I got myself
placed No, 3 in the list of speakers--then you get home early.
I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a particular train or
not get there. But see the magnanimity which is born in me, which I have
cultivated all my life. A very famous and very great British clergyman
came to me presently, and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have
got to catch a certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch that
train I shall be carried beyond midnight and break the Sabbath. Won't
you change places with me? " I said: "Certainly I will. " I did it at
once. Now, see what happened.
Talk about Sir Mortimer Durand's sufferings for a single night! I have
suffered ever since because I saved that gentleman from breaking the
Sabbath-yes, saved him. I took his place, but I lost my train, and it
was I who broke the Sabbath. Up to that time I never had broken the
Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I never have kept it.
Oh! I am learning much here to-night. I find I didn't know anything
about the American Society--that is, I didn't know its chief virtue.
I didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador
revealed it--I may say, exposed it. I was intending to go home on the
13th of this month, but I look upon that in a different light now. I am
going to stay here until the American Society pays my passage.
Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes.
We have got a double Fourth of July--a daylight Fourth and a midnight
Fourth. During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we
keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit. We devote it to
teaching our children patriotic things--reverence for the Declaration of
Independence. We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and
when night comes we dishonor it. Presently--before long--they are getting
nearly ready to begin now--on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down,
that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and
noise--all night long--and there will be more than noise there will be
people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who
will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give
to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all
sorts of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over
to rowdies to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we
cripple and kill more people than you would imagine.
We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-July night in that way one
hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night
since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five
thousand towns of America, somebody gets killed or crippled on every
Fourth-of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never
hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. They cripple
and kill more people on the Fourth of July in America than they kill and
cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk.
And, too, we burn houses. Really we destroy more property on every
Fourth-of-July night than the whole of the United States was worth one
hundred and twenty-five years ago. Really our Fourth of July is our
day of mourning, our day of sorrow. Fifty thousand people who have lost
friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July,
when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained
in their families.
I have suffered in that way myself. I have had relatives killed in that
way. One was in Chicago years ago--an uncle of mine, just as good an
uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them--yes, uncles to burn,
uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth
to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask
for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him
all over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know
about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons,
recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a
disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had
another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up
that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a
limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition
of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely
passing matters. Don't let me make you sad.
Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your
colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance. Now I
wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he had
his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution as
a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.
Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much,
and which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an
American one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first Fourth of July
in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years.
That is the day of the Great Charter--the Magna Charta--which was born at
Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the
liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King
John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of
July, of our American liberties. And the second of those Fourths of July
was not born until four centuries later, in, Charles the First's time,
in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties.
The next one was still English, in New England, where they established
that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to
remain with us--no taxation without representation. That is always going
to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us.
The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in
Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776--that is English, too. It is not
American. Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III. ,
Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the Home
Government. Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove
them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a
revolution. The revolution was brought about by circumstances which
they could not control. The Declaration of Independence was written by
a British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British
subject. There was not the name of a single American attached to the
Declaration of Independence--in fact, there was not an American in the
country in that day except the Indians out on the plains. They were
Englishmen, all Englishmen--Americans did not begin until seven years
later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then,
the American Republic was established. Since then, there have been
Americans. So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties.
We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and
that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great
American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful
tribute--Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the
black slaves free, but set the white man free also. The owner was set
free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he
was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not
want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this matter
England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty years
before, and we followed her example. We always followed her example,
whether it was good or bad.
And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation,
and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong
to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon
English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man
before the world. We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our
slaves as I have said.
It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of
them, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the
Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that
we owe these things to England. Let us be able to say to Old England,
this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our
Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us
the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights,
you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon
Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for
them.
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872
MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I
will not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in
this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an
experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and
wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It
has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into
kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has
been accomplished at last. It was a great step when the two last
misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It
is another great step when England adopts our sewing-machines without
claiming the invention--as usual. It was another when they imported one
of our sleeping-cars the other day. And it warmed my heart more than
I can tell, yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman
ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own free will and accord--and
not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the
barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. With a common origin, a common
language, a common literature, a common religion, and--common drinks,
what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a
permanent bond of brotherhood?
This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and
glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior
to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have
saved Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some
legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let
us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only
destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and
unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the
killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not
claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law
against a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are
generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion.
I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After
an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old
relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure
you hold him at--and return the basket. " Now there couldn't be anything
friendlier than that.
But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a
body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a
fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more
word of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government
which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual
is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.
And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is
the condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out
of a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and
all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for
us yet. *
*At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,
but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the
blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making
did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory
would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just
sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,
sociable time. It is known that in consequence of that remark
forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. The
depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the
banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General
Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.
More than one said that night: "And this is the sort of person
that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire! "
ABOUT LONDON
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB,
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.
Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.
It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club
which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and
fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre;
that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.
Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the
customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a
pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he
is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our
human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all
our depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and
all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ
of innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with
a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing
about "Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to
crush that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you
by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for
weeks. " We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King
"Your Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have
heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter
this. It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us
not repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.
I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
marvellous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and
gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a
horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre,
the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition. ] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII. , and
Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde
Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind. " [Cabs are not permitted in
Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage. ] It is a
great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between the
railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and of
heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend upon
parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his vehicle.
I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the edges of it
the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.
And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that
is! I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild
animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie. " I never believed before
there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you
can find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British
Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have
nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems
to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her
greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has built
other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted
in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the
world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose
prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their
monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and
Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert memorial
is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the existence of as
commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity. ]
The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding. I have
read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. I revere
that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean a book
is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in Great
Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much complained
of by publishers. ] And then every day that author goes there to gaze
at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. And what a
touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, careworn
clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons
for Sunday. You will pardon my referring to these things.
Everything in this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from
talking, even at the risk of being instructive. People here seem always
to express distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little
confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak. I collar a citizen, and I
think I am going to get some valuable information out of him. I ask him
how far it is to Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and
sixpence. Now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn.
I find myself down-town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea
where I am--being usually lost when alone--and I stop a citizen and say:
"How far is it to Charing Cross? " "Shilling fare in a cab," and off
he goes. I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it is from the
sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin. But I
am trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics and
historical reflections. I will not longer keep you from your orgies.
'Tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and I thank you for it. The name
of the Savage Club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and
the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who
came among you a stranger, and you opened your English hearts to him and
gave him welcome and a home--Artemus Ward. Asking that you will join me,
I give you his memory.
PRINCETON
Mr. Clemens spent several days in May, 1901, in Princeton, New
Jersey, as the guest of Lawrence Hutton. He gave a reading one
evening before a large audience composed of university students
and professors. Before the reading Mr. Clemens said:
I feel exceedingly surreptitious in coming down here without an
announcement of any kind. I do not want to see any advertisements
around, for the reason that I'm not a lecturer any longer. I reformed
long ago, and I break over and commit this sin only just one time this
year: and that is moderate, I think, for a person of my disposition. It
is not my purpose to lecture any more as long as I live. I never intend
to stand up on a platform any more--unless by the request of a sheriff or
something like that.
THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN"
The Countess de Rochambeau christened the St. Louis harbor-boat
'Mark Twain' in honor of Mr. Clemens, June 6, 1902. Just
before the luncheon he acted as pilot.
"Lower away lead! " boomed out the voice of the pilot.
"Mark twain, quarter five and one-half-six feet! " replied the
leadsman below.
"You are all dead safe as long as I have the wheel--but this is
my last time at the wheel. "
At the luncheon Mr. Clemens made a short address.
First of all, no--second of all--I wish to offer my thanks for the honor
done me by naming this last rose of summer of the Mississippi Valley for
me, this boat which represents a perished interest, which I fortified
long ago, but did not save its life. And, in the first place, I wish
to thank the Countess de Rochambeau for the honor she has done me in
presiding at this christening.
I believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that I should be allowed the
privilege of joining my voice with the general voice of St.
Louis and
Missouri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and this part of the
continent these illustrious visitors from France.
When La Salle came down this river a century and a quarter ago there was
nothing on its banks but savages. He opened up this great river, and by
his simple act was gathered in this great Louisiana territory. I would
have done it myself for half the money.
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY COLONEL GEORGE HARVEY AT
DELMONICO'S, DECEMBER 5, 1905, TO CELEBRATE THE SEVENTIETH
ANNIVERSARY OF MR. CLEMENS' BIRTH
Mr. Howells introduced Mr. Clemens:
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I will try not
to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our
honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. I
will not say, 'Oh King, live forever! ' but 'Oh King, live as
long as you like! '" [Amid great applause and waving of napkins
all rise and drink to Mark Twain. ]
Well, if I made that joke, it is the best one I ever made, and it is in
the prettiest language, too. --I never can get quite to that height. But
I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember it--and I shall use it when
occasion requires.
I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one
very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was
so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper
appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person
born with high and delicate instincts--why, even the cradle wasn't
whitewashed--nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth,
I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that.
Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a
village--hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri,
where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and
they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh
in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village--I--why, I was
the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and
months; and although I say it myself that shouldn't, I came the nearest
to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two
years. Well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is
so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they
examined me all around and gave their opinion. Nobody asked them, and
I shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody
did. Their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and I feel those
opinions to this day. Well, I stood that as long as--well, you know I
was born courteous, and I stood it to the limit. I stood it an hour,
and then the worm turned. I was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and I
turned. I knew very well the strength of my position; I knew that I was
the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and
I came out and said so: And they could not say a word. It was so
true: They blushed; they were embarrassed. Well, that was the first
after-dinner speech I ever made: I think it was after dinner.
It's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one.
That was my cradle-song; and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used
to swan-songs; I have sung them several times.
This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the
size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase,
seventieth birthday.
The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new
and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which
have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed
upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You
can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall
never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you
climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell
on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain
my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.
I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly
to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an
exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old
age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people
we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have
decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the
property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have put us
out of commission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound maxim,
this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.
I will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to
commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and
the hangman for seventy years. Some of the details may sound untrue, but
they are not. I am not here to deceive; I am here to teach.
We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to
harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have
been regular about going to bed and getting up--and that is one of
the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't
anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I
had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity.
It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person.
In the matter of diet--which is another main thing--I have been
persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me
until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the
best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie
after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For
thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and
no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is
all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache
in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by
that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon
you this--which I think is wisdom--that if you find you can't make seventy
by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the
Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count
your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a
cemetery.
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I
have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when
I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and
that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I
was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an
example to others, and--not that I care for moderation myself, it has
always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain
when awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know
quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to
be seventy.
I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night,
sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never
waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and
dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you
should lose the only moral you've got--meaning the chairman--if you've
got one: I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped
smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on
principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics
who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds.
To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I
have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found
that those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap
cigars--reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four
dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven,
now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes
the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people
that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is?
As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like
to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. This dryness
does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are
different. You let it alone.
Since I was seven years old I have seldom taken a dose of medicine, and
have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on
allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did;
it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it
made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine
barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The rest
of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things,
because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. I had it all.
By the time the drugstore was exhausted my health was established, and
there has never been much the matter with me since. But you know very
well it would be foolish for the average child to start for seventy on
that basis. It happened to be just the thing for me, but that was merely
an accident; it couldn't happen again in a century.
I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I
never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any
benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired. But let another
person try my way, and see where he will come out. I desire now to
repeat and emphasise that maxim: We can't reach old age by another man's
road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you.
I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other
people to try that, or for me to recommend it. Very few would succeed:
you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can't get
them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your
box. Morals are an acquirement--like music, like a foreign language, like
piety, poker, paralysis--no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I
started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this
house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that--the world
before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can
remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the
weather, the--I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral,
an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But
if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place,
and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so
on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash
once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and
how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got
that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any
exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under
this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and
served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then
she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and
character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for
business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her--ah,
pathetic skeleton, as she was--I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of
Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to
get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high,
and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it
will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match.
Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin
microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes
is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian--I mean, you take the
sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear sir, I wish you
wouldn't look at me like that.
Threescore years and ten!
It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe
no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a
time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your
term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an
honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are
not for you, nor any bugle-call but "lights out. " You pay the time-worn
duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer--and without
prejudice--for they are not legally collectable.
The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many
twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will
never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and
the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter
through the deserted streets--a desolation which would not remind you
now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you
must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you
that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more--if you shrink
at thought of these things, you need only reply, "Your invitation honors
me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I
am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke
my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all
affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70
you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay
your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. "
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