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ARRoGANT CoURiERS WiTH ESSaYS
Grade Level: Type of Work Subject/Topic is on:
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[ ]9-10 [ ]Cliff Notes [Speeches ]
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1906
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
by Mark Twain
PREFACE.
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF
"MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES."
If I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead
of sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious
intervals, should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse
me for making him sick, I would say that he deserved to be made sick
for not knowing any better how to utilize the blessings this world
affords. And if I sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and
he, instead of seasoning his graver reading with a chapter of it now
and then, when his mind demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses
himself with several chapters of it at a single sitting, he will
deserve to be nauseated, and he will have nobody to blame but
himself if he is. There is no more sin in publishing an entire
volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a candy-store with no
hardware in it. It lies wholly with the customer whether he will
injure himself by means of either, or will derive from them the
benefits which they will afford him if he uses their possibilities
judiciously.
Respectfully submitted,
THE AUTHOR.
THE STORY OF A SPEECH.
An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine years
later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner given by the
publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the seventieth
anniversary of the birth of John Greenleaf Whittier, at the Hotel
Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877.
THIS is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant
reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop
lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the
Atlantic and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows,
I am reminded of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when
I had just succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary
puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly
Californiaward. I started an inspection tramp through the southern
mines of California. I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to try
the virtue of my nom de guerre.
I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log
cabin in the foot-hills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was
snowing at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted,
opened the door to me. When he heard my nom de guerre he looked more
dejected than before. He let me in- pretty reluctantly, I thought- and
after the customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, I
took a pipe. This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this
time. Now he spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly
suffering, "You're the fourth- I'm going to move." "The fourth
what?" said I. "The fourth littery man that has been here in
twenty-four hours- I'm going to move." "You don't tell me!" said I;
"who were the others?" "Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes- consound the lot!"
You can easily believe I was interested. I supplicated- three hot
whiskeys did the rest- and finally the melancholy miner began. Said
he:
"They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in of
course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot,
but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr.
Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was
as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had
double chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built
like a prize-fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if
he had a wig made of hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down his
face, like a finger with the end joint tilted up. They had been
drinking, I could see that. And what queer talk they used! Mr.
Holmes inspected this cabin, then he took me by the buttonhole, and
says he:
"'Through the deep caves of thought
I hear a voice that sings,
Build thee more stately mansions,
O my soul!'
"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want
to.' Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger,
that way. However, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when Mr.
Emerson came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the
buttonhole and says:
"'Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.'
"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel.'
You see it sort of riled me- I warn't used to the ways of littery
swells. But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr.
Longfellow and buttonholes me, and interrupts me. Says he:
"'Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis-'
"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if
you'll be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and
let me get this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir, after
they'd filled up I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it, and then
he fires up all of a sudden and yells:
"'Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
For I would drink to other days.'
"By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I don't deny it, I
was getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I,
'Looky here, my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the
court knows herself, you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.'
Them's the very words I said to him. Now I don't want to sass such
famous littery people, but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't
nothing unreasonable 'bout me; I don't mind a passel of guests
a-treadin' on my tail three or four times, but when it comes to
standing on it it's different, 'and if the court knows herself,' I
says, 'you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.' Well, between
drinks they'd swell around the cabin and strike attitudes and spout;
and pretty soon they got out a greasy old deck and went to playing
euchre at ten cents a corner- on trust. I began to notice some
pretty suspicious things. Mr. Emerson dealt, looked at his hand, shook
his head, says:
"'I am the doubter and the doubt-'
and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout.
Says he:
"'They reckon ill who leave me out;
They know not well the subtle ways I keep.
I pass and deal again!'
"Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one!
Well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a
sudden I see by Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. He had already
corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. So now he kind of
lifts a little in his chair and says:
"'I tire of globes and aces!-
Too long the game is played!'
- and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as
pie and says:
"'Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught,'
- and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! Emerson
claps his hand on his bowie, Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and
I went under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous
Holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order,
gentlemen; the first man that draws, I'll lay down on him and
smother him!' All quiet on the Potomac, you bet!
"They were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow.
Emerson says, 'The nobbiest thing I ever wrote was "Barbara
Frietchie."' Says Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my "Biglow
Papers."' Says Holmes, 'My "Thanatopis" lays over 'em both.' They
mighty near ended in a fight. Then they wished they had some more
company- and Mr. Emerson pointed to me and says:
"'Is yonder squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed?'
"He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot- so I let it pass. Well,
sir, next they took it into their heads that they would like some
music; so they made me stand up and sing "When Johnny Comes Marching
Home" till I dropped- at thirteen minutes past four this morning.
That's what I've been through, my friend. When I woke at seven, they
were leaving, thank goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on,
and his'n under his arm. Says I, 'Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are
you going to do with them?' He says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em;
because:
"'Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.'
As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours- and I'm
going to move; I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere."
I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these were not the
gracious singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and
homage; these were impostors."
The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he,
"Ah! impostors, were they? Are you?"
I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not travelled on
my nom de guerre enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved
to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated
the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since
I believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from
perpendicular fact on an occasion like this.
From Mark Twain's Autobiography.
January 11, 1906.
Answer to a letter received this morning:
DEAR MRS. H.,- I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that
curious passage in my life. During the first year or two after it
happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were so
intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled,
established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my
mind- and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have
lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse,
vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and
your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to
look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to delve
among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy of it.
It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am
not able to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or
two from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in
1888, in Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C., of
Concord, Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort
which nothing but death terminates. The C.'s were very bright people
and in every way charming and companionable. We were together a
month or two in Venice and several months in Rome, afterward, and
one day that lamented break of mine was mentioned. And when I was on
the point of lathering those people for bringing it to my mind when
I had gotten the memory of it almost squelched, I perceived with joy
that the C.'s were indignant about the way that my performance had
been received in Boston. They poured out their opinions most freely
and frankly about the frosty attitude of the people who were present
at that performance, and about the Boston newspapers for the
position they had taken in regard to the matter. That position was
that I had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond imagination. Very
well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year or two, and had been
thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of it- which was
not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought of it I
wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy a
thing. Well, the C.'s comforted me, but they did not persuade me to
continue to think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I
tried to get it out of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until
Mrs. H.'s letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I
had thought of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny
I wondered if possibly she might be right. At any rate, my curiosity
was aroused, and I wrote to Boston and got the whole thing copied,
as above set forth.
I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering- dimly I
can see a hundred people no, perhaps fifty- shadowy figures sitting at
tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. I don't
know who they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand
table and facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave,
unsmiling? Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining
out of his face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his
benignant face; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and
affection and all good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose
facets are being turned toward the light first one way and then
another- a charming man, and always fascinating, whether he was
talking or whether he was sitting still (what he would call still, but
what would be more or less motion to other people). I can see those
figures with entire distinctness across this abyss of time.
One other feature is clear- Willie Winter (for these past thousand
years dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying
that high post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then
than he is now, and he showed it. It was always a pleasure to me to
see Willie Winter at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I
was seldom at a banquet where Willie Winter was not also present,
and where he did not read a charming poem written for the occasion. He
did it this time, and it was up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely
phrased, and as good to listen to as music, and sounding exactly as if
it was pouring unprepared out of heart and brain.
Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday- because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening- the gay oration above quoted from the
Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had
perfectly memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy
and self-satisfied ease, and begin to deliver it. Those majestic
guests, that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened, as
did everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I
delivered myself of- we'll say the first two hundred words of my
speech. I was expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but
this was not the case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the
dialogue: "The old miner said, 'You are the fourth, I'm going to
move.' 'The fourth what?' said I. He answered, 'The fourth littery man
that has been here in twenty-four hours. I am going to move.' 'Why,
you don't tell me,' said I. 'Who were the others?' 'Mr. Longfellow,
Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, consound the lot-'"
Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered what
the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty- I
struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description
of the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always
hoping- but with a gradually perishing hope- that somebody would
laugh, or that somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't
know enough to give it up and sit down, I was too new to public
speaking, and so I went on with this awful performance, and carried it
clear through to the end, in front of a body of people who seemed
turned to stone with horror. It was the sort of expression their faces
would have worn if I had been making these remarks about the Deity and
the rest of the Trinity; there is no milder way in which to describe
the petrified condition and the ghastly expression of those people.
When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat. I
shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know
what the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one
I shall never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was
near me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a
gasp. There was no use- he understood the whole size of the
disaster. He had good intentions, but the words froze before they
could get out. It was an atmosphere that would freeze anything. If
Benvenuto Cellini's salamander had been in that place he would not
have survived to be put into Cellini's autobiography. There was a
frightful pause. There was an awful silence, a desolating silence.
Then the next man on the list had to get up- there was no help for it.
That was Bishop- Bishop had just burst handsomely upon the world
with a most acceptable novel, which had appeared in The Atlantic
Monthly, a place which would make any novel respectable and any author
noteworthy. In this case the novel itself was recognized as being,
without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was away up in the public
favor, and he was an object of high interest, consequently there was a
sort of national expectancy in the air; we may say our American
millions were standing, from Maine to Texas and from Alaska to
Florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands ready to
applaud, when Bishop should get up on that occasion, and for the first
time in his life speak in public. It was under these damaging
conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. I had
spoken several times before, and that is the reason why I was able
to go on without dying in my tracks, as I ought to have done- but
Bishop had had no experience. He was up facing those awful deities-
facing those other people, those strangers- facing human beings for
the first time in his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was
well packed away in his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable,
until I had been heard from. I suppose that after that, and under
the smothering pall of that dreary silence, it began to waste away and
disappear out of his head like the rags breaking from the edge of a
fog, and presently there wasn't any fog left. He didn't go on- he
didn't last long. It was not many sentences after his first before
he began to hesitate, and break, and lose his grip, and totter, and
wobble, and at last he slumped down in a limp and mushy pile.
Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than
one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man
hadn't strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so
stupefied, paralyzed, it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or
even try. Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells
mournfully, and without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and
supported us out of the room. It was very kind- he was most
generous. He towed us tottering away into some room in that
building, and we sat down there. I don't know what my remark was
now, but I know the nature of it. It was the kind of remark you make
when you know that nothing in the world can help your case. But
Howells was honest- he had to say the heart-breaking things he did
say: that there was no help for this calamity, this shipwreck, this
cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that had ever
happened in anybody's history- and then he added, "That is, for you-
and consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in your
case, you deserve to suffer. You have committed this crime, and you
deserve to have all you are going to get. But here is an innocent man.
Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him.
He can never hold his head up again. The world can never look upon
Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse."
That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which
pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two
whenever it forced its way into my mind.
Now then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it
arrived this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless
I am an idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word
to the last. It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is
saturated with humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or
vulgarity in it anywhere. What could have been the matter with that
house? It is amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with
laughter, and those deities the loudest of them all. Could the fault
have been with me? Did I lose courage when I saw those great men up
there whom I was going to describe in such a strange fashion? If
that happened, if I showed doubt, that can account for it, for you
can't be successfully funny if you show that you are afraid of it.
Well, I can't account for it, but if I had those beloved and revered
old literary immortals back here now on the platform at Carnegie
Hall I would take that same old speech, deliver it, word for word, and
melt them till they'd run all over that stage. Oh, the fault must have
been with me, it is not in the speech at all.
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS.
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY,
PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881.
On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response, President Rollins
said:
"This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly
born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors. He is
not technically, therefore, of New England descent. Under the
painful circumstances in which he has found himself, however, he has
done the best he could- he has had all his children born there, and
has made of himself a New England ancestor. He is a self-made man.
More than this, and better even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful
literature he is of New England ascent. To ascend there in anything
that's reasonable is difficult, for- confidentially, with the door
shut- we all know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that
goodly land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that
Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent- become a man of
mark."
I RISE to protest. I have kept still for years, but really I think
there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do
you want to celebrate those people for?- those ancestors of yours of
1620- the Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to celebrate
them for? Your pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you
are not celebrating the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the
Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock on the 22d of December. So you are
celebrating their landing. Why, the other pretext was thin enough, but
this is thinner than ever; the other was tissue, tinfoil,
fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf. Celebrating their landing! What
was there remarkable about it, I would like to know? What can you be
thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had been at sea three or four months.
It was the very middle of winter: it was as cold as death off Cape Cod
there. Why shouldn't they come ashore? If they hadn't landed there
would be some reason for celebrating the fact. It would have been a
case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world would not
willingly let die. If it had been you, gentlemen, you probably
wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be
celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but
only transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the
Pilgrims- to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple
and customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance- a
circumstance to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and
glorified, at orgies like this for two hundred and sixty years- hang
it, a horse would have known enough to land; a horse- Pardon again;
the gentleman on my right assures me that it was not merely the
landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating, but the Pilgrims
themselves. So we have struck an inconsistency here- one says it was
the landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims. It is an
inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious
tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston. Well, then, what
do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They were a mighty hard
lot- you know it. I grant you, without the slightest unwillingness,
that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were
the people of Europe of that day; I grant you that they are better
than their predecessors. But what of that?- that is nothing. People
always progress. You are better than your fathers and grandfathers
were (this is the first time I have ever aimed a measureless slander
at the departed, for I consider such things improper). Yes, those
among you who have not been in the penitentiary, if such there be, are
better than your fathers and grandfathers were; but is that any
sufficient reason for getting up annual dinners and celebrating you?
No, by no means- by no means. Well, I repeat, those Pilgrims were a
hard lot. They took good care of themselves, but they abolished
everybody else's ancestors. I am a border-ruffian from the State of
Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me, you have
Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the
combination which makes the perfect man. But where are my ancestors?
Whom shall I celebrate? Where shall I find the raw material?
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian- an early
Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. Not
one drop of my blood flows in that Indian's veins today. I stand here,
lone and forlorn, without an ancestor. They skinned him! I do not
object to that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemen- alive!
They skinned him alive- and before company! That is what rankles.
Think how he must have felt; for he was a sensitive person and
easily embarrassed. If he had been a bird, it would have been all
right, and no violence done to his feelings, because he would have
been considered "dressed." But he was not a bird, gentlemen, he was
a man, and probably one of the most undressed men that ever was. I ask
you to put yourselves in his place. I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a
tardy act of justice; I ask it in the interest of fidelity to the
traditions of your ancestors; I ask it that the world may contemplate,
with vision unobstructed by disguising swallow-tails and white
cravats, the spectacle which the true New England Society ought to
present. Cease to come to these annual orgies in this hollow modern
mockery- the surplusage of raiment. Come in character; come in the
summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity, come in the free and
joyous costume which your sainted ancestors provided for mine.
Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marmaduke
Stevenson, et al. Your tribe chased them out of the country for
their religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your
ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils
of the sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to
acquire that highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man
on this broad continent to worship according to the dictates of his
own conscience- and they were not going to allow a lot of
pestiferous Quakers to interfere with it. Your ancestors broke forever
the chains of political slavery, and gave the vote to every man in
this wide land, excluding none!- none except those who did not
belong to the orthodox church. Your ancestors- yes, they were a hard
lot; but, nevertheless, they gave us religious liberty to worship as
they required us to worship, and political liberty to vote as the
church required; and so I the bereft one, I the forlorn one, am here
to do my best to help you celebrate them right.
The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an ancestress of mine. Your
people were pretty severe with her- you will confess that. But, poor
thing! I believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took
her into their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that
when she died she went to the same place which your ancestors went to.
It is a great pity, for she was a good woman. Roger Williams was an
ancestor of mine. I don't really remember what your people did with
him. But they banished him to Rhode Island, anyway. And then, I
believe, recognizing that this was really carrying harshness to an
unjustifiable extreme, they took pity on him and burned him. They were
a hard lot! All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine! Your
people made it tropical for them. Yes, they did; by pressure and the
gallows they made such a clean deal with them that there hasn't been a
witch and hardly a halter in our family from that day to this, and
that is one hundred and eighty-nine years. The first slave brought
into New England out of Africa by your progenitors was an ancestor
of mine- for I am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite
Mongrel. I'm not one of your sham meerschaums that you can color in
a week. No, my complexion is the patient art of eight generations.
Well, in my own time, I had acquired a lot of my kin- by purchase, and
swapping around, and one way and another- and was getting along very
well. Then, with the inborn perversity of your lineage, you got up a
war, and took them all away from me. And so, again am I bereft,
again am I forlorn; no drop of my blood flows in the veins of any
living being who is marketable.
O my friends, hear me and reform! I seek your good, not mine. You
have heard the speeches. Disband these New England societies-
nurseries of a system of steadily augmenting laudation and hosannaing,
which, if persisted in uncurbed, may some day in the remote future
beguile you into prevaricating and bragging. Oh, stop, stop, while you
are still temperate in your appreciation of your ancestors! Hear me, I
beseech you; get up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock! The Pilgrims
were a simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks
before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were
excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron
fence around this one. But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are
enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your nativity,
opulent New England, overflowing with rocks, this one isn't worth,
at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. Therefore, sell it,
before it is injured by exposure, or at least throw it open to the
patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its taxes.
Yes, hear your true friend- your only true friend- list to his
voice. Disband these societies, hotbeds of vice, of moral decay-
perpetuators of ancestral superstition. Here on this board I see
water, I see milk, I see the wild and deadly lemonade. These are but
steps upon the downward path. Next we shall see tea, then chocolate,
then coffee- hotel coffee. A few more years- all too few, I fear- mark
my words, we shall have cider! Gentlemen, pause ere it be too late.
You are on the broad road which leads to dissipation, physical ruin,
moral decay, gory crime and the gallows! I beseech you, I implore you,
in the name of your anxious friends, in the name of your suffering
families, in the name of your impending widows and orphans, stop ere
it be too late. Disband these New England societies, renounce these
soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from varnishing the rusty
reputations of your long-vanished ancestors- the super-high-moral
old iron-clads of Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of Plymouth Rock-
go home, and try to learn to behave!
However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I honor and appreciate
your Pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and I
endorse and adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine once- a
man of sturdy opinions, of sincere make of mind, and not given to
flattery. He said: "People may talk as they like about that Pilgrim
stock, but, after all's said and done, it would be pretty hard to
improve on those people; and, as for me, I don't mind coming out
flat-footed and saying there ain't any way to improve on them-
except having them born in Missouri!"
COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES.
DELIVERED AT THE LOTOS CLUB, JANUARY 11, 1908.
In introducing Mr. Clemens, Frank R. Lawrence, the President of
the Lotos Club, recalled the fact that the first club dinner in the
present club-house, some fourteen years ago, was in honor of Mark
Twain.
I WISH to begin this time at the beginning, lest I forget it
altogether; that is to say, I wish to thank you for this welcome
that you are giving, and the welcome which you gave me seven years
ago, and which I forgot to thank you for at that time. I also wish
to thank you for the welcome you gave me fourteen years ago, which I
also forgot to thank you for at the time.
I hope you will continue this custom to give me a dinner every seven
years before I join the hosts in the other world- I do not know
which world.
Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Porter have paid me many compliments. It is
very difficult to take compliments. I do not care whether you
deserve the compliments or not, it is just as difficult to take
them. The other night I was at the Engineers' Club, and enjoyed the
sufferings of Mr. Carnegie. They were complimenting him there; there
it was all compliments, and none of them deserved. They say that you
cannot live by bread alone, but I can live on compliments.
I do not make any pretence that I dislike compliments. The
stronger the better, and I can manage to digest them. I think I have
lost so much by not making a collection of compliments, to put them
away and take them out again once in a while. When in England I said
that I would start to collect compliments, and I began there and I
have brought some of them along.
The first one of these lies- I wrote them down and preserved them- I
think they are mighty good and extremely just. It is one of Hamilton
Mabie's compliments. He said that La Salle was the first one to make a
voyage of the Mississippi, but Mark Twain was the first to chart,
light, and navigate it for the whole world.
If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [Life
on the Mississippi], it would have been money in my pocket. I tell
you, it is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have
them ring true. It's an art by itself.
Here is another compliment by Albert Bigelow Paine, my biographer.
He is writing four octavo volumes about me, and he has been at my
elbow two and one-half years.
I just suppose that he does not know me, but says he knows me. He
says "Mark Twain is not merely a great writer, a great philosopher,
a great man; he is the supreme expression of the human being, with his
strength and his weakness." What a talent for compression! It takes
a genius in compression to compact as many facts as that.
W. D. Howells spoke of me as first of Hartford, and ultimately of
the solar system, not to say of the universe.
You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame
reaches to Neptune and Saturn, that will satisfy even me. You know how
modest and retiring Howells seems to be, but deep down he is as vain
as I am.
Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Oxford, whose gown was red.
He had been invited to an exercise at Columbia, and upon inquiry had
been told that it was usual to wear the black gown. Later he had found
that three other men wore bright gowns, and he had lamented that he
had been one of the black mass, and not a red torch.
Edison wrote: "The average American loves his family. If he has
any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark
Twain."
Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl which came to
me indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph
of me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said:
"We've got a John the Baptist like that." She also said: "Only
ours has more trimmings."
I suppose she meant the halo. Now here is a gold-miner's compliment.
It is forty-two years old. It was my introduction to an audience to
which I lectured in a log school-house. There were no ladies there.
I wasn't famous then. They didn't know me. Only the miners were there,
with their breeches tucked into their boot-tops and with clay all over
them. They wanted some one to introduce me, and they selected a miner,
who protested, saying:
"I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two
things about him. One is, he has never been in jail, and the other is,
I don't know why."
There's one thing I want to say about that English trip. I knew
his Majesty the King of England long years ago, and I didn't meet
him for the first time then. One thing that I regret was that some
newspapers said I talked with the Queen of England with my hat on. I
don't do that with any woman. I did not put it on until she asked me
to. Then she told me to put it on, and it's a command there. I thought
I had carried my American democracy far enough. So I put it on. I have
no use for a hat, and never did have.
Who was it who said that the police of London knew me? Why, the
police know me everywhere. There never was a day over there when a
policeman did not salute me, and then put up his hand and stop the
traffic of the world. They treated me as though I were a duchess.
The happiest experience I had in England was at a dinner given in
the building of the Punch publication, a humorous paper which is
appreciated by all Englishmen. It was the greatest privilege ever
allowed a foreigner. I entered the dining-room of the building,
where those men get together who have been running the paper for
over fifty years. We were about to begin dinner when the toastmaster
said: "Just a minute; there ought to be a little ceremony." Then there
was that meditating silence for a while, and out of a closet there
came a beautiful little girl dressed in pink, holding in her hand a
copy of the previous week's paper, which had in it my cartoon. It
broke me all up. I could not even say "Thank you." That was the
prettiest incident of the dinner, the delight of all that wonderful
table. When she was about to go, I said, "My child, you are not
going to leave me; I have hardly got acquainted with you." She
replied, "You know I've got to go; they never let me come in here
before, and they never will again." That is one of the beautiful
incidents that I cherish.
[At the conclusion of his speech, and while the diners were still
cheering him, Colonel Porter brought forward the red-and-gray gown
of the Oxford "doctor," and Mr. Clemens was made to don it. The diners
rose to their feet in their enthusiasm. With the mortar-board on his
head, and looking down admiringly at himself, Mr. Twain said:]
I like that gown. I always did like red. The redder it is the better
I like it. I was born for a savage. Now, whoever saw any red like
this? There is no red outside the arteries of an archangel that
could compare with this. I know you all envy me. I am going to have
luncheon shortly with ladies- just ladies. I will be the only lady
of my sex present, and I shall put on this gown and make those
ladies look dim.
BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS.
ADDRESS AT THE PILGRIMS' CLUB LUNCHEON, GIVEN
IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS AT THE SAVOY
HOTEL, LONDON, JUNE 25, 1907.
Mr. Birrell, M.P., Chief-Secretary for Ireland, in introducing Mr.
Clemens said: "We all love Mark Twain, and we are here to tell him so.
One more point- all the world knows it, and that is why it is
dangerous to omit it- our guest is a distinguished citizen of the
Great Republic beyond the seas. In America his Huckleberry Finn and
his Tom Sawyer are what Robinson Crusoe and Tom Brown's School Days
have been to us. They are racy of the soil. They are books to which it
is impossible to place any period of termination. I will not speak
of the classics- reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We
do not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and
depreciations, our two-penny little prefaces or our forewords. I am
not going to say what the world a thousand years hence will think of
Mark Twain. Posterity will take care of itself, will read what it
wants to read, will forget what it chooses to forget, and will pay
no attention whatsoever to our critical mumblings and jumblings. Let
us therefore be content to say to our friend and guest that we are
here speaking for ourselves and for our children, to say what he has
been to us. I remember in Liverpool, in 1867, first buying the copy,
which I still preserve, of the celebrated Jumping Frog. It had a few
words of preface which reminded me then that our guest in those days
was called 'the wild humorist of the Pacific slope,' and a few lines
later down, 'the moralist of the Main.' That was some forty years ago.
Here he is, still the humorist, still the moralist. His humor enlivens
and enlightens his morality, and his morality is all the better for
his humor. That is one of the reasons why we love him. I am not here
to mention any book of his- that is a subject of dispute in my
family circle, which is the best and which is the next best- but I
must put in a word, lest I should not be true to myself- a terrible
thing- for his Joan of Arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and of
manly sincerity for which I take this opportunity of thanking him. But
you can all drink this toast, each one of you with his own
intention. You can get into it what meaning you like. Mark Twain is
a man whom English and Americans do well to honor. He is the true
consolidator of nations. His delightful humor is of the kind which
dissipates and destroys national prejudices. His truth and his
honor, his love of truth, and his love of honor, overflow all
boundaries. He has made the world better by his presence. We rejoice
to see him here. Long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of
hearty, honest human affection!"
PILGRIMS, I desire first to thank those undergraduates of Oxford.
When a man has grown so old as I am, when he has reached the verge
of seventy-two years, there is nothing that carries him back to the
dreamland of his life, to his boyhood, like recognition of those young
hearts up yonder. And so I thank them out of my heart. I desire to
thank the Pilgrims of New York also for their kind notice and
message which they have cabled over here. Mr. Birrell says he does not
know how he got here. But he will be able to get away all right- he
has not drunk anything since he came here. I am glad to know about
those friends of his, Otway and Chatterton- fresh, new names to me.
I am glad of the disposition he has shown to rescue them from the
evils of poverty, and if they are still in London, I hope to have a
talk with them. For a while I thought he was going to tell us the
effect which my book had upon his growing manhood. I thought he was
going to tell us how much that effect amounted to, and whether it
really made him what he now is, but with the discretion born of
Parliamentary experience he dodged that, and we do not know now
whether he read the book or not. He did that very neatly. I could
not do it any better myself.
My books have had effects, and very good ones, too, here and
there, and some others not so good. There is no doubt about that.
But I remember one monumental instance of it years and years ago.
Professor Norton, of Harvard, was over here, and when he came back
to Boston I went out with Howells to call on him. Norton was allied in
some way by marriage with Darwin. Mr. Norton was very gentle in what
he had to say, and almost delicate, and he said: "Mr. Clemens, I
have been spending some time with Mr. Darwin in England, and I
should like to tell you something connected with that visit. You
were the object of it, and I myself would have been very proud of
it, but you may not be proud of it. At any rate, I am going to tell
you what it was, and to leave to you to regard it as you please. Mr.
Darwin took me up to his bedroom and pointed out certain things there-
pitcher-plants, and so on, that he was measuring and watching from day
to day- and he said: 'The chambermaid is permitted to do what she
pleases in this room, but she must never touch those plants and
never touch those books on that table by that candle. With those books
I read myself to sleep every night.' Those were your own books." I
said: "There is no question to my mind as to whether I should regard
that as a compliment or not. I do regard it as a very great compliment
and a very high honor that that great mind, laboring for the whole
human race, should rest itself on my books. I am proud that he
should read himself to sleep with them."
Now, I could not keep that to myself- I was so proud of it. As
soon as I got home to Hartford I called up my oldest friend- and
dearest enemy on occasion- the Rev. Joseph Twichell, my pastor, and
I told him about that, and, of course, he was full of interest and
venom. Those people who get no compliments like that feel like that.
He went off. He did not issue any applause of any kind, and I did
not hear of that subject for some time. But when Mr. Darwin passed
away from this life, and some time after Darwin's Life and Letters
came out, the Rev. Mr. Twichell procured an early copy of that work
and found something in it which he considered applied to me. He came
over to my house- it was snowing, raining, sleeting, but that did
not make any difference to Twichell. He produced the book, and
turned over and over, until he came to a certain place, when he
said: "Here, look at this letter from Mr. Darwin to Sir Joseph
Hooker." What Mr. Darwin said- I give you the idea and not the very
words- was this: I do not know whether I ought to have devoted my
whole life to these drudgeries in natural history and the other
sciences or not, for while I may have gained in one way I have lost in
another. Once I had a fine perception and appreciation of high
literature, but in me that quality is atrophied. "That was the
reason," said Mr. Twichell, "he was reading your books."
Mr. Birrell has touched lightly- very lightly, but in not an
uncomplimentary way- on my position in this world as a moralist. I
am glad to have that recognition, too, because I have suffered since I
have been in this town; in the first place, right away, when I came
here, from a newsman going around with a great red, highly displayed
placard in the place of an apron. He was selling newspapers, and there
were two sentences on that placard which would have been all right
if they had been punctuated; but they ran those two sentences together
without a comma or anything, and that would naturally create a wrong
impression, because it said, "Mark Twain arrives Ascot Cup stolen." No
doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined together in
that unkind way. I have no doubt my character has suffered from it.
I suppose I ought to defend my character, but how can I defend it? I
can say here and now- and anybody can see by my face that I am
sincere, that I speak the truth- that I have never seen that Cup. I
have not got the Cup- I did not have a chance to get it. I have always
had a good character in that way. I have hardly ever stolen
anything, and if I did steal anything I had discretion enough to
know about the value of it first. I do not steal things that are
likely to get myself into trouble. I do not think any of us do that. I
know we all take things- that is to be expected- but really, I have
never taken anything, certainly in England, that amounts to any
great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years ago I stole
a hat, but that did not amount to anything. It was not a good hat, and
was only a clergyman's hat, anyway.
I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there
also. I dare say he is Archdeacon now- he was a canon then- and he was
serving in the Westminster battery, if that is the proper term- I do
not know, as you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so
much. He left the luncheon table before I did. He began this. I did
steal his hat, but he began by taking mine. I make that interjection
because I would not accuse Archdeacon Wilberforce of stealing my
hat- I should not think of it. I confine that phrase to myself. He
merely took my hat. And with good judgment, too- it was a better hat
than his. He came out before the luncheon was over, and sorted the
hats in the hall, and selected one which suited. It happened to be
mine. He went off with it. When I came out by-and-by there was no
hat there which would go on my head except his, which was left behind.
My head was not the customary size just at that time. I had been
receiving a good many very nice and complimentary attentions, and my
head was a couple of sizes larger than usual, and his hat just
suited me. The bumps and corners were all right intellectually.
There were results pleasing to me- possibly so to him. He found out
whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that all the way
home, whenever he met anybody his gravities, his solemnities, his deep
thoughts, his eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the people he
met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms.
I had another experience. It was not unpleasing. I was received with
a deference which was entirely foreign to my experience by everybody
whom I met, so that before I got home I had a much higher opinion of
myself than I have ever had before or since. And there is in that very
connection an incident which I remember at that old date which is
rather melancholy to me, because it shows how a person can deteriorate
in a mere seven years. It is seven years ago. I have not that hat now.
I was going down Pall-Mall, or some other of your big streets, and I
recognized that that hat needed ironing. I went into a big shop and
passed in my hat, and asked that it might be ironed. They were
courteous, very courteous, even courtly. They brought that hat back to
me presently very sleek and nice, and I asked how much there was to
pay. They replied that they did not charge the clergy anything. I have
cherished the delight of that moment from that day to this. It was the
first thing I did the other day to go and hunt up that shop and hand
in my hat to have it ironed. I said when it came back, "How much to
pay?" They said, "Ninepence." In seven years I have acquired all
that worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I was seven years
ago.
But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and I hope you
will forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of
seventy-two you know perfectly well that he never reached that place
without knowing what this life is- heartbreaking bereavement. And so
our reverence is for our dead. We do not forget them; but our duty
is toward the living; and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit,
cheerful in speech and in hope, that is a benefit to those who are
around us.
My own history includes an incident which will always connect me
with England in a pathetic way, for when I arrived here seven years
ago with my wife and my daughter- we had gone around the globe
lecturing to raise money to clear off a debt- my wife and one of my
daughters started across the ocean to bring to England our eldest
daughter. She was twenty-four years of age and in the bloom of young
womanhood, and we were unsuspecting. When my wife and daughter- and my
wife has passed from this life since- when they had reached
mid-atlantic, a cablegram- one of those heartbreaking cablegrams which
we all in our days have to experience- was put into my hand. It stated
that that daughter of ours had gone to her long sleep. And so, as I
say, I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing; I
must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside, and recognize that I am of
the human race like the rest, and must have my cares and griefs. And
therefore I noticed what Mr. Birrell said- I was so glad to hear him
say it- something that was in the nature of these verses here at the
top of this:
"He lit our life with shafts of sun
And vanquished pain.
Thus two great nations stand as one
In honoring Twain."
I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very
grateful for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received
since I have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all
conditions of people in England- men, women, and children- and there
is in them compliment, praise, and, above all and better than all,
there is in them a note of affection. Praise is well, compliment is
well, but affection- that is the last and final and most precious
reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement,
and I am very grateful to have that reward. All these letters make
me feel that here in England- as in America- when I stand under the
English flag, I am not a stranger. I am not an alien, but at home.
DEDICATION SPEECH.
AT THE DEDICATION OF THE COLLEGE OF THE
CITY OF NEW YORK, MAY 14, 1908.
Mr. Clemens wore his gown as Doctor of Laws, Oxford University.
Ambassador Bryce and Mr. Choate had made the formal addresses.
HOW difficult indeed, is the higher education. Mr. Choate needs a
little of it. He is not only short as a statistician of New York,
but he is off, far off, in his mathematics. The four thousand citizens
of Greater New York, indeed!
But I don't think it was wise or judicious on the part of Mr. Choate
to show this higher education he has obtained. He sat in the lap of
that great education (I was there at the time), and see the result-
the lamentable result. Maybe if he had had a sandwich here to
sustain him the result would not have been so serious.
For seventy-two years I have been striving to acquire that higher
education which stands for modesty and diffidence, and it doesn't
work.
And then look at Ambassador Bryce, who referred to his alma mater,
Oxford. He might just as well have included me. Well, I am a later
production.
If I am the latest graduate, I really and sincerely hope I am not
the final flower of its seven centuries; I hope it may go on for seven
ages longer.
DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE
ADDRESS TO THE VIENNA PRESS CLUB, NOVEMBER 21, 1897,
AS DELIVERED IN GERMAN
ES hat mich tief geruhrt, meine Herren, hier so gastfreundlich
empfangen zu werden, von Kollegen aus meinem eigenen Berufe, in diesem
von meiner eigenen Heimath so weit entferntem Lande. Mein Herz ist
voller Dankbarkeit, aber meine Armuth an deutschen Worten zwingt
mich zu groszer Sparzamkeit des Ausdruckes. Entschuldigen Sie, meine
Herren, dasz ich verlese, was ich Ihnen sagen will. (Er las aber
nicht, Anm. d. Ref.) Die deutsche Sprache spreche ich nicht gut,
doch haben mehrere Sachverstandige mich versichert, dasz ich sie
schreibe wie ein Engel. Mag sein- ich weisz nicht. Habe bis jetzt
keine Bekanntschaften mit Engeln gehabt. Das kommt spater- wenn's
dem lieben Gott gefallt- es hat keine Eile.
Seit lange, meine Herren, habe ich die leidenschaftliche Sehnsucht
gehegt, eine Rede auf Deutsch zu halten, aber man hat mir's nie
erlauben wollen. Leute, die kein Gefuhl fur die Kunst hatten, legten
mir immer Hindernisse in den Weg und vereitelten meinen Wunsch-
zuweilen durch Vorwande, haufig durch Gewalt. Immer sagten diese Leute
zu mir: "Schweigen Sie, Ew. Hochwohlgeboren! Ruhe, um Gotteswillen!
Suche eine andere Art und Weise, Dich lastig zu machen."
Im jetzigen Fall, wie gewohnlich, ist es mir schwierig geworden, mir
die Erlaubnisz zu verschaffen. Das Comite bedauerte sehr, aber es
konnte mir die Erlaubnisz nicht bewilligen wegen eines Gesetzes, das
von der Concordia verlangt, sie soll die deutsche Sprache schnutzen.
Du liebe Zeit! Wieso hatte man mir das sagen konnen- mogen- durfen-
sollen? Ich bin ja der treueste Freund der deutschen Sprache- und
nicht nur jetzt, sondern von lange her- ja vor zwanzig Jahren schon.
Und nie habe ich das Verlangen gehabt, der edlen Sprache zu schaden,
im Gegentheil, nur gewunscht, sie zu verbessern; ich wollte sie blos
reformiren. Es ist der Traum meines Lebens gewesen. Ich habe schon
Besuche bei den verschiedenen deutschen Regierungen abgestattet und um
Kontrakte gebeten. Ich bin jetzt nach Oesterreich in demselben Auftrag
gekommen. Ich wurde nur einige Aenderungen anstreben. Ich wurde blos
die Sprachmethode- die uppige, weitschweifige Konstruktion-
zusammenrucken; die ewige Parenthese unterdrucken, abschaffen,
vernichten; die Einfuhrung von mehr als dreizehn Subjekten in einen
Satz verbieten; das Zeitwort so weit nach vorne rucken, bis man es
ohne Fernrohr entdecken kann. Mit einem Wort, meine Herren, ich mochte
Ihre geliebte Sprache vereinfachen, auf dasz, meine Herren, wenn Sie
sie zum Gebet brauchen, man sie dort oben versteht.
Ich flehe Sie an, von mir sich berathen zu lassen, fuhren Sie
diese erwahnten Reformen aus. Dann werden Sie eine prachtvolle Sprache
besitzen und nachher, wenn Sie Etwas sagen wollen, werden Sie
wenigstens selber verstehen, was Sie gesagt haben. Aber ofters
heutzutage, wenn Sie einen meilen-langen Satz von sich gegeben und Sie
sich etwas angelehnt haben, um auszuruhen, dann mussen Sie eine
ruhrende Neugierde empfinden, selbst herauszubringen, was Sie
eigentlich gesprochen haben. Vor mehreren Tagen hat der
Korrespondent einer hiesigen Zeitung einen Satz zustande gebracht
welcher hundertundzwolf Worte enthielt und darin waren sieben
Parenthese eingeschachtelt und es wurde Das Subjekt siebenmal
gewechselt. Denken Sie nur, meine Herren, im Laufe der Reise eines
einzigen Satzes musz das arme, verfolgte, ermudete Subjekt siebenmal
umsteigen.
Nun, wenn wir die erwahnten Reformen ausfuhren, wird's nicht mehre
so arg sein. Doch noch eins. Ich mochte gern das trennbare Zeitwort
auch ein Bischen reformiren. Ich mochte Niemand thun lassen, was
Schiller gethan: Der hat die ganze Geschichte des dreizigjahrigen
Krieges zwischen die zwei Glieder eines trennbaren Zeitwortes
eingezwangt. Das hat sogar Deutschland selbst emport; und man hat
Schiller die Erlaubnisz verweigert, die Geschichte des hundert
Jahrigen Krieges zu verfassen- Gott sei's gedankt. Nachdem alle
diese Reformen festgestellt sein werden, wird die deutsche Sprache die
edelste und die schonste auf der Welt sein.
Da Ihnen jetzt, meine Herren, der Charackter meiner Mission
bekannt ist, bitte ich Sie, so freundlich zu sein und mir Ihre
werthvolle Hilfe zu schenken. Herr Potzl hat das Publikum glauben
machen wollen, dasz ich nach Wien gekommen bin, um die Brucken zu
verstopfen und den Verkehr zu hindern, wahrend ich Beobachtungen
sammle und aufzeichne. Lassen Sie sich aber nicht von ihm anfuhren.
Meine haufige Anwesenheit auf den Brucken hat einen ganz
unschuldigen Grund. Dort giebt's den nothigen Raum. Dort kann man
einen edlen, langen, deutschen Satz ausdehnen, die Bruckengelander
entlang, und seinen ganzen Inhalt mit einem Blick ubersehen. Auf das
eine Ende des Gelanders klebe ich das erste Glied eines trennbaren
Zeitwortes und das Schluszglied klebe ich an's andere Ende- dann
breite ich den Leib des Satzes dazwischen aus. Gewohnlich sind fur
meinen Zweck die Brucken der Stadt lang genug: wenn ich aber Potzl's
Schriften studiren will, fahre ich hinaus und benutze die herrliche
unendliche Reichsbrucke. Aber das ist eine Verleumdung. Potzl schreibt
das schonste Deutsch. Vielleicht nicht so biegsam wie das meinige,
aber in manchen Kleinigkeiten viel besser. Entschuldigen Sie diese
Schmeicheleien. Die sind wohl verdient. Nun bringe ich meine Rede
um- nein- ich wollte sagen, ich bringe sie zum Schlusz. Ich bin ein
Fremder- aber hier, unter Ihnen, habe ich es ganz vergessen. Und so,
wieder, und noch wieder- biete ich Ihnen meinen herzlichsten Dank!
HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE.
ADDRESS TO THE VIENNA PRESS CLUB, NOVEMBER 21, 1897
[A LITERAL TRANSLATION].
IT has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here so hospitably
received to be. From colleagues out of my own profession, in this from
my own home so far distant land. My heart is full of gratitude, but my
poverty of German words forces me to greater economy of expression.
Excuse you, my gentlemen, that I read off, what I you say will. [But
he didn't read].
The German language speak I not good, but have numerous connoisseurs
me assured that I her write like an angel. Maybe- maybe- I know not.
Have till now no acquaintance with the angels had. That comes later-
when it the dear God please- it has no hurry.
Since long, my gentlemen, have I the passionate longing nursed a
speech on German to hold, but one has me not permitted. Men, who no
feeling for the art had, laid me ever hindrance in the way and made
naught my desire- sometimes by excuses, often by force. Always said
these men to me: "Keep you still, your Highness! Silence! For God's
sake seek another way and means yourself obnoxious to make."
In the present case, as usual it is me difficult become, for me
the permission to obtain. The committee sorrowed deeply, but could
me the permission not grant on account of a law which from the
Concordia demands she shall the German language protect. Du liebe
Zeit! How so had one to me this say could- might- dared- should? I
am indeed the truest friend of the German language- and not only
now, but from long since- yes, before twenty years already. And
never have I the desire had the noble language to hurt; to the
contrary, only wished she to improve- I would her only reform. It is
the dream of my life been. I have already visits by the various German
governments paid and for contracts prayed. I am now to Austria in
the same task come. I would only some changes effect. I would only the
language method- the luxurious, elaborate construction compress, the
eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the
introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid;
the verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope
discover can. With one word, my gentlemen, I would your beloved
language simplify so that, my gentlemen, when you her for prayer need,
One her yonder-up understands.
I beseech you, from me yourself counsel to let, execute these
mentioned reforms. Then will you an elegant language possess, and
afterward, when you some thing say will, will you at least yourself
understand what you said had. But often nowadays, when you a mile-long
sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then
must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine
what you actually spoken have. Before several days has the
correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred
and twelve words contain, and therein were seven parentheses
smuggled in, and the subject seven times changed. Think you only, my
gentlemen, in the course of the voyage of a single sentence must the
poor, persecuted, fatigued subject seven times change position!
Now, when we the mentioned reforms execute, will it no longer so bad
be. Doch noch eins. I might gladly the separable verb also a little
bit reform. I might none do let what Schiller did: he has the whole
history of the Thirty Years' War between the two members of a
separable verb in-pushed. That has even Germany itself aroused, and
one has Schiller the permission refused the History of the Hundred
Years' War to compose- God be it thanked! After all these reforms
established be will, will the German language the noblest and the
prettiest on the world be.
Since to you now, my gentlemen, the character of my mission known
is, beseech I you so friendly to be and to me your valuable help
grant. Mr. Potzl has the public believed make would that I to Vienna
come am in order the bridges to clog up and the traffic to hinder,
while I observations gather and note. Allow you yourselves but not
from him deceived. My frequent presence on the bridges has an entirely
innocent ground. Yonder gives it the necessary space, yonder can one a
noble long German sentence elaborate, the bridge-railing along, and
his whole contents with one glance overlook. On the one end of the
railing pasted I the first member of a separable verb and the final
member cleave I to the other end- then spread the body of the sentence
between it out! Usually are for my purposes the bridges of the city
long enough; when I but Potzl's writings study will I ride out and use
the glorious endless imperial bridge. But this is a calumny; Potzl
writes the prettiest German. Perhaps not so pliable as the mine, but
in many details much better. Excuse you these flatteries. These are
well deserved.
Now I my speech execute- no, I would say I bring her to the close. I
am a foreigner- but here, under you, have I it entirely forgotten. And
so again and yet again proffer I you my heartiest thanks.
GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS.
ADDRESS AT THE JUBILEE CELEBRATION OF THE
EMANCIPATION OF THE HUNGARIAN PRESS,
MARCH 26, 1899.
The Ministry and members of Parliament were present. The subject was
the "Ausgleich"- i. e., the arrangement for the apportionment of the
taxes between Hungary and Austria. Paragraph 14 of the ausgleich fixes
the proportion each country must pay to the support of the army. It is
the paragraph which caused the trouble and prevented its renewal.
NOW that we are all here together, I think it will be a good idea to
arrange the ausgleich. If you will act for Hungary I shall be quite
willing to act for Austria, and this is the very time for it. There
couldn't be a better, for we are all feeling friendly, fair-minded,
and hospitable now, and full of admiration for each other, full of
confidence in each other, full of the spirit of welcome, full of the
grace of forgiveness, and the disposition to let bygones be bygones.
Let us not waste this golden, this beneficent, this providential
opportunity. I am willing to make any concession you want, just so
we get it settled. I am not only willing to let grain come in free,
I am willing to pay the freight on it, and you may send delegates to
the Reichsrath if you like. All I require is that they shall be quiet,
peaceable people like your own deputies, and not disturb our
proceedings.
If you want the
Gegenseitigengeldbeitragendenverhaltnismassigkeiten rearranged and
readjusted I am ready for that. I will let you off at twenty-eight per
cent.- twenty-seven- even twenty-five if you insist, for there is
nothing illiberal about me when I am out on a diplomatic debauch.
Now, in return for these concessions, I am willing to take
anything in reason, and I think we may consider the business settled
and the ausgleich ausgegloschen at last for ten solid years, and we
will sign the papers in blank, and do it here and now.
Well, I am unspeakably glad to have that ausgleich off my hands.
It has kept me awake nights for anderthalbjahr.
But I never could settle it before, because always when I called
at the Foreign Office in Vienna to talk about it, there wasn't anybody
at home, and that is not a place where you can go in and see for
yourself whether it is a mistake or not, because the person who
takes care of the front door there is of a size that discourages
liberty of action and the free spirit of investigation. To think the
ausgleich is abgemacht at last! It is a grand and beautiful
consummation, and I am glad I came.
The way I feel now I do honestly believe I would rather be just my
own humble self at this moment than paragraph 14.
A NEW GERMAN WORD.
To aid a local charity Mr. Clemens appeared before a fashionable
audience in Vienna, March 10, 1899, reading his sketch "The Lucerne
Girl," and describing how he had been interviewed and ridiculed. He
said in part:
I HAVE not sufficiently mastered German to allow my using it with
impunity. My collection of fourteen-syllable German words is still
incomplete. But I have just added to that collection a jewel- a
veritable jewel. I found it in a telegram from Linz, and it contains
ninety-five letters:
Personaleinkommensteuerschatzungskommissionsmitgliedsreisekosten-
rechnungserganzungsrevisionsfund
If I could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone I should
sleep beneath it in peace.
UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM.
DELIVERED AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE PUBLISHERS OF
"THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY" TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
IN HONOR OF HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY,
AUGUST 29, 1879.
I WOULD have travelled a much greater distance than I have come to
witness the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes; for my feeling toward
him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter
from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event
to him, as all of you know by your own experience. You never can
receive letters enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that
one, or dim the memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the
gratification it gave you. Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or
cheap.
Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our
guest- Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was also the first great literary man
I ever stole anything from- and that is how I came to write to him and
he to me. When my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me,
"The dedication is very neat." Yes, I said, I thought it was. My
friend said, "I always admired it, even before I saw it in The
Innocents Abroad." I naturally said: "What do you mean? Where did
you ever see it before?" "Well, I saw it first some years ago as
Doctor Holmes's dedication to his Songs in Many Keys." Of course, my
first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, but upon
reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two and give
him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a
book-store, and he did prove it. I had really stolen that
dedication, almost word for word. I could not imagine how this curious
thing had happened; for I knew one thing- that a certain amount of
pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this
pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's
ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man- and
admirers had often told me I had nearly a basketful- though they
were rather reserved as to the size of the basket.
However, I thought the thing out, and solved the mystery. Two
years before, I had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich
Islands, and had read and re-read Doctor Holmes's poems till my mental
reservoir was filled up with them to the brim. The dedication lay on
the top, and handy, so, by-and-by, I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps I
unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people
have told me that my book was pretty poetical, in one way or
another. Well, of course, I wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I
hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way
that it was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed
we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and
hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. He stated a
truth, and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot
so gently and so healingly, that I was rather glad I had committed the
crime, for the sake of the letter. I afterward called on him and
told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine that struck him
as being good protoplasm for poetry. He could see by that that there
wasn't anything mean about me; so we got along right from the start. I
have not met Doctor Holmes many times since; and lately he said-
However, I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which I got
on my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my
fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say that I am
right glad to see that Doctor Holmes is still in his prime and full of
generous life; and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble
and infirmities of mind and body, I hope it may be a very long time
yet before any one can truthfully say, "He is growing old."
THE WEATHER.
ADDRESS AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST
ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY.
The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant- The Weather of New
England."
Who can lose it and forget it?
Who can have it and regret it?
"Be interposer 'twixt us Twain."
-Merchant of Venice.
I REVERENTLY believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything
in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I
think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who
experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and
then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good
article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.
There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that
compels the stranger's admiration- and regret. The weather is always
doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always
getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they
will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other
season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six
different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I
that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvellous
collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so
astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world
and get specimens from all the climes. I said, "Don't you do it; you
come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him what we
could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and
he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he
confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never
heard of before. And as to quantity- well, after he had picked out and
discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather
enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to
deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of
New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some
things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of
poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual
visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and
cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so
the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has
permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for
accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the
paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what
to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the
Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the
joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see
his tail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in
New England. Well, he mulls over it, and by-and-by he gets out
something about like this: Probably northeast to southwest winds,
varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points
between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place;
probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded
by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning. Then he jots down his
postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents. "But it is
possible that the programme may be wholly changed in the mean time."
Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the
dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about
it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of it- a perfect grand
review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to
move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the
house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned. You make up
your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under, and take
hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you
get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments; but they
can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing,
that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing
behind for you to tell whether- Well, you'd think it was something
valuable, and a Congressman had been there. And the thunder. When
the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up
the instruments for the performance, strangers say, "Why, what awful
thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raised and the real
concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with
his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in New
England- lengthways, I mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the size
of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it
can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond
the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over
the neighboring States. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather.
You can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying
to do it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the
New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like
to hear rain on a tin roof. So I covered part of my roof with tin,
with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on
that tin? No, sir; skips it every time. Mind, in this speech I have
been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather- no language
could do it justice. But, after all, there is at least one or two
things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced by
it) which we residents would not like to part with. If we hadn't our
bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the
weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying
vagaries- the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from
the bottom to the top- ice that is as bright and clear as crystal;
when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen
dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah
of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the
sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms
that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which
change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to
red, from red to green, and green to gold- the tree becomes a spraying
fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the
acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of
bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make
the words too strong.
THE BABIES.
DELIVERED AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN
BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR
FIRST COMMANDER GENERAL U. S.
GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879.
The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies.- As they comfort us
in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities."
I LIKE that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We
have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast
works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame
that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored
the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and
think a minute- if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your
early married life and recontemplate your first baby- you will
remember that he amounted to a good deal, and even something over. You
soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family
headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire
command. You became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had
to stand around too. He was not a commander who made allowances for
time, distance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute his
order whether it was possible or not. And there was only one form of
marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He
treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the
bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You could face the
death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow;
but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted
your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were
sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and
advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his
war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of
the chance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to
throw out any side-remarks about certain services being unbecoming
an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered
his pap bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You
went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial
office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to
see if it was right- three parts water to one of milk, a touch of
sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those
immortal hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things
you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take
stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his
sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty,
but too thin- simply wind on the stomach, my friends. If the baby
proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o'clock in the morning,
didn't you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which
would not improve a Sunday-school book much, that that was the very
thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! you were under good
discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your
undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even
tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!- Rock-a-by Baby in the
Tree-top, for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee!
And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is not everybody
within a mile around that likes military music at three in the
morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or
three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited
him like exercise and noise, what did you do? You simply went on until
you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn't amount
to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by
itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole
Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible,.
brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can't make
him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As
long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins.
Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain't any real
difference between triplets and an insurrection.
Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance
of the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty
years from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if
it still survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a
Republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of
our increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a
political leviathan- a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day
will be on deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a
big contract on their hands. Among the three or four million cradles
now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve
for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. In
one of these cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this
moment teething- think of it!- and putting in a world of dead earnest,
unarticulated, but perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. In
another the future renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining
Milky Way with but a languid interest- poor little chap!- and
wondering what has become of that other one they call the wet-nurse.
In another the future great historian is lying- and doubtless will
continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. In another the
future President is busying himself with no profounder problem of
state than what the mischief has become of his hair so early; and in a
mighty array of other cradles there are now some 60,000 future
office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple
with that same old problem a second time. And in still one more
cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with
his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his
whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way
to get his big toe into his mouth- an achievement which, meaning no
disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire
attention to some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a
prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he
succeeded.
OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES.
DELIVERED AT THE AUTHORS' CLUB, NEW YORK.
OUR children- yours-and-mine. They seem like little things to talk
about- our children, but little things often make up the sum of
human life- that's a good sentence. I repeat it, little things often
produce great things. Now, to illustrate, take Sir Isaac Newton- I
presume some of you have heard of Mr. Newton. Well, once when Sir
Isaac Newton- a mere lad- got over into the man's apple orchard- I
don't know what he was doing there- I didn't come all the way from
Hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n Mr. Newton's honesty- but when he was
there- in the main orchard- he saw an apple fall and he was
a-t-t-racted toward it, and that led to the discovery- not of Mr.
Newton- but of the great law of attraction and gravitation.
And there was once another great discoverer- I've forgotten his
name, and I don't remember what he discovered, but I know it was
something very important, and I hope you will all tell your children
about it when you get home. Well, when the great discoverer was once
loafin' around down in Virginia, and a-puttin' in his time flirting
with Pocahontas- oh! Captain John Smith, that was the man's name-
and while he and Poca were sitting in Mr. Powhatan's garden, he
accidentally put his arm around her and picked something- a simple
weed, which proved to be tobacco- and now we find it in every
Christian family, shedding its civilizing influence broadcast
throughout the whole religious community.
Now there was another great man, I can't think of his name either,
who used to loaf around and watch the great chandelier in the
cathedral at Pisa, which set him to thinking about the great law of
gunpowder, and eventually led to the discovery of the cotton-gin.
Now, I don't say this as an inducement for our young men to loaf
around like Mr. Newton and Mr. Galileo and Captain Smith, but they
were once little babies two days old, and they show what little things
have sometimes accomplished.
EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS.
The children of the Educational Alliance gave a performance of
"The Prince and the Pauper" on the afternoon of April 14, 1907, in the
theatre of the Alliance Building in East Broadway. The audience was
composed of nearly one thousand children of the neighborhood. Mr.
Clemens, Mr. Howells, and Mr. Daniel Frohman were among the invited
guests.
I HAVE not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily, and so thoroughly
since I played Miles Hendon twenty-two years ago. I used to play in
this piece ("The Prince and the Pauper") with my children, who,
twenty-two years ago, were little youngsters. One of my daughters
was the Prince, and a neighbor's daughter was the Pauper, and the
children of other neighbors played other parts. But we never gave such
a performance as we have seen here to-day. It would have been beyond
us.
My late wife was the dramatist and stage-manager. Our coachman was
the stage-manager, second in command. We used to play it in this
simple way, and the one who used to bring in the crown on a cushion-
he was a little fellow then- is now a clergyman way up high- six or
seven feet high- and growing higher all the time. We played it well,
but not as well as you see it here, for you see it done by practically
trained professionals.
I was especially interested in the scene which we have just had, for
Miles Hendon was my part. I did it as well as a person could who never
remembered his part. The children all knew their parts. They did not
mind if I did not know mine. I could thread a needle nearly as well as
the player did whom you saw to-day. The words of my part I could
supply on the spot. The words of the song that Miles Hendon sang
here I did not catch. But I was great in that song.
[Then Mr. Clemens hummed a bit of doggerel that the reporter made
out as this:
"There was a woman in her town,
She loved her husband well,
But another man just twice as well."
"How is that?" demanded Mr. Clemens. Then resuming:]
It was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a new set of words each
time that I played the part.
If I had a thousand citizens in front of me, I would like to give
them information, but you children already know all that I have
found out about the Educational Alliance. It's like a man living
within thirty miles of Vesuvius and never knowing about a volcano.
It's like living for a lifetime in Buffalo, eighteen miles from
Niagara, and never going to see the Falls. So I had lived in New
York and knew nothing about the Educational Alliance.
This theatre is a part of the work, and furnishes pure and clean
plays. This theatre is an influence. Everything in the world is
accomplished by influences which train and educate. When you get to be
seventy-one and a half, as I am, you may think that your education
is over, but it isn't.
If we had forty theatres of this kind in this city of four millions,
how they would educate and elevate! We should have a body of
educated theatre-goers.
It would make better citizens, honest citizens. One of the best
gifts a millionaire could make would be a theatre here and a theatre
there. It would make of you a real Republic, and bring about an
educational level.
THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE.
On November 19, 1907, Mr. Clemens entertained a party of six or
seven hundred of his friends, inviting them to witness the
representation of "The Prince and the Pauper," played by boys and
girls of the East Side at the Children's Educational Theatre, New
York.
JUST a word or two to let you know how deeply I appreciate the honor
which the children who are the actors and frequenters of this cozy
playhouse have conferred upon me. They have asked me to be their
ambassador to invite the hearts and brains of New York to come down
here and see the work they are doing. I consider it a grand
distinction to be chosen as their intermediary. Between the children
and myself there is an indissoluble bond of friendship.
I am proud of this theatre and this performance- proud, because I am
naturally vain- vain of myself and proud of the children.
I wish we could reach more children at one time. I am glad to see
that the children of the East Side have turned their backs on the
Bowery theatres to come to see the pure entertainments presented here.
This Children's Theatre is a great educational institution. I hope
the time will come when it will be part of every public school in
the land. I may be pardoned in being vain. I was born vain, I guess.
[At this point the stage-manager's whistle interrupted Mr. Clemens.]
That settles it; there's my cue to stop. I was to talk until the
whistle blew, but it blew before I got started. It takes me longer
to get started than most people. I guess I was born at slow speed.
My time is up, and if you'll keep quiet for two minutes I'll tell
you something about Miss Herts, the woman who conceived this
splendid idea. She is the originator and the creator of this
theatre. Educationally, this institution coins the gold of young
hearts into external good.
[On April 23, 1908, he spoke again at the same place]
I will be strictly honest with you; I am only fit to be honorary
president. It is not to be expected that I should be useful as a
real president. But when it comes to things ornamental I, of course,
have no objection. There is, of course, no competition. I take it as a
very real compliment because there are thousands of children who
have had a part in this request. It is promotion in truth.
It is a thing worth doing that is done here. You have seen the
children play. You saw how little Sally reformed her burglar. She
could reform any burglar. She could reform me. This is the only school
in which can be taught the highest and most difficult lessons- morals.
In other schools the way of teaching morals is revolting. Here the
children who come in thousands live through each part.
They are terribly anxious for the villain to get his bullet, and
that I take to be a humane and proper sentiment. They spend freely the
ten cents that is not saved without a struggle. It comes out of the
candy money, and the money that goes for chewing-gum and other
necessaries of life. They make the sacrifice freely. This is the
only school which they are sorry to leave.
POETS AS POLICEMEN.
Mr. Clemens was one of the speakers at the Lotos Club dinner to
Governor Odell, March 24, 1900. The police problem was referred to
at length.
LET us abolish policemen who carry clubs and revolvers, and put in a
squad of poets armed to the teeth with poems on Spring and Love. I
would be very glad to serve as commissioner, not because I think I
am especially qualified, but because I am too tired to work and
would like to take a rest.
Howells would go well as my deputy. He is tired too, and needs a
rest badly.
I would start in at once to elevate, purify, and depopulate the
red-light district. I would assign the most soulful poets to that
district, all heavily armed with their poems. Take Chauncey Depew as a
sample. I would station them on the corners after they had rounded
up all the depraved people of the district so they could not escape,
and then have them read from their poems to the poor unfortunates. The
plan would be very effective in causing an emigration of the
depraved element.
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED.
When Mr. Clemens arrived from Europe in 1895 one of the first things
he did was to see the dramatization of Pudd'nhead Wilson. The audience
becoming aware of the fact that Mr. Clemens was in the house called
upon him for a speech.
NEVER in my life have I been able to make a speech without
preparation, and I assure you that this position in which I find
myself is one totally unexpected.
I have been hemmed in all day by William Dean Howells and other
frivolous persons, and I have been talking about everything in the
world except that of which speeches are constructed. Then, too,
seven days on the water is not conducive to speech-making. I will only
say that I congratulate Mr. Mayhew; he has certainly made a delightful
play out of my rubbish. His is a charming gift. Confidentially I
have always had an idea that I was well equipped to write plays, but I
have never encountered a manager who has agreed with me.
DALY THEATRE.
ADDRESS AT A DINNER AFTER THE ONE HUNDREDTH
PERFORMANCE OF "THE TAMING OF THE SHREW."
Mr. Clemens made the following speech, which he incorporated
afterward in Following the Equator.
I AM glad to be here. This is the hardest theatre in New York to get
into, even at the front door. I never got in without hard work. I am
glad we have got so far in at last. Two or three years ago I had an
appointment to meet Mr. Daly on the stage of this theatre at eight
o'clock in the evening. Well, I got on a train at Hartford to come
to New York and keep the appointment. All I had to do was to come to
the back door of the theatre on Sixth Avenue. I did not believe
that; I did not believe it could be on Sixth Avenue, but that is
what Daly's note said- come to that door, walk right in, and keep
the appointment. It looked very easy. It looked easy enough, but I had
not much confidence in the Sixth Avenue door.
Well, I was kind of bored on the train, and I bought some
newspapers- New Haven newspapers- and there was not much news in them,
so I read the advertisements. There was one advertisement of a
bench-show. I had heard of bench-shows, and I often wondered what
there was about them to interest people. I had seen bench-shows-
lectured to bench-shows, in fact- but I didn't want to advertise
them or to brag about them. Well, I read on a little, and learned that
a bench-show was not a bench-show- but dogs, not benches at all-
only dogs. I began to be interested, and as there was nothing else
to do I read every bit of the advertisement, and learned that the
biggest thing in this show was a St. Bernard dog that weighed one
hundred and forty-five pounds. Before I got to New York I was so
interested in the bench-shows that I made up my mind to go to one
the first chance I got. Down on Sixth Avenue, near where that back
door might be, I began to take things leisurely. I did not like to
be in too much of a hurry. There was not anything in sight that looked
like a back door. The nearest approach to it was a cigar store. So I
went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough to
pay for any information I might get and leave the dealer a fair
profit. Well, I did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man think
me crazy, by asking him if that was the way to Daly's Theatre, so I
started gradually to lead up to the subject, asking him first if
that was the way to Castle Garden. When I got to the real question,
and he said he would show me the way, I was astonished. He sent me
through a long hallway, and I found myself in a back yard. Then I went
through a long passageway and into a little room, and there before
my eyes was a big St. Bernard dog lying on a bench. There was
another door beyond and I went there, and was met by a big, fierce man
with a fur cap on and coat off, who remarked, "Phwat do yez want?" I
told him I wanted to see Mr. Daly. "Yez can't see Mr. Daly this time
of night," he responded. I urged that I had an appointment with Mr.
Daly, and gave him my card, which did not seem to impress him much.
"Yez can't get in and yez can't shmoke here. Throw away that cigar. If
yez want to see Mr. Daly, yez'll have to be after going to the front
door and buy a ticket, and then if yez have luck and he's around
that way yez may see him." I was getting discouraged, but I had one
resource left that had been of good service in similar emergencies.
Firmly but kindly I told him my name was Mark Twain, and I awaited
results. There was none. He was not fazed a bit. "Phwere's your
order to see Mr. Daly?" he asked. I handed him the note, and he
examined it intently. "My friend," I remarked, "you can read that
better if you hold it the other side up." But he took no notice of the
suggestion, and finally asked: "Where's Mr. Daly's name?" "There it
is," I told him, "on the top of the page." "That's all right," he
said, "that's where he always puts it; but I don't see the 'W' in
his name," and he eyed me distrustfully. Finally he asked, "Phwat do
yez want to see Mr. Daly for?" "Business." "Business?" "Yes." It was
my only hope. "Pwhat kind- theatres?" That was too much. "No." "What
kind of shows, then?" "Bench-shows." It was risky, but I was
desperate. "Bench-shows, is it- where?" The big man's face changed,
and he began to look interested. "New Haven." "New Haven, it is? Ah,
that's going to be a fine show. I'm glad to see you. Did you see a big
dog in the other room?" "Yes." "How much do you think that dog
weighs?" "One hundred and forty-five pounds." "Look at that, now! He's
a good judge of dogs, and no mistake. He weighs all of one hundred and
thirty-eight. Sit down and shmoke- go on and shmoke your cigar, I'll
tell Mr. Daly you are here." In a few minutes I was on the stage
shaking hands with Mr. Daly, and the big man standing around glowing
with satisfaction. "Come around in front," said Mr. Daly, "and see the
performance. I will put you into my own box." And as I moved away I
heard my honest friend mutter, "Well, he desarves it."
THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN.
A LARGE part of the daughter of civilization is her dress- as it
should be. Some civilized women would lose half their charm without
dress, and some would lose all of it. The daughter of modern
civilization dressed at her utmost best is a marvel of exquisite and
beautiful art and expense. All the lands, all the climes, and all
the arts are laid under tribute to furnish her forth. Her linen is
from Belfast, her robe is from Paris, her lace is from Venice, or
Spain, or France, her feathers are from the remote regions of Southern
Africa, her furs from the remoter region of the iceberg and the
aurora, her fan from Japan, her diamonds from Brazil, her bracelets
from California, her pearls from Ceylon, her cameos from Rome. She has
gems and trinkets from buried Pompeii, and others that graced comely
Egyptian forms that have been dust and ashes now for forty
centuries. Her watch is from Geneva, her card-case is from China,
her hair is from- from- I don't know where her hair is from; I never
could find out; that is, her other hair- her public hair, her Sunday
hair; I don't mean the hair she goes to bed with....
And that reminds me of a trifle. Any time you want to you can glance
around the carpet of a Pullman car, and go and pick up a hair-pin; but
not to save your life can you get any woman in that car to acknowledge
that hair-pin. Now, isn't that strange? But it's true. The woman who
has never swerved from cast-iron veracity and fidelity in her whole
life will, when confronted with this crucial test, deny her
hair-pin. She will deny that hair-pin before a hundred witnesses. I
have stupidly got into more trouble and more hot water trying to
hunt up the owner of a hair-pin in a Pullman than by any other
indiscretion of my life.
DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT.
When the present copyright law was under discussion, Mr. Clemens
appeared before the committee. He had sent Speaker Cannon the
following letter:
"DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,- Please get me the thanks of Congress, not
next week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish this for
your affectionate old friend right away- by persuasion if you can,
by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get
on the floor of the House for two or three hours and talk to the
members, man by man, in behalf of support, encouragement, and
protection of one of the nation's most valuable assets and industries-
its literature. I have arguments with me- also a barrel with liquid in
it.
"Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait for
others- there isn't time; furnish them to me yourself and let Congress
ratify later. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for
seventy-one years and am entitled to the thanks. Congress knows this
perfectly well, and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and
earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and
never publicly uttered.
"Send me an order on the sergeant-at-arms quick. When shall I come?
"With love and a benediction,
"MARK TWAIN."
While waiting to appear before the committee, Mr. Clemens talked
to the reporters:
WHY don't you ask why I am wearing such apparently unseasonable
clothes? I'll tell you. I have found that when a man reaches the
advanced age of seventy-one years, as I have, the continual sight of
dark clothing is likely to have a depressing effect upon him.
Light-colored clothing is more pleasing to the eye and enlivens the
spirit. Now, of course, I cannot compel every one to wear such
clothing just for my especial benefit, so I do the next best thing and
wear it myself.
Of course, before a man reaches my years the fear of criticism might
prevent him from indulging his fancy. I am not afraid of that. I am
decidedly for pleasing color combinations in dress. I like to see
the women's clothes, say, at the opera. What can be more depressing
than the sombre black which custom requires men to wear upon state
occasions? A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of
crows, and is just about as inspiring.
After all, what is the purpose of clothing? Are not clothes intended
primarily to preserve dignity and also to afford comfort to their
wearer? Now I know of nothing more uncomfortable than the
present-day clothes of men. The finest clothing made is a person's own
skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.
The best-dressed man I have ever seen, however, was a native of
the Sandwich Islands who attracted my attention thirty years ago. Now,
when that man wanted to don especial dress to honor a public
occasion or a holiday, why, he occasionally put on a pair of
spectacles. Otherwise the clothing with which God had provided him
sufficed.
Of course, I have ideas of dress reform. For one thing, why not
adopt some of the women's styles? Goodness knows, they adopt enough of
ours. Take the peek-a-boo waist, for instance. It has the obvious
advantages of being cool and comfortable, and in addition it is almost
always made up in pleasing colors which cheer and do not depress.
It is true that I dressed the Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's
Court in a plug-hat, but, let's see, that was twenty-five years ago.
Then no man was considered fully dressed until he donned a plug-hat.
Nowadays I think that no man is dressed until he leaves it home.
Why, when I left home yesterday they trotted out a plug-hat for me
to wear.
"You must wear it," they told me; "why, just think of going to
Washington without a plug-hat!" But I said no; I would wear a derby or
nothing. Why, I believe I could walk along the streets of New York-
I never do- but still I think I could- and I should never see a
well-dressed man wearing a plug-hat. If I did I should suspect him
of something. I don't know just what, but I would suspect him.
Why, when I got up on the second story of that Pennsylvania
ferry-boat coming down here yesterday I saw Howells coming along. He
was the only man on the boat with a plug-hat, and I tell you he felt
ashamed of himself. He said he had been persuaded to wear it against
his better sense. But just think of a man nearly seventy years old who
has not a mind of his own on such matters!
"Are you doing any work now?" the youngest and most serious reporter
asked.
Work? I retired from work on my seventieth birthday. Since then I
have been putting in merely twenty-six hours a day dictating my
autobiography, which, as John Phoenix said in regard to his autograph,
may be relied upon as authentic, as it is written exclusively by me.
But it is not to be published in full until I am thoroughly dead. I
have made it as caustic, fiendish, and devilish as possible. It will
fill many volumes, and I shall continue writing it until the time
comes for me to join the angels. It is going to be a terrible
autobiography. It will make the hair of some folks curl. But it cannot
be published until I am dead, and the persons mentioned in it and
their children and grand-children are dead. It is something awful!
"Can you tell us the names of some of the notables that are here
to see you off?"
I don't know. I am so shy. My shyness takes a peculiar phase. I
never look a person in the face. The reason is that I am afraid they
may know me and that I may not know them, which makes it very
embarrassing for both of us. I always wait for the other person to
speak. I know lots of people, but I don't know who they are. It is all
a matter of ability to observe things. I never observe anything now. I
gave up the habit years ago. You should keep a habit up if you want to
become proficient in it. For instance, I was a pilot once, but I
gave it up, and I do not believe the captain of the Minneapolis
would let me navigate his ship to London. Still, if I think that he is
not on the job I may go up on the bridge and offer him a few
suggestions.
COLLEGE GIRLS.
Five hundred undergraduates, under the auspices of the Woman's
University Club, New York, welcomed Mr. Clemens as their guest,
April 3, 1906, and gave him the freedom of the club, which the
chairman explained was freedom to talk individually to any girl
present.
I'VE worked for the public good thirty years, so for the rest of
my life I shall work for my personal contentment. I am glad Miss Neron
has fed me, for there is no telling what iniquity I might wander
into on an empty stomach- I mean, an empty mind.
I am going to tell you a practical story about how once upon a
time I was blind- a story I should have been using all these months,
but I never thought about telling it until the other night, and now it
is too late, for on the nineteenth of this month I hope to take formal
leave of the platform forever at Carnegie Hall- that is, take leave so
far as talking for money and for people who have paid money to hear me
talk. I shall continue to infest the platform on these conditions-
that there is nobody in the house who has paid to hear me, that I am
not paid to be heard, and that there will be none but young women
students in the audience. [Here Mr. Clemens told the story of how he
took a girl to the theatre while he was wearing tight boots, which
appears elsewhere in this volume, and ended by saying: "And now let
this be a lesson to you- I don't know what kind of a lesson; I'll
let you think it out."]
GIRLS
GIRLS.
IN my capacity of publisher I recently received a manuscript from
a teacher which embodied a number of answers given by her pupils to
questions propounded. These answers show that the children had nothing
but the sound to go by- the sense was perfectly empty. Here are some
of their answers to words they were asked to define: Auriferous-
pertaining to an orifice; ammonia- the food of the gods; equestrian-
one who asks questions; parasite- a kind of umbrella; ipecac- a man
who likes a good dinner. And here is the definition of an ancient word
honored by a great party: Republican- a sinner mentioned in the Bible.
And here is an innocent deliverance of a zoological kind: "There are a
good many donkeys in the theological gardens." Here also is a
definition which really isn't very bad in its way: Demagogue- a vessel
containing beer and other liquids. Here, too, is a sample of a boy's
composition on girls, which, I must say, I rather like:
"Girls are very stuckup and dignified in their manner and
behaveyour. They think more of dress than anything and like to play
with dowls and rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance
and are afraid of guns. They stay at home all the time and go to
church every Sunday. They are al-ways sick. They are al-ways funy
and making fun of boys hands and they say how dirty. They cant play
marbles. I pity them poor things. They make fun of boys and then
turn round and love them. I don't belave they ever killed a cat or
anything. They look out every nite and say, 'Oh, a'nt the moon
lovely!' Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they al-ways
now their lessons bettern boys."
THE LADIES.
DELIVERED AT THE ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL, 1872,
OF THE SCOTTISH CORPORATION OF LONDON
Mr. Clemens replied to the toast "The Ladies."
I AM proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to
this especial toast, to "The Ladies," or to women if you please, for
that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and
therefore the more entitled to reverence. I have noticed that the
Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous
characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never
refer to even the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady," but
speaks of her as a woman. It is odd, but you will find it is so. I
am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the toast to
women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should
take precedence of all others- of the army, of the navy, of even
royalty itself- perhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this
day and in this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a
broad general health to all good women when you drink the health of
the Queen of England and the Princess of Wales. I have in mind a
poem just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. And
what an inspiration that was, and how instantly the present toast
recalls the verses to all our minds when the most noble, the most
gracious, the purest, and sweetest of all poets says:
"Woman! O woman!- er-
Wom-"
However, you remember the lines; and you remember how feelingly, how
daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up before you,
feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman; and how, as
you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into worship of
the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere breath,
mere words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet, with
stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this beautiful
child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows that
must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how
the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe- so wild, so
regretful, so full of mournful retrospection. The lines run thus:
"Alas!- alas!- a- alas!
--Alas!---- alas!"
- and so on. I do not remember the rest; but, taken together, it seems
to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius
has ever brought forth- and I feel that if I were to talk hours I
could not do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than
I have now done in simply quoting that poet's matchless words. The
phases of the womanly nature are infinite in their variety. Take any
type of woman, and you shall find in it something to respect,
something to admire, something to love. And you shall find the whole
joining you heart and hand. Who was more patriotic than Joan of Arc?
Who was braver? Who has given us a grander instance of
self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you remember well, what a
throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over us all when
Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. Who does not sorrow for the loss of
Sappho, the sweet. singer of Israel? Who among us does not miss the
gentle ministrations, the softening influences, the humble piety of
Lucretia Borgia? Who can join in the heartless libel that says woman
is extravagant in dress when he can look back and call to mind our
simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed in her modification of the
Highland costume? Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been
painters, women have been poets. As long as language lives the name of
Cleopatra will live. And not because she conquered George III.- but
because she wrote those divine lines:
"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so."
The story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones
of our own sex- some of them sons of St. Andrew, too- Scott, Bruce,
Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis- the gifted Ben Lomond, and
the great new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli.* Out of the great plains of
history tower whole mountain ranges of sublime women- the Queen of
Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey Gamp; the list is endless- but I
will not call the mighty roll, the names rise up in your own
memories at the mere suggestion, luminous with the glory of deeds that
cannot die, hallowed by the loving worship of the good and the true of
all epochs and all climes. Suffice it for our pride and our honor that
we in our day have added to it such names as those of Grace Darling
and Florence Nightingale. Woman is all that she should be- gentle,
patient, long-suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous
impulses. It is her blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead
for the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor the distressed,
uplift the fallen, befriend the friendless- in a word, afford the
healing of her sympathies and a home in her heart for all the
bruised and persecuted children of misfortune that knock at its
hospitable door. And when I say, God bless her, there is none among us
who has known the ennobling affection of a wife, or the steadfast
devotion of a mother but in his heart will say, Amen!
* Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of England, had
just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and had made a
speech which gave rise to a world of discussion.
WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB.
On October 27, 1900, the New York Woman's Press Club gave a tea in
Carnegie Hall. Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor.
IF I were asked an opinion I would call this an ungrammatical
nation. There is no such thing as perfect grammar, and I don't
always speak good grammar myself. But I have been foregathering for
the past few days with professors of American universities, and I've
heard them all say things like this: "He don't like to do it."
[There was a stir.] Oh, you'll hear that to-night if you listen, or,
"He would have liked to have done it." You'll catch some educated
Americans saying that. When these men take pen in hand they write with
as good grammar as any. But the moment they throw the pen aside they
throw grammatical morals aside with it.
To illustrate the desirability and possibility of concentration, I
must tell you a story of my little six-year-old daughter. The
governess had been teaching her about the reindeer, and, as the custom
was, she related it to the family. She reduced the history of that
reindeer to two or three sentences when the governess could not have
put it into a page. She said: "The reindeer is a very swift animal.
A reindeer once drew a sled four hundred miles in two hours." She
appended the comment: "This was regarded as extraordinary." And
concluded: "When that reindeer was done drawing that sled four hundred
miles in two hours it died."
As a final instance of the force of limitations in the development
of concentration, I must mention that beautiful creature, Helen
Keller, whom I have known for these many years. I am filled with the
wonder of her knowledge, acquired because shut out from all
distraction. If I could have been deaf, dumb, and blind I also might
have arrived at something.
VOTES FOR WOMEN.
AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE HEBREW TECHNICAL
SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, HELD IN THE TEMPLE
EMMANUEL, JANUARY 20, 1901
Mr. Clemens was introduced by President Meyer, who said: "In one
of Mr. Clemens's works he expressed his opinion of men, saying he
had no choice between Hebrew and Gentile, black men or white; to him
all men were alike. But I never could find that he expressed his
opinion of women; perhaps that opinion was so exalted that he could
not express it. We shall now be called to hear what he thinks of
women."
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,- It is a small help that I can afford, but
it is just such help that one can give as coming from the heart
through the mouth. The report of Mr. Meyer was admirable, and I was as
interested in it as you have been. Why, I'm twice as old as he, and
I've had so much experience that I would say to him, when he makes his
appeal for help: "Don't make it for to-day or to-morrow, but collect
the money on the spot."
We are all creatures of sudden impulse. We must be worked up by
steam, as it were. Get them to write their wills now, or it may be too
late by-and-by. Fifteen or twenty years ago I had an experience I
shall never forget. I got into a church which was crowded by a
sweltering and panting multitude. The city missionary of our town-
Hartford- made a telling appeal for help. He t