I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.
And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my wonder to
come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation on
such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I dreadfully
wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many short answers
as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I desired
to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass enough to
really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night when all
plantations were exactly alike and all the same color. But I held in. I
used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.
Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as
if it had been daylight. And not only that, but singing--
'Father in heaven, the day is declining,' etc.
It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly
reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said:--
'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
'Don't _know_?'
This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I
had to say just what I had said before.
'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby. 'What's the name of the
_next_ point?'
Once more I didn't know.
'Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of _any _point or place I
told you.'
I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.
'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?'
'I--I--don't know.'
'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What
_do_ you know?'
'I--I--nothing, for certain.'
'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down a
lane.'
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from one
side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would boil a
while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.
April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
They don't tally right,
and yet I'll swear the names and dates are right, and so of course they
ought to tally. I never labeled one of these thing carelessly in my
life. There is a most extraordinary mystery here."
He was tired out, now, and his brains were beginning to clog. He said he
would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this
riddle. He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then
unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a
sitting posture. "Now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall
it; "what was that dream?--it seemed to unravel that puz--"
He landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without finishing the
sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his "records." He
took a single swift glance at them and cried out--
"It's so! Heavens, what a revelation! And for twenty-three years no man
has ever suspected it!"
CHAPTER XXI.
Doom.
He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring
the cabbages.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on
the other three hundred and sixty-four.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
Wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went to work
under a high pressure of steam. He was awake all over. All sense of
weariness had been swept away by the invigorating refreshment of the
great and hopeful discovery which he had made. He made fine and accurate
reproductions of a number of his "records," and then enlarged them on a
scale of ten to one with his pantograph. He did these pantograph
enlargements on sheets of white cardboard, and made each individual line
of the bewildering maze of whorls or curves or loops which constituted
the "pattern," of a "record" stand out bold and black by reinforcing it
with ink. To the untrained eye the collection of delicate originals made
by the human finger on the glass plates looked about alike; but when
enlarged ten times they resembled the markings of a block of wood that
has been sawed across the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a
glance, and at a distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were
alike.
I have found out that there aint no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
All them people
and camels was smothered and dead and buried—buried under ten foot of
sand, we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind
uncovered them, and all that time their friends wouldn’t ever know what
become of that caravan. Tom said:
“_Now_ we know what it was that happened to the people we got the
swords and pistols from.”
Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn’t get at them, and the
wind never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and
warn’t fit to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor
people as a person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was
mistaken; this last caravan’s death went harder with us, a good deal
harder. You see, the others was total strangers, and we never got to
feeling acquainted with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the
man that was watching the girl, but it was different with this last
caravan. We was huvvering around them a whole night and ’most a whole
day, and had got to feeling real friendly with them, and acquainted. I
have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you
like people or hate them than to travel with them. Just so with these.
We kind of liked them from the start, and traveling with them put on
the finisher. The longer we traveled with them, and the more we got
used to their ways, the better and better we liked them, and the
gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. We had come to know
some of them so well that we called them by name when we was talking
about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that we even dropped
the Miss and Mister and just used their plain names without any handle,
and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course, it
wasn’t their own names, but names we give them. There was Mr. Elexander
Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss
Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and young Bushrod Butler,
and these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans and
simmeters, and dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as
soon as we come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn’t
Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing, any more, but only Elleck, and Addy,
and Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and so on.
I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!
It makes a striking and lively
picture from whatsoever point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into
the sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive of
a “gob” of mud on the end of a shingle. A few hundred yards of this flat
ground at its base belongs to the English, and then, extending across the
strip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of
a mile, comes the “Neutral Ground,” a space two or three hundred yards
wide, which is free to both parties.
“Are you going through Spain to Paris?” That question was bandied about
the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never
could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more
tired of answering, “I don't know.” At the last moment six or seven had
sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did
go, and I felt a sense of relief at once--it was forever too late now and
I could make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a
prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to
make it up.
But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten rid
of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another--a
tiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about
it, even in the first place: “That high hill yonder is called the Queen's
Chair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there
when the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she
would never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the
fortresses. If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag
for a few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up
there.”
We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the
subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These
galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in
them great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six
hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean
work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor.
Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apples sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
4, "he's a labrick--just a Simon-pure
labrick, if ever there was one."
"Yes, sir, he's a dam fool, that's the way I put him up," said No. 5.
"Anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my
sentiments."
"I'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6. "Perfect jackass--yes, and it
ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead,
I ain't no judge, that's all."
Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over the town, and
gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first
name; Pudd'nhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well
liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it
stayed. That first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to
get it set aside, or even modified. The nickname soon ceased to carry
any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was
to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.
CHAPTER II.
Driscoll Spares His Slaves.
Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for
the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The
mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the
serpent.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
Pudd'nhead Wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a
small house on the extreme western verge of the town. Between it and
Judge Driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence
dividing the properties in the middle. He hired a small office down in
the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it:
DAVID WILSON.
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW.
SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC.
But his deadly remark had ruined his chance--at least in the law. No
clients came. He took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his
own house with the law features knocked out of it. It offered his
services now in the humble capacities of land-surveyor and expert
accountant. Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and
then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch
patience and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his
way into the legal field yet. Poor fellow, he could not foresee that it
was going to take him such a weary long time to do it.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down the chief avenue,
smouldering in its crushed-strawberry tint, those splendid effects were
repeated; for every balcony, and every fanciful bird-cage of a snuggery
countersunk in the house-fronts, and all the long lines of roofs were
crowded with people, and each crowd was an explosion of brilliant color.
Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down into the
distance, was alive with gorgeously-clothed people not still, but moving,
swaying, drifting, eddying, a delirious display of all colors and all
shades of color, delicate, lovely, pale, soft, strong, stunning, vivid,
brilliant, a sort of storm of sweetpea blossoms passing on the wings of a
hurricane; and presently, through this storm of color, came swaying and
swinging the majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best of
gaudinesses, and the long procession of fanciful trucks freighted with
their groups of curious and costly images, and then the long rearguard of
stately camels, with their picturesque riders.
For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandishness, and
sustained interest and fascination, it was the most satisfying show I had
ever seen, and I suppose I shall not have the privilege of looking upon
its like again.
CHAPTER LXI.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made
School Boards.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction of deaf and dumb
and blind children than we sometimes apply in our American public schools
to the instruction of children who are in possession of all their
faculties? The result would be that the deaf and dumb and blind would
acquire nothing. They would live and die as ignorant as bricks and
stones. The methods used in the asylums are rational. The teacher
exactly measures the child's capacity, to begin with; and from thence
onwards the tasks imposed are nicely gauged to the gradual development of
that capacity, the tasks keep pace with the steps of the child's
progress, they don't jump miles and leagues ahead of it by irrational
caprice and land in vacancy--according to the average public-school plan.
In the public school, apparently, they teach the child to spell cat, then
ask it to calculate an eclipse; when it can read words of two syllables,
they require it to explain the circulation of the blood; when it reaches
the head of the infant class they bully it with conundrums that cover the
domain of universal knowledge.
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
This has
been a bitter year for English pride, and I don't like to see England
humbled--that is, not too much. We are sprung from her loins, and it
hurts me. I am for republics, and she is the only comrade we've got, in
that. We can't count France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland
to count. Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted--and
sincere, too, and nearly straight. But I am appalled to notice that
the wide extension of the surface has damaged her manners, and made her
rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels.
Won't you give our love to the Howellses all and particular?
Sincerely yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he
thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and
change. The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the
middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: “A
successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out
of it.” Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of
his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he
wrote, whimsically, “Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at
a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself..... I
would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de
luxe editions of my books. But Mrs. Clemens and the children object
to this, I do not know why.” And, in a moment of depression: “You
see the lightning refuses to strike me--there is where the defect
is. We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did. But
nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy.”
They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on
Lake Lucerne--“The charmingest place we ever lived in,” he declared,
“for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery.” It was here that
he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one
other manuscript.
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
It was remarkable
in me to remember a thing like that, which occurred when I was so young.
And it was still more remarkable that I should cling to the delusion,
for thirty years, that I _did_ remember it--for of course it never
happened; he would not have been able to walk at that age. If I had
stopped to reflect, I should not have burdened my memory with that
impossible rubbish so long. It is believed by many people that an
impression deposited in a child's memory within the first two years of
its life cannot remain there five years, but that is an error. The
incident of Benvenuto Cellini and the salamander must be accepted as
authentic and trustworthy; and then that remarkable and indisputable
instance in the experience of Helen Keller--however, I will speak of
that at another time. For many years I believed that I remembered
helping my grandfather drink his whiskey toddy when I was six weeks old,
but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my
memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could
remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are
decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the
things that happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all
have to do it.
My uncle, John A. Quarles, was a farmer, and his place was in the
country four miles from Florida. He had eight children, and fifteen or
twenty negroes, and was also fortunate in other ways. Particularly in
his character. I have not come across a better man than he was. I was
his guest for two or three months every year, from the fourth year after
we removed to Hannibal till I was eleven or twelve years old. I have
never consciously used him or his wife in a book, but his farm has come
very handy to me in literature, once or twice. In "Huck Finn" and in
"Tom Sawyer Detective" I moved it down to Arkansas. It was all of six
hundred miles, but it was no trouble, it was not a very large farm;
five hundred acres, perhaps, but I could have done it if it had been
twice as large. And as for the morality of it, I cared nothing for that;
I would move a State if the exigencies of literature required it.
It was a heavenly place for a boy, that farm of my uncle John's. The
house was a double log one, with a spacious floor (roofed in) connecting
it with the kitchen.
It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
He said that even the
smartest whites had been obliged to confess that they could not learn the
trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had possibilities which
they could not master. The white man could not control its motions,
could not make it obey him; but the aboriginal could. He told me some
wonderful things--some almost incredible things--which he had seen the
blacks do with the boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed
to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books.
It is contended--and may be said to be conceded--that the boomerang was
known to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of
this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended
that it was known to the ancient Egyptians.
One of two things is then apparent, either some one with a boomerang
arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity before European knowledge
of the thing had been lost, or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it.
It will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the
fact. But there is no hurry.
CHAPTER XX.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either of them.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
From diary:
Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany--several years
ago; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the
people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said:
“Do you remember my introducing you to an earl--the Earl of C.?”
“Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage,
just starting--belated--for the train. I remember it.”
“I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was
not looking for. He had told me a while before, about a remarkable and
interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of yours,
and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you for some
particulars about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that
day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time; but the
thing that surprised me was this: when I introduced you, you said, 'I am
glad to meet your lordship--again.
When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
So I took him over
home myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too
--typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and whole Niagaras of happy
tears; and by George! we found the aforetime young matron graying
toward the imminent verge of her half century, and the babies all
men and women, and some of them married and experimenting familywise
themselves--for not a soul of the tribe was dead! Conceive of the
ingenious devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred for
this prisoner, and she had _invented_ all those funerals herself,
to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius of
the whole thing was leaving the family-invoice a funeral _short_,
so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing.
But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan le Fay hated him
with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him.
And yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than
deliberate depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she
had; but that was no way to speak of it. When red-headed people
are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
Consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were five
whose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer
known! One woman and four men--all bent, and wrinkled, and
mind-extinguished patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten
these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories about them,
nothing definite and nothing that they repeated twice in the same
way. The succession of priests whose office it had been to pray
daily with the captives and remind them that God had put them
there, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience,
humbleness, and submission to oppression was what He loved to see
in parties of a subordinate rank, had traditions about these poor
old human ruins, but nothing more. These traditions went but
little way, for they concerned the length of the incarceration only,
and not the names of the offenses. And even by the help of
tradition the only thing that could be proven was that none of
the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years: how much longer
this privation has lasted was not guessable.
Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
“Whenever said
Directors shall determine that it is inexpedient to maintain preaching,
reading, or speaking in said church in accordance with the terms of this
deed, they are authorized and required to reconvey forthwith said lot
of land with the building thereon to Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and
assigns forever, by a proper deed of conveyance.”
She is never careless, never slipshod, about a matter of business.
Owning the property through her Board of Waxworks was safe enough, still
it was sound business to set another grip on it to cover accidents,
and she did it. Her barkers (what a curious name; I wonder if it is
copyrighted); her barkers persistently advertise to the public her
generosity in giving away a piece of land which cost her a trifle, and
a two--hundred--and--fifty--thousand--dollar church which cost her
nothing; and they can hardly speak of the unselfishness of it without
breaking down and crying; yet they know she gave nothing away, and never
intended to. However, such is the human race. Often it does seem such a
pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Some of the hostiles think that Mrs. Eddy's idea in protecting this
property in the interest of her heirs, and in accumulating a great money
fortune, is, that she may leave her natural heirs well provided for when
she goes. I think it is a mistake. I think she is of late years giving
herself large concern about only one interest-her power and glory, and
the perpetuation and worship of her Name--with a capital N. Her Church
is her pet heir, and I think it will get her wealth. It is the torch
which is to light the world and the ages with her glory.
I think she once prized money for the ease and comfort it could bring,
the showy vanities it could furnish, and the social promotion it could
command; for we have seen that she was born into the world with little
ways and instincts and aspirations and affectations that are duplicates
of our own. I do not think her money-passion has ever diminished in
ferocity, I do not think that she has ever allowed a dollar that had no
friends to get by her alive, but I think her reason for wanting it
has changed.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous andshallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said Faith is believing what youknow aint so.
Where masses of people are gathered together in England, caste is
submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the
moment, and every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of
fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of watching himself and
guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is
forgotten, and falls into abeyance--and to such a degree indeed, that he
will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to--an exhibition of
daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world.
But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself,
or when the company present is small and new to him. He is on his guard
then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the
false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of
humor.
Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor;
but both the American and his humor had their origin in England, and have
merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new
environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a
couple that were made in Australia at club suppers--one of them by an
Englishman, the other by an Australian.
CHAPTER XII.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said “Faith is believing what you
know ain't so.”
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a
missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New
Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of
God; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart
in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we
and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous
life the corpuscles.
Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said:
“It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are
the metes and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that
it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly
unaccountable--the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos.
Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be divine
revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built
on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding
priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
When we found that a
good many foreigners had hardly ever heard of America, and that a
good many more knew it only as a barbarous province away off
somewhere, that had lately been at war with somebody, we pitied the
ignorance of the Old World, but abated no jot of our importance.
Many and many a simple community in the Eastern hemisphere will
remember for years the incursion of the strange horde in the year of
our Lord 1867, that called themselves Americans, and seemed to
imagine in some unaccountable way that they had a right to be proud
of it. We generally created a famine, partly because the coffee on
the __Quaker City__ was unendurable, and sometimes the more substantial
fare was not strictly first class; and partly because one naturally
tires of sitting long at the same board and eating from the same
dishes.
The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They
looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of
America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes.
They noticed that we looked out for expenses, and got what we
conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the
mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes
and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in
making those idiots understand their own language. One of our
passengers said to a shopkeeper, in reference to a proposed return
to buy a pair of gloves, “Allong restay trankeel--may be ve coom
Moonday;” and would you believe it, that shopkeeper, a born
Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had been said. Sometimes it
seems to me, somehow, that there must be a difference between
Parisian French and __Quaker City__ French.
The people stared at us every where, and we stared at them. We
generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with
them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we
crushed them. And yet we took kindly to the manners and customs,
and especially to the fashions of the various people we visited.
When we left the Azores, we wore awful capotes and used fine tooth
combs--successfully. When we came back from Tangier, in Africa, we
were topped with fezzes of the bloodiest hue, hung with tassels like
an Indian's scalp-lock.
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.
Clemens had tried to be funny
but had failed, and his true role in life was statistics; that
he was a master of statistics, and loved them for their own
sake, and it would be the easiest task he ever undertook if he
would try to count all the real jokes he had ever made. While
the toastmaster was speaking, the members saw Mr. Clemens's
eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush. He jumped up,
and made a characteristic speech.
Perhaps I am not a humorist, but I am a first-class fool—a simpleton;
for up to this moment I have believed Chairman MacAlister to be a decent
person whom I could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives. The
exhibition he has just made of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and
a knave of the deepest dye. I have been cruelly deceived, and it serves
me right for trusting a Scotchman. Yes, I do understand figures, and I
can count. I have counted the words in MacAlister's drivel (I certainly
cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four
hundred and thirty-nine. I also carefully counted the lies—there were
exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. Therefore, I leave
MacAlister to his fate.
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors,
because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is
dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well
myself.
GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR
ADDRESS AT A FAIR HELD AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK, IN
OCTOBER, 1900, IN AID OF THE ORPHANS AT GALVESTON
I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy this place first and
would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a
text for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is
proverbial with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not
come here, and has not furnished me with a text, and I am here without
a text. I have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome
faces, and—but I won't continue that, for I could go on forever about
attractive faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. But, after all,
compliments should be in order in a place like this.
I have been in New York two or three days, and have been in a condition
of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being
to regulate the moral and political situation on this planet—put it on
a sound basis—and when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it
requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when
you have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position
of corking.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
When a farmer was caught in the last
agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink.
In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars for a
piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000.
When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered
that the land was specially fitted for the wool-culture. Prosperity
followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the
noble metals were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The
result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South
Wales.
It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways,
steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gardens, art galleries,
libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable
home of every species of culture and of every species of material
enterprise, and there is a church at every man's door, and a race-track
over the way.
CHAPTER XI.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again--and that is
well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people,
and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The
English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always
called lavishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other
English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I
know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more
particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to
distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run
across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling.
Mr. Gane (“New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 “), tried to distribute
his gratitude, and was not lucky:
“The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The
treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted
people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with
pleasure our stay amongst them.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue
from! Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great
things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi
has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average
of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm
person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic
Silurian Period,' just a million years ago next November, the Lower
Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand
miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.
And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and
forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and
three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their
streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor
and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about
science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a
trifling investment of fact.
When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches I have been
speaking of, it is time for the people thereabouts to move. The water
cleaves the banks away like a knife. By the time the ditch has become
twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity is as good as accomplished,
for no power on earth can stop it now. When the width has reached a
hundred yards, the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.
The current flowing around the bend traveled formerly only five miles
an hour; now it is tremendously increased by the shortening of the
distance. I was on board the first boat that tried to go through the
cut-off at American Bend, but we did not get through. It was toward
midnight, and a wild night it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of
rain. It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was making about
fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or thirteen was the best our
boat could do, even in tolerably slack water, therefore perhaps we were
foolish to try the cut-off.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isnt.
But with it, it is quite assertive and
enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip
makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get
railroad coffee?
We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not
a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of
game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to
Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no
Aboriginals--no “blackfellows.” And to this day I have never seen one.
In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the
curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We
have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them.
It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before.
CHAPTER XV.
Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people, but I am measurably
familiar with it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to
stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming
excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was
famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago--Wagga-Wagga. This
was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was
out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he
soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of
space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in
unappeasable curiosity--curiosity as to which of the two long-missing
persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir
Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English
history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then; and the
dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and
fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played
upon the world's stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a
British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial
development.
Herodotus says, Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.
I got it out of John Hay’s _Castilian Days_,
reducing and condensing it to fit the requirements of this small story.
Mr. Hay and I were friends from early times, and if he were still with us
he would not rebuke me for the liberty I have taken.
The knowledge of military minutiæ exhibited in this book will be found to
be correct, but it is not mine; I took it from _Army Regulations_, ed.
1904; _Hardy’s Tactics_—_Cavalry_, revised ed., 1861; and _Jomini’s
Handbook of Military Etiquette_, West Point ed., 1905.
It would not be honest in me to encourage by silence the inference that I
composed the Horse’s private bugle-call, for I did not. I lifted it, as
Aristotle says. It is the opening strain in _The Pizzicato_ in _Sylvia_,
by Delibes. When that master was composing it he did not know it was a
bugle-call, it was I that found it out.
Along through the book I have distributed a few anachronisms and unborn
historical incidents and such things, so as to help the tale over the
difficult places. This idea is not original with me; I got it out of
Herodotus. Herodotus says, “Very few things happen at the right time,
and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will
correct these defects.”
The cats in the chair do not belong to me, but to another.
These are all the exceptions. What is left of the book is mine.
MARK TWAIN.
LONE TREE HILL, DUBLIN,
NEW HAMPSHIRE, _October_, 1905.
Part I
I
SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF
I AM Buffalo Bill’s horse. I have spent my life under his saddle—with
him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his
clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on
the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over six feet, is
young, hasn’t an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in
his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair
dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody
is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a
person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded
buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing
a hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out
behind from the shelter of his broad slouch.
When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.
He was intrusted
to me by my brother on his dying bed, and I have indulged him to his
hurt, instead of training him up severely, and making a man of him. I
have violated my trust, and I must not add the sin of desertion to that.
I have forgiven him once already, and would subject him to a long and
hard trial before forgiving him again, if I could live; but I must not
run that risk. No, I must restore the will. But if I survive the duel, I
will hide it away, and he will not know, and I will not tell him until
he reforms, and I see that his reformation is going to be permanent."
He re-drew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a fortune
again. As he was finishing his task, Tom, wearied with another brooding
tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the sitting-room door.
He glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of his uncle had nothing
but terrors for him to-night. But his uncle was writing! That was
unusual at this late hour. What could he be writing? A chill of anxiety
settled down upon Tom's heart. Did that writing concern him? He was
afraid so. He reflected that when ill luck begins, it does not come in
sprinkles, but in showers. He said he would get a glimpse of that
document or know the reason why. He heard some one coming, and stepped
out of sight and hearing. It was Pembroke Howard. What could be
hatching?
Howard said, with great satisfaction:
"Everything's right and ready. He's gone to the battle-ground with his
second and the surgeon--also with his brother. I've arranged it all with
Wilson--Wilson's his second. We are to have three shots apiece."
"Good! How is the moon?"
"Bright as day, nearly. Perfect, for the distance--fifteen yards. No
wind--not a breath; hot and still."
"All good; all first-rate. Here, Pembroke, read this, and witness it."
Pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's hand a
hearty shake and said:
"Now that's right, York--but I knew you would do it. You couldn't leave
that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain
defeat before him, and I knew you wouldn't, for his father's sake if not
for his own."
"For his dead father's sake I couldn't, I know; for poor Percy--but you
know what Percy was to me.
This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!- Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901
Livy says Amen to that; also, can you give us a day or two's
notice, so the room will be sure to be vacant?
I'm going to stick close to my desk for a month, now, hoping to write a
small book.
Ys Ever
MARK
The letter which follows is a fair sample of Mark Twain's private
violence on a subject which, in public print, he could only treat
effectively by preserving his good humor. When he found it
necessary to boil over, as he did, now and then, for relief, he
always found a willing audience in Twichell. The mention of his
“Private Philosophy” refers to 'What Is Man?', privately published
in 1906; reissued by his publishers in 1916.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
14 W. 10th Jan. 29, '01.
DEAR JOE,--I'm not expecting anything but kicks for scoffing, and am
expecting a diminution of my bread and butter by it, but if Livy will
let me I will have my say. This nation is like all the others that
have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will
tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will
be, when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!
I can't understand it! You are a public guide and teacher, Joe, and are
under a heavy responsibility to men, young and old; if you teach your
people--as you teach me--to hide their opinions when they believe the
flag is being abused and dishonored, lest the utterance do them and a
publisher a damage, how do you answer for it to your conscience? You
are sorry for me; in the fair way of give and take, I am willing to be a
little sorry for you.
However, I seem to be going counter to my own Private Philosophy--which
Livy won't allow me to publish--because it would destroy me. But I hope
to see it in print before I die. I planned it 15 years ago, and wrote it
in '98. I've often tried to read it to Livy, but she won't have it; it
makes her melancholy. The truth always has that effect on people. Would
have, anyway, if they ever got hold of a rag of it--Which they don't.
You are supposing that I am supposing that I am moved by a Large
Patriotism, and that I am distressed because our President has blundered
up to his neck in the Philippine mess; and that I am grieved because
this great big ignorant nation, which doesn't know even the A B C
facts of the Philippine episode, is in disgrace before the sarcastic
world--drop that idea!
