Bot-S: The Complete Works of Mark Twain

ROGERS AND RAILROADS

          AT A BANQUET GIVEN MR. H. H. ROGERS BY THE BUSINESS MEN OF
          NORFOLK, VA., CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF THE VIRGINIAN RAILWAY,
          APRIL, 3, 1909

          Toastmaster:

          "I have often thought that when the time comes, which must come
          to all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great Beyond,
          and the question is propounded, 'What have you done to gain
          admission into this great realm?' if the answer could be
          sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh,' it would be the surest
          passport to a welcome entrance.  We have here to-night one who
          has made millions laugh--not the loud laughter that bespeaks
          the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps
          the human heart and the human mind.  I refer, of course, to
          Doctor Clemens.  I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary
          title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of
          any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title."

I thank you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me,
and I am sure I would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my
time I have made some of them cry; and before I stop entirely I hope to
make some more of them cry.  I like compliments.  I deal in them myself.
I have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the
chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of his to-night, and I hope
some of them are deserved.

It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an
intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with Napoleon and Caesar.
Why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life?  Napoleon
and Caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves.  But
I'm here!

The chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the
hands of man are the roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he
built a lot of them; and they are there yet.

Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and you can find them.  But
Rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet.  I like
to hear my old friend complimented, but I don't like to hear it overdone.

I didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing.  I
will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and
when I shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a
railroad in which I own no stock.

They proposed that I go along with the committee and help inspect that
dump down yonder.  I didn't go.  I saw that dump.  I saw that thing when
I was coming in on the steamer, and I didn't go because I was diffident,
sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing again
--that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like Mr. Rogers's foot.

The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is.
It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he, is a very
competent financier.  Maybe he is now, but it was not always so.  I know
lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and I know
how he started; and it was not a very good start.  I could have done
better myself.  The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made
the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to
ask questions.  He did not like to appear ignorant.  To this day he don't
like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody.
On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a
couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth
from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship.  He did not like
to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be
ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in
bed he could not sleep.  He wondered if he could afford that outlay in
case he lost.  He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: "A king's
crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000."
He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he
went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.

I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented.  I am not stingy in compliments
to him myself.  Why, I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to
comfort her.  That is the kind of person I am.  I knew she would be
uneasy about him.  I knew she would be solicitous about what he might do
down here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort her.  I said he was
doing well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it.
He is like I used to be.  There were times when I was careless--careless
in my dress when I got older.  You know how uncomfortable your wife can
get when you are going away without her superintendence.  Once when my
wife could not go with me (she always went with me when she could
--I always did meet that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a
long time ago, in Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not
go; but, in her anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made
preparation.  She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors
at the White House at seven o'clock in the evening.  She said, "If I
should tell you now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before
you get to Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and
you will find it in your dress--vest pocket when you are dressing at the
Arlington--when you are dressing to see the President."  I never thought
of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it
out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "Don't wear your arctics in
the White House."

You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness,
complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments,
although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all.  There is one side of Mr.
Rogers that has not been mentioned.  If you will leave that to me I will
touch upon that.  There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk
papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side
of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr.
Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book.  And she has a right to feel
that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it, he
rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful
Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from
scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as
well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine
years of age.  She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has
existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.

That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his
character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand
daily out of that generous heart of his.  You never hear of it.  He is
supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright.
But the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright,
and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God.

I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been
allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I
don't look at him I can tell it now.

In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which I
was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt.  If you will
remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back; my
books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights.  Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books
have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again," and that was a correct proposition.  He saved my copyrights,
and saved me from financial ruin.  He it was who arranged with my
creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and
persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end of
four years I would pay dollar for dollar.  That arrangement was made;
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a
borrowed one at that.

You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is always
trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that).  These are only
emblematic of his character, and that is all.  I say, without exception,
hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.






THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

          ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,
          JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF
          BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

          Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor."

The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to
fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity.
All things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am
among strangers.  It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer
of thirty-five years ago.  I was no stranger to him.  I knew him well.
I built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from
the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from under
his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in his case
and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't there to
see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for that was
the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub.  I wetted down the paper
Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly; I rolled,
I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers, I carried
them around at dawn Thursday mornings.  The carrier was then an object of
interest to all the dogs in town.  If I had saved up all the bites I ever
received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year.  I enveloped the
papers that were for the mail--we had a hundred town subscribers and
three hundred and fifty country ones; the town subscribers paid in
groceries and the country ones in cabbages and cord-wood--when they paid
at all, which was merely sometimes, and then we always stated the fact in
the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we forgot it they stopped the
paper.  Every man on the town list helped edit the thing--that is,
he gave orders as to how it was to be edited; dictated its opinions,
marked out its course for it, and every time the boss failed to connect
he stopped his paper.  We were just infested with critics, and we tried
to satisfy them all over.  We had one subscriber who paid cash, and he
was more trouble than all the rest.  He bought us once a year, body and
soul, for two dollars.  He used to modify our politics every which way,
and he made us change our religion four times in five years.  If we ever
tried to reason with him, he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of
course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction. That man used to write
articles a column and a half long, leaded long primer, and sign them
"Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some other high-sounding rot;
and then, after it was set up, he would come in and say he had changed
his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech, because he hadn't any--and
order it to be left out.  We couldn't afford "bogus" in that office, so
we always took the leads out, altered the signature, credited the article
to the rival paper in the next village, and put it in.  Well, we did have
one or two kinds of "bogus."  Whenever there was a barbecue, or a circus,
or a baptizing, we knocked off for half a day, and then to make up for
short matter we would "turn over ads"--turn over the whole page and
duplicate it.  The other "bogus" was deep philosophical stuff, which we
judged nobody ever read; so we kept a galley of it standing, and kept on
slapping the same old batches of it in, every now and then, till it got
dangerous.  Also, in the early days of the telegraph we used to economize
on the news.  We picked out the items that were pointless and barren of
information and stood them on a galley, and changed the dates and
localities, and used them over and over again till the public interest in
them was worn to the bone.  We marked the ads, but we seldom paid any
attention to the marks afterward; so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad
was equally eternal.  I have seen a "td" notice of a sheriff's sale still
booming serenely along two years after the sale was over, the sheriff
dead, and the whole circumstance become ancient history.  Most of the
yearly ads were patent-medicine stereotypes, and we used to fence with
them.

I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse
bills on, the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we always
stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was not
considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and symbols
that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi Valley;
and I can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the summer
and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a hatful of
handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do a
temperance lecture.  His way of life was simple, his needs not complex;
all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he
was satisfied.  But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,
and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will
"make even" and stop.






SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

          On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr.
          Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter.  So many members
          surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: "Is this genuine
          popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme?"

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a most difficult thing for
any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary.  I don't know
what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say
a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.

If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind
chairmen say of me.  In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty
as if he was envious of me.  I would like to have one man come out
flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it
were true.  I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking,
that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by
saying complimentary things.

I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well as
any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented.  And
there is another side.  I have a wicked side.  Estimable friends who know
all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you
things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented.

The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you
live, is a life of interior sin.  That is what makes life valuable and
pleasant.  To lead a life of undiscovered sin!  That is true joy.

Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me.  But,
oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him.  We are a pair.  I have
made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am.
Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is
nothing of the sort.  I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy.

Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits of
mine, and then he will make a speech.

I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as
the two put together.

When that fearless  and forgetful chairman is found there will be another
story told.  At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found
him.  He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all
sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but
when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he was
a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence with
which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis.

I like compliments.  I like to go home and tell them all over again to
the members of my family.  They don't believe them, but I like to tell
them in the home circle, all the same.  I like to dream of them if I can.

I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am
praised any more than I am entitled to be.






READING-ROOM OPENING

          On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address
          preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London.

I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the
legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with
intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the
community so desires.

If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand
in its pocket and bring out the penny tax.  I think it a proof of the
healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it
taxes itself for its mental food.

A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up
through the newspapers and magazines to other literature.  What would we
do without newspapers?

Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster was
made known to the entire world.  This reminds me of an episode which
occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford, Connecticut.

The clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any.
He did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates
around for collection.  I complained to the governor of his lack of
financial trust in me, and he replied: "I would trust you myself--if you
had a bell-punch."

You have paid me many compliments, and I like to listen to compliments.
I indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of England
and America.  He also alluded to my name, of which I am rather fond.

A little girl wrote me from New Zealand in a letter I received yesterday,
stating that her father said my proper name was not Mark Twain but Samuel
Clemens, but that she knew better, because Clemens was the name of the
man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not Mark.  She was
sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark is in the Bible and Twain is in the
Bible.

I was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and as
I now know my name to be a scriptural one, I am not without hopes of
making it worthy.






LITERATURE

          ADDRESS AT THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND BANQUET, LONDON, MAY 4, 1900

          Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to the
          toast "Literature."

MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately with this toast without
assistance from me.  Still, I was born generous.  If he had advanced any
theories that needed refutation or correction I would have attended to
them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is
in the habit of making I would have dealt with them.

In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his statements.  I could not
have made such statements if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate is
the only way I can approximate to the truth.  You cannot have a theory
without principles.  Principles is another name for prejudices.  I have
no prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else.

I am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because
there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have
entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are
prejudices.

I propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere.  I am in favor
of everything everybody is in favor of.  What you should do is to satisfy
the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a
President.

There could not be a broader platform than mine.  I am in favor of
anything and everything--of temperance and intemperance, morality and
qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver.

I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I want to by the great
position of ruler of a country.  I have been in turn reporter, editor,
publisher, author, lawyer, burglar.  I have worked my way up, and wish to
continue to do so.

I read to-day in a magazine article that Christendom issued last year
fifty-five thousand new books.  Consider what that means!  Fifty-five
thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors.  We are going
to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later.
Therefore, double your, subscriptions to the literary fund!






DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLUB, AT
          SHERRY'S, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 20, 1900

          Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast "The Disappearance of
          Literature."  Doctor Gould presided, and in introducing
          Mr. Clemens said that he (the speaker), when in Germany, had to
          do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was
          taking what the Germans thought undue liberties with their
          language.

It wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in Germany.
It wasn't necessary at all.  Instead of that he ought to have impressed
upon those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered them.  Their
language had needed untangling for a good many years.  Nobody else seemed
to want to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I
made a pretty good job of it.  The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting
up their verbs.  Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world
when it's all together.  It's downright inhuman to split it up.  But
that's just what those Germans do.  They take part of a verb and put it
down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it
away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they
just shovel in German.  I maintain that there is no necessity for
apologizing for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation.

We have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature.
That's no new thing.  That's what certain kinds of literature have been
doing for several years.  The fact is, my friends, that the fashion in
literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts or
go out of business.  Professor Winchester here, if I remember fairly
correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels produced
to-day would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott.  That may be his
notion.  Maybe he is right; but so far as I am concerned, I don't care if
they don't.

Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern
epics like Paradise Lost.  I guess he's right.  He talked as if he was
pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would
suppose that he never had read it.  I don't believe any of you have ever
read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to.  That's something that you
just want to take on trust.  It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester
says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of
literature.  He said that Scott would outlive all his critics.  I guess
that's true.  The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two
ages to appreciate Scott.  When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and
you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest.  It takes
a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years.

But as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance of
literature, they didn't say anything about my books.  Maybe they think
they've disappeared.  If they do, that just shows their ignorance on the
general subject of literature.  I am not as young as I was several years
ago, and maybe I'm not so fashionable, but I'd be willing to take my
chances with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of literature
to the Century Publishing Company.  And I haven't got much of a pull
here, either.  I often think that the highest compliment ever paid to my
poor efforts was paid by Darwin through President Eliot, of Harvard
College.  At least, Eliot said it was a compliment, and I always take the
opinion of great men like college presidents on all such subjects as
that.

I went out to Cambridge one day a few years ago and called on President
Eliot.  In the course of the conversation he said that he had just
returned from England, and that he was very much touched by what he
considered the high compliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he went
on to tell me something like this:

"Do you know that there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom, where
the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things?  One is a plant
he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those
insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for the
particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) "and the other some books that lie
on the night table at the head of his bed.  They are your books, Mr.
Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep."

My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it
the highest one that was ever paid to me.  To be the means of soothing to
sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like Darwin's was
something that I had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I never
hope to be able to do it again.






THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER

          AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900

          Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily News, as
          president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens as the principal
          ornament of American literature.

I must say that I have already begun to regret that I left my gun at
home.  I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with
just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will
certainly use a gun on that chairman.  It is my privilege to compliment
him in return.  You behold before you a very, very old man.  A cursory
glance at him would deceive the most penetrating.  His features seem to
reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts--they seem to bear the
traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for
the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-school of a life that
may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or will
riz--I mean to say, will rise.  His private character is altogether
suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has got.  If you
examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features,
because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor--mere
effects of a great spirit upon a weak body--mere accidents of a great
career.  In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues,
and he practises them all--secretly--always secretly.  You all know him
so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here.  Gentlemen,
Colonel Brown.






THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO MR. CARNEGIE AT THE DEDICATION
          OF THE NEW YORK ENGINEERS' CLUB, DECEMBER 9, 1907

          Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who,
          quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day
          when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small
          change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes.

It seems to me that I was around here in the neighborhood of the Public
Library about fifty or sixty years ago.  I don't deny the circumstance,
although I don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was
not to be printed until I am dead, unless I'm dead now.  I had that $3 in
change, and I remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat.  I have
prospered since.  Now I have plenty of money and a disposition to
squander it, but I can't.  One of those trust companies is taking care of
it.

Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall be out after
nightfall this winter, I must say that I have come here with a mission,
and I would make my errand of value.

Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie to-night.  I was
expecting them.  They are very gratifying to me.

I have been a guest of honor myself, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is
experiencing now.  It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments
and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of
us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of
our condemnation.

Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face.  It is fairly scintillating with
fictitious innocence.  You would think, looking at him, that he had never
committed a crime in his life.  But no--look at his pestiferious
simplified spelling.  You can't any of you imagine what a crime that has
been.  Torquemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie.  That old fellow shed some
blood in the Inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to the
entire race.  I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was, just
the same.  He's got us all so we can't spell anything.

The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end.
He meant well, but he, attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the
disease.  He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet.  There's not a
vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can hitch
anything to.  Look at the "h's" distributed all around.  There's
"gherkin."  What are you going to do with the "h" in that?  What the
devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, I'd like to know.  It's one thing I
admire the English for: they just don't mind anything about them at all.

But look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them.
A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving
us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of
this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken
thief.  Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about
fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't
spell them!  It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs.

Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even
the prisoner at the bar.  I'd like to hear him try once--but not in
public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic
entertainments are barred.  I'd like to hear him try in private, and when
he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it
was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or
walked with its wings.  The chances are that he would give it tusks and
make it lay eggs.

Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for him
--if he'll take the risk.  If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a
system of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every
shade of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in
any tongue that we could not spell accurately.  That would be competent,
adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair
punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of
simplified spelling.  If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell me
unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with r-o-w,
b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful
wedlock and don't know their own origin.

Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of
inadequate and incompetent, things would be different.  Spelling reform
has only made it bald-headed and unsightly.  There is the whole tribe of
them, "row" and "read" and "lead"--a whole family who don't know who they
are.  I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one.

If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of
comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of a
man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to
recall the lady hog and the future ham.

It's a rotten alphabet.  I appoint Mr. Carnegie to get after it, and
leave simplified spelling alone.

Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco
earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never have
had if spelling had been left all alone.

Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and made him more comfortable
than he would have been had he received only compliment after compliment,
and I wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all right, but, like
chastity, you can carry it too far.






SPELLING AND PICTURES

          ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AT THE
          WALDORF-ASTORIA, SEPTEMBER 18, 1906

I am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified
spelling.  I have come here because they cannot all be reached except
through you.  There are only two forces that can carry light to all the
corners of the globe--only two--the sun in the heavens and the Associated
Press down here.  I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean
it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around.  You speak with
a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and
intellects, as you--except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without
your help.  If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified
forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole
spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties
are at an end.

Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the
world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and
angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out of
Associated Press despatches.  And so I beg you, I beseech you--oh, I
implore you to spell them in our simplified forms.  Do this daily,
constantly, persistently, for three months--only three months--it is all
I ask.  The infallible result?--victory, victory all down the line.  For
by that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted
to the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged
forms will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul.  And we
shall be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and
diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no man
addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose some
of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt.  Do not doubt it.
We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places with
an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and
happy in it.  We do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and tushes
after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while.

Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world?  That is the idea.  It is
my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit.  We all
do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest is
anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests.
In 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to make a
noise, I was indifferent to it; more--I even irreverently scoffed at it.
What I needed was an object-lesson, you see.  It is the only way to teach
some people.  Very well, I got it.  At that time I was scrambling along,
earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a word,
compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present.
I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron
contract.  One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to
write ten pages--on this revolting text: "Considerations concerning the
alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous
superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the
unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects."

Ten pages of that.  Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled
railroad train.  Seven cents a word.  I saw starvation staring the family
in the face.  I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so as
to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor can
ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got
graft in it for him and the magazine.  I said, "Read that text, Jackson,
and let it go on the record; read it out loud."  He read it:
"Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal
extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the
Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its
plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects."

I said, "You want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer
thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?"

He said, "A word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you
going to do about it?"

I said, "Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression.  What's an average
English word?"

He said, "Six letters."

I said, "Nothing of the kind; that's French, and includes the spaces
between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half.
By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary
and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half.  I can
put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not
another man alive that can come within two hundred of it.  My page is
worth eighty-four dollars to me.  It takes exactly as long to fill your
magazine page with long words as it does with short ones-four hours.
Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours.
I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor.  For the family's
sake I've got to be so.  So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents,
because I can get the same money for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,'
because I can get the same price for 'cop.' And so on and so on.  I never
write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can
humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;
I wouldn't do it for fifteen.  Examine your obscene text, please; count
the words."

He counted and said it was twenty-four.  I asked him to count the
letters.  He made it two hundred and three.

I said, "Now, I hope you see the whole size of your crime.  With my
vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five
letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your
inhuman twenty-four I would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents.
Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three
hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same
labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars.  I do not wish to
work upon this scandalous job by the piece.  I want to be hired by the
year."  He coldly refused.  I said:

"Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you
ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness."
Again he coldly refused.  I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I was
not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an
anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten to
the heart with holoaophotal subterranean extemporaneousness.  God forgive
me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours.

From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member of
the heaven-born institution, the International Association for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Carnegie's
Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work .  .  .  .

Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally,
sanely--yes, and calmly, not excitedly.  What is the real function, the
essential function, the supreme function, of language?  Isn't it merely
to convey ideas and emotions?  Certainly.  Then if we can do it with
words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome
forms?  But can we?  Yes.  I hold in my hand the proof of it.  Here is a
letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts.  I think she
never saw a spelling-book in her life.  The spelling is her own.  There
isn't a waste letter in it anywhere.  It reduces the fonetics to the last
gasp--it squeezes the surplusage out of every word--there's no spelling
that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House.  And as
for the punctuation, there isn't any.  It is all one sentence, eagerly
and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere.  The
letter is absolutely genuine--I have the proofs of that in my possession.
I  can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter
presently and comfort your eyes with it.  I will read the letter:

"Miss dear freind I took some Close into the armerry and give them to you
to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to treble you but i
got to have one of them Back it was a black oll wolle Shevyott With a
jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and palsy
menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it
belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about it i thoght she was
willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to
Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has
got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For
her i gels you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i
torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful
about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off
seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to
take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And
see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for it
if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True
freind

"i liked your
appearance very Much"

Now you see what simplified spelling can do.

It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions
like a sewer.  I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print
all your despatches in it.

Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:

I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of
the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally.  I think
I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little while
that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with these
old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about it at
all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as I keep
the Sabbath.

There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography, and
it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present
condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their literature
in the old form.  That looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the
forms as they are while we have got one million people coming in here
from foreign countries every year and they have got to struggle with this
orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship
for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn.
This is merely sentimental argument.

People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and
a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has
been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it
because of its ancient and hallowed associations.

Now, I don't see that there is any real argument about that.  If that
argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the
flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so
long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness
for them on account of the associations.  Why, it is like preserving a
cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it
by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity.

I think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our
family cancer, and I wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut out
and let the family cancer go.

Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young
person like yourselves.  I am exhausted by the heat of the day.  I must
take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry it
away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of the
righteous.  There is nothing much left of me but my age and my
righteousness, but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you
always keep your youth.






BOOKS AND BURGLARS

          ADDRESS TO THE REDDING (CONN.) LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
          OCTOBER 28, 1908

Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the
burglars who happened along and broke into my house--taking a lot of
things they didn't need, and for that matter which I didn't need--had
first made entry into this institution.

Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their
dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing moral
truths and getting a moral uplift.  The whole course of their lives would
have been changed.  As it was, they kept straight on in their immoral way
and were sent to jail.

For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress.

And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly.  Now, I
have known so many burglars--not exactly known, but so many of them have
come near me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed to allow
them credit for whatever good qualities they possess.

Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I just now think of, is
their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's sleep.

Noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their
visitation is to murder sleep later on.

Now we are prepared for these visitors.  All sorts of alarm devices have
been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has been
electrified.  The burglar who steps within this danger zone will set
loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our
elaborate system of defences.  As for the fate of the trespasser, do not
seek to know that.  He will never be heard of more.







AUTHORS' CLUB

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS, LONDON,
          JUNE, 1899

          Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.

It does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much.  It only
pleases and delights me.  I have not gone beyond the age when
embarrassment is possible, but I have reached the age when I know how to
conceal it.  It is such a satisfaction to me to hear Sir Walter Besant,
who is much more capable than I to judge of my work, deliver a judgment
which is such a contentment to my spirit.

Well, I have thought well of the books myself, but I think more of them
now.  It charms me also to hear Sir Spencer Walpole deliver a similar
judgment, and I shall treasure his remarks also.  I shall not discount
the praises in any possible way.  When I report them to my family they
shall lose nothing.  There are, however, certain heredities which come
down to us which our writings of the present day may be traced to.
I, for instance, read the Walpole Letters when I was a boy.  I absorbed
them, gathered in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away to be
used by-and-by.  One does that so unconsciously with things one really
likes.  I am reminded now of what use those letters have been to me.

They must not claim credit in America for what was really written in
another form so long ago.  They must only claim that I trimmed this,
that, and the other, and so changed their appearance as to make them seem
to be original.  You now see what modesty I have in stock.  But it has
taken long practice to get it there.

But I must not stand here talking.  I merely meant to get up and give my
thanks for the pleasant things that preceding speakers have said of me.
I wish also to extend my thanks to the Authors' Club for constituting me
a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit
of your legal adviser.

I believe you keep a lawyer.  I have always kept a lawyer, too, though I
have never made anything out of him.  It is service to an author to have
a lawyer.  There is something so disagreeable in having a personal
contact with a publisher.  So it is better to work through a lawyer--and
lose your case.  I understand that the publishers have been meeting
together also like us.  I don't know what for, but possibly they are
devising new and mysterious ways for remunerating authors.  I only wish
now to thank you for electing me a member of this club--I believe I have
paid my dues--and to thank you again for the pleasant things you have
said of me.

Last February, when Rudyard Kipling was ill in America, the sympathy
which was poured out to him was genuine and sincere, and I believe that
which cost Kipling so much will bring England and America closer
together.  I have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection
and respect between the two countries.  I hope it will continue to grow,
and, please God, it will continue to grow.  I trust we authors will leave
to posterity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friendship between
England and America that will count for much.  I will now confess that
I have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a publication.
I have brought it here to lay at your feet.  I do not ask your indulgence
in presenting it, but for your applause.

Here it is:  "Since England and America may be joined together in
Kipling, may they not be severed in 'Twain.'"






BOOKSELLERS

          Address at banquet on Wednesday evening, May 20, 1908, of the
          American Booksellers' Association, which included most of the
          leading booksellers of America, held at the rooms of the Aldine
          Association, New York.

This annual gathering of booksellers from all over America comes together
ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss, business; therefore
I am required to, talk shop.  I am required to furnish a statement of the
indebtedness under which I lie to you gentlemen for your help in enabling
me to earn my living.  For something over forty years I have acquired my
bread by print, beginning with The Innocents Abroad, followed at
intervals of a year or so by Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so
on.  For thirty-six years my books were sold by subscription.  You are
not interested in those years, but only in the four which have since
followed.  The books passed into the hands of my present publishers at
the beginning of 1900, and you then became the providers of my diet.
I think I may say, without flattering you, that you have done exceedingly
well by me.  Exceedingly well is not too strong a phrase, since the
official statistics show that in four years you have sold twice as many
volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my publishers bound you
and them to sell in five years.  To your sorrow you are aware that
frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be five or ten years
old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies, and after an
added ten or twenty years ceases to sell.  But you sell thousands of my
moss-backed old books every year--the youngest of them being books that
range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old, and the oldest reaching
back to thirty-five and forty.

By the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for,
50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they
sold them or not.  It is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for it
was your business to unload 250,000 volumes upon the public in five years
if you possibly could.  Have you succeeded?  Yes, you have--and more.
For in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000
volumes, and 240,000 besides.

Your sales have increased each year.  In the first year you sold 90,328;
in the second year, 104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth year
--which was last year--you sold 160,000.  The aggregate for the four
years is 500,000 volumes, lacking 11,000.

Of the oldest book, The Innocents Abroad,--now forty years old--you sold
upward of 46,000 copies in the four years; of Roughing It--now
thirty-eight years old; I think--you sold 40,334; of Tom Sawyer, 41,000.
And so on.

And there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying to me: the Personal
Recollections of Joan of Arc is a serious book; I wrote it for love, and
never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me in
that matter.  In your hands its sale has increased each year.  In 1904
you sold 1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574.






"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE"

          On October 5, 1906, Mr. Clemens, following a musical recital by
          his daughter in Norfolk, Conn., addressed her audience on the
          subject of stage-fright.  He thanked the people for making
          things as easy as possible for his daughter's American debut as
          a contralto, and then told of his first experience before the
          public.

My heart goes out in sympathy to any one who is making his first
appearance before an audience of human beings.  By a direct process of
memory I go back forty years, less one month--for I'm older than I look.

I recall the occasion of my first appearance.  San Francisco knew me then
only as a reporter, and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as a
lecturer.  I knew that nothing short of compulsion would get me to the
theatre.  So I bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that I could
not escape.  I got to the theatre forty-five minutes before the hour set
for the lecture.  My knees were shaking so that I didn't know whether I
could stand up.  If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it
is stage-fright-and seasickness.  They are a pair.  I had stage-fright
then for the first and last time.  I was only seasick once, too.  It was
on a little ship on which there were two hundred other passengers.
I--was--sick.  I was so sick that there wasn't any left for those other
two hundred passengers.

It was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that theatre, and I peeked
through the little peekholes they have in theatre curtains and looked
into the big auditorium.  That was dark and empty, too.  By-and-by it
lighted up, and the audience began to arrive.

I had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart men, to sprinkle
themselves through the audience armed with big clubs.  Every time I said
anything they could possibly guess I intended to be funny they were to
pound those clubs on the floor.  Then there was a kind lady in a box up
there, also a good friend of mine, the wife of the Governor.  She was to
watch me intently, and whenever I glanced toward her she was going to
deliver a gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole audience into
applause.

At last I began.  I had the manuscript tucked under a United States flag
in front of me where I could get at it in case of need.  But I managed to
get started without it.  I walked up and down--I was young in those days
and needed the exercise--and talked and talked.

Right in the middle of the speech I had placed a gem.  I had put in a
moving, pathetic part which was to get at the hearts and souls of my
hearers.  When I delivered it they did just what I hoped and expected.
They sat silent and awed.  I had touched them.  Then I happened to glance
up at the box where the Governor's wife was--you know what happened.

Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage-fright left me,
never to return.  I know if I was going to be hanged I could get up and
make a good showing, and I intend to.  But I shall never forget my
feelings before the agony left me, and I got up here to thank you for her
for helping my daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first
appearance.  And I want to thank you for your appreciation of her
singing, which is, by-the-way, hereditary.






MORALS AND MEMORY

          Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held at
          Barnard College (Columbia University), March 7, 1906, by the
          Barnard Union.  One of the young ladies presented Mr. Clemens,
          and thanked him for his amiability in coming to make them an
          address.  She closed with the expression of the great joy it
          gave her fellow-collegians, "because we all love you."

If any one here loves me, she has my sincere thanks.  Nay, if any one
here is so good as to love me--why, I'll be a brother to her.  She shall
have my sincere, warm, unsullied affection.  When I was coming up in the
car with the very kind young lady who was delegated to show me the way,
she asked me what I was going to talk about.  And I said I wasn't sure.
I said I had some illustrations, and I was going to bring them in.
I said I was certain to give those illustrations, but that I hadn't the
faintest notion what they were going to illustrate.

Now, I've been thinking it over in this forest glade [indicating the
woods of Arcady on the scene setting], and I've decided to work them in
with something about morals and the caprices of memory.  That seems to me
to be a pretty good subject.  You see, everybody has a memory and it's
pretty sure to have caprices.  And, of course, everybody has morals.

It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like
to ask.  I know I have.  But I'd rather teach them than practice them any
day.  "Give them to others"--that's my motto.  Then you never have any
use for them when you're left without.  Now, speaking of the caprices of
memory in general, and of mine in particular, it's strange to think of
all the tricks this little mental process plays on us.  Here we're
endowed with a faculty of mind that ought to be more supremely
serviceable to us than them all.  And what happens?  This memory of ours
stores up a perfect record of the most useless facts and anecdotes and
experiences.  And all the things that we ought to know--that we need to
know--that we'd profit by knowing--it casts aside with the careless
indifference of a girl refusing her true lover.  It's terrible to think
of this phenomenon.  I tremble in all my members when I consider all the
really valuable things that I've forgotten in seventy years--when I
meditate upon the caprices of my memory.

There's a bird out in California that is one perfect symbol of the human
memory.  I've forgotten the bird's name (just because it would be
valuable for me to know it--to recall it to your own minds, perhaps).

But this fool of a creature goes around collecting the most ridiculous
things you can imagine and storing them up.  He never selects a thing
that could ever prove of the slightest help to him; but he goes about
gathering iron forks, and spoons, and tin cans, and broken mouse-traps
--all sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to carry and yet be any
use when he gets it.  Why, that bird will go by a gold watch to bring
back one of those patent cake-pans.

Now, my mind is just like that, and my mind isn't very different from
yours--and so our minds are just like that bird.  We pass by what would
be of inestimable value to us, and pack our memories with the most
trivial odds and ends that never by any chance; under any circumstances
whatsoever, could be of the slightest use to any one.

Now, things that I have remembered are constantly popping into my head.
And I am repeatedly startled by the vividness with which they recur to me
after the lapse of years and their utter uselessness in being remembered
at all.

I was thinking over some on my way up here.  They were the illustrations
I spoke about to the young lady on the way up.  And I've come to the
conclusion, curious though it is, that I can use every one of these
freaks of memory to teach you all a lesson.  I'm convinced that each one
has its moral.  And I think it's my duty to hand the moral on to you.

Now, I recall that when I was a boy I was a good boy--I was a very good
boy.  Why, I was the best boy in my school.  I was the best boy in that
little Mississippi town where I lived.  The population was only about
twenty million.  You may not believe it, but I was the best boy in that
State--and in the United States, for that matter.

But I don't know why I never heard any one say that but myself.  I always
recognized it.  But even those nearest and dearest to me couldn't seem to
see it.  My mother, especially, seemed to think there was something wrong
with that estimate.  And she never got over that prejudice.

Now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years old her memory failed
her.  She forgot little threads that hold life's patches of meaning
together.  She was living out West then, and I went on to visit her.

I hadn't seen my mother in a year or so.  And when I got there she knew
my face; knew I was married; knew I had a family, and that I was living
with them.  But she couldn't, for the life of her, tell my name or who I
was.  So I told her I was her boy.

"But you don't live with me," she said.

"No," said I, "I'm living in Rochester."

"What are you doing there?"

"Going to school."

"Large school?"

"Very large."

"All boys?"

"All boys."

"And how do you stand?" said my mother.

"I'm the best boy in that school," I answered.

"Well," said my mother, with a return of her old fire, "I'd like to know
what the other boys are like."

Now, one point in this story is the fact that my mother's mind went back
to my school days, and remembered my little youthful self-prejudice when
she'd forgotten everything else about me.

The other point is the moral.  There's one there that you will find if
you search for it.

Now, here's something else I remember.  It's about the first time I ever
stole a watermelon.  "Stole" is a strong word.  Stole?  Stole?  No, I
don't mean that.  It was the first time I ever withdrew a watermelon.
It was the first time I ever extracted a watermelon.  That is exactly the
word I want--"extracted." It is definite.  It is precise.  It perfectly
conveys my idea.  Its use in dentistry connotes the delicate shade of
meaning I am looking for.  You know we never extract our own teeth.

And it was not my watermelon that I extracted.  I extracted that
watermelon from a farmer's wagon while he was inside negotiating with an
other customer.  I carried that watermelon to one of the secluded
recesses of the lumber-yard, and there I broke it open.

It was a green watermelon.

Well, do you know when I saw that I began to feel sorry--sorry--sorry.
It seemed to me that I had done wrong.  I reflected deeply.  I reflected
that I was young--I think I was just eleven.  But I knew that though
immature I did not lack moral advancement.  I knew what a boy ought to do
who had extracted a watermelon--like that.

I considered George Washington, and what action he would have taken under
similar circumstances.  Then I knew there was just one thing to make me
feel right inside, and that was--Restitution.

So I said to myself:  "I will do that.  I will take that green watermelon
back where I got it from."  And the minute I had said it I felt that
great moral uplift that comes to you when you've made a noble resolution.

So I gathered up the biggest fragments, and I carried them back to the
farmer's wagon, and I restored the watermelon--what was left of it.  And
I made him give me a good one in place of it, too.

And I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around working off
his worthless, old, green watermelons on trusting purchasers who had to
rely on him.  How could they tell from the outside whither the melons
were good or not?  That was his business.  Arid if he didn't reform, I
told him I'd see that he didn't get any more of my trade--nor anybody,
else's I knew, if I could help it.

You know that man was as contrite as a revivalist's last convert.
He said he was all broken up to think I'd gotten a green watermelon.
He promised the he would never carry another green watermelon if he
starved for it.  And he drove off--a better man.

Now, do you see what I did for that man?  He was on a downward path, and
I rescued him.  But all I got out of it was a watermelon.

Yet I'd rather have that memory--just that memory of the good I did for
that depraved farmer--than all the material gain you can think of.  Look
at the lesson he got!  I never got anything like that from it.  But I
ought to be satisfied:  I was only eleven years old, but I secured
everlasting benefit to other people.

The moral in this is perfectly clear, and I think there's one in they
next memory I'm going to tell you about.

To go back to my childhood, there's another little incident that comes to
me from which you can draw even another moral.  It's about one of the
times I went fishing.  You see, in our house there was a sort of family
prejudice against going fishing if you hadn't permission.  But it would
frequently be bad judgment to ask.  So I went fishing secretly, as it
were--way up the Mississippi.  It was an exquisitely happy trip, I
recall, with a very pleasant sensation.

Well, while I was away there was a tragedy in our town.  A stranger,
stopping over on his way East from California; was stabbed to death in an
unseemly brawl.

Now; my father was justice of the peace, and because he was justice of
the peace he was coroner; and since he was coroner he was also constable;
and being constable he vas sheriff; and out of consideration for his
holding the office of sheriff he was likewise county clerk and a dozen
other officials I don't think of just this minute.

I thought he had power of life or death, only he didn't use it over other
boys.  He was sort of an austere man.  Somehow I didn't like being round
him when I'd done anything he, disapproved of.  So that's the reason I
wasn't often around.

Well, when this gentleman got knifed they communicated with the proper
authority; the coroner, and they laid, the corpse out in the coroner's
office--our front sitting-room--in preparation for the inquest the next
morning.

About 9 or 10 o'clock I got back from fishing.  It was a little too late
for me to be received by my folks, so I took my shoes off and slipped
noiselessly up the back way to the sitting-room.  I was very tired, and I
didn't wish to disturb my people.  So I groped my way to the sofa and lay
down.

Now, I didn't know anything of what had happened during my absence.
But I was sort of nervous on my own account-afraid of being caught,
and rather dubious about the morning affair.  And I had been lying there
a few moments when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness, and I
became aware of something on the other side of the room.

It was something foreign to the apartment.  It had an uncanny appearance.
And I sat up looking very hard, and wondering what in heaven this long,
formless, vicious-looking thing might be.

First I thought I'd go and see.  Then I thought, "Never mind that."

Mind you, I had no cowardly sensations whatever, but it didn't seem
exactly prudent to investigate.  But I somehow couldn't keep my eyes off
the thing.  And the more I looked at it the more disagreeably it grew on
me.  But I was resolved to play the man.  So I decided to turn over and
count a hundred, and let the patch of moonlight creep up and show me what
the dickens it was.

I turned over and tried to count, but I couldn't keep my mind on it.
I kept thinking of that grewsome mass.  I was losing count all the time,
and going back and beginning over again.  Oh no; I wasn't frightened
--just annoyed.  But by the time I'd gotten to the century mark I turned
cautiously over and opened my eyes with great fortitude.

The moonlight revealed to me a marble-white human hand.  Well, maybe I
wasn't embarrassed!  But then that changed to a creepy feeling again, and
I thought I'd try the counting again.  I don't know how many hours or
weeks it was that I lay there counting hard.  But the moonlight crept up
that white arm, and it showed me a lead face and a terrible wound over
the heart.

I could scarcely say that I was terror-stricken or anything like that.
But somehow his eyes interested me so that I went right out of the
window.  I didn't need the sash.  But it seemed easier to take it than
leave it behind.

Now, let that teach you a lesson--I don't know just what it is.  But at
seventy years old I find that memory of peculiar value to me.  I have
been unconsciously guided by it all these years.  Things that seemed
pigeon-holed and remote are a perpetual influence.  Yes, you're taught in
so many ways.  And you're so felicitously taught when you don't know it.

Here's something else that taught me a good deal.

When I was seventeen I was very bashful, and a sixteen-year-old girl came
to stay a week with us.  She was a peach, and I was seized with a
happiness not of this world.

One evening my mother suggested that, to entertain her, I take her to the
theatre.  I didn't really like to, because I was seventeen and sensitive
about appearing in the streets with a girl.  I couldn't see my way to
enjoying my delight in public.  But we went.

I didn't feel very happy.  I couldn't seem to keep my mind on the play.
I became conscious, after a while, that that was due less to my lovely
company than my boots.  They were sweet to look upon, as smooth as skin,
but fitted ten time as close.  I got oblivious to the play and the girl
and the other people and everything but my boots until--I hitched one
partly off.  The sensation was sensuously perfect: I couldn't help it.  I
had to get the other off, partly.  Then I was obliged to get them off
altogether, except that I kept my feet in the legs so they couldn't get
away.

From that time I enjoyed the play.  But the first thing I knew the
curtain came down, like that, without my notice, and--I hadn't any boots
on.  What's more, they wouldn't go on.  I tugged strenuously.  And the
people in our row got up and fussed and said things until the peach and I
simply had to move on.

We moved--the girl on one arm and the boots under the other.

We walked home that way, sixteen blocks, with a retinue a mile long:
Every time we passed a lamp-post, death gripped one at the throat.  But
we, got home--and I had on white socks.

If I live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years old I don't suppose I
could ever forget that walk.  I, remember, it about as keenly as the
chagrin I suffered on another occasion.

At one time in our domestic history we had a colored butler who had a
failing.  He could never remember to ask people who came to the door to
state their business.  So I used to suffer a good many calls
unnecessarily.

One morning when I was especially busy he brought me a card engraved with
a name I did not know.  So I said, "What does he wish to see me for?" and
Sylvester said, "Ah couldn't ask him, sah; he, wuz a genlinun."  "Return
instantly," I thundered, "and inquire his mission.  Ask him what's his
game."  Well, Sylvester returned with the announcement that he had
lightning-rods to sell.  "Indeed," said I, "things are coming to a fine
pass when lightning-rod agents send up engraved cards."  "He has
pictures," added Sylvester.  "Pictures, indeed!  He maybe peddling
etchings.  Has he a Russia leather case?"  But Sylvester was too
frightened to remember.  I said; "I am going down to make it hot for that
upstart!"

I went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way.  When I got to
the parlor I was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid
courtesy.  And when I looked in the door, sure enough he had a Russia
leather case in his hand.  But I didn't happen to notice that it was our
Russia leather case.

And if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of
etchings spread out before him.  But I didn't happen to notice that they
were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some
unguessed purpose.

Very curtly I asked the gentleman his business.  With a surprised, timid
manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at Onteora, and
they had asked him to call.  Fine lie, I thought, and I froze him.

He seemed to be kind of non-plussed, and sat there fingering the etchings
in the case until I told him he needn't bother, because we had those.
That pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarrassed way, to
pick up another from the floor.  But I stopped him.  I said, "We've got
that, too." He seemed pitifully amazed, but I was congratulating myself
on my great success.

Finally the gentleman asked where Mr. Winton lived; he'd met him in the
mountains, too.  So I said I'd show him gladly.  And I did on the spot.
And when he was gone I felt queer, because there were all his etchings
spread out on the floor.

Well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in.  I showed her the
card, and told her all exultantly.  To my dismay she nearly fainted. She
told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had
forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way.  And she pushed me out
of the door, and commanded me to get over to the Wintons in a hurry and
get him back.

I came into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Winton was sitting up very stiff
in a chair, beating me at my own game.  Well, I began, to put another
light on things.  Before many seconds Mrs. Winton saw it was time to
change her temperature.  In five minutes I had asked the man to luncheon,
and she to dinner, and so on.

We made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the
time of his life.  Why, I don't believe we let him get sober the whole
time.

I trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons I
have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher
things, and elevate you to plans far above the old--and--and--

And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had a better time with you
to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago.






QUEEN VICTORIA

          ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES CLUB, AT
          DELMONICO'S, MONDAY, MAY 25, IN HONOR OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S
          BIRTHDAY

          Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how
          he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a
          friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five
          yards and attributed the shot to Mark twain.  The duel did not
          take place.  Mr. Clemens continued as follows:

It also happened that I was the means of stopping duelling in Nevada, for
a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and the
Governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me I should go
to prison for the full term.  That's why I left Nevada, and I have not
been there since.

You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country
in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was
consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of
lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed
and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will
still be formed in the generations that are to come--a life which finds
its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and
out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre
across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished
at their source.

As a woman the Queen was all that the most exacting standards could
require.  As a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had
no peer in her time among either, monarchs or commoners.  As a monarch
she was without reproach in her great office.  We may not venture,
perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any
monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other.
It is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified.

In those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and
conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will
still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political
glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to a
place in that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call
tradition.  Which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live
always.  And with it her character--a fame rare in the history of
thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, since it will not rest
upon harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and
freely vouchsafed.  She mended broken hearts where she could, but she
broke none.

What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we shall
not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember the
wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and supported
her--Prince Albert's.  We need not talk any idle talk here to-night about
either possible or impossible war between the two countries; there will
be no war while we remain sane and the son of Victoria and Albert sits
upon the throne.  In conclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter
the voice of my country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and
also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign.






JOAN OF ARC

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS, GIVEN AT
          THE ALDINE ASSOCIATION CLUB, DECEMBER 22, 1905

          Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young woman attired
          as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle,
          courtesied reverently and tendered Mr. Clemens a laurel wreath
          on a satin pillow.  He tried to speak, but his voice failed
          from excess of emotion. "I thank you!" he finally exclaimed,
          and, pulling him self together, he began his speech.

Now there is an illustration [pointing to the retreating Joan of Arc].
That is exactly what I wanted--precisely what I wanted--when I was
describing to myself Joan of Arc, after studying her history and her
character for twelve years diligently.

That was the product--not the conventional Joan of Arc.  Wherever you
find the conventional Joan of Arc in history she is an offence to anybody
who knows the story of that wonderful girl.

Why, she was--she was almost supreme in several details.  She had a
marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was
absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words,
her everything--she was only eighteen years old.

Now put that heart into such a breast--eighteen years old--and give it
that masterly intellect which showed in the face, and furnish it with
that almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to have?
The conventional Joan of Arc?  Not by any means.  That is impossible.
I cannot comprehend any such thing as that.

You must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we
just saw.  And her spirit must look out of the eyes.  The figure should
be--the figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get
in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture!

I hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the
conventional, you have got it at second-hand.  Certainly, if you had
studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but
when you have the common convention you stick to that.

You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a Joan
of Arc--that lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but
whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely, because she
was a girl he can not see the divinity in her, and so he paints a
peasant, a coarse and lubberly figure--the figure of a cotton-bale, and
he clothes that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant region just like a
fish woman, her hair cropped short like a Russian peasant, and that face
of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the
glories which are in the spirit and in her heart that expression in that
face is always just the fixed expression of a ham.

But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has Sir
Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist, the, illustrator, does not often
get the idea of the man whose book he is illustrating.  Here is a very
remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr. Beard, who illustrated a
book of mine. You may never have heard of it.  I will tell you about it
now--A Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Now, Beard got everything that I put into that book and a little more
besides.  Those pictures of Beard's in that book--oh, from the first page
to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the
servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and the
insolence of priest-craft and king-craft--those creatures that make
slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off.  Beard
put it all in that book.  I meant it to be there.  I put a lot of it
there and Beard put the rest.

What publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he
saved them.  He did not waste any on the illustrations.  He had a very
good artist--Williams--who had never taken a lesson in drawing.
Everything he did was original.  The publisher hired the cheapest
wood-engraver he could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of
that.  You can see that if Williams had had a chance he would have made
some very good pictures.  He had a good heart and good intentions.

I had a character in the first book he illustrated--The Innocents Abroad.
That was a boy seventeen or eighteen years old--Jack Van Nostrand--a New
York boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature.  He and I
tried to get Williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of Jack
that would be worthy of Jack.

Jack was a most singular combination.  He was born and reared in New York
here.  He was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined
in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he
expressed a feeling he did it in Bowery slang, and it was a most curious
combination--that delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness.  There
was no coarseness inside of Jack at all, and Jack, in the course of
seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that was
marvellous--ignorance of various things, not of all things.  For
instance, he did not know anything about the Bible.  He had never been in
Sunday-school.  Jack got more out of the Holy Land than anybody else,
because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of
surprises to him.

I said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning
that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that "The
song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't sing.
It sounded absurd, but it was charged on Jack as a fact, and as he went
along through that country he had a proper foil in an old rebel colonel,
who was superintendent and head engineer in a large Sunday-school in
Wheeling, West Virginia.  That man was full of enthusiasm wherever he
went, and would stand and deliver himself of speeches, and Jack would
listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder.

Jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the first
overland stage-coach.  That man's name who ran that line of stages--well,
I declare that name is gone.  Well, names will go.

Halliday--ah, that's the name--Ben Halliday, your uncle [turning to Mr.
Carnegie].  That was the fellow--Ben Halliday--and Jack was full of
admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages made--and it
was good speed--one hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and
night, and it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of the
Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a
speech), so he called us up to him.  He called up five sinners and three
saints.  It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified me.  And he
said: "Here are the Fords of the Jordan--a monumental place.  At this
very point, when Moses brought the children of Israel through--he brought
the children of Israel from Egypt through the desert you see them--he
guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty years,
and brought them to this spot safe and sound.  There you see--there is
the scene of what Moses did."

And Jack said: "Moses who?"

"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that!  Moses, the great
law-giver!  Moses, the great patriot!  Moses, the great warrior!  Moses,
the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these people through these
three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed there safe and
sound."

Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years.
Ben Halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty--six hours."

Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it was beautiful.  Jack was
not ignorant on all subjects.  That boy was a deep student in the history
of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to the
marrow.  There was a subject that interested him all the time.  Other
subjects were of no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable
innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into the picture.

Yes, Williams wanted to do it.  He said: "I will make him as innocent as
a virgin."  He thought a moment, and then said, "I will make him as
innocent as an unborn virgin;" which covered the ground.

I was reminded of Jack because I came across a letter to-day which is
over thirty years old that Jack wrote.  Jack was doomed to consumption.
He was very long and slim, poor creature; and in a year or two after he
got back from that excursion, to the Holy Land he went on a ride on
horseback through Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two.

He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine; and he said:
"I have ridden horseback"--this was three years after--"I hate ridden
horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you never see
anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle station--ten
miles apart, twenty miles apart.  Now you tell Clemens that in all that
stretch of four hundred miles I have seen only two books--the Bible and
'Innocents Abroad'.  Tell Clemens the Bible was in a very good
condition."

I say that he had studied, and he had, the real Saxon liberty, the
acquirement of our liberty, and Jack used to repeat some verses--I don't
know where they came from, but I thought of them to-day when I saw that
letter--that that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted
lines from that unknown poet:

               "For he had sat at Sidney's feet
               And walked with him in plain apart,
               And through the centuries heard the beat
               Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart."

And he was that kind of a boy.  He should have lived, and yet he should
not have lived, because he died at that early age--he couldn't have been
more than twenty--he had seen all there was to see in the world that was
worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is
valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion,
is the only valuable thing in it.  He had arrived at that point where
presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the
realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived at that point.






ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC.

          DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD,
          OF LONDON

GENTLEMAN,--I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished
guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has
extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of
brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's arms company making the
destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance citizens
paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating
their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades
taking care of their hereafter.  I am glad to assist in welcoming our
guest--first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of
hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he
is in sympathy with insurance, and has been the means of making many
other men cast their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance
line of business--especially accident insurance.  Ever since I have been
a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a
better man.  Life has seemed more precious.  Accidents have assumed a
kindlier aspect.  Distressing special providences have lost half their
horror.  I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an
advertisement.  I do not seem, to care for poetry any more.  I do not
care for politics--even agriculture does not excite me.  But to me now
there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance.  I have seen an
entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon
of a broken leg.  I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in
their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution.  In all my experience
of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a
freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his
remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right.  And I have seen
nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's
face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.

I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity
which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY is an
institution, which is peculiarly to be depended upon.  A man is bound to
prosper who gives it his custom.  No man pan take out a policy in it and
not get crippled before the year is out.  Now there was one indigent man
who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had grown
disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smile--said life was
but a weariness.  Three weeks ago I got him to insure with us, and now he
is the brightest, happiest spirit in this land--has a good steady income
and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around on a
shutter.

I will say in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is
none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I
curl say the same far the rest of the speakers.






OSTEOPATHY

          On February 27, 1901, Mr. Clemens appeared before the Assembly
          Committee in Albany, New York, in favor of the Seymour bill
          legalizing the practice of osteopathy.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--Dr. Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave me
the character.  I have heard my character discussed a thousand times
before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did
not get more than half of them.

I was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in
here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way.
What remarkable names those diseases have!  It makes me envious of the
man that has them all.  I have had many diseases, and am thankful for all
I have had.

One of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in
Sweden, a treatment which I took.  It is, I suppose, a kindred thing.
There is apparently no great difference between them.  I was a year and a
half in London and Sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, Mr.
Kildren.

I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a
certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't.

The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed with power.  It stands
between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor I must employ.
When my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by the
State.  Now then, it doesn't seem logical that the State shall depart
from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and take
the other position in the matter of smaller consequence--the health of
the body.

The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the State.
Oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the State you create the same
condition as prevailed in the Garden of Eden.

You want the thing that you can't have.  I didn't care much about the
osteopaths, but as soon as I found they were going to drive them out I
got in a state of uneasiness, and I can't sleep nights now.

I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden about the prohibited apple.
Adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it,
just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it.

Whose property is my body?  Probably mine.  I so regard it.  If I
experiment with it, who must be answerable?  I, not the State.  If I
choose injudiciously, does the State die?  Oh no.

I was the subject of my mother's experiment.  She was wise.  She made
experiments cautiously.  She didn't pick out just any child in the flock.
No, she chose judiciously.  She chose one she could spare, and she
couldn't spare the others.  I was the choice child of the flock; so I had
to take all of the experiments.

In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure.
Mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through.
A bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect.  Then I was
rubbed down with flannels, sheet was dipped in the water, and I was put
to bed.  I perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with
me.

But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and I didn't care for
that.  When they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my
conscience, the exudation of sin.  It purified me spiritually, and it
remains until this day.

I have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy.  I took a chance at
the latter for old times' sake, for, three tines, when a boy, mother's
new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family
physician to pull me out.

The physicians think they are moved by regard for the best interests of
the public.  Isn't there a little touch of self-interest back of it all?
It seems to me there is, and I don't claim to have all the virtues--only
nine or ten of them.

I was born in the "Banner State," and by "Banner State" I mean Missouri.
Osteopathy was born in the same State, and both of us are getting along
reasonably well.  At a time during my younger days my attention was
attracted to a picture of a house which bore the inscription, "Christ
Disputing with the Doctors."

I could attach no other meaning to it than that Christ was actually
quarreling with the doctors.  So I asked an old slave, who was a sort of
a herb doctor in a small way--unlicensed, of course--what the meaning of
the picture was.  "What had has done?" I asked.  And the colored man
replied "Humph, he ain't got no license."






WATER-SUPPLY

          Mr. Clemens visited Albany on February 21 and 28, 1901. The
          privileges of the floor were granted and he was asked to make a
          short address to the Senate.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--I do not know how to thank you sufficiently
for this high honor which you are conferring upon me.  I have for the
second time now enjoyed this kind of prodigal hospitality--in the other
House yesterday, to-day in this one.  I am a modest man, and diffident
about appearing before legislative bodies, and yet utterly an entirely
appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is extended to me, and I
thank you very much for it.

If I had the privilege, which unfortunately I have not got, of suggesting
things to the legislators in my individual capacity, I would so enjoy the
opportunity that I would not charge anything for it at all.  I would do
that without a salary.  I would give them the benefit of my wisdom and
experience in legislative bodies, and if I could have had the privilege
for a few minutes of giving advice to the other House I should have liked
to, but of course I could not undertake it, as they did not ask me to do
it--but if they had only asked me!

Now that the House is considering a measure which is to furnish a
water-supply to the city of New York, why, permit me to say I live in New
York myself.  I know all about its ways, its desires, and its residents,
and--if I had the privilege--I should have urged them not to weary
themselves over a measure like that to furnish water to the city of New
York, for we never drink it.

But I will not venture to advise this body, as I only venture to advise
bodies who are, not present.






MISTAKEN IDENTITY

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL "LADIES' DAY," PAPYRUS CLUB, BOSTON

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am perfectly astonished--a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d
--ladies and gentlemen--astonished at the way history repeats itself.
I find myself situated at this moment exactly and precisely as I was once
before, years ago, to a jot, to a tittle--to a very hair.  There isn't a
shade of difference.  It is the most astonishing coincidence that ever
--but wait.  I will tell you the former instance, and then you will see
it for yourself.  Years ago I arrived one day at Salamanca, New York,
eastward bound; must change cars there and take the sleeper train.  There
were crowds of people there, and they were swarming into the long sleeper
train and packing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and
confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and low profanity.
I asked the young man in the ticket-office if I could have a
sleeping-section, and he answered "No," with a snarl that shrivelled me
up like burned leather.  I went off, smarting under this insult to my
dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if I couldn't
have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car; but he cut me
short with a venomous "No, you can't; every corner is full.  Now, don't
bother me any more"; and he turned his back and walked off.  My dignity
was in a state now which cannot be described.  I was so ruffled that
--"well," I said to my companion, "If these people knew who I am they--"
But my companion cut me short there--"Don't talk such folly," he said;
"if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help your
high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in it?"

This did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then I
observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me.
I saw his dark countenance light up.  He whispered to the uniformed
conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway
this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore.

"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked.  "Will you have a place in
the sleeper?"

"Yes," I said, "and much oblige me, too.  Give me anything--anything will
answer."

"We have nothing left but the big family state-room," he continued, "with
two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at your
disposal.  Here, Tom, take these satchels aboard!"

Then he touched his hat and we and the colored Tom moved along.  I was
bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in
and waited.  Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment,
and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles:

"Now, is dey anything you want, sah?  Case you kin have jes' anything you
wants.  It don't make no difference what it is."

"Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night-blazing hot?"
I asked.  "You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch?"

"Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll get it myself."

"Good!  Now, that lamp is hung too high.  Can I have a big coach candle
fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably?"

"Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll
burn all night.  Yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want,
and dish yer whole railroad'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for
to get it for you.  Dat's so."  And he disappeared.

Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a
smile on my companion, and said, gently:

"Well, what do you say now?"

My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't.  The next
moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door,
and this speech followed:

"Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute.  I told de conductah so.
Laws!  I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you."

"Is that so, my boy?" (Handing him a quadruple fee.) "Who am I?"

"Jenuel McClellan," and he disappeared again.

My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well!  what do you say now?"
Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while ago
--viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now.  Perceive it?






CATS AND CANDY

          The following address was delivered at a social meeting of
          literary men in New York in 1874:

When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor--and
correspondently honest.  We had a youth living with us by the name of Jim
Wolfe.  He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very
diffident.  He and I slept together--virtuously; and one bitter winter's
night a cousin Mary--she's married now and gone--gave what they call a
candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of hot
candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that
came from the eaves--it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with
vines--to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting
there.  In the mean time we were gone to bed.  We were not invited to
attend this party; we were too young.

The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were
in bed.  There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and
our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard.  A couple of
tom-cats--it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex--were
assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were
growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on,
and we couldn't sleep at all.

Finally Jim said, "For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that
chimney."  So I said, "Of course you would."  He said, "Well, I would;
I have a mighty good notion to do it."  Says I, "Of course you have;
certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it."  I hoped he might
try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.

Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed
out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short
shirt.  He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the
chimney where the cats were.  In the mean time these young ladies and
gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim got
almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels flew up
and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the midst of
the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of candy.

There was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces of
chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up there--now anybody
in the world would have gone into profanity or something calculated to
relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off his legs,
nursed his blisters a little, and said, "I could have ketched them cats
if I had had on a good ready."

[Does any reader know what a "ready" was in 1840?  D.W.]






OBITUARY POETRY

          ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR, PHILADELPHIA, in 1895

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The--er this--er--welcome occasion gives me an
--er--opportunity to make an--er--explanation that I have long desired to
deliver myself of.  I rise to the highest honors before a Philadelphia
audience.  In the course of my checkered career I have, on divers
occasions, been charged--er--maliciously with a more or less serious
offence.  It is in reply to one of the more--er--important of these that
I wish to speak.  More than once I have been accused of writing obituary
poetry in the Philadelphia Ledger.

I wish right here to deny that dreadful assertion.  I will admit that
once, when a compositor in the Ledger establishment, I did set up some of
that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no indictment can be found
against me.  I did not write that poetry--at least, not all of it.






CIGARS AND TOBACCO

My friends for some years now have remarked that I am an inveterate
consumer of tobacco.  That is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco
have changed.  I have no doubt that you will say, when I have explained
to you what my present purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated, but I
do not so regard it.

Whenever I held a smoking-party at my house, I found that my guests had
always just taken the pledge.

Let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco.
It began, I think, when I was a lad, and took the form of a quid, which I
became expert in tucking under my tongue.  Afterward I learned the
delights of the pipe, and I suppose there was no other youngster of my
age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available for
pipe-smoking.

Well, time ran on, and there came a time when I was able to gratify one
of my youthful ambitions--I could buy the choicest Havana cigars without
seriously interfering with my income.  I smoked a good many, changing off
from the Havana cigars to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking.

At last it occurred to me that something was lacking in the Havana
cigar.  It did not quite fulfil my youthful anticipations.
I experimented.  I bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a
Connecticut wrapper.  After a while I became satiated of these, and I
searched for something else, The Pittsburg stogy was recommended to me.
It certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be a merit in tobacco,
and I experimented with the stogy.

Then, once more, I changed off, so that I might acquire the subtler
flavor of the Wheeling toby.  Now that palled, and I looked around New
York in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to most people vile,
but which, I am sure, would be ambrosial to me.  I couldn't find any.
They put into my hands some of those little things that cost ten cents a
box, but they are a delusion.

I said to a friend, "I want to know if you can direct me to an honest
tobacco merchant who will tell me what is the worst cigar in the New York
market, excepting those made for Chinese consumption--I want real
tobacco.  If you will do this and I find the man is as good as his word,
I will guarantee him a regular market for a fair amount of his cigars."

We found a tobacco dealer who would tell the truth--who, if a cigar was
bad, would boldly say so.  He produced what he called the very worst
cigars he had ever had in his shop.  He let me experiment with one then
and there.  The test was satisfactory.

This was, after all, the real thing.  I negotiated for a box of them and
took them away with me, so that I might be sure of having them handy when
I want them.

I discovered that the "worst cigars," so called, are the best for me,
after all.






BILLIARDS

          Mr. Clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of April
          24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story.

The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition.
Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I
wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark.  One day a
stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor.  I looked him over
casually.  When he proposed a game, I answered, "All right."

"Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait," he
said; and when I had done so, he remarked: "I will be perfectly fair with
you.  I'll play you left-handed."  I felt hurt, for he was cross-eyed,
freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to teach him a lesson.  He
won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got was the
opportunity to chalk my cue.

"If you can play like that with your left hand," I said, "I'd like to see
you play with your right."

"I can't," he said.  "I'm left-handed."






THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG

          REMINISCENCES OF NEVADA

I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that Nevada had lively newspapers
in those days.

My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs, of the Union, an
excellent reporter.

Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated; but, as a
general thing, he was a wary and cautious drinker, although always ready
to damp himself a little with the enemy.

He had the advantage of me in one thing: he could get the monthly
public-school report and I could not, because the principal hated my sheet
--the 'Enterprise'.

One snowy night, when the report was due, I started out, sadly wondering
how I was to get it.

Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street, I stumbled on
Boggs, and asked him where he was going.

"After the school report."

"I'll go along with you."

"No, Sir.  I'll excuse you."

"Have it your own way."

A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and
Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully.

He gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him start up the Enterprise
stairs.

I said:

"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't,
I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get a proof of it
after it's set up, though I don't begin to suppose I can.  Good night."

"Hold on a minute.  I don't mind getting the report and sitting around
with the boys a little while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down
to the principal's with me."

"Now you talk like a human being.  Come along."

We ploughed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report--a short
document--and soon copied it in our office.

Meantime, Boggs helped himself to the punch.

I gave the manuscript back to him, and we started back to get an inquest.

At four o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having
a relaxing concert as usual (for some of the printers were good singers
and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the
accordion), the proprietor of the Union strode in and asked if anybody
had heard anything of Boggs or the school report.

We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent.

We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in
one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of
"corned" miners on, the iniquity of squandering the public money on
education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were
literally starving for whiskey."

He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours.

We dragged him away, and put him into bed.

Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me
accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass
its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the
misfortune had occurred.  But we were perfectly friendly.

The day the next school report was due the proprietor of the Tennessee
Mine furnished us a buggy, and asked us to go down and write something
about the property--a very common request, and one always gladly acceded
to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure
excursions as other people.

The "mine" was a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of
getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a
windlass.

The workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner.

I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk, so I took an unlighted
candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope,
implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of
him, and then swung out over the shaft.

I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe.

I lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some
specimens, and shouted to Boggs to hoist away.

No answer.

Presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a
voice came down:

"Are you all set?"

"All set-hoist away!"

"Are you comfortable?"

"Perfectly."

"Could you wait a little?"

"Oh, certainly-no particular hurry."

"Well-good-bye."

"Why, where are you going?"

"After the school report!"

And he did.

I stayed down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled
up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock.

I walked home, too--five miles-up-hill.

We had no school report next morning--but the Union had.






AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS

     EXTRACT FROM "PARIS NOTES," IN "TOM SAWYER ABROAD," ETC.

I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it never names an
historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates,
you get left.  A French speech is something like this:

"Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and
perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our
chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of
foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification before
Heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its
own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty
proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed
peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live;
and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the
2d December, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of France,
that but for him there had been no 17th Mardi in history, no 12th
October, nor 9th January, no 22d April, no 16th November, no 30th
September, no 2d July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no
31st May--that but for him, France, the pure, the grand, the peerless,
had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day."

I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent
way:

"My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January.
The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just
proportion to the magnitude of the act itself.  But for it there had been
no 30th November--sorrowful spectacle!  The grisly deed of the 16th June
had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known
existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal 12th
October.  Shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th January, with its
freight of death for you and me and all that breathe?  Yes, my friends,
for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it alone
--the blessed 25th December."

It may be well enough to explain.  The man of the 13th January is Adam;
the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful
spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly
deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September
was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of
October, the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood.  When you go
to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you--annotated.






STATISTICS

          EXTRACT FROM "THE HISTORY OF THE SAVAGE CLUB"

          During that period of gloom when domestic bereavement had
          forced Mr. Clemens and his dear ones to secure the privacy they
          craved until their wounds should heal, his address was known to
          only a very few of his closest friends.  One old friend in New
          York, after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a letter
          addressed as follows

                    MARK TWAIN,
                         God Knows Where,
                                   Try London.

          The letter found him, and Mr. Clemens replied to the letter
          expressing himself surprised and complimented that the person
          who was credited with knowing his whereabouts should take so
          much interest in him, adding: "Had the letter been addressed to
          the care of the 'other party,' I would naturally have expected
          to receive it without delay."

          His correspondent tried again, and addressed the second letter:

                    MARK TWAIN,
                         The Devil Knows Where,
                              Try London.

          This found him also no less promptly.

          On June 9, 1899, he consented to visit the Savage Club, London,
          on condition that there was to be no publicity and no speech
          was to be expected from him.  The toastmaster, in proposing the
          health of their guest, said that as a Scotchman, and therefore
          as a born expert, he thought Mark Twain had little or no claim
          to the title of humorist.  Mr. 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.  When I am situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as
though I were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please
consider I am playing a part for want of something better, and this, is
not unfamiliar to me; I have often done this before.

When I was here about eight years ago I was coming up in a car of the
elevated road.  Very few people were in that car, and on one end of it
there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about
fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye--a beautiful
eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had
a vocation.  He had with him a very fine little child of about four or
five years.  I was watching the affection which existed between those
two.  I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps.  It was really a pretty
child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I was admiring her
he began to notice me.

I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody
else would do--admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get
four times as much of his admiration.  Things went on very pleasantly.
I was making my way into his heart.

By-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off,
he got up, crossed over, and he said: "Now I am going to say something to
you which I hope you will regard as a compliment."  And then he went on
to say: "I have never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of him,
and any friend of mine will tell you that when I have once seen a
portrait of a man I place it in my eye and store it away in my memory,
and I can tell you now that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his
brother.  Now," he said, "I hope you take this as a compliment.  Yes, you
are a very good imitation; but when I come to look closer, you are
probably not that man."

I said: "I will be frank with you.  In my desire to look like that
excellent character I have dressed for the character; I have been playing
a part."

He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you look very well on the
outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the
original"

So when I come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say I always
play a part.  But I will say before I sit down that when it comes to
saying anything here I will express myself in this way: I am heartily in
sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers in
this calamity, and in your desire to heap those who were rendered
homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the fact that I am
not playing a part.






SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE

          After the address at the Robert Fulton Fund meeting, June 19,
          1906, Mr. Clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the
          San Francisco earthquake.

I haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of San Francisco has
grown up since my day.  When I was there she had one hundred and eighteen
thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were Chinese.
I was a reporter on the Virginia City Enterprise in Nevada in 1862, and
stayed there, I think, about two years, when I went to San Francisco and
got a job as a reporter on The Call.  I was there three or four
years.

I remember one day I was walking down Third Street in San Francisco.  It
was a sleepy, dull Sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring.  Suddenly
as I looked up the street about three hundred yards the whole side of a
house fell out.  The street was full of bricks and mortar.  At the same
time I was knocked against the side of a house, and stood there stunned
for a moment.

I thought it was an earthquake.  Nobody else had heard anything about it
and no one said earthquake to me afterward, but I saw it and I wrote it.
Nobody else wrote it, and the house I saw go into the street was the only
house in the city that felt it.  I've always wondered if it wasn't a
little performance gotten up for my especial entertainment by the nether
regions.






CHARITY AND ACTORS

          ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR IN THE METROPOLITAN
          OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, MAY 6, 1907

          Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair
          open.  Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr. Clemens, said:

          "We intend to make this a banner week in the history of the
          Fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he
          actor, singer, dancer, or workman.  We have spent more than
          $40,000 during the past year.  Charity covers a multitude of
          sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues.  At the
          opening of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin Booth
          and Joseph Jefferson.  In their place we have to-day that
          American institution and apostle of wide humanity--Mark Twain."

As Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues.  This is
true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over.  Mr. Frohman
has told you something of the object and something of the character of
the work.  He told me he would do this--and he has kept his word!  I had
expected to hear of it through the newspapers.  I wouldn't trust anything
between Frohman and the newspapers--except when it's a case of charity!

You should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and
many a year.  When you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your
heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse.  You are all under
obligation to him.  This is your opportunity to be his benefactor--to
help provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities.

At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy.  If you offer a
twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive $19
in change.  There is to be no robbery here.  There is to be no creed here
--no religion except charity.  We want to raise $250,000--and that is a
great task to attempt.

The President has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in
Washington.  Now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash.

By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open.  I call
the ball game.  Let the transmuting begin!






RUSSIAN REPUBLIC

The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in Russia was
launched on the evening of April 11, 1906, at the Club A house, 3 Fifth
Avenue, with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal spokesmen.
Mr. Clemens made an introductory address, presenting Mr. Gorky.

If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of
the Tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go
ahead and do it.  We need not discuss the methods by which that purpose
is to be attained.  Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or
averted for a while, but if it must come--

I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot in
Russia, to make that country free.  I am certain that it will be
successful, as it deserves to be.  Any such movement should have and
deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for
funds as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just and powerful
meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us.
Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free
ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying
to do the same thing in Russia.

The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no
difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm
blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off.
If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free.






RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

          On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casino
          for the benefit of the Russian sufferers.  After the
          performance Mr. Clemens spoke.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an
audience like this our rude English tongue, after we have heard that
divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue.

It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always
been a puzzle to me.  How beautiful that language is.  How expressive it
seems to be.  How full of grace it is.

And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid it
is.  And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to
understand it.

Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame
Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her.

I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but I have
always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself--her fiery self.  I have
wanted to know that beautiful character.

Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I always
feel young when I come in the presence of young people.

I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years ago--when
Madame Bernhardt came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was going to
play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely women
--a widow and her daughter--neighbors of ours, highly cultivated ladies
they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were very poor,
and they said "Well, we must not spend six dollars on a pleasure of the
mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if it must go at
all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat."

And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great
pleasure of seeing Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors equally
highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those good-hearted
Joneses sent that six dollars--deprived themselves of it--and sent it to
those poor Smiths to buy bread with.  And those Smiths took it and bought
tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt.

Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also.

Now, I was going to make a speech--I supposed I was, but I am not.  It is
late, late; and so I am going to tell a story; and there is this
advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing
you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted
sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what
that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear
me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of
that story, and you are bound to get it--it flashes, it flames, it is the
jewel in the toad's head--you don't overlook that.

Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost
opportunity--oh, the lost opportunity.  Anybody in this house who has
reached the turn of life--sixty, or seventy, or even fifty, or along
there--when he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned
all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that is.

You younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those words
--the lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived and
felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity.

Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that,
whose lament is that.

I was in a village which is a suburb of New Bedford several years ago
--well, New Bedford is a suburb of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the other
way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great centre of
the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth century,
and I was up there at Fair Haven some years ago with a friend of mine.

There was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we
were there in the afternoon.  This great building was filled, like this
great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and I started down
the centre aisle.  He saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said "Now,
look at that bronzed veteran--at that mahogany-faced man.  Now, tell me,
do you see anything about that man's face that is emotional?  Do you see
anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there are
fires that can be started?  Would you ever imagine that that is a human
volcano?"

"Why, no," I said, "I would not.  He looks like a wooden Indian in front
of a cigar store."

"Very well," said my friend, "I will show you that there is emotion even
in that unpromising place.  I will just go to that man and I will just
mention in the most casual way an incident in his life.  That man is
getting along toward ninety years old.  He is past eighty.  I will
mention an incident of fifty or sixty years ago.  Now, just watch the
effect, and it will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't know
when I do say that thing--but you just watch the effect."

He went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark or
two.  I could not catch up.  They were so casual I could not recognize
which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old man
was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with profanity
of the most exquisite kind.  You never heard such accomplished profanity.
I never heard it also delivered with such eloquence.

I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then--more than if I had been
uttering it myself.  There is nothing like listening to an artist--all
his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and
earthquake.

Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell you about that.  About
sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just
come home from a three years' whaling voyage.  He came into that village
of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief mate, he was
going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and happy about it.

"Then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that
town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the
Father Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region.
Therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for miles
and miles around that had not taken the pledge.

"So you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond of
his grog.  And he was just an outcast, because when they found he would
not join Father Mathew's Society they ostracized him, and he went about
that town three weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness--the only human
being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it
privately.

"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your
fellow-man, may you never know it.  Then he recognized that there was
something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the
fellowship of your fellow-man.  And at last he gave it up, and at nine
o'clock one night he went down to the Father Mathew Temperance Society,
and with a broken heart he said: 'Put my name down for membership in this
society.'

"And then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning they
came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his was
ready to sail on a three years' voyage.  In a minute he was on board that
ship and gone.

"And he said--well, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to
repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and
so that whole voyage of three years was a three years' agony to that man
because he saw all the time the mistake he had made.

"He felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the
crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it,
and there was the torturous Smell of it.

"He went through the whole, three years of suffering, and at last coming
into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow two
feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his crew
torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had his
reward.  He really did get to shore at fast, and jumped and ran and
bought a jug and rushed to the society's office, and said to the
secretary:

"'Take my name off your membership books, and do it right away!  I have
got a three years' thirst on.'

"And the secretary said: 'It is not necessary.  You were blackballed!'"






WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS

          ADDRESS AT THE CELEBRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S 92D BIRTHDAY
          ANNIVERSARY, CARNEGIE HALL, FEBRUARY 11, 1901, TO RAISE FUNDS
          FOR THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY AT CUMBERLAND GAP, TENN.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The remainder of my duties as presiding chairman
here this evening are but two--only two.  One of them is easy, and the
other difficult.  That is to say, I must introduce the orator, and then
keep still and give him a chance.  The name of Henry Watterson carries
with it its own explanation.  It is like an electric light on top of
Madison Square Garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out
of the darkness.  You mention the name of Henry Watterson, and your minds
are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and
achievements.  A journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel.
Yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel.

It is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any
collusion or prearrangement, that he and I, both of whom were rebels
related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this
evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence
to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy.  I don't know
as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact,
nevertheless.  Colonel Watterson and I were both rebels, and we are blood
relations.  I was a second lieutenant in a Confederate company for a
while--oh, I could have stayed on if I had wanted to.  I made myself
felt, I left tracks all around the country.  I could have stayed on, but
it was such weather.  I never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in
all my life.

The Colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, I suppose, to destroy
the Union.  He did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would have
done so.  I had a plan, and I fully intended to drive General Grant into
the Pacific Ocean--if I could get transportation.  I told Colonel
Watterson about it.  I told him what he had to do.  What I wanted him to
do was to surround the Eastern army and wait until I came up.  But he was
insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a
second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that.  And
what was the consequence?  The Union was preserved.  This is the first
time I believe that that secret has ever been revealed.

No one outside of the family circle, I think, knew it before; but there
the facts are.  Watterson saved the Union; yes, he saved the Union.  And
yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made
toward granting him a pension.  That is the way things are done.  It is a
case where some blushing ought to be done.  You ought to blush, and I
ought to blush, and he--well, he's a little out of practice now.






ROBERT FULTON FUND

          ADDRESS MADE ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 19, 1906

          Mr. Clemens had been asked to address the association by Gen.
          Frederick D. Grant, president.  He was offered a fee of $1,000,
          but refused it, saying:

          "I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keep
          the $1,000, and add it to the Memorial Fund as my contribution
          to erect a monument in New York to the memory of the man who
          applied steam to navigation."

          At this meeting Mr. Clemens made this formal announcement from
          the platform:

          "This is my last appearance on the paid platform.  I shall not
          retire from the gratis platform until I am buried, and courtesy
          will compel me to keep still and not disturb the others.  Now,
          since I must, I shall say good-bye.  I see many faces in this
          audience well known to me.  They are all my friends, and I feel
          that those I don't know are my friends, too.  I wish to
          consider that you represent the nation, and  that in saying
          good-bye to you I am saying good-bye to the nation.  In the
          great name of humanity, let me say this final word: I offer an
          appeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers,
          mothers, and helpless little children.  They were sheltered and
          happy two days ago.  Now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless,
          and homeless, the victims of a great disaster.  So I beg of
          you, I beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses and
          remember San Francisco, the smitten city."

I wish to deliver a historical address.  I've been studying the history
of---er--a--let me see--a [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over
to Gen. Fred D.  Grant, who sat at the head of the platform.  He leaned
over an a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and
continued].  Oh yes!  I've been studying Robert Fulton.  I've been
studying a biographical sketch of Robert Fulton, the inventor of--er--a
--let's see--ah yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the Morse
sewing--machine.  Also, I understand he invented the air--diria--pshaw!
I have it at last--the dirigible balloon.  Yes, the dirigible--but it is
a difficult word, and I don't see why anybody should marry a couple of
words like that when they don't want to be married at all and are likely
to quarrel with each other all the time.  I should put that couple of
words under the ban of the United States Supreme Court, under its
decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and drown 'em.

I used to know Fulton.  It used to do me good to see him dashing through
tile town on a wild broncho.

And Fulton was born in---er--a--Well, it doesn't make much difference
where he was born, does it?  I remember a man who came to interview me
once, to get a sketch of my life.  I consulted with a friend--a practical
man--before he came, to know how I should treat him.

"Whenever you give the interviewer a fact," he said, "give him another
fact that will contradict it.  Then he'll go away with a jumble that he
can't use at all.  Be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiot--just be
natural."  That's what my friend told me to do, and I did it.

"Where were you born?" asked the interviewer.

"Well-er-a," I began, "I was born in Alabama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich
Islands; I don't know where, but right around there somewhere.  And you
had better put it down before you forget it."

"But you weren't born in all those places," he said.

"Well, I've offered you three places.  Take your choice.  They're all at
the same price."

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I shall be nineteen in June," I said.

"Why, there's such a discrepancy between your age and your looks," he
said.

"Oh, that's nothing," I said, "I was born discrepantly."

Then we got to talking about my brother Samuel, and he told me my
explanations were confusing.

"I suppose he is dead," I said.  "Some said that he was dead and some
said that he wasn't."

"Did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not?" asked the
reporter.

"There was a mystery," said I.  "We were twins, and one day when we were
two weeks old--that is, he was one week old, and I was one week old--we
got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned.  We never could tell
which.  One of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand.
There it is on my hand.  This is the one that was drowned.  There's no
doubt about it.

"Where's the mystery?" he said.

"Why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin?"
I answered.  I didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation
confused him.  To me it is perfectly plain.

But, to get back to Fulton.  I'm going along like an old man I used to
know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather.  He had an
awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because he
switched off into something else.  He used to tell about how his
grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram.  The old
man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up.
The ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an
invitation.

Just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would
recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye.  She used to
loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she received
company.  The eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was loose.  And
whenever she winked it would turn aver.

Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about
how he believed accidents never happened.

"There was an Irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he
said, "and a Dutchman was standing on the ground below.  The Irishman
fell on the Dutchman and killed him.  Accident?  Never!  If the Dutchman
hadn't been there the Irishman would have been killed.  Why didn't the
Irishman fall on a dog which was next, to the Dutchman?  Because the dog
would have seen him coming."

Then he'd get off from the Dutchman to an uncle named Reginald Wilson.
Reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the
machinery's belt.  He went excursioning around the factory until he was
properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best
three-ply carpet.  His wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a
monument to his memory.  It read:

                          Sacred to the memory
                                   of
             sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet
                  containing the mortal remainders of

                            REGINALD WILSON

                        Go thou and do likewise

And so an he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather
until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether
something else happened.






FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

          ADDRESS DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 23, 1907

          Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in introducing Mr.
          Clemens, said:

          "The people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate
          recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the
          progress of the world and the happiness of mankind."  As Mr.
          Clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder
          and louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for silence.
          It was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the
          applause ceased before Mr. Clemens could speak.  He attempted
          it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered
          again loudly.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am but human, and when you, give me a reception
like that I am obliged to wait a little while I get my voice.  When you
appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do
feel it.

We are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of American history,
and not only in American history, but in the world's history.

Indeed it was--the application of steam by Robert Fulton.

It was a world event--there are not many of them.  It is peculiarly an
American event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in effect.
We should regard this day as a very great American holiday.  We have not
many that are exclusively American holidays.  We have the Fourth of July,
which we regard as an American holiday, but it is nothing of the kind.
I am waiting for a dissenting voice.  All great efforts that led up to
the Fourth of July were made, not by Americans, but by English residents
of America, subjects of the King of England.

They fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the
blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which
are incorporated in the Declaration of Independence; but they were not
Americans.  They signed the Declaration of Independence; no American's
name is signed to that document at all.  There never was an American such
as you and I are until after the Revolution, when it had all been fought
out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the Constitution, and the
recognition of the Independence of America by all powers.

While we revere the Fourth of July--and let us always revere it, and the
liberties it conferred upon us--yet it was not an American event, a great
American day.

It was an American who applied that steam successfully.  There are not a
great many world events, and we have our full share.  The telegraph,
telephone, and the application of steam to navigation--these are great
American events.

To-day I have been requested, or I have requested myself, not to confine
myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things,
and to introduce one of the nation's celebrants.

Admiral Harrington here is going to tell you all that I have left untold.
I am going to tell you all that I know, and then he will follow up with
such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he knows.

No doubt you have heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the
influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat
is suffering neglect.

You probably do not know a great deal about that boat.  It was the most
important steamboat in the world.  I was there and saw it.  Admiral
Harrington was there at the time.  It need not surprise you, for he is
not as old as he looks.  That little boat was interesting in every way.
The size of it.  The boat was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet
long.  The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two hundred feet.
You see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the
breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again]
--the Admiral says it was a flat boat.  Then her tonnage--you know
nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her
tonnage.  We know the speed she made.  She made four miles---and
sometimes five miles.  It was on her initial trip, on, August 11, 1807,
that she made her initial trip, when she went from [consults Admiral]
Jersey City--to Chicago.  That's right.  She went by way of Albany.
Now comes the tonnage of that boat.  Tonnage of a boat means the amount
of displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can
shove in a day.  The tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey
he can displace in a day.

Robert Fulton named the 'Clermont' in honor of his bride, that is,
Clermont was the name of the county-seat.

I feel that it surprises you that I know so much.  In my remarks of
welcome of Admiral Harrington I am not going to give him compliments.
Compliments always embarrass a man.  You do not know anything to say.
It does not inspire you with words.  There is nothing you can say in
answer to a compliment.  I have been complimented myself a great many
times, and they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not
said enough.

The Admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated
together a great deal a friendly way in the time of Pocahontas.  That
incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father,
Powhatan's club, was gotten up by the Admiral and myself to advertise
Jamestown.

At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the facilities of
advertising that you have.

I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations--in public
service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and then--but it was
a mistake.  A case of mistaken identity.  I do not think it is at all a
necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington's public history.  You know that
it is in the histories.  I am not here to tell you anything about his
public life, but to expose his private life.

I am something of a poet.  When the great poet laureate, Tennyson, died,
and I found that the place was open, I tried to get it--but I did not get
it.  Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very
difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first.  When I was
down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood and Par-am.  I
made this rhyme:

               "The people of Johnswood are pious and good;
               The people of Par-am they don't care a----."

I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but as long as such men
as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country
will never cease.  I will say that the same high qualities, the same
moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of
conduct, of observation, and expression have caused Admiral Harrington to
be mistaken for me--and I have been mistaken for him.

A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have the honor and
privilege of introducing to you Admiral Harrington.






LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN

          ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE,
          NOVEMBER 11, 1893

          In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said:

          "To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings.
          The place where last we met about the table has vanished, and
          to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all
          our own.  It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be
          spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for
          full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future
          that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the
          bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters;
          for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to
          genius in literature or in art.  Is there a civilized being who
          has not heard the name of Mark Twain?  We knew him long years
          ago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit
          and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad
          to educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the
          American joke.  The world has looked on and applauded while he
          has broken many images.  He has led us in imagination all over
          the globe.  With him as our guide we have traversed alike the
          Mississippi and the Sea of Galilee.  At his bidding we have
          laughed at a thousand absurdities.  By a laborious process of
          reasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are
          actually dead.  He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the
          foot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping
          bitter tears at the tomb of Adam.  To-night we greet him in the
          flesh.  What name is there in literature that can be likened to
          his?  Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this
          table can tell us, but I know of none.  Himself his only
          parallel!"

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,--I
have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously
phrased or so well deserved.  I return thanks for them from a full heart
and an appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence:  While I
am charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I
have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a
deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to
me.  To be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and
if I read your countenances rightly I am envied.  I am glad to see this
club in such palatial quarters.  I remember it twenty years ago when it
was housed in a stable.

Now when I was studying for the ministry there were two or three things
that struck my attention particularly.  At the first banquet mentioned in
history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was
invited to stand up and have his say.  They were all there, his brethren,
David and Goliath, and--er, and if he had had such experience as I have
had he would have waited until those other people got through talking.
He got up and testified to all his failings.  Now if he had waited before
telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he might
not have given himself away as he did, and I think that I would give
myself away if I should go on.  I think I'd better wait until the others
hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make an
explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I'll
deny it happened.

          Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech, replying
          to a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner, Charles
          A. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others, each
          welcoming the guest of honor.

I don't see that I have a great deal to explain.  I got off very well,
considering the opportunities that these other fellows had.  I don't see
that Mr. Low said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana.
However, I will say that I never heard so many lies told in one evening
as were told by Mr. McKelway--and I consider myself very capable; but
even in his case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding how
much he hadn't found out.  By accident he missed the very things that I
didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism.

I have been on the continent of Europe for two and a half years.  I have
met many Americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others
making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find
that nearly all preserved their Americanism.  I have found they all like
to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the Stars
and Stripes.  I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth
and glorified monarchical institutions.

I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years I met
only one person who had fallen a victim to the shams--I think we may call
them shams--of nobilities and of heredities.  She was entirely lost in
them.  After I had listened to her for a long time, I said to her:  "At
least you must admit that we have one merit.  We are not like the
Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country
to leave it.  Thank God, we don't!"






COPYRIGHT

          With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and
          a number of other authors, Mr. Clemens appeared before the
          committee December 6, 1906.  The new Copyright Bill
          contemplated an author's copyright for the term of his life and
          for fifty years thereafter, applying also for the benefit of
          artists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the
          talking.  F. D. Millet made a speech for the artists, and John
          Philip Sousa for the musicians.

          Mr. Clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chief
          feature.  He made a speech, the serious parts of which created
          a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the Senators
          and Representatives in roars of laughter.

I have read this bill.  At least I have read such portions as I could
understand.  Nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and
thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised legislator.

I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which
concerns my trade.  I like that extension of copyright life to the
author's life and fifty years afterward.  I think that would satisfy any
reasonable author, because it would take care of his children.  Let the
grandchildren take care of themselves.  That would take care of my
daughters, and after that I am not particular.  I shall then have long
been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it.

It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the
United States are protected by the bill.  I like that.  They are all
important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the Copyright
law I should like to see it done.  I should like to see oyster culture
added, and anything else.

I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by
the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier
Constitution, which we call the decalogue.  The decalogue says you shall
not take away from any man his profit.  I don't like to be obliged to use
the harsh term.  What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shaft not
steal," but I am trying to use more polite language.

The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one class,
the people who create the literature of the land.  They always talk
handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great,
monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their
enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it.

I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit.
I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the
possession of the product of a man's labor.  There is no limit to real
estate.

Doctor Bale has suggested that a man might just as well, after
discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the
Government step in and take it away.

What is the excuse?  It is that the author who produced that book has had
the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit
which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of
people.  But it doesn't do anything of the kind.  It merely takes the
author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher
double profit.  He goes on publishing the book and as many of his
confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear
families in affluence.

And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation
after generation forever, for they never die.  In a few weeks or months
or years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monument.  I hope I shall
not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself.
But I shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of
my copyright.  My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I can
use, but my children can use it.  I can get along; I know a lot of
trades.  But that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I
can because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know
anything and can't do anything.  I hope Congress will extend to them the
charity which they have failed to get from me.

Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous--strenuous about
race-suicide--should come to me and try to get me to use my large
political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this
Congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I should
try to calm him down.  I should reason with him.  I should say to him,
"Leave it alone.  Leave it alone and it will take care of itself.  Only
one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit.  If they
have reached that limit let them go right on.  Let them have all the
liberty they want.  In restricting that family to twenty-two children you
are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year
in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while."

It is the very same with copyright.  One author per year produces a book
which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all.  This nation
can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is
demonstrably impossible.  All that the limited copyright can do is to
take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per
year.

I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of
the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the
Declaration of Independence 220,000 books.  They have all gone.  They had
all perished before they were ten years old.  It is only one book in 1000
that can outlive the forty-two year limit.  Therefore why put a limit at
all?  You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children.

If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books
that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with Cooper; you can
follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe,
and there you have to wait a long time.  You come to Emerson, and you
have to stand still and look further.  You find Howells and T. B.
Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you question
if you can name twenty persons in the United States who--in a whole
century have written books that would live forty-two years.  Why, you
could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing].  Add the
wives and children and you could put the result on, two or three more
benches.

One hundred persons--that is the little, insignificant crowd whose
bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit to
anybody?  You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of
the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have
gone to the wife and children.

When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman
asked me what limit I would propose.  I said, "Perpetuity." I could see
some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for
the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such
thing as property in ideas.  I said there was property in ideas before
Queen Anne's time; they had perpetual copyright.  He said, "What is a
book?  A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be
no property in it."

I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that
had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.

He said real estate.  I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who
travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see
nothing at all; they are mentally blind.  But there is one in the party
who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means.  To
him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on
that harbor a great city will spring up.  That is his idea.  And he has
another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey
and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and
buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania.

That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to
Cairo Railway would be built.

Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an
idea in somebody's head.  The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is
another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which
represent ideas.  An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that
did not exist before.

So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that
is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be
under any limitation at all.  We don't ask for that.  Fifty years from
now we shall ask for it.

I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments.  I do seem
to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that I
have got nothing to do with.  It is a part of my generous, liberal
nature; I can't help it.  I feel the same sort of charity to everybody
that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in
the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with
life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving,
weaving, weaving around.  He watched his chance, and by and by when the
steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on
the portico.

And the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched the
door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it.  He got to
the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so unsteady
that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top and
raised his foot and put it on the top step.  But only the toe hitched on
the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step, with his
arm around the newel-post, and he said:

"God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this."






IN AID OF THE BLIND

          ADDRESS AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION FOR
          PROMOTING THE INTERESTS OF THE BLIND AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA,
          MARCH 29, 1906

If you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my
conduct I will offer the explanation that I never presided at a meeting
of any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out of my line.
I supposed I could do anything anybody else could, but I recognize that
experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that experience.  I don't
feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to impress an
audience.  I shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a meeting like
this, and I shall just take the humble place of the Essex band.

There was a great gathering in a small New England town, about
twenty-five years ago.  I remember that circumstance because there was
something that happened at that time.  It was a great occasion.  They
gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns
around.  It was an extraordinary occasion.

The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and
tried to do itself proud from beginning to end.  It praised the orators,
the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this in
honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives
toward the end.  Having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and
glorification, he found he still had one band left over.  He had to say
something about it, and he said: "The Essex band done the best it could."

I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am going to get through as
well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me.  I have got all
the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and
intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has called
the meeting.  But they are too voluminous.  I could not pack those
statistics into my head, and I had to give it up.  I shall have to just
reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts.  There are too
many statistics and figures for me.  I never could do anything with
figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished
anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only
mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in
that, as soon as I reach nine times seven--

[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment.  He was trying to
figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to
St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him.  Mr. McKelway whispered the answer,
and the speaker resumed:]

I've got it now.  It's eighty-four.  Well, I can get that far all right
with a little hesitation.  After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage
a statistic.

"This association for the--"

[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma.  Again he was obliged to turn to Mr.
McKelway.]

Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind.  It's a long name.  If
I could I would write it out for you and let you take it home and study
it, but I don't know how to spell it.  And Mr. Carnegie is down in
Virginia somewhere.  Well, anyway, the object of that association which
has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands of
very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will push
it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give them
a little of your assistance out of your pockets.

The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work
for them to do so that they may earn, their own bread.  Now it is dismal
enough to be blind--it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be
largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to
do with their hands.  The time passes so heavily that it is never day or
night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with
folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ their
minds, it is drearier and drearier.

And then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and
so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could have
something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the same time
earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which is the result
of the labor of one's own hands.  They need that cheer and pleasure.  It
is the only way you can turn their night into day, to give them happy
hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the blessed sun.  That
you can do in the way I speak of.

Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss
the light.  Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years old
--their lives are unendingly dreary.  But they can be taught to use
their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries.  That
association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
has taught its blind to make many things.  They make them better than
most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes.
The goods they make are readily salable.  People like them.  And so they
are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer.  They pass
their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did.

What this association needs and wants is $15,000.  The figures are set
down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would
not be here.  And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you
will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank
which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or
some time.  Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and
that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.

I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything
better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part
with it.  It is always for good objects, of course.  This is the plan:
When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and
you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like as
not.  Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to
split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or
fifty, or whatever the sum maybe.  Let him contribute ten or twenty a
year.  He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him
to contribute a large amount.  When you get used to it you would rather
contribute than borrow money.

I tried it in Helen Keller's case.  Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897
when I was in London and said: "The gentleman who has been so liberal in
taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her in
his will, and now they don't know what to do."  They were proposing to
raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400
or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful
teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs.  Macy.  I wrote to Mr. Hutton and said:
"Go on, get up your fund.  It will be slow, but if you want quick work,
I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking people to
contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever
they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people
wouldn't feel the burden of it.  And he wrote back saying he had raised
the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in, a single afternoon.  We
would like to do something just like that to-night.  We will take as many
checks as you care to give.  You can leave your donations in the big room
outside.

I knew once what it was to be blind.  I shall never forget that
experience.  I have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or four
hours, and the sufferings that I endured and the mishaps and the
accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when I feel
for the blind and always shall feel.  I once went to Heidelberg on an
excursion.  I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph Twichell,
of Hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact.  I always
travel with clergymen when I can.  It is better for them, it is better
for me.  And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather and
without a lightning rod is a good one.  The Reverend Twichell is one of
those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients for
a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together.  In that
old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years.  We
went to the inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colossal
bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of.  It was as big as this room.

I didn't take much notice of the place.  I didn't really get my bearings.
I noticed Twichell got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind in
which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on
your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and I was way up
north at the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between.

We went to bed.  Twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience
loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep.  I couldn't get to sleep.
It was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you hear
various kinds of noises now and then.  A mouse away off in the southwest.
You throw things at the mouse.  That encourages the mouse.  But I
couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I would
give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling
fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance.

I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle, but I didn't think of
it until it was too late.  It was the darkest place that ever was.  There
has never been darkness any thicker than that.  It just lay in cakes.

I thought that before dressing I would accumulate my clothes.  I pawed
around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor
except one sock.  I couldn't get on the track of that sock.  It might
have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash.  But I didn't think of
that.  I went excursioning on my hands and knees.  Presently I thought,
"I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed again."  That is what I
tried to do during the next three hours.  I had lost the bearings of that
bed.  I was going in the wrong direction all the time.  By-and-by I came
in collision with a chair and that encouraged me.

It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there was only a chair here
and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this territory,
and I thought maybe after I found that chair I might find the next one.
Well, I did.  And I found another and another and another.  I kept going
around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions, and finally
when I banged into another chair I almost lost my temper.  And I raised
up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a
mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high.

I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there.  And when I saw
myself in the mirror I was frightened out of my wits.  I don't allow any
ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and smashed at it.  A million
pieces.  Then I reflected.  That's the way I always do, and it's
unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has clear
judgment.  And I had judgment, and I would have had to pay for that
mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was Twichell who broke it.

Then I got down, on my hands and knees and went on another exploring
expedition.

As far as I could  remember there were six chairs in that Oklahoma, and
one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your
head when rushing madly along.  In the course of time I collided with
thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out there.
It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condition
when I got through with it.  I went on and on, and at last got to a place
where I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf.  I knew that wasn't
in the middle of the room.  Up to that time I was afraid I had gotten out
of the city.

I was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher of
water about a foot high, and it was at the head of Twichell's bed, but I
didn't know it.  I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at it, but it
didn't help any and came right down in Twichell's face and nearly drowned
him.  But it woke him up.  I was grateful to have company on any terms.
He lit a match, and there I was, way down south when I ought to have been
back up yonder.  My bed was out of sight it was so far away.  You needed
a telescope to find it.  Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed him off and
we got sociable.

But that night wasn't wasted.  I had my pedometer on my leg.  Twichell
and I were in a pedometer match.  Twichell had longer legs than I.  The
only way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed.  I always walk
in my sleep, and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him.  After
all, I never found that sock.  I never have seen it from that day to
this.  But that adventure taught me what it is to be blind.  That was one
of the most serious occasions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of
it without somebody thinking it isn't serious.  You try it and see how
serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that night.

[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret.  He then introduced Joseph
H. Choate, saying:]

It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate.  I don't have to
really introduce him.  I don't have to praise him, or to flatter him.
I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly
acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has
ever produced.  And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five
years more.  He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly.
He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his
countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher
in his countrymen's esteem and affection, I would say that word whether
it was true or not.






DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH

          ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE
          MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL, JANUARY 21, 1909

          The president, Dr.  George N.  Miller, in introducing Mr.
          Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars.

GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,--I am glad to be among my own kind to-night.
I was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally
as deadly a profession.  It wasn't so very long ago that I became a
member of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record
is one that can't be scoffed at.

As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people.  I have
always had a good deal to do with burglars--not officially, but through
their attentions to me.  I never suffered anything at the hands of a
burglar.  They have invaded my house time and time again.  They never got
anything.  Then those people who burglarized our house in September--we
got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been
sorry ever since.  They did us a great service they scared off all the
servants in the place.

I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the
Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the
country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all
parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back
with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives
which otherwise would have been lost.

I have been practising now for seven months.  When I settled on my farm
in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled--and
since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled
still.  This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression
on my community.  I suppose it is the same with all of you.

I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I
organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School.
I am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.

Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country
district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division
of responsibility.  I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a
sexton, and an undertaker.  The combination is air-tight, and once a man
is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him.

These four of us--three in the regular profession and the fourth an
undertaker--are all good men.  There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding
undertaker.  Bill is there in every respect.  He is a little lukewarm on
general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp.  Like my old
Southern, friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere.

Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor.  Ruggles is one of the best
men I have got.  He also is not much on general medicine, but he is a
fine horse-doctor.  Ferguson doesn't make any money off him.

You see, the combination started this way.  When I got up to Redding and
had become a doctor, I looked around to see what my chances were for
aiding in, the great work.  The first thing I did was to determine what
manner of doctor I was to be.  Being a Connecticut farmer, I naturally
consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath.

Then I got circulating about, and got in touch with Ferguson and
Ruggles.  Ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying
that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he couldn't
see where it helped horses.

Well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community, and
it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and that
was race-suicide.  And driving about the country-side I was told by my
fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable disease.
But it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to stop it
or we'll have to move.

We've had some funny experiences up there in Redding.  Not long ago a
fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face.  We asked
him what was the matter.  We always hold consultations on every case, as
there isn't business enough for four.  He said he didn't know, but that
he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis.  We
treated him for that, and I never saw a man die more peacefully.

That same afternoon my dog Tige treed an African gentleman.  We chained
up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had
appendicitis.  We asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes,
that he'd like to know if there was anything in it.  So we cut him open
and found nothing in him but darkness.  So we diagnosed his case as
infidelity, because he was dark inside.  Tige is a very clever dog, and
aids us greatly.

The other day a patient came to me and inquired if I was old Doctor
Clemens--

As a practitioner I have given a great deal of my attention to Bright's
disease. I have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable.
Listen:

Rule 1.  When approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise President
--I mean an all-wise Providence--well, anyway, it's the same thing--has
seen fit to afflict with disease--well, the rule is simple, even if it is
old-fashioned.

Rule 2.  I've forgotten just what it is, but--

Rule 3.  This is always indispensable: Bleed your patient.






MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH

          ADDRESS DELIVERED JUNE 4, 1902, AT COLUMBIA, MO.

          When the name of Samuel L. Clemens was called the humorist
          stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently
          hesitated.  There was a dead silence for a moment.  Suddenly
          the entire audience rose and stood in silence.  Some one began
          to spell out the word Missouri with an interval between the
          letters.  All joined in.  Then the house again became silent.
          Mr. Clemens broke the spell:

As you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], I
guess, I suppose I had better stand too.

[Then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech.  As the great humorist
spoke of his recent visit to Hannibal, his old home, his voice trembled.]

You cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said].  In fact,
when I found myself shaking hands with persons I had not seen for fifty
years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when
I last saw them, I experienced emotions that I had never expected, and
did not know were in me.  I was profoundly moved anal saddened to think
that this was the last time, perhaps, that I would ever behold those kind
old faces and dear old scenes of childhood.

[The humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the audience
was in a continual roar of laughter.  He was particularly amused at the
eulogy on himself read by Gardiner Lathrop in conferring the degree.] He
has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said Mr. Clemens] by
telling the truth about me.

I have seen it stated in print that as a boy I had been guilty of
stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons.  I read a story to this effect
very closely not long ago, and I was convinced of one thing, which was
that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal,
and that I had not acted right in doing so.  I wish now, however, to make
an honest statement, which is that I do not believe, in all my checkered
career, I stole a ton of peaches.

One night I stole--I mean I removed--a watermelon from a wagon while the
owner was attending to another customer.  I crawled off to a secluded
spot, where I found that it was green.  It was the greenest melon in the
Mississippi Valley.  Then I began to reflect.  I began to be sorry.  I
wondered what George Washington would have done had he been in my place.
I thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which
comes to a man with a good resolution, and I took up that watermelon and
took it back to its owner.  I handed him the watermelon and told him to
reform.  He took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good
one in place of the green melon, I forgave him.

I told him that I would still be a customer of his, and that I cherished
no ill-feeling because of the incident--that would remain green in my
memory.






BUSINESS

          The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual banquet,
          March 30, 1901, at the Y. M. C. A. Building. Mr. James G.
          Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank, made the first speech of
          the evening, after which Mr. Clemens was introduced by Mr.
          Bailey as the personal friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the
          types of successful business men.

MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker
as myself all the rest of the night.  I took exception to the introducing
of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great
financier present.  I am a financier.  But my methods are not the same as
Mr. Cannon's.

I cannot say that I have turned out the great business man that I thought
I was when I began life.  But I am comparatively young yet, and may
learn.  I am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was that I
got the big-head early in the game.  I want to explain to you a few
points of difference between the principles of business as I see them and
those that Mr. Cannon believes in.

He says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your
employer.  That's all right--as a theory.  What is the matter with
loyalty to yourself?  As nearly as I can understand Mr. Cannon's
methods, there is one great drawback to them.  He wants you to work a
great deal.  Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much
more-restful.  My idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and
the employee the idle one.  The employer should be the worried man, and
the employee the happy one.  And why not?  He gets the salary.  My plan
is to get another man to do the work for me.  In that there's more
repose.  What I want is repose first, last, and all the time.

Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success;
they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness.  Well, diligence is all
right.  Let it go as a theory.  Honesty is the best policy--when there is
money in it.  But truthfulness is one of the most dangerous--why, this
man is misleading you.

I had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this.  I was
acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening,
which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago.  It only reached me
this morning.  I was mortified at the discourtesy into which I had been
brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by my
hosts.  As I had accepted your invitation, of course I had to send
regrets to my other friends.

When I started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking over
my shoulder.  Women always want to know what is going on.  Said she
"Should not that read in the third person?"  I conceded that it should,
put aside what I was writing, and commenced over again.  That seemed to
satisfy her, and so she sat down and let me proceed.  I then--finished my
first note--and so sent what I intended.  I never could have done this if
I had let my wife know the truth about it.  Here is what I wrote:

     TO THE OHIO SOCIETY,--I have at this moment received a most kind
     invitation (eleven days old) from Mr. Southard, president; and a
     like one (ten days old) from Mr. Bryant, president of the Press
     Club.  I thank the society cordially for the compliment of these
     invitations, although I am booked elsewhere and cannot come.

     But, oh, I should like to know the name of the Lightning Express by
     which they were forwarded; for I owe a friend a dozen chickens, and
     I believe it will be cheaper to send eggs instead, and let them
     develop on the road.
                    Sincerely yours,
                                        Mark TWAIN.


I want to tell you of some of my experiences in business, and then I will
be in a position to lay down one general rule for the guidance of those
who want to succeed in business.  My first effort was about twenty-five
years ago.  I took hold of an invention--I don't know now what it was all
about, but some one came to me tend told me it was a good thing, and that
there was lots of money in it.  He persuaded me to invest $15,000, and I
lived up to my beliefs by engaging a man to develop it.  To make a long
story short, I sunk $40,000 in it.

Then I took up the publication of a book.  I called in a publisher and
said to him: "I want you to publish this book along lines which I shall
lay down.  I am the employer, and you are the employee.  I am going to
show them some new kinks in the publishing business.  And I want you to
draw on me for money as you go along," which he did.  He drew on me for
$56,000.  Then I asked him to take the book and call it off.  But he
refused to do that.

My next venture was with a machine for doing something or other.  I knew
less about that than I did about the invention.  But I sunk $170,000 in
the business, and I can't for the life of me recollect what it was the
machine was to do.

I was still undismayed.  You see, one of the strong points about my
business life was that I never gave up.  I undertook to publish General
Grant's book, and made $140,000 in six months.  My axiom is, to succeed
in business: avoid my example.






CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR

          At the dinner given in honor of Andrew Carnegie by the Lotos
          Club, March 17, 1909, Mr. Clemens appeared in a white suit from
          head to feet.  He wore a white double-breasted coat, white
          trousers, and white shoes.  The only relief was a big black
          cigar, which he confidentially informed the company was not
          from his usual stack bought at $3 per barrel.

The State of Missouri has for its coat of arms a barrel-head with two
Missourians, one on each side of it, and mark the motto--"United We
Stand, Divided We Fall."  Mr. Carnegie, this evening, has suffered from
compliments.  It is interesting to hear what people will say about a man.
Why, at the banquet given by this club in my honor, Mr. Carnegie had the
inspiration for which the club is now honoring him.  If Dunfermline
contributed so much to the United States in contributing Mr. Carnegie,
what would have happened if all Scotland had turned out?  These
Dunfermline folk have acquired advantages in coming to America.

Doctor McKelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation, when he said of
Mr. Carnegie:

"There is a man who wants to pay more taxes than he is charged." Richard
Watson Gilder did very well for a poet.  He advertised his magazine.  He
spoke of hiring Mr. Carnegie--the next thing he will be trying to hire
me.

If I undertook--to pay compliments I would do it stronger than any others
have done it, for what Mr. Carnegie wants are strong compliments.  Now,
the other side of seventy, I have preserved, as my chiefest virtue,
modesty.






ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE

          ADDRESS AT A DINNER OF THE MANHATTAN DICKENS FELLOWSHIP,
          NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 7, 1906

          This dinner was in commemoration of the ninety-fourth
          anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.  On an other
          occasion Mr. Clemens told the same story with variations and a
          different conclusion to the University Settlement Society.

I always had taken an interest in young people who wanted to become
poets.  I remember I was particularly interested in one budding poet when
I was a reporter.  His name was Butter.

One day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that he was going to
commit suicide--he was tired of life, not being able to express his
thoughts in poetic form.  Butter asked me what I thought of the idea.

I said I would; that it was a good idea.  "You can do me a friendly turn.
You go off in a private place and do it there, and I'll get it all.  You
do it, and I'll do as much for you some time."

At first he determined to drown himself.  Drowning is so nice and clean,
and writes up so well in a newspaper.

But things ne'er do go smoothly in weddings, suicides, or courtships.
Only there at the edge of the water, where Butter was to end himself,
lay a life-preserver--a big round canvas one, which would float after the
scrap-iron was soaked out of it.

Butter wouldn't kill himself with the life-preserver in sight, and so I
had an idea.  I took it to a pawnshop, and [soaked] it for a revolver:
The pawnbroker didn't think much of the exchange, but when I explained
the situation he acquiesced.  We went up on top of a high building, and
this is what happened to the poet:

He put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel straight through
his head.  The tunnel was about the size of your finger.  You could look
right through it.  The job was complete; there was nothing in it.

Well, after that that man never could write prose, but he could write
poetry.  He could write it after he had blown his brains out.  There is
lots of that talent all over the country, but the trouble is they don't
develop it.

I am suffering now from the fact that I, who have told the truth a good
many times in my life, have lately received more letters than anybody
else urging me to lead a righteous life.  I have more friends who want to
see me develop on a high level than anybody else.

Young John D. Rockefeller, two weeks ago, taught his Bible class all
about veracity, and why it was better that everybody should always keep a
plentiful supply on hand.  Some of the letters I have received suggest
that I ought to attend his class and learn, too.  Why, I know Mr.
Rockefeller, and he is a good fellow.  He is competent in many ways to
teach a Bible class, but when it comes to veracity he is only thirty-five
years old.  I'm seventy years old.  I have been familiar with veracity
twice as long as he.

And the story about George Washington and his little hatchet has also
been suggested to me in these letters--in a fugitive way, as if I needed
some of George Washington and his hatchet in my constitution.  Why, dear
me, they overlook the real point in that story.  The point is not the one
that is usually suggested, and you can readily see that.

The point is not that George said to his father, "Yes, father, I cut down
the cheery-tree; I can't tell a lie," but that the little boy--only seven
years old--should have his sagacity developed under such circumstances.
He was a boy wise beyond his years.  His conduct then was a prophecy of
later years.  Yes, I think he was the most remarkable man the country
ever produced-up to my time, anyway.

Now then, little George realized that circumstantial evidence was against
him.  He knew that his father would know from the size of the chips that
no full-grown hatchet cut that tree down, and that no man would have
haggled it so.  He knew that his father would send around the plantation
and inquire for a small boy with a hatchet, and he had the wisdom to come
out and confess it.  Now, the idea that his father was overjoyed when he
told little George that he would rather have him cut down, a thousand
cheery-trees than tell a lie is all nonsense.  What did he really mean?
Why, that he was absolutely astonished that he had a son who had the
chance to tell a lie and didn't.

I admire old George--if that was his name--for his discernment.  He knew
when he said that his son couldn't tell a lie that he was stretching it a
good deal.  He wouldn't have to go to John D. Rockefeller's Bible class
to find that out.  The way the old George Washington story goes down it
doesn't do anybody any good.  It only discourages people who can tell a
lie.






WELCOME HOME

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR AT THE LOTOS CLUB,
          NOVEMBER 10, 1900

In August, 1895, just before sailing for Australia, Mr. Clemens issued
the following statement:

"It has been reported that I sacrificed, for the benefit of the
creditors, the property of the publishing firm whose financial backer I
was, and that I am now lecturing for my own benefit.

"This is an error.  I intend the lectures, as well as the property, for
the creditors.  The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brains, and a
merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of
insolvency and may start free again for himself.  But I am not a business
man, and honor is a harder master than the law.  It cannot compromise for
less than one hundred cents on a dollar, and its debts are never
outlawed.

"I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose capital I
furnished.  If the firm had prospered I would have expected to collect
two-thirds of the profits.  As it is, I expect to pay all the debts.  My
partner has no resources, and I do not look for assistance to my wife,
whose contributions in cash from her own means have nearly equalled the
claims of all the creditors combined.  She has taken nothing; on the
contrary, she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the
obligations due to the rest of the creditors.

"It is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that as a legal
discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other fifty per cent. as fast
as I can earn it.  From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, I am
confident that if I live I can pay off the last debt within four years.

"After which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make a fresh and
unincumbered start in life.  I am going to Australia, India, and South
Africa, and next year I hope to make a tour of the great cities of the
United States."

I thank you all out of my heart for this fraternal welcome, and it seems
almost too fine, almost too magnificent, for a humble Missourian such as
I am, far from his native haunts on the banks of the Mississippi; yet my
modesty is in a degree fortified by observing that I am not the only
Missourian who has been honored here to-night, for I see at this very
table-here is a Missourian [indicating Mr. McKelway], and there is a
Missourian [indicating Mr. Depew], and there is another Missourian--and
Hendrix and Clemens; and last but not least, the greatest Missourian of
them all--here he sits--Tom Reed, who has always concealed his birth till
now.  And since I have been away I know what has been happening in his
case: he has deserted politics, and now is leading a creditable life.  He
has reformed, and God prosper him; and I judge, by a remark which he made
up-stairs awhile ago, that he had found a new business that is utterly
suited to his make and constitution, and all he is doing now is that he
is around raising the average of personal beauty.

But I am grateful to the president for the kind words which he has said
of me, and it is not for me to say whether these praises were deserved or
not.  I prefer to accept them just as they stand, without concerning
myself with the statistics upon which they have been built, but only with
that large matter, that essential matter, the good-fellowship, the
kindliness, the magnanimity, and generosity that prompted their
utterance.  Well, many things have happened since I sat here before, and
now that I think of it, the president's reference to the debts which were
left by the bankrupt firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. gives me an
opportunity to say a word which I very much wish to say, not for myself,
but for ninety-five men and women whom I shall always hold in high esteem
and in pleasant remembrance--the creditors of that firm.  They treated me
well; they treated me handsomely.  There were ninety-six of them, and by
not a finger's weight did ninety-five of them add to the burden of that
time for me.  Ninety-five out of the ninety-six--they didn't indicate by
any word or sign that they were anxious about their money.  They treated
me well, and I shall not forget it; I could not forget it if I wanted to.
Many of them said, "Don't you worry, don't you hurry"; that's what they
said.  Why, if I could have that kind of creditors always, and that
experience, I would recognize it as a personal loss to be out of debt.
I owe those ninety-five creditors a debt of homage, and I pay it now in
such measure as one may pay so fine a debt in mere words.  Yes, they said
that very thing.  I was not personally acquainted with ten of them, and
yet they said, "Don't you worry, and don't you hurry."  I know that
phrase by heart, and if all the other music should perish out of the
world it would still sing to me.  I appreciate that; I am glad to say
this word; people say so much about me, and they forget those creditors.
They were handsomer than I was--or Tom Reed.

Oh, you have been doing many things in this time that I have been absent;
you have done lots of things, some that are well worth remembering, too.
Now, we have fought a righteous war since I have gone, and that is rare
in history--a righteous war is so rare that it is almost unknown in
history; but by the grace of that war we set Cuba free, and we joined her
to those three or four nations that exist on this earth; and we started
out to set those poor Filipinos free, too, and why, why, why that most
righteous purpose of ours has apparently miscarried I suppose I never
shall know.

But we have made a most creditable record in China in these days--our
sound and level-headed administration has made a most creditable record
over there, and there are some of the Powers that cannot say that by any
means.  The Yellow Terror is threatening this world to-day.  It is
looming vast and ominous on that distant horizon.  I do not know what is
going to be the result of that Yellow Terror, but our government has had
no hand in evoking it, and let's be happy in that and proud of it.

We have nursed free silver, we watched by its cradle; we have done the
best we could to raise that child, but those pestiferous Republicans have
--well, they keep giving it the measles every chance they get, and we
never shall raise that child.  Well, that's no matter--there's plenty of
other things to do, and we must think of something else.  Well, we have
tried a President four years, criticised him and found fault with him the
whole time, and turned around a day or two ago with votes enough to spare
to elect another.  O consistency!  consistency!  thy name--I don't know
what thy name is--Thompson will do--any name will do--but you see there
is the fact, there is the consistency.  Then we have tried for governor
an illustrious Rough Rider, and we liked him so much in that great office
that now we have made him Vice-President--not in order that that office
shall give him distinction, but that he may confer distinction upon that
office.  And it's needed, too--it's needed.  And now, for a while anyway,
we shall not be stammering and embarrassed when a stranger asks us, "What
is the name of the Vice-President?"  This one is known; this one is
pretty well known, pretty widely known, and in some quarters favorably.
I am not accustomed to dealing in these fulsome compliments, and I am
probably overdoing it a little; but--well, my old affectionate admiration
for Governor Roosevelt has probably betrayed me into the complimentary
excess; but I know him, and you know him; and if you give him rope
enough--I mean if--oh yes, he will justify that compliment; leave it just
as it is.  And now we have put in his place Mr. Odell, another Rough
Rider, I suppose; all the fat things go to that profession now.  Why, I
could have been a Rough Rider myself if I had known that this political
Klondike was going to open up, and I would have been a Rough Rider if I
could have gone to war on an automobile but not on a horse!  No, I know
the horse too well; I have known the horse in war and in peace, and there
is no place where a horse is comfortable.  The horse has too many
caprices, and he is too much given to initiative.  He invents too many
new ideas.  No, I don't want anything to do with a horse.

And then we have taken Chauncey Depew out of a useful and active life and
made him a Senator--embalmed him, corked him up.  And I am not grieving.
That man has said many a true thing about me in his time, and I always
said something would happen to him.  Look at that [pointing to Mr. Depew]
gilded mummy!  He has made my life a sorrow to me at many a banquet on
both sides of the ocean, and now he has got it.  Perish the hand that
pulls that cork!

All these things have happened, all these things have come to pass, while
I have been away, and it just shows how little a Mugwump can be missed in
a cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the last one that is left
--a GRAND OLD PARTY all by himself.  And there is another thing that has
happened, perhaps the most imposing event of them all: the institution
called the Daughters of the--Crown--the Daughters of the Royal Crown--has
established itself and gone into business. Now, there's an American idea
for you; there's an idea born of God knows what kind of specialized
insanity, but not softening of the brain--you cannot soften a thing that
doesn't exist--the Daughters of the Royal Crown!  Nobody eligible but
American descendants of Charles II.  Dear me, how the fancy product of
that old harem still holds out!

Well, I am truly glad to foregather with you again, and partake of the
bread and salt of this hospitable house once more.  Seven years ago, when
I was your guest here, when I was old and despondent, you gave me the
grip and the word that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive; and
now I come back from my exile young again, fresh and alive, and ready to
begin life once more, and your welcome puts the finishing touch upon my
restored youth and makes it real to me, and not a gracious dream that
must vanish with the morning.  I thank you.






AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH

          The steamship St. Paul was to have been launched from Cramp's
          shipyard in Philadelphia on March 25, 1895.  After the
          launching a luncheon was to nave been given, at which Mr.
          Clemens was to make a speech.  Just before the final word was
          given a reporter asked Mr. Clemens for a copy of his speech to
          be delivered at the luncheon.  To facilitate the work of the
          reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the speech.  It
          happened, however, that when the blocks were knocked away the
          big ship refused to budge, and no amount of labor could move
          her an inch.  She had stuck fast upon the ways.  As a result,
          the launching was postponed for a week or two; but in the mean
          time Mr. Clemens had gone to Europe.  Years after a reporter
          called on Mr. Clemens and submitted the manuscript of the
          speech, which was as follows:

Day after to-morrow I sail for England in a ship of this line, the Paris.
It will be my fourteenth crossing in three years and a half.  Therefore,
my presence here, as you see, is quite natural, quite commercial.  I am
interested in ships.  They interest me more now than hotels do.  When a
new ship is launched I feel a desire to go and see if she will be good
quarters for me to live in, particularly if she belongs to this line, for
it is by this line that I have done most of my ferrying.

People wonder why I go so much.  Well, I go partly for my health, partly
to familiarize myself with the road.  I have gone over the same road so
many times now that I know all the whales that belong along the route,
and latterly it is an embarrassment to me to meet them, for they do not
look glad to see me, but annoyed, and they seem to say: "Here is this old
derelict again."

Earlier in life this would have pained me and made me ashamed, but I am
older now, and when I am behaving myself, and doing right, I do not care
for a whale's opinion about me.  When we are young we generally estimate
an opinion by the size of the person that holds it, but later we find
that that is an uncertain rule, for we realize that there are times when
a hornet's opinion disturbs us more than an emperor's.

I do not mean that I care nothing at all for a whale's opinion, for that
would be going to too great a length.  Of course, it is better to have
the good opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my position is that
if you cannot have a whale's good opinion, except at some sacrifice of
principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without it.
That is my idea about whales.

Yes, I have gone over that same route so often that I know my way without
a compass, just by the waves.  I know all the large waves and a good many
of the small ones.  Also the sunsets.  I know every sunset and where it
belongs just by its color.  Necessarily, then, I do not make the passage
now for scenery.  That is all gone by.

What I prize most is safety, and in, the second place swift transit and
handiness.  These are best furnished, by the American line, whose
watertight compartments have no passage through them; no doors to be left
open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to
another in time of collision.  If you nullify the peril which collisions
threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends
voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than
staying at home.

When the Paris was half-torn to pieces some years ago, enough of the
Atlantic ebbed and flowed through one end of her, during her long agony,
to sink the fleets of the world if distributed among them; but she
floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost.  In time of collision
the rock of Gibraltar is not safer than the Paris and other great ships
of this line.  This seems to be the only great line in the world that
takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention
of tugs and barges or bridges--takes him through without breaking bulk,
so to speak.

On the English side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is
waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in, London.  Nothing could
be handier.  If your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a
lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but
that is not the case.  The journey is from the city of New York to the
city of London, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one,
nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily.  And when the passenger
lands on our side he lands on the American side of the river, not in the
provinces.  As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head
quartermaster of the New York land garboard streak of the middle watch)

"When we land a passenger on the American side there's nothing betwix him
and his hotel but hell and the hackman."

I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship.  She is
another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty
fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten, what it is to
fly its flag to sea.  I am not sure as to which St. Paul she is named
for.  Some think it is the one that is on the upper Mississippi, but the
head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed Goliath.  But it is
not important.  No matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and
godspeed.






SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

          AT THE METROPOLITAN CLUB, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 28, 1902

          Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens by Colonel
          Harvey, President of Harper & Brothers.

I think I ought to be allowed to talk as long as I want to, for the
reason that I have cancelled all my winter's engagements of every kind,
for good and sufficient reasons, and am making no new engagements for
this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance I shall have to
disembowel my skull for a year--close the mouth in that portrait for a
year.  I want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this
innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as I
consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like
this.  That was bad that was a bad, bad, bad arrangement.  Under that old
custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner
at the bar, and covered him all over with compliments, nothing but
compliments, not a thing but compliments, never a slur, and sat down and
left that man to get up and talk without a text.  You cannot talk on
compliments; that is not a text.  No modest person, and I was born one,
can talk on compliments.  A man gets up and is filled to the eyes with
happy emotions, but his tongue is tied; he has nothing to say; he is in
the condition of Doctor Rice's friend who came home drunk and explained
it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "John, when you have drunk all
the whiskey you want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla."  He said, "Yes,
but when I have drunk all the whiskey I want I can't say sarsaparilla."
And so I think it is much better to leave a man unmolested until the
testimony and pleadings are all in.  Otherwise he is dumb--he is at the
sarsaparilla stage.

Before I get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as Mr. Howells suggested I
do, I want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are
doing me, and I am quite competent to estimate it at its value.  I see
around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished
men; there are more than fifty here, and I believe I know thirty-nine of
them well.  I could probably borrow money from--from the others, anyway.
It is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a distinguished company
gather here on such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign prince
to be feted--when you have come here not to do honor to hereditary
privilege and ancient lineage, but to do reverence to mere moral
excellence and elemental veracity-and, dear me, how old it seems to make
me!  I look around me and I see three or four persons I have known so
many, many years.  I have known Mr. Secretary Hay--John Hay, as the
nation and the rest of his friends love to call him--I have known John
Hay and Tom Reed and the Reverend Twichell close upon thirty-six years.
Close upon thirty-six years I have known those venerable men.  I have
known Mr. Howells nearly thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew
before he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth.
Twenty-seven years ago, I heard him make the most noble and eloquent and
beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips.  Tom
Reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement.  Well,
suppose that that is true.  What's the use of telling the truth all the
time?  I never tell the truth about Tom Reed--but that is his defect,
truth; he speaks the truth always.  Tom Reed has a good heart, and he has
a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment.  Why, when Tom Reed was
invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for the Procreation or
Procrastination, or something, of morals, I don't know what it was
--advancement, I suppose, of pure morals--he had the immortal indiscretion
to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously
utilizing the opportunities that Providence puts in our way we can all be
bigamists.  You perceive his limitations.  Anything he has in his mind he
states, if he thinks it is true.  Well, that was true, but that was no
place to say it--so they fired him out.

A lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; I have held
grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out by
the very handsome compliments that have been paid me.  Even Wayne
MacVeagh--I have had a grudge against him many years.  The first time I
saw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private dinner-party at Charles A. Dana's,
and when I got there he was clattering along, and I tried to get a word
in here and there; but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is
started, and I could not get in five words to his one--or one word to his
five.  I struggled along and struggled along, and--well, I wanted to tell
and I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before, and it was a
remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream
recounting Sam Jones the revivalist's reception in heaven.  I was on a
train, and was approaching the celestial way-station--I had a through
ticket--and I noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he had
his ticket in his hat.  He was the remains of the Archbishop of
Canterbury; I recognized him by his photograph.  I had nothing against
him, so I took his ticket and let him have mine.  He didn't object--he
wasn't in a condition to object--and presently when the train stopped at
the heavenly station--well, I got off, and he went on by request--but
there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one
with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were
expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise a
shout, but it didn't materialize.  I don't know whether they were
disappointed.  I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the
Archbishop and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and
I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was doing it in the German
tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.  Well, I found it was
no use, I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was occupying the whole
place, and I said to Mr. Dana, "What is the matter with that man?  Who is
that man with the long tongue?  What's the trouble with him, that long,
lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a job--who is that?"  "Well, now,"
Mr. Dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep
quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man.  Talk!  He was born to
talk. Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you."  I said, "I have
been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left."
He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and
inspiration of that proverb which says, 'No matter how close you skin an
onion, a clever man can always peel it again.'"  Well, I reflected and
I quieted down.  That would never occur to Tom Reed.  He's got no
discretion.  Well, MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit
in all those years; he has been peeling Mr. Mitchell lately.  That's the
kind of man he is.

Mr. Howells--that poem of his is admirable; that's the way to treat a
person.  Howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people,
and he has always exhibited them in my favor.  Howells has never written
anything about me that I couldn't read six or seven times a day; he is
always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of me
than any one in this world, and published it in the North American
Review.  He did me the justice to say that my intentions--he italicized
that--that my intentions were always good, that I wounded people's
conventions rather than their convictions.  Now, I wouldn't want anything
handsomer than that said of me.  I would rather wait, with anything harsh
I might have to say, till the convictions become conventions.  Bangs has
traced me all the way down.  He can't find that honest man, but I will
look for him in the looking-glass when I get home.  It was intimated by
the Colonel that it is New England that makes New York and builds up this
country and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's a lot of
people here who came from elsewhere, like John Hay from away out West,
and Howells from Ohio, and St. Clair McKelway and me from Missouri, and
we are doing what we can to build up New York a little-elevate it.  Why,
when I was living in that village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of
the Mississippi, and Hay up in the town of Warsaw, also on the banks of
the Mississippi River it is an emotional bit of the Mississippi, and when
it is low water you have to climb up to it on a ladder, and when it
floods you have to hunt for it; with a deep-sea lead--but it is a great
and beautiful country.  In that old time it was a paradise for
simplicity--it was a simple, simple life, cheap but comfortable, and full
of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage of modern civilization
there at all.  It was a delectable land.  I went out there last June,
and I met in that town of Hannibal a schoolmate of mine, John Briggs,
whom I had not seen for more than fifty years. I tell you, that was a
meeting!  That pal whom I had known as a little boy long ago, and knew
now as a stately man three or four inches over six feet and browned by
exposure to many climes, he was back there to see that old place again.
We spent a whole afternoon going about here and there and yonder, and
hunting up the scenes and talking of the crimes which we had committed so
long ago.  It was a heartbreaking delight, full of pathos, laughter, and
tears, all mixed together; and we called the roll of the boys and girls
that we picnicked and sweethearted with so many years ago, and there were
hardly half a dozen of them left; the rest were in their graves; and we
went up there on the summit of that hill, a treasured place in my memory,
the summit of Holiday's Hill, and looked out again over that magnificent
panorama of the Mississippi River, sweeping along league after league, a
level green paradise on one side, and retreating capes and promontories
as far as you could see on the other, fading away in the soft, rich
lights of the remote distance.  I recognized then that I was seeing now
the most enchanting river view the planet could furnish.  I never knew it
when I was a boy; it took an educated eye that had travelled over the
globe to know and appreciate it; and John said, "Can you point out the
place where Bear Creek used to be before the railroad came?"  I said,
"Yes, it ran along yonder."  "And can you point out the swimming-hole?"
"Yes, out there."  And he said, "Can you point out the place where we
stole the skiff?"  Well, I didn't know which one he meant.  Such a
wilderness of events had intervened since that day, more than fifty years
ago, it took me more than five minutes to call back that little incident,
and then I did call it back; it was a white skiff, and we painted it red
to allay suspicion.  And the saddest, saddest man came along--a stranger
he was--and he looked that red skiff over so pathetically, and he said:
"Well, if it weren't for the complexion I'd know whose skiff that was."
He said it in that pleading way, you know, that appeals for sympathy and
suggestion; we were full of sympathy for him, but we weren't in any
condition to offer suggestions.  I can see him yet as he turned away with
that same sad look on his face and vanished out of history forever.
I wonder what became of that man.  I know what became of the skiff.
Well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely life.  There was no crime.
Merely little things like pillaging orchards and watermelon-patches and
breaking the Sabbath--we didn't break the Sabbath often enough to
signify--once a week perhaps.  But we were good boys, good Presbyterian
boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good
Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did
wander a little from the fold.

Look at John Hay and me.  There we were in obscurity, and look where we
are now.  Consider the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious
vocations he has served--and vocations is the right word; he has in all
those vocations acquitted himself with high credit and honor to his
country and to the mother that bore him.  Scholar, soldier, diplomat,
poet, historian--now, see where we are.  He is Secretary of State and I
am a gentleman.  It could not happen in any other country.  Our
institutions give men the positions that of right belong to them through
merit; all you men have won your places, not by heredities, and not by
family influence or extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts God
gave you at your birth, made effective by your own energies; this is the
country to live in.

Now, there is one invisible guest here.  A part of me is present; the
larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife,
and she has a good many personal friends here, and I think it won't
distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to be
confined to that bed for many months to come from that nervous
prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very well
--and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak of her.  I knew
her for the first time just in the same year that I first knew John Hay
and Tom Reed and Mr. Twichell--thirty-six years ago--and she has been the
best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a good deal; she has
reared me--she and Twichell together--and what I am I owe to them.
Twichell why, it is such a pleasure to look upon Twichell's face! For
five-and-twenty years I was under the Rev.  Mr. Twichell's tuition, I was
in his pastorate, occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due
reverence.  That man is full of all the graces that go to make a person
companionable and beloved; and wherever Twichell goes to start a church
the people flock there to buy the land; they find real estate goes up all
around the spot, and the envious and the thoughtful always try to get
Twichell to move to their neighborhood and start a church; and wherever
you see him go you can go and buy land there with confidence, feeling
sure that there will be a double price for you before very long. I am not
saying this to flatter Mr. Twichell; it is the fact.  Many and many a
time I have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought up all the
pews on a margin--and it would have been better for me spiritually and
financially if I had stayed under his wing.

I have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvellous in how many
different ways I have done good, and it is comfortable to reflect--now,
there's Mr. Rogers--just out of the affection I bear that man many a time
I have given him points in finance that he had never thought of--and if
he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those
ideas in his business, it would make a difference in his bank account.

Well, I like the poetry.  I like all the speeches and the poetry, too.
I liked Doctor Van Dyke's poem.  I wish I could return thanks in proper
measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings to
pay me compliments; some were merited and some you overlooked, it is
true; and Colonel Harvey did slander every one of you, and put things
into my mouth that I never said, never thought of at all.

And now, my wife and I, out of our single heart, return you our deepest
and most grateful thanks, and--yesterday was her birthday.






TO THE WHITEFRIARS

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE WHITEFRIARS CLUB IN HONOR OF
          MR. CLEMENS, LONDON, JUNE 20, 1899

          The Whitefriars Club was founded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Mr.
          Clemens was made an honorary member in 1874.  The members are
          representative of literary and journalistic London.  The toast
          of "Our Guest" was proposed by Louis F. Austin, of the
          Illustrated London News, and in the course of some humorous
          remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the
          "Friars," as the members of the club style themselves.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF THE VOW--in whatever the vow is; for
although I have been a member of this club for five-and twenty years,
I don't know any more about what that vow is than Mr. Austin seems to.
But what ever the vow is, I don't care what it is.  I have made a
thousand vows.

There is no pleasure comparable to making a vow in the presence of one
who appreciates that vow, in the presence of men who honor and appreciate
you for making the vow, and men who admire you for making the vow.

There is only one pleasure higher than that, and that is to get outside
and break the vow.  A vow is always a pledge of some kind or other for
the protection of your own morals and principles or somebody else's,
and generally, by the irony of fate, it is for the protection of your own
morals.

Hence we have pledges that make us eschew tobacco or wine, and while you
are taking the pledge there is a holy influence about that makes you feel
you are reformed, and that you can never be so happy again in this world
until--you get outside and take a drink.

I had forgotten that I was a member of this club--it is so long ago.
But now I remember that I was here five-and-twenty years ago, and that I
was then at a dinner of the Whitefriars Club, and it was in those old
days when you had just made two great finds.  All London was talking
about nothing else than that they had found Livingstone, and that the
lost Sir Roger Tichborne had been found--and they were trying him for it.

And at the dinner, Chairman (I do not know who he was)--failed to come to
time.  The gentleman who had been appointed to pay me the customary
compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know
what they were.

And George Augustus Sala came in at the last moment, just when I was
about to go without compliments altogether.  And that man was a gifted
man.  They just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit
down, to introduce the stranger, and Sala, made one of those marvellous
speeches which he was capable of making.  I think no man talked so fast
as Sala did.  One did not need wine while he was making a speech.  The
rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute.  An incomparable
speech was that, an impromptu speech, and--an impromptu speech is a
seldom thing, and he did it so well.

He went into the whole history of the United States, and made it entirely
new to me.  He filled it with episodes and incidents that Washington
never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although I knew none
of it had happened, from that day to this I do not know any history but
Sala's.

I do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up
and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is.  You sit and
wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going to
introduce you.  You know that if he says something severe, that if he
will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will
furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against
that.

Anybody can get up and straighten out his character.  But when a
gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do?

Mr. Austin has done well.  He has supplied so many texts that I will have
to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you do
not have any text at all.  Now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech
without any difficulty at all, and I could have done that if I had gone
on with the schooling with which I began.  I see here a gentleman on my
left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years
ago.

When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr. Depew, it carries me a long
way back.  An old and valued friend of mine is he, and I saw his career
as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by
another miscarriage of justice, is a United States Senator.  But those
were delightful days when I was taking lessons in oratory.

My other master the Ambassador-is not here yet.  Under those two
gentlemen I learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming.

You know the New England dinner is the great occasion on the other side
of the water.  It is held every year to celebrate the landing of the
Pilgrims.  Those Pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in
England, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to
go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called Mayflower and set sail,
and I have heard it said that they pumped the Atlantic Ocean through that
ship sixteen times.

They fell in over there with the Dutch from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and a
lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that Mr.
Depew is descended.

On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended from those Puritans who landed
on a bitter night in December.  Every year those people used to meet at a
great banquet in New York, and those masters of mind in oratory had to
make speeches.  It was Doctor Depew's business to get up there and
apologise for the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had to get up later and explain
the crimes of the Puritans, and grand, beautiful times we used to have.

It is curious that after that long lapse of time I meet the Whitefriars
again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others showing
a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after all this time, I find
one of the masters of oratory and the others named in the list.

And here we three meet again as exiles on one pretext or another, and you
will notice that while we are absent there is a pleasing tranquillity in
America--a building up of public confidence.  We are doing the best we
can for our country.  I think we have spent our lives in serving our
country, and we never serve it to greater advantage than when we get out
of it.

But impromptu speaking--that is what I was trying to learn.  That is a
difficult thing.  I used to do it in this way.  I used to begin about a
week ahead, and write out my impromptu, speech and get it by heart.  Then
I brought it to the New England dinner printed on a piece of paper in my
pocket, so that I could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried, and
in order to do an impromptu speech as it should be done you have to
indicate the places for pauses and hesitations.  I put them all in it.
And then you want the applause in the right places.

When I got to the place where it should come in, if it did not come in
I did not care, but I had it marked in the paper.  And these masters of
mind used to wonder why it was my speech came out in the morning in the
first person, while theirs went through the butchery of synopsis.

I do that kind of speech (I mean an offhand speech), and do it well, and
make no mistake in such a way to deceive the audience completely and make
that audience believe it is an impromptu speech--that is art.

I was frightened out of it at last by an experience of Doctor Hayes.  He
was a sort of Nansen of that day.  He had been to the North Pole, and it
made him celebrated.  He had even seen the polar bear climb the pole.

He had made one of those magnificent voyages such as Nansen made, and in
those days when a man did anything which greatly distinguished him for
the moment he had to come on to the lecture platform and tell all about
it.

Doctor Hayes was a great, magnificent creature like Nansen, superbly
built.  He was to appear in Boston.  He wrote his lecture out, and it was
his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil hour he concluded
that it would be a good thing to preface it with something rather
handsome, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off by heart and
deliver as if it were the thought of the moment.

He had not had my experience, and could not do that.  He came on the
platform, held his manuscript down, and began with a beautiful piece of
oratory.  He spoke something like this:

"When a lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture of
nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the
horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up
their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the departing sun--"

Here a man came across the platform and touched him on the shoulder, and
said: "One minute."  And then to the audience:

"Is Mrs. John Smith in the house?  Her husband has slipped on the ice and
broken his leg."

And you could see the Mrs. John Smiths get up everywhere and drift out of
the house, and it made great gaps everywhere.  Then Doctor Hayes began
again: "When a lonely man, a pigmy in the architecture--"  The janitor
came in again and shouted: "It is not Mrs. John Smith!  It is Mrs. John
Jones!"

Then all the Mrs. Jones got up and left.  Once more the speaker started,
and was in the midst of the sentence when he was interrupted again, and
the result was that the lecture was not delivered.  But the lecturer
interviewed the janitor afterward in a private room, and of the fragments
of the janitor they took "twelve basketsful."

Now, I don't want to sit down just in this way.  I have been talking with
so much levity that I have said no serious thing, and you are really no
better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested that I am a
person who deals in wisdom.  I have said nothing which would make you
better than when you came here.

I should be sorry to sit down without having said one serious word which
you can carry home and relate to your children and the old people who are
not able to get away.

And this is just a little maxim which has saved me from many a difficulty
and many a disaster, and in times of tribulation and uncertainty has come
to my rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe it as I do day and
night.

I always use it in an emergency, and you can take it home as a legacy
from me, and it is "When in doubt, tell the truth."






THE ASCOT GOLD CUP

          The news of Mr. Clemens's arrival in England in June, 1907, was
          announced in the papers with big headlines.  Immediately
          following the announcement was the news--also with big
          headlines--that the Ascot Gold Cup had been stolen the same
          day.  The combination, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES-ASCOT CUP STOLEN,
          amused the public.  The Lord Mayor of London gave a banquet at
          the Mansion House in honor of Mr. Clemens.

I do assure you that I am not so dishonest as I look.  I have been so
busy trying to rehabilitate my honor about that Ascot Cup that I have had
no time to prepare a speech.

I was not so honest in former days as I am now, but I have always been
reasonably honest.  Well, you know how a man is influenced by his
surroundings.  Once upon a time I went to a public meeting where the
oratory of a charitable worker so worked on my feelings that, in common
with others, I would have dropped something substantial in the hat--if it
had come round at that moment.

The speaker had the power of putting those vivid pictures before one.
We were all affected.  That was the moment for the hat.  I would have put
two hundred dollars in.  Before he had finished I could have put in four
hundred dollars.  I felt I could have filled up a blank check--with
somebody else's name--and dropped it in.

Well, now, another speaker got up, and in fifteen minutes damped my
spirit; and during the speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm went
away.  When at last the hat came round I dropped in ten cents--and took
out twenty-five.

I came over here to get the honorary degree from Oxford, and I would have
encompassed the seven seas for an honor like that--the greatest honor
that has ever fallen to my share.  I am grateful to Oxford for conferring
that honor upon me, and I am sure my country appreciates it, because
first and foremost it is an honor to my country.

And now I am going home again across the sea.  I am in spirit young but
in the flesh old, so that it is unlikely that when I go away I shall ever
see England again.  But I shall go with the recollection of the generous
and kindly welcome I have had.

I suppose I must say "Good-bye."  I say it not with my lips only, but
from the heart.






THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER

          A portrait of Mr. Clemens, signed by all the members of the
          club attending the dinner, was presented to him, July 6, 1907,
          and in submitting the toast "The Health of Mark Twain" Mr. J.
          Scott Stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of Doctor
          Clemens's works to Harold Frederic during Frederic's last
          illness.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SAVAGES,--I am very glad indeed to have that
portrait.  I think it is the best one that I have ever had, and there
have been opportunities before to get a good photograph.  I have sat to
photographers twenty-two times to-day.  Those sittings added to those
that have preceded them since I have been in Europe--if we average at
that rate--must have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings.  Out
of all those there ought to be some good photographs.  This is the best I
have had, and I am glad to have your honored names on it.  I did not know
Harold Frederic personally, but I have heard a great deal about him, and
nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead a
man to honor another man and to love him.  I consider that it is a
misfortune of mine that I have never had the luck to meet him, and if any
book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier for
him and more comfortable, I am very glad and proud of that.  I call to
mind such a case many years ago of an English authoress, well known in
her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in
every possible way.  In a little biographical sketch of her I found that
her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she was
no longer able to read.  That has always remained in my mind, and I have
always cherished it as one of the good things of my life.  I had read
what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done.

Stanley apparently  carried a book of mine feloniously away to Africa,
and I have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there
in the wilds of Africa--because on his previous journeys he never carried
anything to read except Shakespeare and the Bible.  I did not know of
that circumstance.  I did not know that he had carried a book of mine.
I only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man.  I knew
Stanley very well in those old days.  Stanley was the first man who ever
reported a lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis.  When I was down
there the next time to give the same lecture I was told to give them
something fresh, as they had read that in the papers.  I met Stanley here
when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with the
finding of Livingstone.  You remember how he would break out at the
meetings of the British Association, and find fault with what people
said, because Stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain them.
They had to come out or break him up--and so he would go round and
address geographical societies.  He was always on the warpath in those
days, and people always had to have Stanley contradicting their geography
for them and improving it.  But he always came back and sat drinking beer
with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was then one of the
most civilized human beings that ever was.

I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which
appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer
said that I characterized Mr. Birrell's speech the other day at the
Pilgrims' Club as "bully."  Now, if you will excuse me, I never use slang
to an interviewer or anybody else.  That distresses me.  Whatever I said
about Mr. Birrell's speech was said in English, as good English as
anybody uses.  If I could not describe Mr. Birrell's delightful speech
without using slang I would not describe it at all.  I would close my
mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me.

Now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an
altogether wrong way to interview him.  It is entirely wrong because none
of you, I, or anybody else, could interview a man--could listen to a man
talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in the
first person.  It can't be done.  What results is merely that the
interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own
language and puts it in your mouth.  It will always be either better
language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse.
I have a great respect for the English language.  I am one of its
supporters, its promoters, its elevators.  I don't degrade it.  A slip of
the tongue would be the most that you would get from me.  I have always
tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.
I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I
feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think.

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to
facts.  I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as
too much truth.  Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too
many of them without damaging your literature.  I love all literature,
and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for
twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature,
and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor
everybody else's.

Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes.  At home I venture
things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts.
I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white
clothes in England.  I meant to keep that command fair and clean, and I
would have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions,
but I can't invent a new process in life right away.  I have not had
white clothes on since I crossed the ocean until now.

In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired of gray and black that
you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as I have.  I wear
white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I don't go out in
the streets in them.  I don't go out to attract too much attention.
I like to attract some, and always I would like to be dressed so that I
may be more conspicuous than anybody else.

If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have contented myself with
blue paint, but I would have bankrupted the rainbow.  I so enjoy gay
clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when I
go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the men
are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress.  These are
two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes:  When I find
myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know I
possess something that is superior to everybody else's.  Clothes are
never clean.  You don't know whether they are clean or not, because you
can't see.

Here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or it
is full of grit.  Your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your
hair.  If you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill
gets so heavy that you have to take care.  I am proud to say that I can
wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days.  If you
need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to
give it to you.  I hope I have convinced some of you that it is just as
well to wear white clothes as any other kind.  I do not want to boast.
I only want to make you understand that you are not clean.

As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two years old does not
clearly indicate how old I am, because part of every day--it is with me
as with you, you try to describe your age, and you cannot do it.
Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five.  It is
very seldom in a day that I am seventy-two years old.  I am older now
sometimes than I was when I used to rob orchards; a thing which I would
not do to-day--if the orchards were watched.  I am so glad to be here
to-night.  I am so glad to renew with the Savages that now ancient time
when I first sat with a company of this club in London in 1872.  That is
a long time ago.  But I did stay with the Savages a night in London long
ago, and as I had come into a very strange land, and was with friends, as
I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed
evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own kind and my
own feelings.

I am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very likely
that I shall not see you again.  It is easier than I thought to come
across the Atlantic.  I have been received, as you know, in the most
delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here.  It keeps me
choked up all the time.  Everybody is so generous, and they do seem to
give you such a hearty welcome.  Nobody in the world can appreciate it
higher than I do.  It did not wait till I got to London, but when I came
ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcome
--a good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the
world, and save you and me having to do it.  They are the men who with
their hands build empires and make them prosper.  It is because of them
that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury.  They received me
with a "Hurrah!" that went to my heart.  They are the men that build
civilization, and without them no civilization can be built.  So I came
first to the authors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end
this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it.






GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG

          Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the
          Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort, December 22, 1907.  The
          toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high
          tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was
          dear to the hearts of all Americans.

It is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments
from the powers in authority.  A compliment is a hard text to preach to.
When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says
pleasant things about me, I always feel like answering simply that what
he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as I am concerned,
the things he said can stand as they are.  But you always have to say
something, and that is what frightens me.

I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary
toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other worm
--and run, for it.  I was remembering that occasion at a later date when
I had to introduce a speaker.  Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction
of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed.  When I
finished there was an awful calm.  I had been telling his life history by
mistake.

One must keep up one's character.  Earn a character first if you can, and
if you can't, then assume one.  From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember one
detail.  All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest.  I could
never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.

Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that
we had known each other thirty years.  He said it was strange that we had
not met years before, when we had both been in Washington.  At that point
I changed the subject, and I changed it with art.  But the facts are
these:

I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a
cent to live on while I wrote it.  So I went to Washington to do a little
journalism.  There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who
had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love
Scotch.  Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate,
selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter.
That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to
support the jug.

But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3 at
once.  That was how I met the General.  It doesn't matter now what we
wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did
occasionally want it.  The Scot sent me out one day to get it.  He had a
great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine.  He said: "The
Lord will provide."

I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel
lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog.  The dog saw me,
too, and at once we became acquainted.  Then General Miles came in,
admired the dog, and asked me to price it.  I priced it at $3.  He
offered me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful
animal, but I refused to take more than Providence knew I needed.  The
General carried the dog to his room.

Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking
around the lobby.

"Did you lose a dog?" I asked.  He said he had.

"I think I could find it," I volunteered, "for a small sum."

"'How much?'" he asked.  And I told him $3.

He urged me to accept more, but I did not wish to outdo Providence.  Then
I went to the General's room and asked for the dog back.  He was very
angry, and wanted to know why I had sold him a dog that did not belong to
me.

"That's a singular question to ask me, sir," I replied.  "Didn't you ask
me to sell him?  You started it."  And he let me have him.  I gave him
back his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to its owner.  That second $3
I earned home to the Scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money
I got from the General, I would have had to lend.

The General seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and I never
had the heart to tell him about it.






WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH

          Mark Twain's speech at the dinner of the "Freundschaft
          Society," March 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of
          introduction used by Toastmaster Frank, who, referring to
          Pudd'nhead Wilson, used the phrase, "When in doubt, tell the
          truth."

MR. CHAIRMAN, Mr. PUTZEL, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FREUNDSCHAFT,--That maxim
I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me.  I did say,
"When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more
sagacity.

Mr. Grout suggested that if I have anything to say against Mr. Putzel, or
any criticism of his career or his character, I am the last person to
come out on account of that maxim and tell the truth.  That is altogether
a mistake.

I do think it is right for other people to be virtuous so that they can
be happy hereafter, but if I knew every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel
has committed in his life, I would not mention one of them.  My judgment
has been maturing for seventy years, and I have got to that point where I
know better than that.

Mr. Putzel stands related to me in a very tender way (through the tax
office), and it does not behoove me to say anything which could by any
possibility militate against that condition of things.

Now, that word--taxes, taxes, taxes!  I have heard it to-night.  I have
heard it all night.  I wish somebody would change that subject; that is a
very sore subject to me.

I was so relieved when judge Leventritt did find something that was not
taxable--when he said that the commissioner could not tax your patience.
And that comforted me.  We've got so much taxation.  I don't know of a
single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer
to prayer.

On an occasion like this the proprieties require that you merely pay
compliments to the guest of the occasion, and I am merely here to pay
compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any
way, and I can say only complimentary things to him.

When I went down to the tax office some time ago, for the first time in
New York, I saw Mr. Putzel sitting in the "Seat of Perjury." I recognized
him right away.  I warmed to him on the spot.  I didn't know that I had
ever seen him before, but just as soon as I saw him I recognized him.
I had met him twenty-five years before, and at that time had achieved a
knowledge of his abilities and something more than that.

I thought: "Now, this is the man whom I saw twenty-five years ago."
On that occasion I not only went free at his hands, but carried off
something more than that.  I hoped it would happen again.

It was twenty-five years ago when I saw a young clerk in Putnam's
bookstore.  I went in there and asked for George Haven Putnam, and handed
him my card, and then the young man said Mr. Putnam was busy and I
couldn't see him.  Well, I had merely called in a social way, and so it
didn't matter.

I was going out when I saw a great big, fat, interesting-looking book
lying there, and I took it up.  It was an account of the invasion of
England in the fourteenth century by the Preaching Friar, and it
interested me.

I asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars.

"Well," I said, "what discount do you allow to publishers?"

He said: "Forty percent. off."

I said: "All right, I am a publisher."

He put down the figure, forty per cent. off, on a card.

Then I said: "What discount do you allow to authors?"

He said: "Forty per cent. off."

"Well," I said,  "set me down as an author."

"Now," said I, "what discount do you allow to the clergy?"

He said: "Forty per cent. off."

I said to him that I was only on the road, and that I was studying for
the ministry.  I asked him wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent. for
that.  He set down the figure, and he never smiled once.

I was working off these humorous brilliancies on him and getting no
return--not a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of
what I was doing there.  I was almost in despair.

I thought I might try him once more, so I said "Now, I am also a member
of the human race.  Will you let me have the ten per cent. off for that?"
He set it down, and never smiled.

Well, I gave it up.  I said: "There is my card with my address on it,
but I have not any money with me.  Will you please send the bill to
Hartford?"  I took up the book and was going away.

He said: "Wait a minute.  There is forty cents coming to you."

When I met him in the tax office I thought maybe I could make something
again, but I could not.  But I had not any idea I could when I came, and
as it turned out I did get off entirely free.

I put up my hand and made a statement.  It gave me a good deal of pain to
do that.  I was not used to it.  I was born and reared in the higher
circles of Missouri, and there we don't do such things--didn't in my
time, but we have got that little matter settled--got a sort of tax
levied on me.

Then he touched me.  Yes, he touched me this time, because he cried
--cried!  He was moved to tears to see that I, a virtuous person only a
year before, after immersion for one year--during one year in the New
York morals--had no more conscience than a millionaire.






THE DAY WE CELEBRATE,

          ADDRESS AT THE FOURTH-OF-JULY DINNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY,
          LONDON, 1899.

I noticed in Ambassador Choate's speech that he said: "You may be
Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time."
You responded by applause.

Consider the effect of a short residence here.  I find the Ambassador
rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a Senator, and I come third.
What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when
you place rank above respectability!

I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it
upon me.  I understand it quite well.  I am here to see that between them
they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must
do it myself.  But I notice they have considered this day merely from one
side--its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side.  But it has another side.
It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming.  It has a
historical side.

I do not say "an" historical side, because I am speaking the American
language.  I do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an"
hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse.  It seems to me the Congress
of Women, now in session, should look to it.  I think "an" is having a
little too much to do with it.  It comes of habit, which accounts for
many things.

Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party.  At the end of the
party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half
an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat.  Now, that was an
innocent act on his part.  He went out first, and of course had the
choice of hats.  As a rule I try to get out first myself.  But I hold
that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity.
He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that
condition of mind he will take anybody's hat.  The result was that the
whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could
not tell a lie.  Of course, he was hard at it.

It is a compliment to both of us.  His hat fitted me exactly; my hat
fitted him exactly.  So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the
Church some how or other, but I do not know what he was born for.  That
is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here
when they say "an" hospital, "an" European, "an" historical.

The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands.
See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of
thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property.  It is
not only sacred to patriotism sand universal freedom, but to the surgeon,
the undertaker, the insurance offices--and they are working, it for all
it is worth.

I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time.  This
coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate.  I was a soldier in the
Southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the
great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all
through me and fires up the old war spirit.  I had in my first engagement
three horses shot under me.  The next ones went over my head, the next
hit me in the back.  Then I retired to meet an engagement.

I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war
profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was.






INDEPENDENCE DAY

          The American Society in London gave a banquet, July 4, 1907, at
          the Hotel Cecil.  Ambassador Choate called on Mr. Clemens to
          respond to the toast "The Day We Celebrate."

MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN,--Once more it happens, as it has
happened so often since I arrived in England a week or two ago, that
instead of celebrating the Fourth of July properly as has been indicated,
I have to first take care of my personal character.  Sir Mortimer Durand
still remains unconvinced.  Well, I tried to convince these people from
the beginning that I did not take the Ascot Cup; and as I have failed to
convince anybody that I did not take the cup, I might as well confess I
did take it and be done with it.  I don't see why this uncharitable
feeling should follow me everywhere, and why I should have that crime
thrown up to me on all occasions.  The tears that I have wept over it
ought to have created a different feeling than this--and, besides,
I don't think it is very right or fair that, considering England has been
trying to take a cup of ours for forty years--I don't see why they should
take so much trouble when I tried to go into the business myself.

Sir Mortimer Durand, too, has had trouble from going to a dinner here,
and he has told you what he suffered in consequence.  But what did he
suffer?  He only missed his train, and one night of discomfort, and he
remembers it to this day.  Oh! if you could only think what I have
suffered from a similar circumstance.  Two or three years ago, in New
York, with that Society there which is made up of people from all British
Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, who were educated in British
colleges and.  British schools, I was there to respond to a toast of some
kind or other, and I did then what I have been in the habit of doing,
from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, I got myself placed
No, 3 in the list of speakers--then you get home early.

I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a, particular train or
not get there.  But see the magnanimity which is born in me, which I have
cultivated all my life.  A very famous and very great British clergyman
came to me presently, and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have
got to catch a certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch that
train I shall be carried beyond midnight and break the Sabbath.  Won't
you change places with me?"  I said: "Certainly I will." I did it at
once.  Now, see what happened.

Talk about Sir Mortimer Durand's sufferings for a single night!  I have
suffered ever since because I saved that gentleman from breaking the
Sabbath-yes, saved him.  I took his place, but I lost my train, and it
was I who broke the Sabbath.  Up to that time I never had broken the
Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I never have kept it.

Oh!  I am learning much here to-night.  I find I didn't know anything
about the American Society--that is, I didn't know its chief virtue.
I didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador
revealed it--I may say, exposed it.  I was intending to go home on the
13th of this month, but I look upon that in a different light now.  I am
going to stay here until the American Society pays my passage.

Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes.
We have got a double Fourth of July--a daylight Fourth and a midnight
Fourth.  During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we
keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit.  We devote it to
teaching our children patriotic things--reverence for the Declaration of
Independence.  We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and when
night comes we dishonor it.  Presently--before long--they are getting
nearly ready to begin now--on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down,
that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and
noise--all night long--and there will be more than noise there will be
people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who
will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give to
irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all sorts
of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over to rowdies
to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we cripple and
kill more people than you would imagine.

We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-July night in that way one
hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night
since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five
thousand towns of America, somebody gets killed or crippled on every
Fourth-of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never
hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock.  They cripple
and kill more people on the Fourth of July in, America than they kill and
cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk.
And, too, we burn houses.  Really we destroy more property on every
Fourth-of-July night than the whole of the United States was worth one
hundred and twenty-five years ago.  Really our Fourth of July is our day
of mourning, our day of sorrow.  Fifty thousand people who have lost
friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July,
when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained in
their families.

I have suffered in that way myself.  I have had relatives killed in that
way.  One was in Chicago years ago--an uncle of mine, just as good an
uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them--yes, uncles to burn,
uncles to spare.  This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth
to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat.  Before that man could ask
for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him
all, over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know
about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons,
recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard.  A person cannot have a
disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life.  I had
another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up
that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree.  He had hardly a
limb left on him anywhere.  All we have left now is an expurgated edition
of that uncle.  But never mind about these things; they are merely
passing matters.  Don't let me make you sad.

Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your
colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance.
Now I wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he
had his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution
as a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.

Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much, and
which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an
American one, and it comes of a great ancestry.  The first Fourth of July
in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years.
That is the day of the Great Charter--the Magna Charta--which was born at
Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the
liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King
John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of
July, of our American liberties.  And the second of those Fourths of July
was not born, until four centuries later, in, Charles the First's time,
in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties.
The next one was still English, in New England, where they established
that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to
remain with us--no taxation without representation.  That is always going
to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us.

The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in
Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776--that is English, too.  It is not
American.  Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III.,
Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the Home
Government.  Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove
them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a
revolution.  The revolution was brought about by circumstances which they
could not control.  The Declaration of Independence was written by a
British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British
subject.  There was not the name of a single American attached to the
Declaration of Independence--in fact, there was not an American in the
country in that day except the Indians out on the plains.  They were
Englishmen, all Englishmen--Americans did not begin until seven, years
later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then, the
American Republic was established.  Since then, there have been
Americans.  So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties.

We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and
that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great
American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful
tribute--Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the
black slaves free, but set the white man free also.  The owner was set
free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he
was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not
want to be.  That proclamation set them all free.  But even in this
matter England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty
years before, and we followed her example.  We always followed her
example, whether it was good or bad.

And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation,
and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong
to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon
English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man
before the world.  We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our
slaves as I have said.

It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of them,
England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the
Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that
we owe these things to England.  Let us be able to say to Old England,
this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our
Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us
the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights, you,
the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon Freedom
--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for them.






AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH

     ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872

MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will
not afflict you with many words.  It is pleasant to celebrate in this
peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment
which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to
a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors.  It has taken nearly
a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and
mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished
at last.  It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were
settled by arbitration instead of cannon.  It is another great step when
England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention--as
usual.  It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the
other day.  And it warmed my heart more than, I can tell, yesterday, when
I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman, ordering an American sherry
cobbler of his own free will and accord--and not only that but with a
great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the
strawberries.  With a common origin, a common language, a common
literature, a common religion, and--common drinks, what is longer needful
to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of
brotherhood?

This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land.  A great and
glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows.  We have a criminal jury system which is superior
to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved
Cain.  I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some
legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.

I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us
live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners.  It only
destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and
unnecessary people at crossings.  The companies seriously regretted the
killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not
claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against
a railway company.  But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are
generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without--compulsion.
I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time.  After an
accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative
of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure you hold
him at--and return the basket."  Now there couldn't be anything
friendlier than that.

But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a
body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July.  It is a
fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle.  I will say only one more word
of brag--and a hopeful one.  It is this.  We have a form of government
which gives each man a fair chance and no favor.  With us no individual
is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
contempt.  Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.
And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the
condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of a
far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all
political place was a matter of bargain and sale.  There is hope for us
yet.*

          *At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,
          but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the
          blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
          harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making
          did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory
          would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just
          sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,
          sociable time.  It is known that in consequence of that remark
          forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb.  The
          depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the
          banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
          that were there.  By that one thoughtless remark General
          Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.
          More than one said that night: "And this is the sort of person
          that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!"






ABOUT LONDON

          ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB,
          LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.

          Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.

It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club
which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
of my countrymen.  I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and
fluttering] you will excuse these clothes.  I am going to the theatre;
that will explain these clothes.  I have other clothes than these.
Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the
customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun
on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the
first man that that idea has occurred to.  It is a credit to our human
nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our
depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our
sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of
innocence and simplicity still.  When a stranger says to me, with a glow
of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about
"Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush
that man into the earth--no.  I feel like saying: "Let me take you by the
hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks."
We will deal in palpable puns.  We will call parties named King "Your
Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard that
name before somewhere.  Such is human nature.  We cannot alter this.
It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose.  Let us not
repine.  But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.

I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
to this prodigious metropolis of yours.  Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless.  I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
marvellous.  Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and
gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square.  [Leicester Square being a
horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre, the
king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and
Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most.  I go to that matchless Hyde
Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind."  [Cabs are not permitted in
Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.]  It is a
great benefaction--is Hyde Park.  There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between
the railings, and breathe the pure, health--giving air of the country and
of heaven.  And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend
upon parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his
vehicle.  I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the
edges of it the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.

And I have been to the Zoological Gardens.  What a wonderful place that
is!  I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild
animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie."  I never believed before
there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you can
find there--and I don't believe it yet.  I have been to the British
Museum.  I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have
nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems
to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her
greatness.  I say to her, our greatness--as a nation.  True, she has
built other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has
uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked
across the world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and
whose prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their
monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and
Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial.  [Sarcasm.  The Albert
memorial is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the
existence of as commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of
obscurity.]

The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding.
I have read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it.
I revere that library.  It is the author's friend.  I don't care how mean
a book is, it always takes one copy.  [A copy of every book printed in
Great Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much
complained of by publishers.]  And then every day that author goes there
to gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work.
And what a touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor,
careworn clergymen gathered together in that vast reading--room cabbaging
sermons for Sunday.  You will pardon my referring to these things.

Everything in this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from
talking, even at the risk of being instructive.  People here seem always
to express distances by parables.  To a stranger it is just a little
confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak.  I collar a citizen, and I
think I am going to get some valuable information out of him.  I ask him
how far it is to Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and
sixpence.  Now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn.
I find myself down-town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea
where I am--being usually lost when alone--and I stop a citizen and say:
"How far is it to Charing Cross?"  "Shilling fare in a cab," and off he
goes.  I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it, is from the
sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin.  But I am
trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics and
historical reflections.  I will not longer keep you from your orgies.
'Tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and I thank you for it.  The name
of the Savage Club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and
the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who
came among you a stranger, and you opened your English hearts to him and
gave him welcome and a home--Artemus Ward.  Asking that you will join me,
I give you his memory.






PRINCETON

          Mr. Clemens spent several days in May, 1901, in Princeton, New
          Jersey, as the guest of Lawrence Hutton.  He gave a reading one
          evening before a large audience composed of university students
          and professors.  Before the reading Mr. Clemens said:

I feel exceedingly surreptitious in coming down here without an
announcement of any kind.  I do not want to see any advertisements
around, for the reason that I'm not a lecturer any longer.  I reformed
long ago, and I break over and commit this sin only just one time this
year: and that is moderate, I think, for a person of my disposition.  It
is not my purpose to lecture any more as long as I live.  I never intend
to stand up on a platform any more--unless by the request of a sheriff or
something like that.






THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN"

          The Countess de Rochambeau christened the St. Louis harbor-boat
          'Mark Twain' in honor of Mr. Clemens, June 6, 1902.  Just
          before the luncheon he acted as pilot.

          "Lower away lead!" boomed out the voice of the pilot.

          "Mark twain, quarter five and one-half-six feet!" replied the
          leadsman below.

          "You are all dead safe as long as I have the wheel--but this is
          my last time at the wheel."

          At the luncheon Mr. Clemens made a short address.

First of all, no--second of all--I wish to offer my thanks for the honor
done me by naming this last rose of summer of the Mississippi Valley for
me, this boat which represents a perished interest, which I fortified
long ago, but did not save its life.  And, in the first place, I wish to
thank the Countess de Rochambeau for the honor she has done me in
presiding at this christening.

I believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that I should be allowed the
privilege of joining my voice with the general voice of St. Louis and
Missouri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and this part of the
continent these illustrious visitors from France.

When La Salle came down this river a century and a quarter ago there was
nothing on its banks but savages.  He opened up this great river, and by
his simple act was gathered in this great Louisiana territory.  I would
have done it myself for half the money.






SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

          ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY COLONEL GEORGE HARVEY AT
          DELMONICO'S, DECEMBER 5, 1905, TO CELEBRATE THE SEVENTIETH
          ANNIVERSARY OF MR. CLEMENS' BIRTH

          Mr. Howells introduced Mr. Clemens:

          "Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I will try not
          to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our
          honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest.  I
          will not say, 'Oh King, live forever!' but 'Oh King, live as
          long as you like!'" [Amid great applause and waving of napkins
          all rise and drink to Mark Twain.]

Well, if I made that joke, it is the best one I ever made, and it is in
the prettiest language, too.--I never can get quite to that height.  But
I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember it--and I shall use it when
occasion requires.

I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one
very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so
crude, unaesthetic, primeval.  Nothing like this at all.  No proper
appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready.  Now, for a person
born with high and delicate instincts--why, even the cradle wasn't
whitewashed--nothing ready at all.  I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any
teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like
that.  Well, everybody came swarming in.  It was the merest little bit of
a village--hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of
Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all
interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was
anything fresh in my line.  Why, nothing ever happened in that village
--I--why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months
and months and months; and although I say it myself that shouldn't, I
came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village
in more than, two years.  Well, those people came, they came with that
curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so
provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion.
Nobody asked them, and I shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a
compliment, but nobody did.  Their opinions were all just green with
prejudice, and I feel those opinions to this day.  Well, I stood that as
long as--well, you know I was born courteous, and I stood it to the
limit.  I stood it an hour, and then the worm turned.  I was the warm; it
was my turn to turn, and I turned.  I knew very well the strength of my
position; I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person
in that whole town, and I came out and said so: And they could not say a
word.  It was so true: They blushed; they were embarrassed.  Well, that
was the first after-dinner speech I ever made: I think it was after
dinner.

It's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one.
That was my cradle-song; and this is my swan-song, I suppose.  I am used
to swan-songs; I have sung them several, times.

This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size
of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase,
seventieth birthday.

The seventieth birthday!  It is the time of life when you arrive at a new
and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which
have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon
your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked.  You can
tell the world how you got there.  It is what they all do.  You shall
never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you
climbed up to that great place.  You will explain the process and dwell
on the particulars with senile rapture.  I have been anxious to explain
my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly
to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else.  It sounds like an
exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old
age.  When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people
we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have
decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the
property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have put us
out of commission ahead of time.  I will offer here, as a sound maxim,
this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.

I will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to commit
suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the
hangman for seventy years.  Some of the details may sound untrue, but
they are not.  I am not here to deceive; I am here to teach.

We have no permanent habits until we are forty.  Then they begin to
harden, presently they petrify, then business begins.  Since forty I have
been regular about going to bed and getting up--and that is one of the
main things.  I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't
anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I
had to.  This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity.
It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person.

In the matter of diet--which is another main thing--I have been
persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me
until one or the other of us got the best of it.  Until lately I got the
best of it myself.  But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie
after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded.  For
thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and
no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening.  Eleven hours.  That
is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a
headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy
comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it.  And I
wish to urge upon you this--which I think is wisdom--that if you find you
can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go.  When
they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on
your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station
where there's a cemetery.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.
I have no other restriction as regards smoking.  I do not know just when
I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and
that I was discreet.  He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was
a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly.  As an
example to others, and--not that I care for moderation myself, it has
always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when
awake.  It is a good rule.  I mean, for me; but some of you know quite
well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be
seventy.

I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night,
sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never waste
any of these opportunities to smoke.  This habit is so old and dear and
precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should
lose the only moral you've got--meaning the chairman--if you've got one:
I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking
now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it
was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a
slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds.

To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit.  I have
never bought cigars with life-belts around them.  I early found that
those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap cigars
--reasonably cheap, at any rate.  Sixty years ago they cost me four
dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven,
now.  Six or seven.  Seven, I think.  Yes; it's seven.  But that includes
the barrel.  I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people
that come have always just taken the pledge.  I wonder why that is?

As for drinking, I  have no rule about that.  When the others drink I
like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference.  This
dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are
different.  You let it alone.

Since I was seven years old I have seldom take, a dose of medicine, and
have still seldomer needed one.  But up to seven I lived exclusively on
allopathic medicines.  Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did;
it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made
cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods.  We had nine
barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years.  Then I was weaned.  The
rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such
things, because I was the pet.  I was the first Standard Oil Trust.
I had it all.  By the time the drugstore was exhausted my health was
established, and there has never been much the matter with me since.
But you know very well it would be foolish for the average child to start
for seventy on that basis.  It happened to be just the thing for me,
but that was merely an accident; it couldn't happen again in a century.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never
intend to take any.  Exercise is loathsome.  And it cannot be any benefit
when you are tired; and I was always tired.  But let another person try
my way, and see where he will come out.  I desire now to repeat and
emphasise that maxim: We can't reach old age by another man's road.  My
habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you.

I have lived a severely moral life.  But it would be a mistake for other
people to try that, or for me to recommend it.  Very few would succeed:
you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can't get
them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your
box.  Morals are an acquirement--like music, like a foreign language,
like piety, poker, paralysis--no man is born with them.  I wasn't myself,
I started poor.  I hadn't a single moral.  There is hardly a man in this
house that is poorer than I was then.  Yes, I started like that--the
world before me, not a moral in the slot.  Not even an insurance moral.
I can remember the first one I ever got.  I can remember the landscape,
the weather, the--I can remember how everything looked.  It was an old
moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit,
anyway.  But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a
dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's
Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat
of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she
will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive.
When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she
hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all.
Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and
served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she
got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and
character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for
business.  She was a great loss to me.  Yet not all loss.  I sold her
--ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was--I sold her to Leopold, the pirate
King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very
glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16
feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur.  Well, she looks it.  They
believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match.

Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin
microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is
morals.  Now you take a sterilized Christian--I mean, you take the
sterilized Christian, for there's only one.  Dear sir, I wish you
wouldn't look at me like that.

Threescore years and ten!

It is the Scriptural statute of limitations.  After that, you owe no
active duties; for you the strenuous life is over.  You are a
time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your
term, well or less well, and you are mustered out.  You are become an
honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not
for you, nor any bugle-tail but "lights out."  You pay the time-worn duty
bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer--and without prejudice--for
they are not legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many
tinges, you cam lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will
never need it again.  If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and
the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter
through the deserted streets--a desolation which would not remind you
now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you
must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you
that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more--if you shrink
at thought of these things, you need only reply, "Your invitation honors
me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I
am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my
pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all
affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No.70
you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay
your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart."


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain's Speeches
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)






MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS COMPLETE

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE


MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1853-1866

VOLUME I


FOREWORD

Nowhere is the human being more truly revealed than in his letters.
Not in literary letters--prepared with care, and the thought of possible
publication--but in those letters wrought out of the press of
circumstances, and with no idea of print in mind.  A collection of such
documents, written by one whose life has become of interest to mankind at
large, has a value quite aside from literature, in that it reflects in
some degree at least the soul of the writer.

The letters of Mark Twain are peculiarly of the revealing sort.  He was a
man of few restraints and of no affectations.  In his correspondence,
as in his talk, he spoke what was in his mind, untrammeled by literary
conventions.

Necessarily such a collection does not constitute a detailed life story,
but is supplementary to it.  An extended biography of Mark Twain has
already been published.  His letters are here gathered for those who wish
to pursue the subject somewhat more exhaustively from the strictly
personal side.  Selections from this correspondence were used in the
biography mentioned.  Most of these are here reprinted in the belief that
an owner of the "Letters" will wish the collection to be reasonably
complete.


[Etext Editor's Note:  A. B. Paine considers this compendium a supplement
to his "Mark Twain, A Biography", I have arranged the volumes of the
"Letters" to correspond as closely as possible with the dates of the
Project Gutenberg six volumes of the "Biography".  D.W.]



MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS

MARK TWAIN--A BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS, for nearly half a century known and celebrated
as "Mark Twain," was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835.
He was one of the foremost American philosophers of his day; he was the
world's most famous humorist of any day.  During the later years of his
life he ranked not only as America's chief man of letters, but likewise
as her best known and best loved citizen.

The beginnings of that life were sufficiently unpromising.  The family
was a good one, of old Virginia and Kentucky stock, but its circumstances
were reduced, its environment meager and disheartening.  The father, John
Marshall Clemens--a lawyer by profession, a merchant by vocation--had
brought his household to Florida from Jamestown, Tennessee, somewhat
after the manner of judge Hawkins as pictured in The Gilded Age.  Florida
was a small town then, a mere village of twenty-one houses located on
Salt River, but judge Clemens, as he was usually called, optimistic and
speculative in his temperament, believed in its future.  Salt River would
be made navigable; Florida would become a metropolis.  He established a
small business there, and located his family in the humble frame cottage
where, five months later, was born a baby boy to whom they gave the name
of Samuel--a family name--and added Langhorne, after an old Virginia
friend of his father.

The child was puny, and did not make a very sturdy fight for life.
Still he weathered along, season after season, and survived two stronger
children, Margaret and Benjamin.  By 1839 Judge Clemens had lost faith in
Florida.  He removed his family to Hannibal, and in this Mississippi
River town the little lad whom the world was to know as Mark Twain spent
his early life.  In Tom Sawyer we have a picture of the Hannibal of those
days and the atmosphere of his boyhood there.

His schooling was brief and of a desultory kind.  It ended one day in
1847, when his father died and it became necessary that each one should
help somewhat in the domestic crisis.  His brother Orion, ten years his
senior, was already a printer by trade.  Pamela, his sister; also
considerably older, had acquired music, and now took a few pupils.
The little boy Sam, at twelve, was apprenticed to a printer named Ament.
His wages consisted of his board and clothes--"more board than clothes,"
as he once remarked to the writer.

He remained with Ament until his brother Orion bought out a small paper
in Hannibal in 1850.  The paper, in time, was moved into a part of the
Clemens home, and the two brothers ran it, the younger setting most of
the type.  A still younger brother, Henry, entered the office as an
apprentice.  The Hannibal journal was no great paper from the beginning,
and it did not improve with time.  Still, it managed to survive--country
papers nearly always manage to survive--year after year, bringing in some
sort of return.  It was on this paper that young Sam Clemens began his
writings--burlesque, as a rule, of local characters and conditions
--usually published in his brother's absence; generally resulting in
trouble on his return.  Yet they made the paper sell, and if Orion had
but realized his brother's talent he might have turned it into capital
even then.

In 1853 (he was not yet eighteen) Sam Clemens grew tired of his
limitations and pined for the wider horizon of the world.  He gave out to
his family that he was going to St. Louis, but he kept on to New York,
where a World's Fair was then going on.  In New York he found employment
at his trade, and during the hot months of 1853 worked in a
printing-office in Cliff Street.  By and by he went to Philadelphia,
where he worked a brief time; made a trip to Washington, and presently
set out for the West again, after an absence of more than a year.

Onion, meanwhile, had established himself at Muscatine, Iowa, but soon
after removed to Keokuk, where the brothers were once more together,
till following their trade.  Young Sam Clemens remained in Keokuk until
the winter of 1856-57, when he caught a touch of the South-American fever
then prevalent; and decided to go to Brazil.  He left Keokuk for
Cincinnati, worked that winter in a printing-office there, and in April
took the little steamer, Paul Jones, for New Orleans, where he expected
to find a South-American vessel.  In Life on the Mississippi we have his
story of how he met Horace Bixby and decided to become a pilot instead of
a South American adventurer--jauntily setting himself the stupendous task
of learning the twelve hundred miles of the Mississippi River between St.
Louis and New Orleans--of knowing it as exactly and as unfailingly, even
in the dark, as one knows the way to his own features.  It seems
incredible to those who knew Mark Twain in his later years--dreamy,
unpractical, and indifferent to details--that he could have acquired so
vast a store of minute facts as were required by that task.  Yet within
eighteen months he had become not only a pilot, but one of the best and
most careful pilots on the river, intrusted with some of the largest and
most valuable steamers.  He continued in that profession for two and a
half years longer, and during that time met with no disaster that cost
his owners a single dollar for damage.

Then the war broke out.  South Carolina seceded in December, 1860 and
other States followed.  Clemens was in New Orleans in January, 1861, when
Louisiana seceded, and his boat was put into the Confederate service and
sent up the Red River.  His occupation gone, he took steamer for the
North--the last one before the blockade closed.  A blank cartridge was
fired at them from Jefferson Barracks when they reached St. Louis, but
they did not understand the signal, and kept on.  Presently a shell
carried away part of the pilot-house and considerably disturbed its
inmates.  They realized, then, that war had really begun.

In those days Clemens's sympathies were with the South.  He hurried up to
Hannibal and enlisted with a company of young fellows who were recruiting
with the avowed purpose of "throwing off the yoke of the invader." They
were ready for the field, presently, and set out in good order, a sort of
nondescript cavalry detachment, mounted on animals more picturesque than
beautiful.  Still, it was a resolute band, and might have done very well,
only it rained a good deal, which made soldiering disagreeable and hard.
Lieutenant Clemens resigned at the end of two weeks, and decided to go to
Nevada with Orion, who was a Union abolitionist and had received an
appointment from Lincoln as Secretary of the new Territory.

In 'Roughing It' Mark Twain gives us the story of the overland journey
made by the two brothers, and a picture of experiences at the other end
--true in aspect, even if here and there elaborated in detail.  He was
Orion's private secretary, but there was no private-secretary work to do,
and no salary attached to the position.  The incumbent presently went to
mining, adding that to his other trades.

He became a professional miner, but not a rich one.  He was at Aurora,
California, in the Esmeralda district, skimping along, with not much to
eat and less to wear, when he was summoned by Joe Goodman, owner and
editor of the Virginia City Enterprise, to come up and take the local
editorship of that paper.  He had been contributing sketches to it now
and then, under the pen, name of "Josh," and Goodman, a man of fine
literary instincts, recognized a talent full of possibilities.  This was
in the late summer of 1862.  Clemens walked one hundred and thirty miles
over very bad roads to take the job, and arrived way-worn and
travel-stained.  He began on a salary of twenty-five dollars a week,
picking up news items here and there, and contributing occasional
sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, and the like.  When the Legislature
convened at Carson City he was sent down to report it, and then, for the
first time, began signing his articles "Mark Twain," a river term, used
in making soundings, recalled from his piloting days.  The name presently
became known up and down the Pacific coast.  His articles were, copied
and commented upon.  He was recognized as one of the foremost among a
little coterie of overland writers, two of whom, Mark Twain and Bret
Harte, were soon to acquire a world-wide fame.

He left Carson City one day, after becoming involved in a duel, the
result of an editorial squib written in Goodman's absence, and went
across the Sierras to San Francisco.  The duel turned out farcically
enough, but the Nevada law, which regarded even a challenge or its
acceptance as a felony, was an inducement to his departure.  Furthermore,
he had already aspired to a wider field of literary effort.  He attached
himself to the Morning Call, and wrote occasionally for one or two
literary papers--the Golden Era and the Californian---prospering well
enough during the better part of the year.  Bret Harte and the rest of
the little Pacific-slope group were also on the staff of these papers,
and for a time, at least, the new school of American humor mustered in
San Francisco.

The connection with the Call was not congenial.  In due course it came to
a natural end, and Mark Twain arranged to do a daily San Francisco letter
for his old paper, the Enterprise.  The Enterprise letters stirred up
trouble.  They criticized the police of San Francisco so severely that
the officials found means of making the writer's life there difficult and
comfortless.  With Jim Gillis, brother of a printer of whom he was fond,
and who had been the indirect cause of his troubles, he went up into
Calaveras County, to a cabin on jackass Hill.  Jim Gillis, a lovable,
picturesque character (the Truthful James of Bret Harte), owned mining
claims.  Mark Twain decided to spend his vacation in pocket-mining, and
soon added that science to his store of knowledge.  It was a halcyon,
happy three months that he lingered there, but did not make his fortune;
he only laid the corner-stone.

They tried their fortune at Angel's Camp, a place well known to readers
of Bret Harte.  But it rained pretty steadily, and they put in most of
their time huddled around the single stove of the dingy hotel of Angel's,
telling yarns.  Among the stories was one told by a dreary narrator named
Ben Coon.  It was about a frog that had been trained to jump, but failed
to win a wager because the owner of a rival frog had surreptitiously
loaded him with shot.  The story had been circulated among the camps, but
Mark Twain had never heard it until then.  The tale and the tiresome
fashion of its telling amused him.  He made notes to remember it.

Their stay in Angel's Camp came presently to an end.  One day, when the
mining partners were following the specks of gold that led to a pocket
somewhere up the hill, a chill, dreary rain set in.  Jim, as usual was
washing, and Clemens was carrying water.  The "color" became better and
better as they ascended, and Gillis, possessed with the mining passion,
would have gone on, regardless of the rain.  Clemens, however, protested,
and declared that each pail of water was his last.  Finally he said, in
his deliberate drawl:

"Jim, I won't carry any more water.  This work is too disagreeable.
Let's go to the house and wait till it clears up."

Gillis had just taken out a pan of earth.  "Bring one more pail, Sam," he
pleaded.

"I won't do it, Jim!  Not a drop!  Not if I knew there was a million
dollars in that pan!"

They left the pan standing there and went back to Angel's Camp.  The rain
continued and they returned to jackass Hill without visiting their claim
again.  Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of earth
left standing on the slope above Angel's, and exposed a handful of
nuggets-pure gold.  Two strangers came along and, observing it, had sat
down to wait until the thirty-day claim-notice posted by Jim Gillis
should expire.  They did not mind the rain--not with that gold in sight
--and the minute the thirty days were up they followed the lead a few
pans further, and took out-some say ten, some say twenty, thousand
dollars. It was a good pocket.  Mark Twain missed it by one pail of
water.  Still, it is just as well, perhaps, when one remembers The
Jumping Frog.

Matters having quieted down in San Francisco, he returned and took up his
work again.  Artemus Ward, whom he had met in Virginia City, wrote him
for something to use in his (Ward's) new book.  Clemens sent the frog
story, but he had been dilatory in preparing it, and when it reached New
York, Carleton, the publisher, had Ward's book about ready for the press.
It did not seem worth while to Carleton to include the frog story, and
handed it over to Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press--a perishing
sheet-saying:

"Here, Clapp, here's something you can use."

The story appeared in the Saturday Press of November 18, 1865.  According
to the accounts of that time it set all New York in a roar, which
annoyed, rather than gratified, its author.  He had thought very little
of it, indeed, yet had been wondering why some of his more highly
regarded work had not found fuller recognition.

But The Jumping Frog did not die.  Papers printed it and reprinted it,
and it was translated into foreign tongues.  The name of "Mark Twain"
became known as the author of that sketch, and the two were permanently
associated from the day of its publication.

Such fame as it brought did not yield heavy financial return.  Its author
continued to win a more or less precarious livelihood doing miscellaneous
work, until March, 1866, when he was employed by the Sacramento Union to
contribute a series of letters from the Sandwich Islands.  They were
notable letters, widely read and freely copied, and the sojourn there was
a generally fortunate one.  It was during his stay in the islands that
the survivors of the wrecked vessel, the Hornet, came in, after long
privation at sea.  Clemens was sick at the time, but Anson Burlingame,
who was in Honolulu, on the way to China, had him carried in a cot to the
hospital, where he could interview the surviving sailors and take down
their story.  It proved a great "beat" for the Union, and added
considerably to its author's prestige.  On his return to San Francisco he
contributed an article on the Hornet disaster to Harper's Magazine, and
looked forward to its publication as a beginning of a real career.  But,
alas!  when it appeared the printer and the proof-reader had somehow
converted "Mark Twain" into "Mark Swain," and his dreams perished.

Undecided as to his plans, he was one day advised by a friend to deliver
a lecture.  He was already known as an entertaining talker, and his
adviser judged his possibilities well.  In Roughing It we find the story
of that first lecture and its success.  He followed it with other
lectures up and down the Coast.  He had added one more profession to his
intellectual stock in trade.

Mark Twain, now provided with money, decided to pay a visit to his
people.  He set out for the East in December, 1866, via Panama, arriving
in New York in January.  A few days later he was with his mother, then
living with his sister, in St. Louis.  A little later he lectured in
Keokuk, and in Hannibal, his old home.

It was about this time that the first great Mediterranean steamship
excursion began to be exploited.  No such ocean picnic had ever been
planned before, and it created a good deal of interest East and West.
Mark Twain heard of it and wanted to go.  He wrote to friends on the
'Alta California,' of San Francisco, and the publishers of that paper had
sufficient faith to advance the money for his passage, on the
understanding that he was to contribute frequent letters, at twenty
dollars apiece.  It was a liberal offer, as rates went in those days, and
a godsend in the fullest sense of the word to Mark Twain.

Clemens now hurried to New York in order to be there in good season for
the sailing date, which was in June.  In New York he met Frank Fuller,
whom he had known as territorial Governor of Utah, an energetic and
enthusiastic admirer of the Western humorist.  Fuller immediately
proposed that Clemens give a lecture in order to establish his reputation
on the Atlantic coast.  Clemens demurred, but Fuller insisted, and
engaged Cooper Union for the occasion.  Not many tickets were sold.
Fuller, however, always ready for an emergency, sent out a flood of
complimentaries to the school-teachers of New York and adjacent
territory, and the house was crammed.  It turned out to be a notable
event.  Mark Twain was at his best that night; the audience laughed
until, as some of them declared when the lecture was over, they were too
weak to leave their seats.  His success as a lecturer was assured.

The Quaker City was the steamer selected for the great oriental tour.
It sailed as advertised, June 8, 1867, and was absent five months, during
which Mark Twain contributed regularly to the 'Alta-California', and
wrote several letters for the New York Tribune.  They were read and
copied everywhere.  They preached a new gospel in travel literature
--a gospel of seeing with an overflowing honesty; a gospel of sincerity
in according praise to whatever he considered genuine, and ridicule to
the things believed to be shams.  It was a gospel that Mark Twain
continued to preach during his whole career.  It became, in fact, his
chief literary message to the world, a world ready for that message.

He returned to find himself famous.  Publishers were ready with plans for
collecting the letters in book form.  The American Publishing Company,
of Hartford, proposed a volume, elaborately illustrated, to be sold by
subscription.  He agreed with them as to terms, and went to Washington'
to prepare copy.  But he could not work quietly there, and presently was
back in San Francisco, putting his book together, lecturing occasionally,
always to crowded houses.  He returned in August, 1868, with the
manuscript of the Innocents Abroad, and that winter, while his book was
being manufactured, lectured throughout the East and Middle West, making
his headquarters in Hartford, and in Elmira, New York.

He had an especial reason for going to Elmira.  On the Quaker City he had
met a young man by the name of Charles Langdon, and one day, in the Bay
of Smyrna, had seen a miniature of the boy's sister, Olivia Langdon, then
a girl of about twenty-two.  He fell in love with that picture, and still
more deeply in love with the original when he met her in New York on his
return.  The Langdon home was in Elmira, and it was for this reason that
as time passed he frequently sojourned there.  When the proofs of the
Innocents Abroad were sent him he took them along, and he and sweet
"Livy" Langdon read them together.  What he lacked in those days in
literary delicacy she detected, and together they pruned it away.  She
became his editor that winter--a position which she held until her death.

The book was published in July, 1869, and its success was immediate and
abundant.  On his wedding-day, February 2, 1870, Clemens received a check
from his publishers for more than four thousand dollars, royalty
accumulated during the three months preceding.  The sales soon amounted
to more than fifty thousand copies, and had increased to very nearly one
hundred thousand at the end of the first three years.  It was a book of
travel, its lowest price three dollars and fifty cents.  Even with our
increased reading population no such sale is found for a book of that
description to-day.  And the Innocents Abroad holds its place--still
outsells every other book in its particular field. [This in 1917. D.W.]

Mark Twain now decided to settle down.  He had bought an interest in the
Express, of Buffalo, New York, and took up his residence in that city in
a house presented to the young couple by Mr. Langdon.  It did not prove a
fortunate beginning.  Sickness, death, and trouble of many kinds put a
blight on the happiness of their first married year and gave, them a
distaste for the home in which they had made such a promising start.
A baby boy, Langdon Clemens, came along in November, but he was never a
strong child.  By the end of the following year the Clemenses had
arranged for a residence in Hartford, temporary at first, later made
permanent.  It was in Hartford that little Langdon died, in 1872.

Clemens, meanwhile, had sold out his interest in the Express, severed his
connection with the Galaxy, a magazine for which he was doing a
department each month, and had written a second book for the American
Publishing Company, Roughing It, published in 1872.  In August of the
same year he made a trip to London, to get material for a book on
England, but was too much sought after, too continuously feted, to do any
work.  He went alone, but in November returned with the purpose of taking
Mrs. Clemens and the new baby, Susy, to England the following spring.
They sailed in April, 1873, and spent a good portion of the year in
England and Scotland.  They returned to America in November, and Clemens
hurried back to London alone to deliver a notable series of lectures
under the management of George Dolby, formerly managing agent for Charles
Dickens.  For two months Mark Twain lectured steadily to London
audiences--the big Hanover Square rooms always filled.  He returned to
his family in January, 1874.

Meantime, a home was being built for them in Hartford, and in the autumn
of 1874 they took up residence in ita happy residence, continued through
seventeen years--well-nigh perfect years.  Their summers they spent in
Elmira, on Quarry Farm--a beautiful hilltop, the home of Mrs. Clemens's
sister.  It was in Elmira that much of Mark Twain's literary work was
done.  He had a special study there, some distance from the house, where
he loved to work out his fancies and put them into visible form.

It was not so easy to work at Hartford; there was too much going on.
The Clemens home was a sort of general headquarters for literary folk,
near and far, and for distinguished foreign visitors of every sort.
Howells and Aldrich used it as their half-way station between Boston and
New York, and every foreign notable who visited America made a pilgrimage
to Hartford to see Mark Twain.  Some even went as far as Elmira, among
them Rudyard Kipling, who recorded his visit in a chapter of his American
Notes.  Kipling declared he had come all the way from India to see Mark
Twain.

Hartford had its own literary group.  Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe lived
near the Clemens home; also Charles Dudley Warner.  The Clemens and
Warner families were constantly associated, and The Gilded Age, published
in 1873, resulted from the friendship of Warner and Mark Twain.  The
character of Colonel Sellers in that book has become immortal, and it is
a character that only Mark Twain could create, for, though drawn from his
mother's cousin, James Lampton, it embodies--and in no very exaggerated
degree--characteristics that were his own.  The tendency to make millions
was always imminent; temptation was always hard to resist.  Money-making
schemes are continually being placed before men of means and prominence,
and Mark Twain, to the day of his death, found such schemes fatally
attractive.

It was because of the Sellers characteristics in him that he invested in
a typesetting-machine which cost him nearly two hundred thousand dollars
and helped to wreck his fortunes by and by.  It was because of this
characteristic that he invested in numberless schemes of lesser
importance, but no less disastrous in the end.  His one successful
commercial venture was his association with Charles L. Webster in the
publication of the Grant Memoirs, of which enough copies were sold to pay
a royalty of more than four hundred thousand dollars to Grant's widow
--the largest royalty ever paid from any single publication.  It saved
the Grant family from poverty.  Yet even this triumph was a misfortune
to Mark Twain, for it led to scores of less profitable book ventures and
eventual disaster.

Meanwhile he had written and published a number of books.  Tom Sawyer,
The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court were among the volumes that
had entertained the world and inspired it with admiration and love for
their author.  In 1878-79 he had taken his family to Europe, where they
spent their time in traveling over the Continent.  It was during this
period that he was joined by his intimate friend, the Rev. Joseph H.
Twichell, of Hartford, and the two made a journey, the story of which is
told in A Tramp Abroad.

In 1891 the Hartford house was again closed, this time indefinitely,
and the family, now five in number, took up residence in Berlin.  The
typesetting-machine and the unfortunate publishing venture were drawing
heavily on the family finances at this period, and the cost of the
Hartford establishment was too great to be maintained.  During the next
three years he was distracted by the financial struggle which ended in
April, 1894, with the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co. Mark Twain now
found himself bankrupt, and nearly one hundred thousand dollars in debt.
It had been a losing fight, with this bitter ending always in view;
yet during this period of hard, hopeless effort he had written a large
portion of the book which of all his works will perhaps survive the
longest--his tender and beautiful story of Joan of Arc.  All his life
Joan had been his favorite character in the world's history, and during
those trying months and years of the early nineties--in Berlin, in
Florence, in Paris--he was conceiving and putting his picture of that
gentle girl-warrior into perfect literary form.  It was published in
Harper's Magazine--anonymously, because, as he said, it would not have
been received seriously had it appeared over his own name.  The
authorship was presently recognized.  Exquisitely, reverently, as the
story was told, it had in it the, touch of quaint and gentle humor which
could only have been given to it by Mark Twain.

It was only now and then that Mark Twain lectured during these years.
He had made a reading tour with George W. Cable during the winter of
1884-85, but he abominated the platform, and often vowed he would never
appear before an audience again.  Yet, in 1895, when he was sixty years
old, he decided to rebuild his fortunes by making a reading tour around
the world.  It was not required of him to pay his debts in full.  The
creditors were willing to accept fifty per cent. of the liabilities, and
had agreed to a settlement on that basis.  But this did not satisfy Mrs.
Clemens, and it did not satisfy him.  They decided to pay dollar for
dollar.  They sailed for America, and in July, 1895, set out from Elmira
on the long trail across land and sea.  Mrs. Clemens, and Clara Clemens,
joined this pilgrimage, Susy and Jean Clemens remaining at Elmira with
their aunt.  Looking out of the car windows, the travelers saw Susy
waving them an adieu.  It was a picture they would long remember.

The reading tour was one of triumph.  High prices and crowded houses
prevailed everywhere.  The author-reader visited Australia, New Zealand,
India, Ceylon, South Africa, arriving in England, at last, with the money
and material which would pay off the heavy burden of debt and make him
once more free before the world.  And in that hour of triumph came the
heavy blow.  Susy Clemens, never very strong, had been struck down.  The
first cable announced her illness.  The mother and Clara sailed at once.
Before they were half-way across the ocean a second cable announced that
Susy was dead.  The father had to meet and endure the heartbreak alone;
he could not reach America, in time for the burial.  He remained in
England, and was joined there by the sorrowing family.

They passed that winter in London, where he worked at the story of his
travels, Following the Equator, the proofs of which he read the next
summer in Switzerland.  The returns from it, and from his reading
venture, wiped away Mark Twain's indebtedness and made him free.  He
could go back to America; as he said, able to look any man in the face
again.

Yet he did not go immediately.  He could live more economically abroad,
and economy was still necessary.  The family spent two winters in Vienna,
and their apartments there constituted a veritable court where the
world's notables gathered.  Another winter in England followed, and then,
in the latter part of 1900, they went home--that is, to America.  Mrs.
Clemens never could bring herself to return to Hartford, and never saw
their home there again.

Mark Twain's return to America, was in the nature of a national event.
Wherever he appeared throngs turned out to bid him welcome.  Mighty
banquets were planned in his honor.

In a house at 14 West Tenth Street, and in a beautiful place at
Riverdale, on the Hudson, most of the next three years were passed.  Then
Mrs. Clemens's health failed, and in the autumn of 1903 the family went
to Florence for her benefit.  There, on the 5th of June, 1904, she died.
They brought her back and laid her beside Susy, at Elmira.  That winter
the family took up residence at 21 Fifth Avenue, New York, and remained
there until the completion of Stormfield, at Redding, Connecticut, in
1908.

In his later life Mark Twain was accorded high academic honors.  Already,
in 1888, he had received from Yale College the degree of Master of Arts,
and the same college made him a Doctor of Literature in 1901.  A year
later the university of his own State, at Columbia, Missouri, conferred
the same degree, and then, in 1907, came the crowning honor, when
venerable Oxford tendered him the doctor's robe.

"I don't know why they should give me a degree like that," he said,
quaintly.  "I never doctored any literature--I wouldn't know how."

He had thought never to cross the ocean again, but he declared he would
travel to Mars and back, if necessary, to get that Oxford degree.
He appreciated its full meaning-recognition by the world's foremost
institution of learning of the achievements of one who had no learning of
the institutionary kind.  He sailed in June, and his sojourn in England
was marked by a continuous ovation.  His hotel was besieged by callers.
Two secretaries were busy nearly twenty hours a day attending to visitors
and mail.  When he appeared on the street his name went echoing in every
direction and the multitudes gathered.  On the day when he rose, in his
scarlet robe and black mortar-board, to receive his degree (he must have
made a splendid picture in that dress, with his crown of silver hair),
the vast assembly went wild.  What a triumph, indeed, for the little
Missouri printer-boy!  It was the climax of a great career.

Mark Twain's work was always of a kind to make people talk, always
important, even when it was mere humor.  Yet it was seldom that; there
was always wisdom under it, and purpose, and these things gave it dynamic
force and enduring life.  Some of his aphorisms--so quaint in form as to
invite laughter--are yet fairly startling in their purport.  His
paraphrase, "When in doubt, tell the truth," is of this sort.  "Frankness
is a jewel; only the young can afford it," he once said to the writer,
apropos of a little girl's remark.  His daily speech was full of such
things.  The secret of his great charm was his great humanity and the
gentle quaintness and sincerity of his utterance.

His work did not cease when the pressing need of money came to an end.
He was full of ideas, and likely to begin a new article or story at any
time.  He wrote and published a number of notable sketches, articles,
stories, even books, during these later years, among them that marvelous
short story--"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." In that story, as in
most of his later work, he proved to the world that he was much more than
a humorist--that he was, in fact, a great teacher, moralist, philosopher
--the greatest, perhaps, of his age.

His life at Stormfield--he had never seen the place until the day of his
arrival, June 18, 1908--was a peaceful and serene old age.  Not that he
was really old; he never was that.  His step, his manner, his point of
view, were all and always young.  He was fond of children and frequently
had them about him.  He delighted in games--especially in billiards--and
in building the house at Stormfield the billiard-room was first
considered.  He had a genuine passion for the sport; without it his
afternoon was not complete.  His mornings he was likely to pass in bed,
smoking--he was always smoking--and attending to his correspondence and
reading.  History and the sciences interested him, and his bed was strewn
with biographies and stories of astronomical and geological research.
The vastness of distances and periods always impressed him.  He had no
head for figures, but he would labor for hours over scientific
calculations, trying to compass them and to grasp their gigantic import.
I remember once finding him highly elated over the fact that he had
figured out for himself the length in hours and minutes of a "light
year." He showed me the pages covered with figures, and was more proud of
them than if they had been the pages of an immortal story.  Then we
played billiards, but even his favorite game could not make him
altogether forget his splendid achievement.

It was on the day before Christmas, 1909, that heavy bereavement once
more came into the life of Mark Twain.  His daughter Jean, long subject
to epileptic attacks, was seized with a convulsion while in her bath and
died before assistance reached her.  He was dazed by the suddenness of
the blow.  His philosophy sustained him.  He was glad, deeply glad for
the beautiful girl that had been released.

"I never greatly envied anybody but the dead," he said, when he had
looked at her.  "I always envy the dead."

The coveted estate of silence, time's only absolute gift, it was the one
benefaction he had ever considered worth while.

Yet the years were not unkindly to Mark Twain.  They brought him sorrow,
but they brought him likewise the capacity and opportunity for large
enjoyment, and at the last they laid upon him a kind of benediction.
Naturally impatient, he grew always more gentle, more generous, more
tractable and considerate as the seasons passed.  His final days may be
said to have been spent in the tranquil light of a summer afternoon.

His own end followed by a few months that of his daughter.  There were
already indications that his heart was seriously affected, and soon after
Jean's death he sought the warm climate of Bermuda.  But his malady made
rapid progress, and in April he returned to Stormfield.  He died there
just a week later, April 21, 1910.

Any attempt to designate Mark Twain's place in the world's literary
history would be presumptuous now.  Yet I cannot help thinking that he
will maintain his supremacy in the century that produced him.  I think so
because, of all the writers of that hundred years, his work was the most
human his utterances went most surely to the mark.  In the long analysis
of the ages it is the truth that counts, and he never approximated, never
compromised, but pronounced those absolute verities to which every human
being of whatever rank must instantly respond.

His understanding of subjective human nature--the vast, unwritten life
within--was simply amazing.  Such knowledge he acquired at the
fountainhead--that is, from himself.  He recognized in himself an extreme
example of the human being with all the attributes of power and of
weakness, and he made his exposition complete.

The world will long miss Mark Twain; his example and his teaching will be
neither ignored nor forgotten.  Genius defies the laws of perspective and
looms larger as it recedes.  The memory of Mark Twain remains to us a
living and intimate presence that today, even more than in life,
constitutes a stately moral bulwark reared against hypocrisy and
superstition--a mighty national menace to sham.






                           MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS


I

EARLY LETTERS, 1853.  NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA

     We have no record of Mark Twain's earliest letters.  Very likely
     they were soiled pencil notes, written to some school sweetheart
     --to "Becky Thatcher," perhaps--and tossed across at lucky moments,
     or otherwise, with happy or disastrous results.  One of those
     smudgy, much-folded school notes of the Tom Sawyer period would be
     priceless to-day, and somewhere among forgotten keepsakes it may
     exist, but we shall not be likely to find it.  No letter of his
     boyhood, no scrap of his earlier writing, has come to light except
     his penciled name, SAM CLEMENS, laboriously inscribed on the inside
     of a small worn purse that once held his meager, almost non-existent
     wealth.  He became a printer's apprentice at twelve, but as he
     received no salary, the need of a purse could not have been urgent.
     He must have carried it pretty steadily, however, from its
     appearance--as a kind of symbol of hope, maybe--a token of that
     Sellers-optimism which dominated his early life, and was never
     entirely subdued.

     No other writing of any kind has been preserved from Sam Clemens's
     boyhood, none from that period of his youth when he had served his
     apprenticeship and was a capable printer on his brother's paper, a
     contributor to it when occasion served.  Letters and manuscripts of
     those days have vanished--even his contributions in printed form are
     unobtainable.  It is not believed that a single number of Orion
     Clemens's paper, the Hannibal Journal, exists to-day.

     It was not until he was seventeen years old that Sam Clemens wrote a
     letter any portion of which has survived.  He was no longer in
     Hannibal.  Orion's unprosperous enterprise did not satisfy him.
     His wish to earn money and to see the world had carried him first to
     St. Louis, where his sister Pamela was living, then to New York
     City, where a World's Fair in a Crystal Palace was in progress.
     The letter tells of a visit to this great exhibition.  It is not
     complete, and the fragment bears no date, but it was written during
     the summer of 1853.


      Fragment of a letter from Sam L.  Clemens to his sister
           Pamela Moffett, in St. Louis, summer of 1853:

.  .  .  From the gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight--the
flags of the different countries represented, the lofty dome, glittering
jewelry, gaudy tapestry, &c., with the busy crowd passing to and fro--tis
a perfect fairy palace--beautiful beyond description.

The Machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot enumerate any
of it on account of the lateness of the hour (past 8 o'clock.) It would
take more than a week to examine everything on exhibition; and as I was
only in a little over two hours tonight, I only glanced at about
one-third of the articles; and having a poor memory; I have enumerated
scarcely any of even the principal objects.  The visitors to the Palace
average 6,000 daily--double the population of Hannibal.  The price of
admission being 50 cents, they take in about $3,000.

The Latting Observatory (height about 280 feet) is near the Palace--from
it you can obtain a grand view of the city and the country round.  The
Croton Aqueduct, to supply the city with water, is the greatest wonder
yet.  Immense sewers are laid across the bed of the Hudson River, and
pass through the country to Westchester county, where a whole river is
turned from its course, and brought to New York.  From the reservoir in
the city to the Westchester county reservoir, the distance is
thirty-eight miles! and if necessary, they could supply every family
in New York with one hundred barrels of water per day!

I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick.  He ought to go to the
country and take exercise; for he is not half so healthy as Ma thinks he
is.  If he had my walking to do, he would be another boy entirely.  Four
times every day I walk a little over one mile; and working hard all day,
and walking four miles, is exercise--I am used to it, now, though, and it
is no trouble.  Where is it Orion's going to?  Tell Ma my promises are
faithfully kept, and if I have my health I will take her to Ky. in the
spring--I shall save money for this.  Tell Jim and all the rest of them
to write, and give me all the news.  I am sorry to hear such bad news
from Will and Captain Bowen.  I shall write to Will soon.  The
Chatham-square Post Office and the Broadway office too, are out of my
way, and I always go to the General Post Office; so you must write the
direction of my letters plain, "New York City, N. Y.," without giving the
street or anything of the kind, or they may go to some of the other
offices.  (It has just struck 2 A.M.  and I always get up at 6, and am
at work at 7.) You ask me where I spend my evenings.  Where would you
suppose, with a free printers' library containing more than 4,000 volumes
within a quarter of a mile of me, and nobody at home to talk to?  I shall
write to Ella soon.  Write soon
                         Truly your Brother
                                             SAM.

P. S.  I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could not
read by it.


     He was lodging in a mechanics' cheap boarding-house in Duane Street,
     and we may imagine the bareness of his room, the feeble poverty of
     his lamp.

     "Tell Ma my promises are faithfully kept."  It was the day when he
     had left Hannibal.  His mother, Jane Clemens, a resolute, wiry woman
     of forty-nine, had put together his few belongings.  Then, holding
     up a little Testament:

     "I want you to take hold of the end of this, Sam," she said, "and
     make me a promise.  I want you to repeat after me these words:
     'I do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card, or drink a drop
     of liquor while I am gone.'"

     It was this oath, repeated after her, that he was keeping
     faithfully.  The Will Bowen mentioned is a former playmate, one of
     Tom Sawyer's outlaw band.  He had gone on the river to learn
     piloting with an elder brother, the "Captain."  What the bad news
     was is no longer remembered, but it could not have been very
     serious, for the Bowen boys remained on the river for many years.
     "Ella" was Samuel Clemens's cousin and one-time sweetheart, Ella
     Creel.  "Jim" was Jim Wolfe, an apprentice in Orion's office, and
     the hero of an adventure which long after Mark Twain wrote under the
     title of, "Jim Wolfe and the Cats."

     There is scarcely a hint of the future Mark Twain in this early
     letter.  It is the letter of a boy of seventeen who is beginning to
     take himself rather seriously--who, finding himself for the first
     time far from home and equal to his own responsibilities, is willing
     to carry the responsibility of others.  Henry, his brother, three
     years younger, had been left in the printing-office with Orion, who,
     after a long, profitless fight, is planning to remove from Hannibal.
     The young traveler is concerned as to the family outlook, and will
     furnish advice if invited.  He feels the approach of prosperity, and
     will take his mother on a long-coveted trip to her old home in the
     spring.  His evenings?  Where should he spend them, with a free
     library of four thousand volumes close by?  It is distinctly a
     youthful letter, a bit pretentious, and wanting in the spontaneity
     and humor of a later time.  It invites comment, now, chiefly because
     it is the first surviving document in the long human story.

     He was working in the printing-office of John A. Gray and Green, on
     Cliff Street, and remained there through the summer.  He must have
     written more than once during this period, but the next existing
     letter--also to Sister Pamela--was written in October.  It is
     perhaps a shade more natural in tone than the earlier example, and
     there is a hint of Mark Twain in the first paragraph.


                      To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                              NEW YORK .  .  .  , Oct. Saturday '53.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I have not written to any of the family for some time,
from the fact, firstly, that I didn't know where they were, and secondly,
because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to
leave New York every day for the last two weeks.  I have taken a liking
to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave, I put it
off a day or so, from some unaccountable cause.  It is as hard on my
conscience to leave New York, as it was easy to leave Hannibal.  I think
I shall get off Tuesday, though.

Edwin Forrest has been playing, for the last sixteen days, at the
Broadway Theatre, but I never went to see him till last night.  The play
was the "Gladiator."  I did not like parts of it much, but other portions
were really splendid.  In the latter part of the last act, where the
"Gladiator" (Forrest) dies at his brother's feet, (in all the fierce
pleasure of gratified revenge,) the man's whole soul seems absorbed in
the part he is playing; and it is really startling to see him.  I am
sorry I did not see him play "Damon and Pythias" the former character
being his greatest.  He appears in Philadelphia on Monday night.

I have not received a letter from home lately, but got a "'Journal'" the
other day, in which I see the office has been sold.  I suppose Ma, Orion
and Henry are in St. Louis now.  If Orion has no other project in his
head, he ought to take the contract for getting out some weekly paper, if
he cannot get a foremanship.  Now, for such a paper as the "Presbyterian"
(containing about 60,000,--[Sixty thousand ems, type measurement.])
he could get $20 or $25 per week, and he and Henry could easily do the
work; nothing to do but set the type and make up the forms....

If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about me;
for if you have a brother nearly eighteen years of age, who is not able
to take care of himself a few miles from home, such a brother is not
worth one's thoughts: and if I don't manage to take care of No. 1, be
assured you will never know it.  I am not afraid, however; I shall ask
favors from no one, and endeavor to be (and shall be) as "independent as
a wood-sawyer's clerk."

I never saw such a place for military companies as New York.  Go on the
street when you will, you are sure to meet a company in full uniform,
with all the usual appendages of drums, fifes, &c.  I saw a large company
of soldiers of 1812 the other day, with a '76 veteran scattered here and
there in the ranks.  And as I passed through one of the parks lately,
I came upon a company of boys on parade.  Their uniforms were neat, and
their muskets about half the common size.  Some of them were not more
than seven or eight years of age; but had evidently been well-drilled.

Passage to Albany (160 miles) on the finest steamers that ply' the
Hudson, is now 25 cents--cheap enough, but is generally cheaper than that
in the summer.

I want you to write as soon as I tell you where to direct your letter.
I would let you know now, if I knew myself.  I may perhaps be here a week
longer; but I cannot tell.  When you write tell me the whereabouts of the
family.  My love to Mr. Moffett and Ella.  Tell Ella I intend to write to
her soon, whether she wants me to nor not.
                              Truly your Brother,
                                        SAML L. CLEMENS.


     He was in Philadelphia when he wrote the nest letter that has come
     down to us, and apparently satisfied with the change.  It is a
     letter to Orion Clemens, who had disposed of his paper, but
     evidently was still in Hannibal.  An extended description of a trip
     to Fairmount Park is omitted because of its length, its chief
     interest being the tendency it shows to descriptive writing--the
     field in which he would make his first great fame.  There is,
     however, no hint of humor, and only a mild suggestion of the author
     of the Innocents Abroad in this early attempt.  The letter as here
     given is otherwise complete, the omissions being indicated.


                      To Orion Clemens, in Hannibal:

                                   PHILADELPHIA, PA. Oct. 26,1853.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--It was at least two weeks before I left New York, that
I received my last letter from home: and since then, not a word have I
heard from any of you.  And now, since I think of it, it wasn't a letter,
either, but the last number of the "Daily Journal," saying that that
paper was sold, and I very naturally supposed from that, that the family
had disbanded, and taken up winter quarters in St. Louis.  Therefore, I
have been writing to Pamela, till I've tired of it, and have received no
answer.  I have been writing for the last two or three weeks, to send Ma
some money, but devil take me if I knew where she was, and so the money
has slipped out of my pocket somehow or other, but I have a dollar left,
and a good deal owing to me, which will be paid next Monday.  I shall
enclose the dollar in this letter, and you can hand it to her.  I know
it's a small amount, but then it will buy her a handkerchief, and at the
same time serve as a specimen of the kind of stuff we are paid with in
Philadelphia, for you see it's against the law, in Pennsylvania, to keep
or pass a bill of less denomination than $5.  I have only seen two or
three bank bills since I have been in the State.  On Monday the hands are
paid off in sparkling gold, fresh from the Mint; so your dreams are not
troubled with the fear of having doubtful money in your pocket.

I am subbing at the Inquirer office.  One man has engaged me to work for
him every Sunday till the first of next April, (when I shall return home
to take Ma to Ky;) and another has engaged my services for the 24th of
next month; and if I want it, I can get subbing every night of the week.
I go to work at 7 o'clock in the evening, and work till 3 o'clock the
next morning.  I can go to the theatre and stay till 12 o'clock and then
go to the office, and get work from that till 3 the next morning; when I
go to bed, and sleep till 11 o'clock, then get up and loaf the rest of
the day.  The type is mostly agate and minion, with some bourgeois; and
when one gets a good agate take,--["Agate," "minion," etc., sizes of
type; "take," a piece of work.  Type measurement is by ems, meaning the
width of the letter 'm'.]--he is sure to make money.  I made $2.50 last
Sunday, and was laughed at by all the hands, the poorest of whom sets
11,000 on Sunday; and if I don't set 10,000, at least, next Sunday, I'll
give them leave to laugh as much as they want to.  Out of the 22
compositors in this office, 12 at least, set 15,000 on Sunday.

Unlike New York, I like this Philadelphia amazingly, and the people in
it.  There is only one thing that gets my "dander" up--and that is the
hands are always encouraging me: telling me--"it's no use to get
discouraged--no use to be down-hearted, for there is more work here than
you can do!"  "Down-hearted," the devil!  I have not had a particle of
such a feeling since I left Hannibal, more than four months ago.  I fancy
they'll have to wait some time till they see me down-hearted or afraid of
starving while I have strength to work and am in a city of 400,000
inhabitants.  When I was in Hannibal, before I had scarcely stepped out
of the town limits, nothing could have convinced me that I would starve
as soon as I got a little way from home....

The grave of Franklin is in Christ Church-yard, corner of Fifth and Arch
streets.  They keep the gates locked, and one can only see the flat slab
that lies over his remains and that of his wife; but you cannot see the
inscription distinctly enough to read it.  The inscription, I believe,
reads thus:

                        "Benjamin  |
                         and       |  Franklin"
                         Deborah   |

I counted 27 cannons (6 pounders) planted in the edge of the sidewalk in
Water St. the other day.  They are driven into the ground, about a foot,
with the mouth end upwards.  A ball is driven fast into the mouth of
each, to exclude the water; they look like so many posts.  They were put
there during the war.  I have also seen them planted in this manner,
round the old churches, in N. Y.....

There is one fine custom observed in Phila.  A gentleman is always
expected to hand up a lady's money for her.  Yesterday, I sat in the
front end of the 'bus, directly under the driver's box--a lady sat
opposite me.  She handed me her money, which was right.  But, Lord!
a St. Louis lady would think herself ruined, if she should be so familiar
with a stranger.  In St. Louis a man will sit in the front end of the
stage, and see a lady stagger from the far end, to pay her fare.  The
Phila. 'bus drivers cannot cheat.  In the front of the stage is a thing
like an office clock, with figures from 0 to 40, marked on its face.
When the stage starts, the hand of the clock is turned toward the 0.
When you get in and pay your fare, the driver strikes a bell, and the
hand moves to the figure 1--that is, "one fare, and paid for," and there
is your receipt, as good as if you had it in your pocket.  When a
passenger pays his fare and the driver does not strike the bell
immediately, he is greeted "Strike that bell!  will you?"

I must close now.  I intend visiting the Navy Yard, Mint, etc., before I
write again.  You must write often.  You see I have nothing to write
interesting to you, while you can write nothing that will not interest
me.  Don't say my letters are not long enough.  Tell Jim Wolfe to write.
Tell all the boys where I am, and to write.  Jim Robinson, particularly.
I wrote to him from N. Y.  Tell me all that is going on in H--l.
                                   Truly your brother
                                                       SAM.


Those were primitive times.  Imagine a passenger in these easy-going days
calling to a driver or conductor to "Strike that bell!"

"H--l" is his abbreviation for Hannibal.  He had first used it in a title
of a poem which a few years before, during one of Orion's absences, he
had published in the paper.  "To Mary in Hannibal" was too long to set as
a display head in single column.  The poem had no great merit, but under
the abbreviated title it could hardly fail to invite notice.  It was one
of several things he did to liven up the circulation during a brief
period of his authority.

The doubtful money he mentions was the paper issued by private banks,
"wild cat," as it was called.  He had been paid with it in New York,
and found it usually at a discount--sometimes even worthless.  Wages and
money were both better in Philadelphia, but the fund for his mother's
trip to Kentucky apparently did not grow very rapidly.

The next letter, written a month later, is also to Orion Clemens, who had
now moved to Muscatine, Iowa, and established there a new paper with an
old title, 'The Journal'.


                  To Orion Clemens, in Muscatine, Iowa:

                                   PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 28th, 1853.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--I received your letter today.  I think Ma ought to
spend the winter in St. Louis.  I don't believe in that climate--it's too
cold for her.

The printers' annual ball and supper came off the other night.  The
proceeds amounted to about $1,000.  The printers, as well as other
people, are endeavoring to raise money to erect a monument to Franklin,
but there are so many abominable foreigners here (and among printers,
too,) who hate everything American, that I am very certain as much money
for such a purpose could be raised in St. Louis, as in Philadelphia.
I was in Franklin's old office this morning--the "North American"
(formerly "Philadelphia Gazette") and there was at least one foreigner
for every American at work there.

How many subscribers has the Journal got?  What does the job-work pay?
and what does the whole concern pay?.....

I will try to write for the paper occasionally, but I fear my letters
will be very uninteresting, for this incessant night-work dulls one's
ideas amazingly.

From some cause, I cannot set type nearly so fast as when I was at home.
Sunday is a long day, and while others set 12 and 15,000, yesterday, I
only set 10,000.  However, I will shake this laziness off, soon, I reckon
....

How do you like "free-soil?"--I would like amazingly to see a good
old-fashioned negro.
                                   My love to all
                                        Truly your brother
                                                       SAM.


     We may believe that it never occurred to the young printer, looking
     up landmarks of Ben Franklin, that time would show points of
     resemblance between the great Franklin's career and his own.  Yet
     these seem now rather striking.  Like Franklin, he had been taken
     out of school very young and put at the printer's trade; like
     Franklin, he had worked in his brother's office, and had written for
     the paper.  Like him, too, he had left quietly for New York and
     Philadelphia to work at the trade of printing, and in time Samuel
     Clemens, like Benjamin Franklin, would become a world-figure,
     many-sided, human, and of incredible popularity.  The boy Sam
     Clemens may have had such dreams, but we find no trace of them.

     There is but one more letter of this early period.  Young Clemens
     spent some time in Washington, but if he wrote from there his
     letters have disappeared.  The last letter is from Philadelphia and
     seems to reflect homesickness.  The novelty of absence and travel
     was wearing thin.


                      To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                   PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 5, '53.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I have already written two letters within the last two
hours, and you will excuse me if this is not lengthy.  If I had the
money, I would come to St. Louis now, while the river is open; but within
the last two or three weeks I have spent about thirty dollars for
clothing, so I suppose I shall remain where I am.  I only want to return
to avoid night-work, which is injuring my eyes.  I have received one or
two letters from home, but they are not written as they should be, and I
know no more about what is going on there than the man in the moon.  One
only has to leave home to learn how to write an interesting letter to an
absent friend when he gets back.  I suppose you board at Mrs. Hunter's
yet--and that, I think, is somewhere in Olive street above Fifth.
Philadelphia is one of the healthiest places in the Union.  I wanted to
spend this winter in a warm climate, but it is too late now.  I don't
like our present prospect for cold weather at all.
                                   Truly your brother
                                                       SAM.


     But he did not return to the West for another half year.  The
     letters he wrote during that period have not survived.  It was late
     in the summer of 1854 when he finally started for St. Louis.  He sat
     up for three days and nights in a smoking-car to make the journey,
     and arrived exhausted.  The river packet was leaving in a few hours
     for Muscatine, Iowa, where his mother and his two brothers were now
     located.  He paid his sister a brief visit, and caught the boat.
     Worn-out, he dropped into his berth and slept the thirty-six hours
     of the journey.

     It was early when-he arrived--too early to arouse the family.  In
     the office of the little hotel where he waited for daylight he found
     a small book.  It contained portraits of the English rulers, with
     the brief facts of their reigns.  Young Clemens entertained himself
     by learning this information by heart.  He had a fine memory for
     such things, and in an hour or two had the printed data perfectly
     and permanently committed.  This incidentally acquired knowledge
     proved of immense value to him.  It was his groundwork for all
     English history.




II

LETTERS 1856-61.  KEOKUK, AND THE RIVER.  END OF PILOTING

     There comes a period now of nearly four years, when Samuel Clemens
     was either a poor correspondent or his letters have not been
     preserved.  Only two from this time have survived--happily of
     intimate biographical importance.

     Young Clemens had not remained in Muscatine.  His brother had no
     inducements to offer, and he presently returned to St. Louis, where
     he worked as a compositor on the Evening News until the following
     spring, rooming with a young man named Burrough, a journeyman
     chair-maker with a taste for the English classics.  Orion Clemens,
     meantime, on a trip to Keokuk, had casually married there, and a
     little later removed his office to that city.  He did not move the
     paper; perhaps it did not seem worth while, and in Keokuk he
     confined himself to commercial printing.  The Ben Franklin Book and
     Job Office started with fair prospects.  Henry Clemens and a boy
     named Dick Hingham were the assistants, and somewhat later, when
     brother Sam came up from St. Louis on a visit, an offer of five
     dollars a week and board induced him to remain.  Later, when it
     became increasingly difficult to pay the five dollars, Orion took
     his brother into partnership, which perhaps relieved the financial
     stress, though the office methods would seem to have left something
     to be desired.  It is about at this point that the first of the two
     letters mentioned was written.  The writer addressed it to his
     mother and sister--Jane Clemens having by this time taken up her
     home with her daughter, Mrs. Moffett.


             To Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                        KEOKUK, Iowa, June 10th, 1856.
MY DEAR MOTHER & SISTER,--I have nothing to write.  Everything is going
on well.  The Directory is coming on finely.  I have to work on it
occasionally, which I don't like a particle I don't like to work at too
many things at once.  They take Henry and Dick away from me too.  Before
we commenced the Directory, I could tell before breakfast just how much
work could be done during the day, and manage accordingly--but now, they
throw all my plans into disorder by taking my hands away from their work.
I have nothing to do with the book--if I did I would have the two book
hands do more work than they do, or else I would drop it.  It is not a
mere supposition that they do not work fast enough--I know it; for
yesterday the two book hands were at work all day, Henry and Dick all the
afternoon, on the advertisements, and they set up five pages and a half
--and I set up two pages and a quarter of the same matter after supper,
night before last, and I don't work fast on such things.  They are either
excessively slow motioned or very lazy.  I am not getting along well with
the job work.  I can't work blindly--without system.  I gave Dick a job
yesterday, which I calculated he would set in two hours and I could work
off in three, and therefore just finish it by supper time, but he was
transferred to the Directory, and the job, promised this morning, remains
untouched.  Through all the great pressure of job work lately, I never
before failed in a promise of the kind.
                                        Your Son
                                                  SAM
Excuse brevity this is my 3rd letter to-night.


     Samuel Clemens was never celebrated for his patience; we may imagine
     that the disorder of the office tried his nerves.  He seems, on the
     whole, however, to have been rather happy in Keokuk.  There were
     plenty of young people there, and he was a favorite among them.  But
     he had grown dissatisfied, and when one day some weeks later there
     fell into His hands an account of the riches of the newly explored
     regions of the upper Amazon, he promptly decided to find his fortune
     at the headwaters of the great South-American river.  The second
     letter reports this momentous decision.  It was written to Henry
     Clemens, who was temporarily absent-probably in Hannibal.


                            To Henry Clemens:

                                        KEOKUK, August 5th, '56.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--..... Ward and I held a long consultation, Sunday
morning, and the result was that we two have determined to start to
Brazil, if possible, in six weeks from now, in order to look carefully
into matters there and report to Dr.  Martin in time for him to follow on
the first of March.  We propose going via New York.  Now, between you and
I and the fence you must say nothing about this to Orion, for he thinks
that Ward is to go clear through alone, and that I am to stop at New York
or New Orleans until he reports.  But that don't suit me.  My confidence
in human nature does not extend quite that far.  I won't depend upon
Ward's judgment, or anybody's else--I want to see with my own eyes, and
form my own opinion.  But you know what Orion is.  When he gets a notion
into his head, and more especially if it is an erroneous one, the Devil
can't get it out again.  So I know better than to combat his arguments
long, but apparently yielded, inwardly determined to go clear through.
Ma knows my determination, but even she counsels me to keep it from
Orion.  She says I can treat him as I did her when I started to St. Louis
and went to New York--I can start to New York and go to South America!
Although Orion talks grandly about furnishing me with fifty or a hundred
dollars in six weeks, I could not depend upon him for ten dollars, so I
have "feelers" out in several directions, and have already asked for a
hundred dollars from one source (keep it to yourself.) I will lay on my
oars for awhile, and see how the wind sets, when I may probably try to
get more.  Mrs. Creel is a great friend of mine, and has some influence
with Ma and Orion, though I reckon they would not acknowledge it.  I am
going up there tomorrow, to press her into my service.  I shall take care
that Ma and Orion are plentifully supplied with South American books.
They have Herndon's Report now.  Ward and the Dr. and myself will hold a
grand consultation tonight at the office.  We have agreed that no more
shall be admitted into our company.

I believe the Guards went down to Quincy today to escort our first
locomotive home.
                         Write soon.
                                   Your Brother,
                                                  SAM.


     Readers familiar with the life of Mark Twain know that none of the
     would-be adventurers found their way to the Amazon: His two
     associates gave up the plan, probably for lack of means.  Young
     Clemens himself found a fifty-dollar bill one bleak November day
     blowing along the streets of Keokuk, and after duly advertising his
     find without result, set out for the Amazon, by way of Cincinnati
     and New Orleans.

     "I advertised the find and left for the Amazon the same day," he
     once declared, a statement which we may take with a literary
     discount.

     He remained in Cincinnati that winter (1856-57) working at his
     trade.  No letters have been preserved from that time, except two
     that were sent to a Keokuk weekly, the Saturday Post, and as these
     were written for publication, and are rather a poor attempt at
     burlesque humor--their chief feature being a pretended illiteracy
     --they would seem to bear no relation to this collection.  He roomed
     that winter with a rugged, self-educated Scotchman--a mechanic, but
     a man of books and philosophies, who left an impress on Mark Twain's
     mental life.

     In April he took up once more the journey toward South America, but
     presently forgot the Amazon altogether in the new career that opened
     to him.  All through his boyhood and youth Samuel Clemens had wanted
     to be a pilot.  Now came the long-deferred opportunity.  On the
     little Cincinnati steamer, the Paul Jones, there was a pilot named
     Horace Bixby.  Young Clemens idling in the pilot-house was one
     morning seized with the old ambition, and laid siege to Bixby to
     teach him the river.  The terms finally agreed upon specified a fee
     to Bixby of five hundred dollars, one hundred down, the balance when
     the pupil had completed the course and was earning money.  But all
     this has been told in full elsewhere, and is only summarized here
     because the letters fail to complete the story.

     Bixby soon made some trips up the Missouri River, and in his absence
     turned his apprentice, or "cub," over to other pilots, such being
     the river custom.  Young Clemens, in love with the life, and a
     favorite with his superiors, had a happy time until he came under a
     pilot named Brown.  Brown was illiterate and tyrannical, and from
     the beginning of their association pilot and apprentice disliked
     each other cordially.

     It is at this point that the letters begin once more--the first
     having been written when young Clemens, now twenty-two years old,
     had been on the river nearly a year.  Life with Brown, of course,
     was not all sorrow, and in this letter we find some of the fierce
     joy of adventure which in those days Samuel Clemens loved.


               To Onion Clemens and Wife, in Keokuk, Iowa:

                                        SAINT LOUIS, March 9th, 1858.
DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER,--I must take advantage of the opportunity now
presented to write you, but I shall necessarily be dull, as I feel
uncommonly stupid.  We have had a hard trip this time.  Left Saint Louis
three weeks ago on the Pennsylvania.  The weather was very cold, and the
ice running densely.  We got 15 miles below town, landed the boat, and
then one pilot.  Second Mate and four deck hands took the sounding boat
and shoved out in the ice to hunt the channel.  They failed to find it,
and the ice drifted them ashore.  The pilot left the men with the boat
and walked back to us, a mile and a half.  Then the other pilot and
myself, with a larger crew of men started out and met with the same fate.
We drifted ashore just below the other boat.  Then the fun commenced.  We
made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men
(both crews) to it like horses, on the shore.  Brown, the pilot, stood in
the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller.  We
would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up
on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many
ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat.
After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half an inch thick on the
oars.  Sent back and warped up the other yawl, and then George (the first
mentioned pilot,) and myself, took a double crew of fresh men and tried
it again.  This time we found the channel in less than half an hour,
and landed on an island till the Pennsylvania came along and took us off.
The next day was colder still.  I was out in the yawl twice, and then we
got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us.  We
went ten miles further, landed, and George and I cleared out again--found
the channel first trial, but got caught in the gorge and drifted
helplessly down the river.  The Ocean Spray came along and started into
the ice after us, but although she didn't succeed in her kind intention
of taking us aboard, her waves washed us out, and that was all we wanted.
We landed on an island, built a big fire and waited for the boat.  She
started, and ran aground!  It commenced raining and sleeting, and a very
interesting time we had on that barren sandbar for the next four hours,
when the boat got off and took us aboard.  The next day was terribly
cold.  We sounded Hat Island, warped up around a bar and sounded again
--but in order to understand our situation you will have to read Dr. Kane.
It would have been impossible to get back to the boat.  But the Maria
Denning was aground at the head of the island--they hailed us--we ran
alongside and they hoisted us in and thawed us out.  We had then been out
in the yawl from 4 o'clock in the morning till half past 9 without being
near a fire.  There was a thick coating of ice over men, yawl, ropes and
everything else, and we looked like rock-candy statuary.  We got to Saint
Louis this morning, after an absence of 3 weeks--that boat generally
makes the trip in 2.

Henry was doing little or nothing here, and I sent him to our clerk to
work his way for a trip, by measuring wood piles, counting coal boxes,
and other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily.  He may go
down with us again, for I expect he likes our bill of fare better than
that of his boarding house.

I got your letter at Memphis as I went down.  That is the best place to
write me at.  The post office here is always out of my route, somehow or
other.  Remember the direction: "S.L.C., Steamer Pennsylvania Care Duval
& Algeo, Wharfboat, Memphis."  I cannot correspond with a paper, because
when one is learning the river, he is not allowed to do or think about
anything else.

I am glad to see you in such high spirits about the land, and I hope you
will remain so, if you never get richer.  I seldom venture to think about
our landed wealth, for "hope deferred maketh the heart sick."

I did intend to answer your letter, but I am too lazy and too sleepy now.
We have had a rough time during the last 24 hours working through the ice
between Cairo and Saint Louis, and I have had but little rest.

I got here too late to see the funeral of the 10 victims by the burning
of the Pacific hotel in 7th street.  Ma says there were 10 hearses, with
the fire companies (their engines in mourning--firemen in uniform,) the
various benevolent societies in uniform and mourning, and a multitude of
citizens and strangers, forming, altogether, a procession of 30,000
persons!  One steam fire engine was drawn by four white horses, with
crape festoons on their heads.
                    Well I am--just--about--asleep--
                                   Your brother
                                                  SAM.


     Among other things, we gather from this letter that Orion Clemens
     had faith in his brother as a newspaper correspondent, though the
     two contributions from Cincinnati, already mentioned, were not
     promising.  Furthermore, we get an intimation of Orion's unfailing
     confidence in the future of the "land"--that is to say, the great
     tract of land in Eastern Tennessee which, in an earlier day, his
     father had bought as a heritage for his children.  It is the same
     Tennessee land that had "millions in it" for Colonel Sellers--the
     land that would become, as Orion Clemens long afterward phrased it,
     "the worry of three generations."

     The Doctor Kane of this letter is, of course, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane,
     the American Arctic explorer.  Any book of exploration always
     appealed to Mark Twain, and in those days Kane was a favorite.

     The paragraph concerning Henry, and his employment on the
     Pennsylvania, begins the story of a tragedy.  The story has been
     fully told elsewhere,--[Mark Twain: A Biography, by same author.]
     --and need only be sketched briefly here.  Henry, a gentle, faithful
     boy, shared with his brother the enmity of the pilot Brown.  Some
     two months following the date of the foregoing letter, on a down
     trip of the Pennsylvania, an unprovoked attack made by Brown upon
     the boy brought his brother Sam to the rescue.  Brown received a
     good pummeling at the hands of the future humorist, who, though
     upheld by the captain, decided to quit the Pennsylvania at New
     Orleans and to come up the river by another boat.  The Brown episode
     has no special bearing on the main tragedy, though now in retrospect
     it seems closely related to it.  Samuel Clemens, coming up the river
     on the A. T. Lacey, two days behind the Pennsylvania, heard a voice
     shout as they approached the Greenville, Mississippi, landing:

     "The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island!
     One hundred and fifty lives lost!"

     It was a true report.  At six o'clock of a warm, mid-June morning,
     while loading wood, sixty miles below Memphis, the Pennsylvania's
     boilers had exploded with fearful results.  Henry Clemens was among
     the injured.  He was still alive when his brother reached Memphis on
     the Lacey, but died a few days later.  Samuel Clemens had idolized
     the boy, and regarded himself responsible for his death.  The letter
     that follows shows that he was overwrought by the scenes about him
     and the strain of watching, yet the anguish of it is none the less
     real.


                          To Mrs. Onion Clemens:

                              MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18th, 1858.
DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--Long before this reaches you, my poor Henry my
darling, my pride, my glory, my all, will have finished his blameless
career, and the light of my life will have gone out in utter darkness.
(O, God!  this is hard to bear.)  Hardened, hopeless,--aye, lost--lost
--lost and ruined sinner as I am--I, even I, have humbled myself to the
ground and prayed as never man prayed before, that the great God might
let this cup pass from me--that he would strike me to the earth, but
spare my brother--that he would pour out the fulness of his just wrath
upon my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending
boy.  The horrors of three days have swept over me--they have blasted my
youth and left me an old man before my time.  Mollie, there are gray
hairs in my head tonight.  For forty-eight hours I labored at the bedside
of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the
star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair.  Men take
me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me "lucky" because I was not
on the Pennsylvania when she blew up!  May God forgive them, for they
know not what they say.

Mollie you do not understand why I was not on that boat--I will tell you.
I left Saint Louis on her, but on the way down, Mr. Brown, the pilot that
was killed by the explosion (poor fellow,) quarreled with Henry without
cause, while I was steering.  Henry started out of the pilot-house--Brown
jumped up and collared him--turned him half way around and struck him in
the face!--and him nearly six feet high--struck my little brother.  I was
wild from that moment.  I left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the
insult--and the Captain said I was right--that he would discharge Brown
in N. Orleans if he could get another pilot, and would do it in St.
Louis, anyhow.  Of course both of us could not return to St. Louis on the
same boat--no pilot could be found, and the Captain sent me to the A. T.
Lacey, with orders to her Captain to bring me to Saint Louis.  Had
another pilot been found, poor Brown would have been the "lucky" man.

I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes before she left N. Orleans, and I
must tell you the truth, Mollie--three hundred human beings perished by
that fearful disaster.  Henry was asleep--was blown up--then fell back on
the hot boilers, and I suppose that rubbish fell on him, for he is
injured internally.  He got into the water and swam to shore, and got
into the flatboat with the other survivors.--[Henry had returned once to
the Pennsylvania to render assistance to the passengers.  Later he had
somehow made his way to the flatboat.]--He had nothing on but his wet
shirt, and he lay there burning up with a southern sun and freezing in
the wind till the Kate Frisbee came along.  His wounds were not dressed
till he got to Memphis, 15 hours after the explosion.  He was senseless
and motionless for 12 hours after that.  But may God bless Memphis, the
noblest city on the face of the earth.  She has done her duty by these
poor afflicted creatures--especially Henry, for he has had five--aye,
ten, fifteen, twenty times the care and attention that any one else has
had.  Dr. Peyton, the best physician in Memphis (he is exactly like the
portraits of Webster) sat by him for 36 hours.  There are 32 scalded men
in that room, and you would know Dr. Peyton better than I can describe
him, if you could follow him around and hear each man murmur as he
passes, "May the God of Heaven bless you, Doctor!"  The ladies have done
well, too.  Our second Mate, a handsome, noble hearted young fellow, will
die.  Yesterday a beautiful girl of 15 stooped timidly down by his side
and handed him a pretty bouquet.  The poor suffering boy's eyes kindled,
his lips quivered out a gentle "God bless you, Miss," and he burst into
tears.  He made them write her name on a card for him, that he might not
forget it.

Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother.
                         Your unfortunate Brother,
                                        SAML. L. CLEMENS.

P. S.  I got here two days after Henry.


     It is said that Mark Twain never really recovered from the tragedy
     of his brother's death--that it was responsible for the serious,
     pathetic look that the face of the world's greatest laugh-maker
     always wore in repose.

     He went back to the river, and in September of the same year, after
     an apprenticeship of less than eighteen months, received his license
     as a St. Louis and New Orleans pilot, and was accepted by his old
     chief, Bixby, as full partner on an important boat.  In Life on the
     Mississippi Mark Twain makes the period of his study from two to two
     and a half years, but this is merely an attempt to magnify his
     dullness.  He was, in fact, an apt pupil and a pilot of very high
     class.

     Clemens was now suddenly lifted to a position of importance.  The
     Mississippi River pilot of those days was a person of distinction,
     earning a salary then regarded as princely.  Certainly two hundred
     and fifty dollars a month was large for a boy of twenty-three.  At
     once, of course, he became the head of the Clemens family.  His
     brother Orion was ten years older, but he had not the gift of
     success.  By common consent the younger brother assumed permanently
     the position of family counselor and financier.  We expect him to
     feel the importance of his new position, and he is too human to
     disappoint us.  Incidentally, we notice an improvement in his
     English.  He no longer writes "between you and I"


         Fragment of a letter to Orion Clemens.  Written at St.
                             Louis in 1859:

.....I am not talking nonsense, now--I am in earnest, I want you to keep
your troubles and your plans out of the reach of meddlers, until the
latter are consummated, so that in case you fail, no one will know it but
yourself.

Above all things (between you and me) never tell Ma any of your troubles;
she never slept a wink the night your last letter came, and she looks
distressed yet.  Write only cheerful news to her.  You know that she will
not be satisfied so long as she thinks anything is going on that she is
ignorant of--and she makes a little fuss about it when her suspicions are
awakened; but that makes no difference--.  I know that it is better that
she be kept in the dark concerning all things of an unpleasant nature.
She upbraids me occasionally for giving her only the bright side of my
affairs (but unfortunately for her she has to put up with it, for I know
that troubles that I curse awhile and forget, would disturb her slumbers
for some time.) (Parenthesis No. 2--Possibly because she is deprived of
the soothing consolation of swearing.) Tell her the good news and me the
bad.

Putting all things together, I begin to think I am rather lucky than
otherwise--a notion which I was slow to take up.  The other night I was
about to round to for a storm--but concluded that I could find a smoother
bank somewhere.  I landed 5 miles below.  The storm came--passed away and
did not injure us.  Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked at the spot
I first chose, and half the trees on the bank were torn to shreds.  We
couldn't have lived 5 minutes in such a tornado.  And I am also lucky in
having a berth, while all the young pilots are idle.  This is the
luckiest circumstance that ever befell me.  Not on account of the wages
--for that is a secondary consideration--but from the fact that the City
of Memphis is the largest boat in the trade and the hardest to pilot, and
consequently I can get a reputation on her, which is a thing I never
could accomplish on a transient boat.  I can "bank" in the neighborhood
of $100 a month on her, and that will satisfy me for the present
(principally because the other youngsters are sucking their fingers.)
Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge! and what vast respect
Prosperity commands!  Why, six months ago, I could enter the "Rooms," and
receive only a customary fraternal greeting--but now they say, "Why, how
are you, old fellow--when did you get in?"

And the young pilots who used to tell me, patronizingly, that I could
never learn the river cannot keep from showing a little of their chagrin
at seeing me so far ahead of them.  Permit me to "blow my horn," for I
derive a living pleasure from these things, and I must confess that when
I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let the d---d rascals get a glimpse
of a hundred dollar bill peeping out from amongst notes of smaller
dimensions, whose face I do not exhibit!  You will despise this egotism,
but I tell you there is a "stern joy" in it.....

Pilots did not remain long on one boat, as a rule; just why it is not so
easy to understand.  Perhaps they liked the experience of change; perhaps
both captain and pilot liked the pursuit of the ideal.  In the
light-hearted letter that follows--written to a friend of the family,
formerly of Hannibal--we get something of the uncertainty of the pilot's
engagements.


               To Mrs. Elizabeth W.  Smith, in Jackson,
                      Cape Girardeau County, Mo.:

                                   ST.  Louis, Oct. 31 [probably 1859].
DEAR AUNT BETSEY,--Ma has not written you, because she did not know when
I would get started down the river again.....

You see, Aunt Betsey, I made but one trip on the packet after you left,
and then concluded to remain at home awhile.  I have just discovered this
morning that I am to go to New Orleans on the "Col.  Chambers"--fine,
light-draught, swift-running passenger steamer--all modern accommodations
and improvements--through with dispatch--for freight or passage apply on
board, or to--but--I have forgotten the agent's name--however, it makes
no difference--and as I was saying, or had intended to say, Aunt Betsey,
probably, if you are ready to come up, you had better take the "Ben
Lewis," the best boat in the packet line.  She will be at Cape Girardeau
at noon on Saturday (day after tomorrow,) and will reach here at
breakfast time, Sunday.  If  Mr. Hamilton is chief clerk,--very well,
I am slightly acquainted with him.  And if Messrs. Carter Gray and Dean
Somebody (I have forgotten his other name,) are in the pilot-house--very
well again-I am acquainted with them.  Just tell Mr. Gray, Aunt Betsey
--that I wish him to place himself at your command.

All the family are well--except myself--I am in a bad way again--disease,
Love, in its most malignant form.  Hopes are entertained of my recovery,
however.  At the dinner table--excellent symptom--I am still as "terrible
as an army with banners."

Aunt Betsey--the wickedness of this world--but I haven't time to moralize
this morning.
                                   Goodbye
                                        SAM CLEMENS.


     As we do not hear of this "attack" again, the recovery was probably
     prompt.  His letters are not frequent enough for us to keep track of
     his boats, but we know that he was associated with Bixby from time
     to time, and now and again with one of the Bowen boys, his old
     Hannibal schoolmates.  He was reveling in the river life, the ease
     and distinction and romance of it.  No other life would ever suit
     him as well.  He was at the age to enjoy just what it brought him
     --at the airy, golden, overweening age of youth.


                    To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

                                        ST. LOUIS, Mch. 1860.
MY DEAR BRO.,--Your last has just come to hand.  It reminds me strongly
of Tom Hood's letters to his family, (which I have been reading lately).
But yours only remind me of his, for although there is a striking
likeness, your humour is much finer than his, and far better expressed.
Tom Hood's wit, (in his letters) has a savor of labor about it which is
very disagreeable.  Your letter is good.  That portion of it wherein the
old sow figures is the very best thing I have seen lately.  Its quiet
style resembles Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," and "Don Quixote,"
--which are my beau ideals of fine writing.

You have paid the preacher!  Well, that is good, also.  What a man wants
with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.

Pamela and I have just returned from a visit to the most wonderfully
beautiful painting which this city has ever seen--Church's "Heart of the
Andes"--which represents a lovely valley with its rich vegetation in all
the bloom and glory of a tropical summer--dotted with birds and flowers
of all colors and shades of color, and sunny slopes, and shady corners,
and twilight groves, and cool cascades--all grandly set off with a
majestic mountain in the background with its gleaming summit clothed in
everlasting ice and snow!  I have seen it several times, but it is always
a new picture--totally new--you seem to see nothing the second time which
you saw the first.  We took the opera glass, and examined its beauties
minutely, for the naked eye cannot discern the little wayside flowers,
and soft shadows and patches of sunshine, and half-hidden bunches of
grass and jets of water which form some of its most enchanting features.
There is no slurring of perspective effect about it--the most distant
--the minutest object in it has a marked and distinct personality--so that
you may count the very leaves on the trees.  When you first see the tame,
ordinary-looking picture, your first impulse is to turn your back upon
it, and say "Humbug"--but your third visit will find your brain gasping
and straining with futile efforts to take all the wonder in--and
appreciate it in its fulness--and understand how such a miracle could
have been conceived and executed by human brain and human hands.  You
will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections
--your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something--you hardly know what
--will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing,
in order to obtain relief.  You may find relief, but you cannot banish
the picture--It remains with you still.  It is in my mind now--and the
smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it.  So much
for the "Heart of the Andes."

Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for
allowing me to embrace and kiss them--and she was horrified at the
Schottische as performed by Miss Castle and myself.  She was perfectly
willing for me to dance until 12 o'clock at the imminent peril of my
going to sleep on the after watch--but then she would top off with a very
inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific
broadside aimed at that heresy of heresies, the Schottische.

I took Ma and the girls in a carriage, round that portion of New Orleans
where the finest gardens and residences are to be seen, and although it
was a blazing hot dusty day, they seemed hugely delighted.  To use an
expression which is commonly ignored in polite society, they were
"hell-bent" on stealing some of the luscious-looking oranges from
branches which overhung the fences, but I restrained them.  They were not
aware before that shrubbery could be made to take any queer shape which a
skilful gardener might choose to twist it into, so they found not only
beauty but novelty in their visit.  We went out to Lake Pontchartrain in
the cars.
                                   Your Brother
                                             SAM CLEMENS


     We have not before heard of Miss Castle, who appears to have been
     one of the girls who accompanied Jane Clemens on the trip which her
     son gave her to New Orleans, but we may guess that the other was his
     cousin and good comrade, Ella Creel.  One wishes that he might have
     left us a more extended account of that long-ago river journey, a
     fuller glimpse of a golden age that has vanished as completely as
     the days of Washington.

     We may smile at the natural youthful desire to air his reading, and
     his art appreciation, and we may find his opinions not without
     interest.  We may even commend them--in part.  Perhaps we no longer
     count the leaves on Church's trees, but Goldsmith and Cervantes
     still deserve the place assigned them.

     He does not tell us what boat he was on at this time, but later in
     the year he was with Bixby again, on the Alonzo Child.  We get a bit
     of the pilot in port in his next.


                    To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

                         "ALONZO CHILD," N. ORLEANS, Sep. 28th 1860.
DEAR BROTHER,--I just received yours and Mollies letter yesterday--they
had been here two weeks--forwarded from St. Louis.  We got here
yesterday--will leave at noon to-day.  Of course I have had no time, in
24 hours, to do anything.  Therefore I'll answer after we are under way
again.  Yesterday, I had many things to do, but Bixby and I got with the
pilots of two other boats and went off dissipating on a ten dollar dinner
at a French restaurant breathe it not unto Ma!--where we ate sheep-head,
fish with mushrooms, shrimps and oysters--birds--coffee with brandy burnt
in it, &c &c,--ate, drank and smoked, from 2 p.m. until 5 o'clock, and
then--then the day was too far gone to do any thing.

Please find enclosed and acknowledge receipt of--$20.00
                                   In haste
                                        SAM L. CLEMENS


     It should be said, perhaps, that when he became pilot Jane Clemens
     had released her son from his pledge in the matter of cards and
     liquor.  This license did not upset him, however.  He cared very
     little for either of these dissipations.  His one great indulgence
     was tobacco, a matter upon which he was presently to receive some
     grave counsel.  He reports it in his next letter, a sufficiently
     interesting document.  The clairvoyant of this visit was Madame
     Caprell, famous in her day.  Clemens had been urged to consult her,
     and one idle afternoon concluded to make the experiment.  The letter
     reporting the matter to his brother is fragmentary, and is the last
     remaining to us of the piloting period.


         Fragment of a letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

                                        NEW ORLEANS February 6, 1862.
.....She's a very pleasant little lady--rather pretty--about 28,--say
5 feet 2 and one quarter--would weigh 116--has black eyes and hair--is
polite and intelligent--used good language, and talks much faster than I
do.

She invited me into the little back parlor, closed the door; and we were
alone.  We sat down facing each other.  Then she asked my age.  Then she
put her hands before her eyes a moment, and commenced talking as if she
had a good deal to say and not much time to say it in.  Something after
this style:

MADAME.  Yours is a watery planet; you gain your livelihood on the water;
but you should have been a lawyer--there is where your talents lie: you
might have distinguished yourself as an orator, or as an editor; you have
written a great deal; you write well--but you are rather out of practice;
no matter--you will be in practice some day; you have a superb
constitution, and as excellent health as any man in the world; you have
great powers of endurance; in your profession your strength holds out
against the longest sieges, without flagging; still, the upper part of
your lungs, the top of them is slightly affected--you must take care of
yourself; you do not drink, but you use entirely too much tobacco; and
you must stop it; mind, not moderate, but stop the use of it totally;
then I can almost promise you 86 when you will surely die; otherwise look
out for 28, 31, 34, 47, and 65; be careful--for you are not of a
long-lived race, that is on your father's side; you are the only healthy
member of your family, and the only one in it who has anything like the
certainty of attaining to a great age--so, stop using tobacco, and be
careful of yourself.....  In some respects you take after your father,
but you are much more like your mother, who belongs to the long-lived,
energetic side of the house....  You never brought all your energies to
bear upon any subject but what you accomplished it--for instance, you are
self-made, self-educated.

S. L. C.  Which proves nothing.

MADAME.  Don't interrupt.  When you sought your present occupation you
found a thousand obstacles in the way--obstacles unknown--not even
suspected by any save you and me, since you keep such matters to
yourself--but you fought your way, and hid the long struggle under a mask
of cheerfulness, which saved your friends anxiety on your account.  To do
all this requires all the qualities I have named.

S. L. C.  You flatter well, Madame.

MADAME.  Don't interrupt: Up to within a short time you had always lived
from hand to mouth-now you are in easy circumstances--for which you need
give credit to no one but yourself.  The turning point in your life
occurred in 1840-7-8.

S. L. C.  Which was?

MADAME.  A death perhaps, and this threw you upon the world and made you
what you are; it was always intended that you should make yourself;
therefore, it was well that this calamity occurred as early as it did.
You will never die of water, although your career upon it in the future
seems well sprinkled with misfortune.  You will continue upon the water
for some time yet; you will not retire finally until ten years from now
....  What is your brother's age?  35--and a lawyer? and in pursuit of an
office?  Well, he stands a better chance than the other two, and he may
get it; he is too visionary--is always flying off on a new hobby; this
will never do--tell him I said so.  He is a good lawyer--a, very good
lawyer--and a fine speaker--is very popular and much respected, and makes
many friends; but although he retains their friendship, he loses their
confidence by displaying his instability of character.....  The land he
has now will be very valuable after a while--

S. L. C.  Say a 50 years hence, or thereabouts.  Madame--

MADAME.  No--less time-but never mind the land, that is a secondary
consideration--let him drop that for the present, and devote himself to
his business and politics with all his might, for he must hold offices
under the Government.....

After a while you will possess a good deal of property--retire at the end
of ten years--after which your pursuits will be literary--try the law
--you will certainly succeed.  I am done now.  If you have any questions
to ask--ask them freely--and if it be in my power, I will answer without
reserve--without reserve.

I asked a few questions of minor importance--paid her $2--and left, under
the decided impression that going to the fortune teller's was just as
good as going to the opera, and the cost scarcely a trifle more--ergo,
I will disguise myself and go again, one of these days, when other
amusements fail.  Now isn't she the devil?  That is to say, isn't she a
right smart little woman?

When you want money, let Ma know, and she will send it.  She and Pamela
are always fussing about change, so I sent them a hundred and twenty
quarters yesterday--fiddler's change enough to last till I get back, I
reckon.
                                             SAM.


     It is not so difficult to credit Madame Caprell with clairvoyant
     powers when one has read the letters of Samuel Clemens up to this
     point.  If we may judge by those that have survived, her prophecy of
     literary distinction for him was hardly warranted by anything she
     could have known of his past performance.  These letters of his
     youth have a value to-day only because they were written by the man
     who later was to become Mark Twain.  The squibs and skits which he
     sometimes contributed to the New Orleans papers were bright,
     perhaps, and pleasing to his pilot associates, but they were without
     literary value.  He was twenty-five years old.  More than one author
     has achieved reputation at that age.  Mark Twain was of slower
     growth; at that age he had not even developed a definite literary
     ambition:  Whatever the basis of Madame Caprell's prophecy, we must
     admit that she was a good guesser on several matters, "a right smart
     little woman," as Clemens himself phrased it.

     She overlooked one item, however: the proximity of the Civil War.
     Perhaps it was too close at hand for second sight.  A little more
     than two months after the Caprell letter was written Fort Sumter was
     fired upon.  Mask Twain had made his last trip as a pilot up the
     river to St. Louis--the nation was plunged into a four years'
     conflict.

     There are no letters of this immediate period.  Young Clemens went
     to Hannibal, and enlisting in a private company, composed mainly of
     old schoolmates, went soldiering for two rainy, inglorious weeks,
     by the end of which he had had enough of war, and furthermore had
     discovered that he was more of a Union abolitionist than a
     slave-holding secessionist, as he had at first supposed.
     Convictions were likely to be rather infirm during those early days
     of the war, and subject to change without notice.  Especially was
     this so in a border State.




III

LETTERS 1861-62.  ON THE FRONTIER.  MINING ADVENTURES.
JOURNALISTIC BEGINNINGS

     Clemens went from the battle-front to Keokuk, where Orion was
     preparing to accept the appointment prophesied by Madame Caprell.
     Orion was a stanch Unionist, and a member of Lincoln's Cabinet had
     offered him the secretaryship of the new Territory of Nevada.  Orion
     had accepted, and only needed funds to carry him to his destination.
     His pilot brother had the funds, and upon being appointed "private"
     secretary, agreed to pay both passages on the overland stage, which
     would bear them across the great plains from St. Jo to Carson City.
     Mark Twain, in Roughing It, has described that glorious journey and
     the frontier life that followed it.  His letters form a supplement
     of realism to a tale that is more or less fictitious, though
     marvelously true in color and background.  The first bears no date,
     but it was written not long after their arrival, August 14, 1861.
     It is not complete, but there is enough of it to give us a very fair
     picture of Carson City, "a wooden town; its population two thousand
     souls."


           Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis:

                              (Date not given, but Sept, or Oct., 1861.)
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I hope you will all come out here someday.  But I shan't
consent to invite you, until we can receive you in style.  But I guess we
shall be able to do that, one of these days.  I intend that Pamela shall
live on Lake Bigler until she can knock a bull down with her fist--say,
about three months.

"Tell everything as it is--no better, and no worse."

Well, "Gold Hill" sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; "Wild cat" isn't
worth ten cents.  The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper,
lead, coal, iron, quick silver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris,
(gypsum,) thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers,
Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes
(pronounced Ki-yo-ties,) poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits.
I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was "the d---dest
country under the sun."--and that comprehensive conception I fully
subscribe to.  It never rains here, and the dew never falls.  No flowers
grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye.  The birds that fly over
the land carry their provisions with them.  Only the crow and the raven
tarry with us.  Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest
--most unadulterated, and compromising sand--in which infernal soil
nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage-brush," ventures to
grow. If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a model, and build a
dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of telegraph wire--set
them one foot apart and then try to walk through them, you'll understand
(provided the floor is covered 12 inches deep with sand,) what it is to
wander through a sage-brush desert.  When crushed, sage brush emits an
odor which isn't exactly magnolia and equally isn't exactly polecat but
is a sort of compromise between the two.  It looks a good deal like
grease-wood, and is the ugliest plant that was ever conceived of.  It is
gray in color.  On the plains, sage-brush and grease-wood grow about
twice as large as the common geranium--and in my opinion they are a very
good substitute for that useless vegetable.  Grease-wood is a perfect
--most perfect imitation in miniature of a live oak tree-barring the color
of it.  As to the other fruits and flowers of the country, there ain't
any, except "Pulu" or "Tuler," or what ever they call it,--a species of
unpoetical willow that grows on the banks of the Carson--a RIVER, 20
yards wide, knee deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked, that it
looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it, and had
run about in a bewildered way and got lost, in its hurry to get out again
before some thirsty man came along and drank it up.  I said we are
situated in a flat, sandy desert--true.  And surrounded on all sides by
such prodigious mountains, that when you gaze at them awhile,--and begin
to conceive of their grandeur--and next to feel their vastness expanding
your soul--and ultimately find yourself growing and swelling and
spreading into a giant--I say when this point is reached, you look
disdainfully down upon the insignificant village of Carson, and in that
instant you are seized with a burning desire to stretch forth your hand,
put the city in your pocket, and walk off with it.

As to churches, I believe they have got a Catholic one here, but like
that one the New York fireman spoke of, I believe "they don't run her
now:" Now, although we are surrounded by sand, the greatest part of the
town is built upon what was once a very pretty grassy spot; and the
streams of pure water that used to poke about it in rural sloth and
solitude, now pass through on dusty streets and gladden the hearts of men
by reminding them that there is at least something here that hath its
prototype among the homes they left behind them.  And up "King's Canon,"
(please pronounce canyon, after the manner of the natives,) there are
"ranches," or farms, where they say hay grows, and grass, and beets and
onions, and turnips, and other "truck" which is suitable for cows--yes,
and even Irish potatoes; also, cabbage, peas and beans.

The houses are mostly frame, unplastered, but "papered" inside with
flour-sacks sewed together, and the handsomer the "brand" upon the sacks
is, the neater the house looks.  Occasionally, you stumble on a stone
house.  On account of the dryness of the country, the shingles on the
houses warp till they look like short joints of stove pipe split
lengthwise.

(Remainder missing.)


     In this letter is something of the "wild freedom of the West," which
     later would contribute to his fame.  The spirit of the frontier--of
     Mark Twain--was beginning to stir him.

     There had been no secretary work for him to do, and no provision for
     payment.  He found his profit in studying human nature and in
     prospecting native resources.  He was not interested in mining not
     yet.  With a boy named John Kinney he made an excursion to Lake
     Bigler--now Tahoe--and located a timber claim, really of great
     value.  They were supposed to build a fence around it, but they were
     too full of the enjoyment of camp-life to complete it.  They put in
     most of their time wandering through the stately forest or drifting
     over the transparent lake in a boat left there by lumbermen.  They
     built themselves a brush house, but they did not sleep in it.  In
     'Roughing It' he writes, "It never occurred to us, for one thing;
     and, besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough.
     We did not wish to strain it."

     They were having a glorious time, when their camp-fire got away from
     them and burned up their claim.  His next letter, of which the
     beginning is missing, describes the fire.


             Fragment of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and
                      Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

.....The level ranks of flame were relieved at intervals by the
standard-bearers, as we called the tall dead trees, wrapped in fire, and
waving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the air.  Then we could
turn from this scene to the Lake, and see every branch, and leaf, and
cataract of flame upon its bank perfectly reflected as in a gleaming,
fiery mirror. The mighty roaring of the conflagration, together with our
solitary and somewhat unsafe position (for there was no one within six
miles of us,) rendered the scene very impressive.  Occasionally, one of
us would remove his pipe from his mouth and say, "Superb!  magnificent!
Beautiful!  but-by the Lord God Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this
little patch tonight, we'll never live till morning! for if we don't burn
up, we'll certainly suffocate."  But he was persuaded to sit up until we
felt pretty safe as far as the fire was concerned, and then we turned in,
with many misgivings.  When we got up in the morning, we found that the
fire had burned small pieces of drift wood within six feet of our boat,
and had made its way to within 4 or 5 steps of us on the South side.  We
looked like lava men, covered as we were with ashes, and begrimed with
smoke.  We were very black in the face, but we soon washed ourselves
white again.

John D. Kinney, a Cincinnati boy, and a first-rate fellow, too, who came
out with judge Turner, was my comrade.  We staid at the Lake four days
--I had plenty of fun, for John constantly reminded me of Sam Bowen when
we were on our campaign in Missouri.  But first and foremost, for Annie's,
Mollies, and Pamela's comfort, be it known that I have never been guilty
of profane language since I have been in this Territory, and Kinney
hardly ever swears.--But sometimes human nature gets the better of him.
On the second day we started to go by land to the lower camp, a distance
of three miles, over the mountains, each carrying an axe.  I don't think
we got lost exactly, but we wandered four hours over the steepest,
rockiest and most dangerous piece of country in the world.  I couldn't
keep from laughing at Kinney's distress, so I kept behind, so that he
could not see me.  After he would get over a dangerous place, with
infinite labor and constant apprehension, he would stop, lean on his axe,
and look around, then behind, then ahead, and then drop his head and
ruminate awhile.--Then he would draw a long sigh, and say: "Well--could
any Billygoat have scaled that place without breaking his --- ------ neck?"
And I would reply, "No,--I don't think he could."  "No--you don't think
he could--" (mimicking me,) "Why don't you curse the infernal place?
You know you want to.--I do, and will curse the --- ------ thieving
country as long as I live."  Then we would toil on in silence for awhile.
Finally I told him--"Well, John, what if we don't find our way out of
this today--we'll know all about the country when we do get out."  "Oh
stuff--I know enough--and too much about the d---d villainous locality
already."  Finally, we reached the camp.  But as we brought no provisions
with us, the first subject that presented itself to us was, how to get
back.  John swore he wouldn't walk back, so we rolled a drift log apiece
into the Lake, and set about making paddles, intending to straddle the
logs and paddle ourselves back home sometime or other.  But the Lake
objected--got stormy, and we had to give it up.  So we set out for the
only house on this side of the Lake--three miles from there, down the
shore.  We found the way without any trouble, reached there before
sundown, played three games of cribbage, borrowed a dug-out and pulled
back six miles to the upper camp.  As we had eaten nothing since sunrise,
we did not waste time in cooking our supper or in eating it, either.
After supper we got out our pipes--built a rousing camp fire in the open
air-established a faro bank (an institution of this country,) on our huge
flat granite dining table, and bet white beans till one o'clock, when
John went to bed.  We were up before the sun the next morning, went out
on the Lake and caught a fine trout for breakfast.  But unfortunately, I
spoilt part of the breakfast.  We had coffee and tea boiling on the fire,
in coffee-pots and fearing they might not be strong enough, I added more
ground coffee, and more tea, but--you know mistakes will happen.--I put
the tea in the coffee-pot, and the coffee in the teapot--and if you
imagine that they were not villainous mixtures, just try the effect once.

And so Bella is to be married on the 1st of Oct.  Well, I send her and
her husband my very best wishes, and--I may not be here--but wherever I
am on that night, we'll have a rousing camp-fire and a jollification in
honor of the event.

In a day or two we shall probably go to the Lake and build another cabin
and fence, and get everything into satisfactory trim before our trip to
Esmeralda about the first of November.

What has become of Sam Bowen?  I would give my last shirt to have him out
here.  I will make no promises, but I believe if John would give him a
thousand dollars and send him out here he would not regret it.  He might
possibly do very well here, but he could do little without capital.

Remember me to all my St. Louis and Keokuk friends, and tell Challie and
Hallie Renson that I heard a military band play "What are the Wild Waves
Saying?" the other night, and it reminded me very forcibly of them.  It
brought Ella Creel and Belle across the Desert too in an instant, for
they sang the song in Orion's yard the first time I ever heard it.  It
was like meeting an old friend.  I tell you I could have swallowed that
whole band, trombone and all, if such a compliment would have been any
gratification to them.
                         Love to the young folks,
                                                  SAM.


The reference in the foregoing letter to Esmeralda has to do with mining
plans.  He was beginning to be mildly interested, and, with his brother
Orion, had acquired "feet" in an Esmeralda camp, probably at a very small
price--so small as to hold out no exciting prospect of riches.  In his
next letter he gives us the size of this claim, which he has visited.
His interest, however, still appears to be chiefly in his timber claim on
Lake Bigler (Tahoe), though we are never to hear of it again after this
letter.


                      To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                             CARSON CITY, Oct. 25, 1861.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I have just finished reading your letter and Ma's of
Sept. 8th.  How in the world could they have been so long coming?  You
ask me if I have for gotten my promise to lay a claim for Mr. Moffett.
By no means.  I have already laid a timber claim on the borders of a lake
(Bigler) which throws Como in the shade--and if we succeed in getting one
Mr. Jones, to move his saw-mill up there, Mr. Moffett can just consider
that claim better than bank stock.  Jones says he will move his mill up
next spring.  In that claim I took up about two miles in length by one in
width--and the names in it are as follows: "Sam. L  Clemens, Wm. A.
Moffett, Thos. Nye" and three others.  It is situated on "Sam Clemens
Bay"--so named by Capt. Nye--and it goes by that name among the
inhabitants of that region.  I had better stop about "the Lake," though,
--for whenever I think of it I want to go there and die, the place is so
beautiful.  I'll build a country seat there one of these days that will
make the Devil's mouth water if he ever visits the earth.  Jim Lampton
will never know whether I laid a claim there for him or not until he
comes here himself.  We have now got about 1,650 feet of mining ground
--and if it proves good, Mr. Moffett's name will go in--if not, I can get
"feet" for him in the Spring which will be good.  You see, Pamela, the
trouble does not consist in getting mining ground--for that is plenty
enough--but the money to work it with after you get it is the mischief.
When I was in Esmeralda, a young fellow gave me fifty feet in the "Black
Warrior"--an unprospected claim.  The other day he wrote me that he had
gone down eight feet on the ledge, and found it eight feet thick--and
pretty good rock, too.  He said he could take out rock now if there were
a mill to crush it--but the mills are all engaged (there are only four of
them) so, if I were willing, he would suspend work until Spring.  I wrote
him to let it alone at present--because, you see, in the Spring I can go
down myself and help him look after it.  There will then be twenty mills
there.  Orion and I have confidence enough in this country to think that
if the war will let us alone we can make Mr. Moffett rich without its
ever costing him a cent of money or particle of trouble.  We shall lay
plenty of claims for him, but if they never pay him anything, they will
never cost him anything, Orion and I are not financiers.  Therefore, you
must persuade Uncle Jim to come out here and help us in that line.
I have written to him twice to come.  I wrote him today.  In both letters
I told him not to let you or Ma know that we dealt in such romantic
nonsense as "brilliant prospects," because I always did hate for anyone
to know what my plans or hopes or prospects were--for, if I kept people
in ignorance in these matters, no one could be disappointed but myself,
if they were not realized.  You know I never told you that I went on the
river under a promise to pay Bixby $500, until I had paid the money and
cleared my skirts of the possibility of having my judgment criticised.
I would not say anything about our prospects now, if we were nearer home.
But I suppose at this distance you are more anxious than you would be if
you saw us every month-and therefore it is hardly fair to keep you in the
dark.  However, keep these matters to yourselves, and then if we fail,
we'll keep the laugh in the family.

What we want now is something that will commence paying immediately.
We have got a chance to get into a claim where they say a tunnel has been
run 150 feet, and the ledge struck.  I got a horse yesterday, and went
out with the Attorney-General and the claim-owner--and we tried to go to
the claim by a new route, and got lost in the mountains--sunset overtook
us before we found the claim--my horse got too lame to carry me, and I
got down and drove him ahead of me till within four miles of town--then
we sent Rice on ahead.  Bunker, (whose horse was in good condition,)
undertook, to lead mine, and I followed after him.  Darkness shut him out
from my view in less than a minute, and within the next minute I lost the
road and got to wandering in the sage brush.  I would find the road
occasionally and then lose it again in a minute or so.  I got to Carson
about nine o'clock, at night, but not by the road I traveled when I left
it.  The General says my horse did very well for awhile, but soon refused
to lead.  Then he dismounted, and had a jolly time driving both horses
ahead of him and chasing them here and there through the sage brush (it
does my soul good when I think of it) until he got to town, when both
animals deserted him, and he cursed them handsomely and came home alone.
Of course the horses went to their stables.

Tell Sammy I will lay a claim for him, and he must come out and attend to
it.  He must get rid of that propensity for tumbling down, though, for
when we get fairly started here, I don't think we shall have time to pick
up those who fall.....

That is Stoughter's house, I expect, that Cousin Jim has moved into.
This is just the country for Cousin Jim to live in.  I don't believe it
would take him six months to make $100,000 here, if he had 3,000 dollars
to commence with.  I suppose he can't leave his family though.

Tell Mrs. Benson I never intend to be a lawyer.  I have been a slave
several times in my life, but I'll never be one again.  I always intend
to be so situated (unless I marry,) that I can "pull up stakes" and clear
out whenever I feel like it.

We are very thankful to you, Pamela, for the papers you send.  We have
received half a dozen or more, and, next to letters, they are the most
welcome visitors we have.
                              Write oftener, Pamela.
                                             Yr.  Brother
                                                            SAM.


The "Cousin Jim" mentioned in this letter is the original of the
character of Colonel Sellers.  Whatever Mark Twain's later opinion of
Cousin Jim Lampton's financial genius may have been, he seems to have
respected it at this time.

More than three months pass until we have another letter, and in that
time the mining fever had become well seated.  Mark Twain himself was
full of the Sellers optimism, and it was bound to overflow, fortify as he
would against it.

He met with little enough encouragement.  With three companions, in
midwinter, he made a mining excursion to the much exploited Humboldt
region, returning empty-handed after a month or two of hard experience.
This is the trip picturesquely described in Chapters XXVII to XXXIII of
Roughing It.--[It is set down historically in Mark Twain 'A Biography.'
Harper & brothers.]--He, mentions the Humboldt in his next letter, but
does not confess his failure.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                             CARSON CITY, Feb. 8, 1862.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--By George Pamela, I begin to fear that I have
invoked a Spirit of some kind or other which I will find some difficulty
in laying.  I wasn't much terrified by your growing inclinations, but
when you begin to call presentiments to your aid, I confess that I
"weaken."  Mr. Moffett is right, as I said before--and I am not much
afraid of his going wrong.  Men are easily dealt with--but when you get
the women started, you are in for it, you know.  But I have decided on
two things, viz: Any of you, or all of you, may live in California, for
that is the Garden of Eden reproduced--but you shall never live in
Nevada; and secondly, none of you, save Mr. Moffett, shall ever cross the
Plains.  If you were only going to Pike's Peak, a little matter of 700
miles from St. Jo, you might take the coach, and I wouldn't say a word.
But I consider it over 2,000 miles from St. Jo to Carson, and the first
6 or 800 miles is mere Fourth of July, compared to the balance of the
route.  But Lord bless you, a man enjoys every foot of it.  If you ever
come here or to California, it must be by sea.  Mr. Moffett must come by
overland coach, though, by all means.  He would consider it the jolliest
little trip he ever took in his life.  Either June, July, or August are
the proper months to make the journey in.  He could not suffer from heat,
and three or four heavy army blankets would make the cold nights
comfortable.  If the coach were full of passengers, two good blankets
would probably be sufficient.  If he comes, and brings plenty of money,
and fails to invest it to his entire satisfaction; I will prophesy no
more.

But I will tell you a few things which you wouldn't have found out if I
hadn't got myself into this scrape.  I expect to return to St. Louis in
July--per steamer.  I don't say that I will return then, or that I shall
be able to do it--but I expect to--you bet.  I came down here from
Humboldt, in order to look after our Esmeralda interests, and my
sore-backed horse and the bad roads have prevented me from making the
journey. Yesterday one of my old Esmeralda friends, Bob Howland, arrived
here, and I have had a talk with him.  He owns with me in the "Horatio
and Derby" ledge.  He says our tunnel is in 52 feet, and a small stream
of water has been struck, which bids fair to become a "big thing" by the
time the ledge is reached--sufficient to supply a mill.  Now, if you knew
anything of the value of water, here; you would perceive, at a glance
that if the water should amount to 50 or 100 inches, we wouldn't care
whether school kept or not.  If the ledge should prove to be worthless,
we'd sell the water for money enough to give us quite a lift.  But you
see, the ledge will not prove to be worthless.  We have located, near by,
a fine site for a mill; and when we strike the ledge, you know, we'll
have a mill-site, water power, and pay-rock, all handy.  Then we shan't
care whether we have capital or not.  Mill-folks will build us a mill,
and wait for their pay.  If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike the ledge in
June--and if we do, I'll be home in July, you know.

Pamela, don't you know that undemonstrated human calculations won't do
to bet on?  Don't you know that I have only talked, as yet, but proved
nothing?  Don't you know that I have expended money in this country but
have made none myself?  Don't you know that I have never held in my hands
a gold or silver bar that belonged to me?  Don't you know that it's all
talk and no cider so far?  Don't you know that people who always feel
jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them--who have the
organ of hope preposterously developed--who are endowed with an
uncongealable sanguine temperament--who never feel concerned about the
price of corn--and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the
bright side of a picture--are very apt to go to extremes, and exaggerate
with 40-horse microscopic power?  Of course I never tried to raise these
suspicions in your mind, but then your knowledge of the fact that some
people's poor frail human nature is a sort of crazy institution anyhow,
ought to have suggested them to you.  Now, if I hadn't thoughtlessly got
you into the notion of coming out here, and thereby got myself into a
scrape, I wouldn't have given you that highly-colored paragraph about the
mill, etc., because, you know, if that pretty little picture should fail,
and wash out, and go the Devil generally, it wouldn't cost me the loss of
an hour's sleep, but you fellows would be so much distressed on my
account as I could possibly be if "circumstances beyond my control" were
to prevent my being present at my own funeral.  But--but--

               "In the bright lexicon of youth,
               There's no such word as Fail--"
                                             and I'll prove it!

And look here.  I came near forgetting it.  Don't you say a word to me
about "trains" across the plains.  Because I am down on that arrangement.
That sort of thing is "played out," you know.  The Overland Coach or the
Mail Steamer is the thing.

You want to know something about the route between California and Nevada
Territory?  Suppose you take my word for it, that it is exceedingly
jolly.  Or take, for a winter view, J. Ross Brown's picture, in Harper's
Monthly, of pack mules tumbling fifteen hundred feet down the side of a
mountain.  Why bless you, there's scenery on that route.  You can stand
on some of those noble peaks and see Jerusalem and the Holy Land.  And
you can start a boulder, and send it tearing up the earth and crashing
over trees-down-down-down-to the very devil, Madam.  And you would
probably stand up there and look, and stare and wonder at the
magnificence spread out before you till you starved to death, if let
alone.  But you should take someone along to keep you moving.

Since you want to know, I will inform you that an eight-stamp water mill,
put up and ready for business would cost about $10,000 to $12,000.  Then,
the water to run it with would cost from $1,000 to $30,000--and even
more, according to the location.  What I mean by that, is, that water
powers in THIS vicinity, are immensely valuable.  So, also, in Esmeralda.
But Humboldt is a new country, and things don't cost so much there yet.
I saw a good water power sold there for $750.00.  But here is the way the
thing is managed.  A man with a good water power on Carson river will
lean his axe up against a tree (provided you find him chopping cord-wood
at $4 a day,) and taking his chalk pipe out of his mouth to afford him an
opportunity to answer your questions, will look you coolly in the face
and tell you his little property is worth forty or fifty thousand
dollars!  But you can easily fix him.  You tell him that you'll build a
quartz mill on his property, and make him a fourth or a third, or half
owner in said mill in consideration of the privilege of using said
property--and that will bring him to his milk in a jiffy.  So he spits on
his hands, and goes in again with his axe, until the mill is finished,
when lo! out pops the quondam wood-chopper, arrayed in purple and fine
linen, and prepared to deal in bank-stock, or bet on the races, or take
government loans, with an air, as to the amount, of the most don't care
a-d---dest unconcern that you can conceive of.  By George, if I just had
a thousand dollars--I'd be all right!  Now there's the "Horatio," for
instance.  There are five or six shareholders in it, and I know I could
buy half of their interests at, say $20 per foot, now that flour is worth
$50 per barrel and they are pressed for money.  But I am hard up myself,
and can't buy--and in June they'll strike the ledge and then "good-bye
canary."  I can't get it for love or money.  Twenty dollars a foot!
Think of it.  For ground that is proven to be rich.  Twenty dollars,
Madam--and we wouldn't part with a foot of our 75 for five times the sum.
So it will be in Humboldt next summer.  The boys will get pushed and sell
ground for a song that is worth a fortune.  But I am at the helm, now.
I have convinced Orion that he hasn't business talent enough to carry on
a peanut stand, and he has solemnly promised me that he will meddle no
more with mining, or other matters not connected with the Secretary's
office.  So, you see, if mines are to be bought or sold, or tunnels run,
or shafts sunk, parties have to come to me--and me only.  I'm the "firm,"
you know.

"How long does it take one of those infernal trains to go through?"
Well, anywhere between three and five months.

Tell Margaret that if you ever come to live in California, that you can
promise her a home for a hundred years, and a bully one--but she wouldn't
like the country.  Some people are malicious enough to think that if the
devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada
Territory, that he would come here--and look sadly around, awhile, and
then get homesick and go back to hell again.  But I hardly believe it,
you know.  I am saying, mind you, that Margaret wouldn't like the
country, perhaps--nor the devil either, for that matter, or any other man
but I like it.  When it rains here, it never lets up till it has done all
the raining it has got to do--and after that, there's a dry spell, you
bet.  Why, I have had my whiskers and moustaches so full of alkali dust
that you'd have thought I worked in a starch factory and boarded in a
flour barrel.

Since we have been here there has not been a fire--although the houses
are built of wood.  They "holler" fire sometimes, though, but I am always
too late to see the smoke before the fire is out, if they ever have any.
Now they raised a yell here in front of the office a moment ago.  I put
away my papers, and locked up everything of value, and changed my boots,
and pulled off my coat, and went and got a bucket of water, and came back
to see what the matter was, remarking to myself, "I guess I'll be on hand
this time, any way."  But I met a friend on the pavement, and he said,
"Where you been?  Fire's out half an hour ago."

Ma says Axtele was above "suspition"--but I have searched through
Webster's Unabridged, and can't find the word.  However, it's of no
consequence--I hope he got down safely.  I knew Axtele and his wife as
well as I know Dan Haines.  Mrs. A. once tried to embarrass me in the
presence of company by asking me to name her baby, when she was well
aware that I didn't know the sex of that Phenomenon.  But I told her to
call it Frances, and spell it to suit herself.  That was about nine years
ago, and Axtele had no property, and could hardly support his family by
his earnings.  He was a pious cuss, though.  Member of Margaret Sexton's
Church.

And Ma says "it looks like a man can't hold public office and be honest."
Why, certainly not, Madam.  A man can't hold public office and be honest.
Lord bless you, it is a common practice with Orion to go about town
stealing little things that happen to be lying around loose.  And I don't
remember having heard him speak the truth since we have been in Nevada.
He even tries to prevail upon me to do these things, Ma, but I wasn't
brought up in that way, you know.  You showed the public what you could
do in that line when you raised me, Madam.  But then you ought to have
raised me first, so that Orion could have had the benefit of my example.
Do you know that he stole all the stamps out of an 8 stamp quartz mill
one night, and brought them home under his over-coat and hid them in the
back room?
                              Yrs. etc.,
                                             SAM


     A little later he had headed for the Esmeralda Hills.  Some time in
     February he was established there in a camp with a young man by the
     name of Horatio Phillips (Raish).  Later he camped with Bob Howland,
     who, as City Marshal of Aurora, became known as the most fearless
     man in the Territory, and, still later, with Calvin H. Higbie (Cal),
     to whom 'Roughing It' would one day be dedicated.  His own funds
     were exhausted by this time, and Orion, with his rather slender
     salary, became the financial partner of the firm.

     It was a comfortless life there in the Esmeralda camp.  Snow covered
     everything.  There was nothing to do, and apparently nothing to
     report; for there are no letters until April.  Then the first one is
     dated Carson City, where he seems to be making a brief sojourn.  It
     is a rather heavy attempt to be light-hearted; its playfulness
     suggests that of a dancing bear.


                   To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis:

                                        CARSON CITY, April 2, 1862.
MY DEAR MOTHER,--Yours of March 2nd has just been received.  I see I am
in for it again--with Annie.  But she ought to know that I was always
stupid.  She used to try to teach me lessons from the Bible, but I never
could understand them.  Doesn't she remember telling me the story of
Moses, one Sunday, last Spring, and how hard she tried to explain it and
simplify it so that I could understand it--but I couldn't?  And how she
said it was strange that while her ma and her grandma and her uncle Orion
could understand anything in the world, I was so dull that I couldn't
understand the "ea-siest thing?"  And doesn't she remember that finally a
light broke in upon me and I said it was all right--that I knew old Moses
himself--and that he kept a clothing store in Market Street?  And then
she went to her ma and said she didn't know what would become of her
uncle Sam he was too dull to learn anything--ever!  And I'm just as dull
yet.  Now I have no doubt her letter was spelled right, and was correct
in all particulars--but then I had to read it according to my lights; and
they being inferior, she ought to overlook the mistakes I make specially,
as it is not my fault that I wasn't born with good sense.  I am sure she
will detect an encouraging ray of intelligence in that last argument.....

I am waiting here, trying to rent a better office for Orion.  I have got
the refusal after next week of a room on first floor of a fire-proof
brick-rent, eighteen hundred dollars a year.  Don't know yet whether we
can get it or not.  If it is not rented before the week is up, we can.

I was sorry to hear that Dick was killed.  I gave him his first lesson in
the musket drill.  We had half a dozen muskets in our office when it was
over Isbell's Music Rooms.

I hope I am wearing the last white shirt that will embellish my person
for many a day--for I do hope that I shall be out of Carson long before
this reaches you.
                                   Love to all.
                                             Very Respectfully
                                                                 SAM.


     The "Annie" in this letter was his sister Pamela's little daughter;
     long years after, she would be the wife of Charles L. Webster, Mark
     Twain's publishing partner.  "Dick" the reader may remember as Dick
     Hingham, of the Keokuk printing-office; he was killed in charging
     the works at Fort Donelson.

     Clemens was back in Esmeralda when the next letter was written, and
     we begin now to get pictures of that cheerless mining-camp, and to
     know something of the alternate hopes and discouragements of the
     hunt for gold--the miner one day soaring on wings of hope, on the
     next becoming excited, irritable, profane.  The names of new mines
     appear constantly and vanish almost at a touch, suggesting the
     fairy-like evanescence of their riches.

     But a few of the letters here will best speak for themselves; not
     all of them are needed.  It is perhaps unnecessary to say that there
     is no intentional humor in these documents.


                    To Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

                                        ESMERALDA, 13th April, 1862.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--Wasson got here night before last "from the wars."
Tell Lockhart he is not wounded and not killed--is altogether unhurt.
He says the whites left their stone fort before he and Lieut. Noble got
there.  A large amount of provisions and ammunition, which they left
behind them, fell into the hands of the Indians.  They had a pitched
battle with the savages some fifty miles from the fort, in which Scott
(sheriff) and another man was killed.  This was the day before the
soldiers came up with them.  I mean Noble's men, and those under Cols.
Evans and Mayfield, from Los Angeles.  Evans assumed the chief command
--and next morning the forces were divided into three parties, and
marched against the enemy.  Col. Mayfield was killed, and Sergeant
Gillespie, also Noble's colonel was wounded.  The California troops went
back home, and Noble remained, to help drive the stock over here.  And,
as Cousin Sally Dillard says, this is all I know about the fight.

Work not yet begun on the H. and Derby--haven't seen it yet.  It is still
in the snow.  Shall begin on it within 3 or 4 weeks--strike the ledge in
July.  Guess it is good--worth from $30 to $50 a foot in California.

Why didn't you send the "Live Yankee" deed-the very one I wanted?  Have
made no inquiries about it, much.  Don't intend to until I get the deed.
Send it along--by mail--d---n the Express--have to pay three times for
all express matter; once in Carson and twice here.  I don't expect to
take the saddle-bags out of the express office.  I paid twenty-five cts.
for the Express deeds.

Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim on
Last Chance Hill.  Expect he will die.

These mills here are not worth a d---n-except Clayton's--and it is not in
full working trim yet.

Send me $40 or $50--by mail--immediately.

The Red Bird is probably good--can't work on the tunnel on account of
snow.  The "Pugh" I have thrown away--shan't re-locate it.  It is nothing
but bed-rock croppings--too much work to find the ledge, if there is one.
Shan't record the "Farnum" until I know more about it--perhaps not at
all.

"Governor" under the snow.

"Douglas" and "Red Bird" are both recorded.

I have had opportunities to get into several ledges, but refused all but
three--expect to back out of two of them.

Stir yourself as much as possible, and lay up $100 or $15,000, subject to
my call.  I go to work to-morrow, with pick and shovel.  Something's got
to come, by G--, before I let go, here.

Col. Youngs says you must rent Kinkead's room by all means--Government
would rather pay $150 a month for your office than $75 for Gen. North's.
Says you are playing your hand very badly, for either the Government's
good opinion or anybody's else, in keeping your office in a shanty.  Says
put Gov. Nye in your place and he would have a stylish office, and no
objections would ever be made, either.  When old Col. Youngs talks this
way, I think it time to get a fine office.  I wish you would take that
office, and fit it up handsomely, so that I can omit telling people that
by this time you are handsomely located, when I know it is no such thing.

I am living with "Ratio Phillips."  Send him one of those black
portfolios--by the stage, and put a couple of pen-holders and a dozen
steel pens in it.

If you should have occasion to dispose of the long desk before I return,
don't forget to break open the middle drawer and take out my things.
Envelop my black cloth coat in a newspaper and hang it in the back room.

Don't buy anything while I am here--but save up some money for me.  Don't
send any money home.  I shall have your next quarter's salary spent
before you get it, I think.  I mean to make or break here within the next
two or three months.
                                   Yrs.
                                             SAM


The "wars" mentioned in the opening paragraph of this letter were
incident to the trouble concerning the boundary line between California
and Nevada.  The trouble continued for some time, with occasional
bloodshed.  The next letter is an exultant one.  There were few enough of
this sort.  We cannot pretend to keep track of the multiplicity of mines
and shares which lure the gold-hunters, pecking away at the flinty
ledges, usually in the snow.  It has been necessary to abbreviate this
letter, for much of it has lost all importance with the years, and is
merely confusing.  Hope is still high in the writer's heart, and
confidence in his associates still unshaken.  Later he was to lose faith
in "Raish," whether with justice or not we cannot know now.


                     To Orion Clowns, in Carson City:

                                        ESMERALDA, May 11, 1862.
MY DEAR BRO.,--TO use a French expression I have "got my d--d satisfy" at
last.  Two years' time will make us capitalists, in spite of anything.
Therefore, we need fret and fume, and worry and doubt no more, but just
lie still and put up with privations for six months.  Perhaps three
months will "let us out."  Then, if Government refuses to pay the rent on
your new office we can do it ourselves.  We have got to wait six weeks,
anyhow, for a dividend, maybe longer--but that it will come there is no
shadow of a doubt, I have got the thing sifted down to a dead moral
certainty.  I own one-eighth of the new "Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company,"
and money can't buy a foot of it; because I know it to contain our
fortune.  The ledge is six feet wide, and one needs no glass to see gold
and silver in it.  Phillips and I own one half of a segregated claim in
the "Flyaway" discovery, and good interests in two extensions on it.
We put men to work on our part of the discovery yesterday, and last night
they brought us some fine specimens.  Rock taken from ten feet below the
surface on the other part of the discovery, has yielded $150.00 to the
ton in the mill and we are at work 300 feet from their shaft.

May 12--Yours by the mail received last night.  "Eighteen hundred feet in
the C. T. Rice's Company!"  Well, I am glad you did not accept of the 200
feet.  Tell Rice to give it to some poor man.

But hereafter, when anybody holds up a glittering prospect before you,
just argue in this wise, viz: That, if all spare change be devoted to
working the "Monitor" and "Flyaway," 12 months, or 24 at furthest, will
find all our earthly wishes satisfied, so far as money is concerned--and
the more "feet" we have, the more anxiety we must bear--therefore, why
not say "No--d---n your 'prospects,' I wait on a sure thing--and a man
is less than a man, if he can't wait 2 years for a fortune?"  When you
and I came out here, we did not expect '63 or '64 to find us rich men
--and if that proposition had been made, we would have accepted it
gladly.  Now, it is made.

Well, I am willing, now, that "Neary's tunnel," or anybody else's tunnel
shall succeed.  Some of them may beat us a few months, but we shall be on
hand in the fullness of time, as sure as fate.  I would hate to swap
chances with any member of the "tribe"--in fact, I am so lost to all
sense and reason as to be capable of refusing to trade "Flyaway" (with
but 200 feet in the Company of four,) foot for foot for that splendid
"Lady Washington," with its lists of capitalist proprietors, and its
35,000 feet of Priceless ground.

I wouldn't mind being in some of those Clear Creek claims, if I lived in
Carson and we could spare the money.  But I have struck my tent in
Esmeralda, and I care for no mines but those which I can superintend
myself.  I am a citizen here now, and I am satisfied--although R. and I
are strapped and we haven't three days' rations in the house.

Raish is looking anxiously for money and so am I.  Send me whatever you
can spare conveniently--I want it to work the Flyaway with.  My fourth of
that claim only cost me $50, (which isn't paid yet, though,) and I
suppose I could sell it here in town for ten times that amount today, but
I shall probably hold onto it till the cows come home.  I shall work the
"Monitor" and the other claims with my own hands.  I prospected of a
pound of "M," yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe, and got
about ten or twelve cents in gold and silver, besides the other half of
it which we spilt on the floor and didn't get.  The specimen came from
the croppings, but was a choice one, and showed much free gold to the
naked eye.

Well, I like the corner up-stairs office amazingly--provided, it has one
fine, large front room superbly carpeted, for the safe and a $150 desk,
or such a matter--one handsome room amidships, less handsomely gotten up,
perhaps, for records and consultations, and one good-sized bedroom and
adjoining it a kitchen, neither of which latter can be entered by anybody
but yourself--and finally, when one of the ledges begins to pay, the
whole to be kept in parlor order by two likely contrabands at big wages,
the same to be free of expense to the Government.  You want the entire
second story--no less room than you would have had in Harris and Co's.
Make them fix for you before the 1st of July-for maybe you might want to
"come out strong" on the 4th, you know.

No, the Post Office is all right and kept by a gentleman but W. F.
Express isn't.  They charge 25 cts to express a letter from here, but I
believe they have quit charging twice for letters that arrive prepaid.

The "Flyaway" specimen I sent you, (taken by myself from DeKay's shaft,
300 feet from where we are going to sink) cannot be called "choice,"
exactly--say something above medium, to be on the safe side.  But I have
seen exceedingly choice chunks from that shaft.  My intention at first in
sending the Antelope specimen was that you might see that it resembles
the Monitor--but, come to think, a man can tell absolutely nothing about
that without seeing both ledges themselves.  I tried to break a handsome
chunk from a huge piece of my darling Monitor which we brought from the
croppings yesterday, but it all splintered up, and I send you the scraps.
I call that "choice"--any d---d fool would.  Don't ask if it has been
assayed, for it hasn't.  It don't need it.  It is amply able to speak for
itself.  It is six feet wide on top, and traversed through and through
with veins whose color proclaims their worth.  What the devil does a man
want with any more feet when he owns in the Flyaway and the invincible
bomb-proof Monitor?

If I had anything more to say I have forgotten what it was, unless,
perhaps, that I want a sum of money--anywhere from $20 to $150, as soon
as possible.

Raish sends regards.  He or I, one will drop a line to the "Age"
occasionally.  I suppose you saw my letters in the "Enterprise."
                                   Yr.  BRO,
                                             SAM

P. S.  I suppose Pamela never will regain her health, but she could
improve it by coming to California--provided the trip didn't kill her.

You see Bixby is on the flag-ship.  He always was the best pilot on the
Mississippi, and deserves his "posish."  They have done a reckless thing,
though, in putting Sam Bowen on the "Swan"--for if a bomb-shell happens
to come his way, he will infallibly jump overboard.

Send me another package of those envelopes, per Bagley's coat pocket.


     We see how anxious he was for his brother to make a good official
     showing.  If a niggardly Government refused to provide decent
     quarters--no matter; the miners, with gold pouring in, would
     themselves pay for a suite "superbly carpeted," and all kept in
     order by "two likely contrabands"--that is to say, negroes.  Samuel
     Clemens in those days believed in expansion and impressive
     surroundings.  His brother, though also mining mad, was rather
     inclined to be penny wise in the matter of office luxury--not a bad
     idea, as it turned out.

     Orion, by the way, was acquiring "feet" on his own account, and in
     one instance, at least, seems to have won his brother's
     commendation.

     The 'Enterprise' letters mentioned we shall presently hear of again.


                    To Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

                                        ESMERALDA, Sunday, May--, 1862.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--Well, if you haven't "struck it rich--" that is, if the
piece of rock you sent me came from a bona fide ledge--and it looks as if
it did.  If that is a ledge, and you own 200 feet in it, why, it's a big
thing--and I have nothing more to say.  If you have actually made
something by helping to pay somebody's prospecting expenses it is a
wonder of the first magnitude, and deserves to rank as such.

If that rock came from a well-defined ledge, that particular vein must be
at least an inch wide, judging from this specimen, which is fully that
thick.

When I came in the other evening, hungry and tired and ill-natured, and
threw down my pick and shovel, Raish gave me your specimen--said Bagley
brought it, and asked me if it were cinnabar.  I examined it by the
waning daylight, and took the specks of fine gold for sulphurets--wrote
you I did not think much of it--and posted the letter immediately.

But as soon as I looked at it in the broad light of day, I saw my
mistake.  During the week, we have made three horns, got a blow-pipe, &c,
and yesterday, all prepared, we prospected the "Mountain House."  I broke
the specimen in two, and found it full of fine gold inside.  Then we
washed out one-fourth of it, and got a noble prospect.  This we reduced
with the blow-pipe, and got about two cents (herewith enclosed) in pure
gold.

As the fragment prospected weighed rather less than an ounce, this would
give about $500 to the ton.  We were eminently well satisfied.
Therefore, hold on to the "Mountain House," for it is a "big thing."
Touch it lightly, as far as money is concerned, though, for it is well to
reserve the code of justice in the matter of quartz ledges--that is,
consider them all (and their owners) guilty (of "shenanigan") until they
are proved innocent.

P. S.--Monday--Ratio and I have bought one-half of a segregated claim in
the original "Flyaway," for $100--$50 down.  We haven't a cent in the
house.  We two will work the ledge, and have full control, and pay all
expenses.  If you can spare $100 conveniently, let me have it--or $50,
anyhow, considering that I own one fourth of this, it is of course more
valuable than one 1/7 of the "Mountain House," although not so rich ....


     There is too much of a sameness in the letters of this period to use
     all of them.  There are always new claims, and work done, apparently
     without system or continuance, hoping to uncover sudden boundless
     affluence.

     In the next letter and the one following it we get a hint of an
     episode, or rather of two incidents which he combined into an
     episode in Roughing It.  The story as told in that book is an
     account of what might have happened, rather than history.  There was
     never really any money in the "blind lead" of the Wide West claim,
     except that which was sunk in it by unfortunate investors.  Only
     extracts from these letters are given.  The other portions are
     irrelevant and of slight value.


         Extract from a letter to Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

                                                            1862.
Two or three of the old "Salina" company entered our hole on the Monitor
yesterday morning, before our men got there, and took possession, armed
with revolvers.  And according to the d---d laws of this forever d---d
country, nothing but the District Court (and there ain't any) can touch
the matter, unless it assumes the shape of an infernal humbug which they
call "forcible entry and detainer," and in order to bring that about, you
must compel the jumpers to use personal violence toward you!  We went up
and demanded possession, and they refused.  Said they were in the hole,
armed and meant to die for it, if necessary.

I got in with them, and again demanded possession.  They said I might
stay in it as long as I pleased, and work but they would do the same.
I asked one of our company to take my place in the hole, while I went to
consult a lawyer.  He did so.  The lawyer said it was no go.  They must
offer some "force."

Our boys will try to be there first in the morning--in which case they
may get possession and keep it.  Now you understand the shooting scrape
in which Gebhart was killed the other day.  The Clemens Company--all of
us--hate to resort to arms in this matter, and it will not be done until
it becomes a forced hand--but I think that will be the end of it,
never-the-less.


     The mine relocated in this letter was not the "Wide West," but it
     furnished the proper incident.  The only mention of the "Wide West"
     is found in a letter written in July.


         Extract from a letter to Orion Clemens, in Carson City:
                                                                 1862
If I do not forget it, I will send you, per next mail, a pinch of decom.
(decomposed rock) which I pinched with thumb and finger from "Wide West"
ledge awhile ago.  Raish and I have secured 200 out of a 400 ft. in it,
which perhaps (the ledge, I mean) is a spur from the W. W.--our shaft is
about 100 ft.  from the W. W. shaft.  In order to get in, we agreed to
sink 30 ft.  We have sub-let to another man for 50 ft., and we pay for
powder and sharpening tools.


     The "Wide West" claim was forfeited, but there is no evidence to
     show that Clemens and his partners were ever, except in fiction,
     "millionaires for ten days."  The background, the local color, and
     the possibilities are all real enough, but Mark Twain's aim in this,
     as in most of his other reminiscent writing, was to arrange and
     adapt his facts to the needs of a good story.

     The letters of this summer (1862) most of them bear evidence of
     waning confidence in mining as a source of fortune--the miner has
     now little faith in his own judgment, and none at all in that of his
     brother, who was without practical experience.


                 Letter to Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

                                             ESMERALDA, Thursday.
MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours of the 17th, per express, just received.  Part of it
pleased me exceedingly, and part of it didn't.  Concerning the letter,
for instance: You have PROMISED me that you would leave all mining
matters, and everything involving an outlay of money, in my hands.

Sending a man fooling around the country after ledges, for God's sake!
when there are hundreds of feet of them under my nose here, begging for
owners, free of charge.  I don't want any more feet, and I won't touch
another foot--so you see, Orion, as far as any ledges of Perry's are
concerned, (or any other except what I examine first with my own eyes,)
I freely yield my right to share ownership with you.

The balance of your letter, I say, pleases me exceedingly.  Especially
that about the H. and D. being worth from $30 to $50 in Cal.  It pleases
me because, if the ledges prove to be worthless, it will be a pleasant
reflection to know that others were beaten worse than ourselves.  Raish
sold a man 30 feet, yesterday, at $20 a foot, although I was present at
the sale, and told the man the ground wasn't worth a d---n.  He said he
had been hankering after a few feet in the H. and D. for a long time, and
he had got them at last, and he couldn't help thinking he had secured a
good thing.  We went and looked at the ledges, and both of them
acknowledged that there was nothing in them but good "indications."  Yet
the owners in the H. and D.  will part with anything else sooner than
with feet in these ledges.  Well, the work goes slowly--very slowly on,
in the tunnel, and we'll strike it some day.  But--if we "strike it
rich,"--I've lost my guess, that's all.  I expect that the way it got so
high in Cal. was, that Raish's brother, over there was offered $750.00
for 20 feet of it, and he refused .....

Couldn't go on the hill today.  It snowed.  It always snows here, I
expect.

Don't you suppose they have pretty much quit writing, at home?

When you receive your next 1/4 yr's salary, don't send any of it here
until after you have told me you have got it.  Remember this.  I am
afraid of that H. and D.

They have struck the ledge in the Live Yankee tunnel, and I told the
President, Mr. Allen, that it wasn't as good as the croppings.  He said
that was true enough, but they would hang to it until it did prove rich.
He is much of a gentleman, that man Allen.

And ask Gaslerie why the devil he don't send along my commission as
Deputy Sheriff.  The fact of my being in California, and out of his
country, wouldn't amount to a d---n with me, in the performance of my
official duties.

I have nothing to report, at present, except that I shall find out all I
want to know about this locality before I leave it.

How do the Records pay?
                              Yr.  Bro.
                                        SAM.


     In one of the foregoing letters--the one dated May 11 there is a
     reference to the writer's "Enterprise Letters."  Sometimes, during
     idle days in the camp, the miner had followed old literary impulses
     and written an occasional burlesque sketch, which he had signed
     "Josh," and sent to the Territorial Enterprise, at Virginia City.
     --[One contribution was sent to a Keokuk paper, The Gate City, and a
     letter written by Mrs. Jane Clemens at the time would indicate that
     Mark Twain's mother did not always approve of her son's literary
     efforts.  She hopes that he will do better, and some time write
     something "that his kin will be proud of."]--The rough, vigorous
     humor of these had attracted some attention, and Orion, pleased with
     any measure of success that might come to his brother, had allowed
     the authorship of them to become known.  When, in July, the
     financial situation became desperate, the Esmeralda miner was moved
     to turn to literature for relief.  But we will let him present the
     situation himself.


                    To Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

                                        ESMERALDA, July 23d, 1862.
MY DEAR BRO.,--No, I don't own a foot in the "Johnson" ledge--I will tell
the story some day in a more intelligible manner than Tom has told it.
You needn't take the trouble to deny Tom's version, though.  I own 25
feet (1-16) of the 1st east ex. on it--and Johnson himself has contracted
to find the ledge for 100 feet.  Contract signed yesterday.  But as the
ledge will be difficult to find he is allowed six months to find it in.
An eighteenth of the Ophir was a fortune to John D. Winters--and the
Ophir can't beat the Johnson any.....

My debts are greater than I thought for; I bought $25 worth of clothing,
and sent $25 to Higbie, in the cement diggings.  I owe about $45 or $50,
and have got about $45 in my pocket.  But how in the h--l I am going to
live on something over $100 until October or November, is singular.  The
fact is, I must have something to do, and that shortly, too.....

Now write to the Sacramento Union folks, or to Marsh, and tell them I'll
write as many letters a week as they want, for $10 a week--my board must
be paid.  Tell them I have corresponded with the N. Orleans Crescent, and
other papers--and the Enterprise.  California is full of people who have
interests here, and it's d---d seldom they hear from this country.
I can't write a specimen letter--now, at any rate--I'd rather undertake
to write a Greek poem.  Tell 'em the mail and express leave three times a
week, and it costs from 25 to 50 cents to send letters by the blasted
express.  If they want letters from here, who'll run from morning till
night collecting materials cheaper.  I'll write a short letter twice a
week, for the present, for the "Age," for $5 per week.  Now it has been a
long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shall be a long
time before I loaf another year.....

If I get the other 25 feet in the Johnson ex., I shan't care a d---n.
I'll be willing to curse awhile and wait.  And if I can't move the bowels
of those hills this fall, I will come up and clerk for you until I get
money enough to go over the mountains for the winter.
                                   Yr.  Bro.
                                                  SAM.


     The Territorial Enterprise at Virginia City was at this time owned
     by Joseph T. Goodman, who had bought it on the eve of the great
     Comstock silver-mining boom, and from a struggling, starving sheet
     had converted it into one of the most important--certainly the most
     picturesque-papers on the coast.  The sketches which the Esmeralda
     miner had written over the name of "Josh" fitted into it exactly,
     and when a young man named Barstow, in the business office, urged
     Goodman to invite "Josh" to join their staff, the Enterprise owner
     readily fell in with the idea.  Among a lot of mining matters of no
     special interest, Clemens, July 30th, wrote his brother: "Barstow
     has offered me the post as local reporter for the Enterprise at $25
     a week, and I have written him that I will let him know next mail,
     if possible."

     In Roughing It we are told that the miner eagerly accepted the
     proposition to come to Virginia City, but the letters tell a
     different story.  Mark Twain was never one to abandon any
     undertaking easily.  His unwillingness to surrender in a lost cause
     would cost him more than one fortune in the years to come.  A week
     following the date of the foregoing he was still undecided.


                    To Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

                                        ESMERALDA, Aug. 7, 1862.
MY DEAR BRO,--Barstow wrote that if I wanted the place I could have it.
I wrote him that I guessed I would take it, and asked him how long before
I must come up there.  I have not heard from him since.

Now, I shall leave at mid-night tonight, alone and on foot for a walk of
60 or 70 miles through a totally uninhabited country, and it is barely
possible that mail facilities may prove infernally "slow" during the few
weeks I expect to spend out there.  But do you write Barstow that I have
left here for a week or so, and in case he should want me he must write
me here, or let me know through you.

The Contractors say they will strike the Fresno next week.  After fooling
with those assayers a week, they concluded not to buy "Mr. Flower" at
$50, although they would have given five times the sum for it four months
ago.  So I have made out a deed for one half of all Johnny's ground and
acknowledged and left in judge F. K. Becktel's hands, and if judge Turner
wants it he must write to Becktel and pay him his Notary fee of $1.50.
I would have paid that fee myself, but I want money now as I leave town
tonight.  However, if you think it isn't right, you can pay the fee to
judge Turner yourself.

Hang to your money now.  I may want some when I get back.....

See that you keep out of debt-to anybody.  Bully for B.!  Write him that
I would write him myself, but I am to take a walk tonight and haven't
time.  Tell him to bring his family out with him.  He can rely upon what
I say--and I say the land has lost its ancient desolate appearance; the
rose and the oleander have taken the place of the departed sage-bush; a
rich black loam, garnished with moss, and flowers, and the greenest of
grass, smiles to Heaven from the vanished sand-plains; the "endless
snows" have all disappeared, and in their stead, or to repay us for their
loss, the mountains rear their billowy heads aloft, crowned with a
fadeless and eternal verdure; birds, and fountains, and trees-tropical
bees--everywhere!--and the poet dreamt of Nevada when he wrote:

               "and Sharon waves, in solemn praise,
               Her silent groves of palm."

and today the royal Raven listens in a dreamy stupor to the songs of
the thrush and the nightingale and the canary--and shudders when the
gaudy-plumaged birds of the distant South sweep by him to the orange
groves of Carson.  Tell him he wouldn't recognize the d--d country.
He should bring his family by all means.

I intended to write home, but I haven't done it.
                                             Yr.  Bro.
                                                       SAM.


     In this letter we realize that he had gone into the wilderness to
     reflect--to get a perspective on the situation.  He was a great
     walker in those days, and sometimes with Higbie, sometimes alone,
     made long excursions.  One such is recorded in Roughing It, the trip
     to Mono Lake.  We have no means of knowing where his seventy-mile
     tour led him now, but it is clear that he still had not reached a
     decision on his return.  Indeed, we gather that he is inclined to
     keep up the battle among the barren Esmeralda hills.


        Last mining letter; written to Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                   ESMERALDA, CAL., Aug. 15, 1862.
MY DEAR SISTER,-I mailed a letter to you and Ma this morning, but since
then I have received yours to Orion and me.  Therefore, I must answer
right away, else I may leave town without doing it at all.  What in
thunder are pilot's wages to me? which question, I beg humbly to observe,
is of a general nature, and not discharged particularly at you.  But it
is singular, isn't it, that such a matter should interest Orion, when it
is of no earthly consequence to me?  I never have once thought of
returning home to go on the river again, and I never expect to do any
more piloting at any price.  My livelihood must be made in this country
--and if I have to wait longer than I expected, let it be so--I have no
fear of failure.  You know I have extravagant hopes, for Orion tells you
everything which he ought to keep to himself--but it's his nature to do
that sort of thing, and I let him alone.  I did think for awhile of going
home this fall--but when I found that that was and had been the cherished
intention and the darling aspiration every year, of these old care-worn
Californians for twelve weary years--I felt a little uncomfortable, but
I stole a march on Disappointment and said I would not go home this fall.
I will spend the winter in San Francisco, if possible.  Do not tell any
one that I had any idea of piloting again at present--for it is all a
mistake.  This country suits me, and--it shall suit me, whether or no....

Dan Twing and I and Dan's dog, "cabin" together--and will continue to do
so for awhile--until I leave for--

The mansion is 10x12, with a "domestic" roof.  Yesterday it rained--the
first shower for five months.  "Domestic," it appears to me, is not
water-proof.  We went outside to keep from getting wet.  Dan makes the
bed when it is his turn to do it--and when it is my turn, I don't, you
know.  The dog is not a good hunter, and he isn't worth shucks to watch
--but he scratches up the dirt floor of the cabin, and catches flies, and
makes himself generally useful in the way of washing dishes.  Dan gets up
first in the morning and makes a fire--and I get up last and sit by it,
while he cooks breakfast.  We have a cold lunch at noon, and I cook
supper--very much against my will.  However, one must have one good meal
a day, and if I were to live on Dan's abominable cookery, I should lose
my appetite, you know.  Dan attended Dr. Chorpenning's funeral yesterday,
and he felt as though he ought to wear a white shirt--and we had a jolly
good time finding such an article.  We turned over all our traps, and he
found one at last--but I shall always think it was suffering from yellow
fever.  He also found an old black coat, greasy, and wrinkled to that
degree that it appeared to have been quilted at some time or other.  In
this gorgeous costume he attended the funeral.  And when he returned, his
own dog drove him away from the cabin, not recognizing him.  This is
true.

You would not like to live in a country where flour was $40 a barrel?
Very well; then, I suppose you would not like to live here, where flour
was $100 a barrel when I first came here.  And shortly afterwards, it
couldn't be had at any price--and for one month the people lived on
barley, beans and beef--and nothing beside.  Oh, no--we didn't luxuriate
then!  Perhaps not.  But we said wise and severe things about the vanity
and wickedness of high living.  We preached our doctrine and practised
it.  Which course I respectfully recommend to the clergymen of St. Louis.

Where is Beack Jolly?--[a pilot]--and Bixby?
                                             Your Brother
                                                            SAM.




IV

LETTERS 1863-64.  "MARK TWAIN."  COMSTOCK JOURNALISM.  ARTEMUS WARD

There is a long hiatus in the correspondence here.  For a space of many
months there is but one letter to continue the story.  Others were
written, of course, but for some reason they have not survived.  It was
about the end of August (1862) when the miner finally abandoned the
struggle, and with his pack on his shoulders walked the one and thirty
miles over the mountains to Virginia City, arriving dusty, lame, and
travel-stained to claim at last his rightful inheritance.  At the
Enterprise office he was welcomed, and in a brief time entered into his
own.  Goodman, the proprietor, himself a man of great ability, had
surrounded himself with a group of gay-hearted fellows, whose fresh, wild
way of writing delighted the Comstock pioneers far more than any sober
presentation of mere news.  Samuel Clemens fitted exactly into this
group.  By the end of the year he had become a leader of it.  When he
asked to be allowed to report the coming Carson legislature, Goodman
consented, realizing that while Clemens knew nothing of parliamentary
procedure, he would at least make the letters picturesque.

It was in the midst of this work that he adopted the name which he was to
make famous throughout the world.  The story of its adoption has been
fully told elsewhere and need not be repeated here.--[See Mark Twain: A
Biography, by the same author; Chapter XL.]

"Mark Twain" was first signed to a Carson letter, February 2, 1863, and
from that time was attached to all of Samuel Clemens's work.  The letters
had already been widely copied, and the name now which gave them
personality quickly obtained vogue.  It was attached to himself as well
as to the letters; heretofore he had been called Sam or Clemens, now he
became almost universally Mark Twain and Mark.

This early period of Mark Twain's journalism is full of delicious
history, but we are permitted here to retell only such of it as will
supply connection to the infrequent letters.  He wrote home briefly in
February, but the letter contained nothing worth preserving.  Then two
months later he gives us at least a hint of his employment.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                             VIRGINIA, April 11, 1863.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--It is very late at night, and I am writing
in my room, which is not quite as large or as nice as the one I had at
home.  My board, washing and lodging cost me seventy-five dollars a
month.

I have just received your letter, Ma, from Carson--the one in which you
doubt my veracity about the statements I made in a letter to you.  That's
right.  I don't recollect what the statements were, but I suppose they
were mining statistics.  I have just finished writing up my report for
the morning paper, and giving the Unreliable a column of advice about how
to conduct himself in church, and now I will tell you a few more lies,
while my hand is in.  For instance, some of the boys made me a present of
fifty feet in the East India G. and S. M.  Company ten days ago.  I was
offered ninety-five dollars a foot for it, yesterday, in gold.  I refused
it--not because I think the claim is worth a cent for I don't but because
I had a curiosity to see how high it would go, before people find out how
worthless it is.  Besides, what if one mining claim does fool me?  I have
got plenty more.  I am not in a particular hurry to get rich.  I suppose
I couldn't well help getting rich here some time or other, whether I
wanted to or not.  You folks do not believe in Nevada, and I am glad you
don't.  Just keep on thinking so.

I was at the Gould and Curry mine, the other day, and they had two or
three tons of choice rock piled up, which was valued at $20,000 a ton.
I gathered up a hat-full of chunks, on account of their beauty as
specimens--they don't let everybody supply themselves so liberally.  I
send Mr. Moffett a little specimen of it for his cabinet.  If you don't
know what the white stuff on it is, I must inform you that it is purer
silver than the minted coin.  There is about as much gold in it as there
is silver, but it is not visible.  I will explain to you some day how to
detect it.

Pamela, you wouldn't do for a local reporter--because you don't
appreciate the interest that attaches to names.  An item is of no use
unless it speaks of some person, and not then, unless that person's name
is distinctly mentioned.  The most interesting letter one can write, to
an absent friend, is one that treats of persons he has been acquainted
with rather than the public events of the day.  Now you speak of a young
lady who wrote to Hollie Benson that she had seen me; and you didn't
mention her name.  It was just a mere chance that I ever guessed who she
was--but I did, finally, though I don't remember her name, now.  I was
introduced to her in San Francisco by Hon. A. B. Paul, and saw her
afterwards in Gold Hill.  They were a very pleasant lot of girls--she and
her sisters.

P. S.  I have just heard five pistol shots down street--as such things
are in my line, I will go and see about it.

P. S.  No 2--5 A.M.--The pistol did its work well--one man--a Jackson
County Missourian, shot two of my friends, (police officers,) through the
heart--both died within three minutes.  Murderer's name is John Campbell.

     The "Unreliable" of this letter was a rival reporter on whom Mark
     Twain had conferred this name during the legislative session.  His
     real name was Rice, and he had undertaken to criticize Clemens's
     reports.  The brisk reply that Rice's letters concealed with a show
     of parliamentary knowledge a "festering mass of misstatements the
     author of whom should be properly termed the 'Unreliable," fixed
     that name upon him for life.  This burlesque warfare delighted the
     frontier and it did not interfere with friendship.  Clemens and Rice
     were constant associates, though continually firing squibs at each
     other in their respective papers--a form of personal journalism much
     in vogue on the Comstock.

     In the next letter we find these two journalistic "blades" enjoying
     themselves together in the coast metropolis.  This letter is labeled
     "No. 2," meaning, probably, the second from San Francisco, but No. 1
     has disappeared, and even No, 2 is incomplete.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

No. 2--($20.00 Enclosed)
                                        LICK HOUSE, S. F., June 1, '63.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--The Unreliable and myself are still here,
and still enjoying ourselves.  I suppose I know at least a thousand
people here--a, great many of them citizens of San Francisco, but the
majority belonging in Washoe--and when I go down Montgomery street,
shaking hands with Tom, Dick and Harry, it is just like being in Main
street in Hannibal and meeting the old familiar faces.  I do hate to go
back to Washoe.  We fag ourselves completely out every day, and go to
sleep without rocking, every night.  We dine out and we lunch out, and we
eat, drink and are happy--as it were.  After breakfast, I don't often see
the hotel again until midnight--or after.  I am going to the Dickens
mighty fast.  I know a regular village of families here in the house, but
I never have time to call on them.  Thunder! we'll know a little more
about this town, before we leave, than some of the people who live in it.
We take trips across the Bay to Oakland, and down to San Leandro, and
Alameda, and those places; and we go out to the Willows, and Hayes Park,
and Fort Point, and up to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on a
yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht on the Pacific
Coast.  Rice says: "Oh, no--we are not having any fun, Mark--Oh, no, I
reckon not--it's somebody else--it's probably the 'gentleman in the
wagon'!" (popular slang phrase.)  When I invite Rice to the Lick House to
dinner, the proprietors send us champagne and claret, and then we do put
on the most disgusting airs.  Rice says our calibre is too light--we
can't stand it to be noticed!

I rode down with a gentleman to the Ocean House, the other day, to see
the sea horses, and also to listen to the roar of the surf, and watch the
ships drifting about, here, and there, and far away at sea.  When I stood
on the beach and let the surf wet my feet, I recollected doing the same
thing on the shores of the Atlantic--and then I had a proper appreciation
of the vastness of this country--for I had traveled from ocean to ocean
across it.
                         (Remainder missing.)


     Not far from Virginia City there are some warm springs that
     constantly send up jets of steam through fissures in the
     mountainside.  The place was a health resort, and Clemens, always
     subject to bronchial colds, now and again retired there for a cure.

     A letter written in the late summer--a gay, youthful document
     --belongs to one of these periods of convalescence.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

No. 12--$20 enclosed.
                              STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, August 19, '63.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--Ma, you have given my vanity a deadly thrust.
Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as a local
editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and
tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire
to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day."  There's a comment on
human vanity for you!  Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I
could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it.  But I don't
want it.  No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my
place on the "Enterprise" is worth.  If I were not naturally a lazy,
idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year.
But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account.  I lead an easy life,
though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps or not.  Everybody
knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of
the mountains or the other.  And I am proud to say I am the most
conceited ass in the Territory.

You think that picture looks old?  Well, I can't help it--in reality I am
not as old as I was when I was eighteen.

I took a desperate cold more than a week ago, and I seduced Wilson (a
Missouri boy, reporter of the Daily Union,) from his labors, and we went
over to Lake Bigler.  But I failed to cure my cold.  I found the "Lake
House" crowded with the wealth and fashion of Virginia, and I could not
resist the temptation to take a hand in all the fun going.  Those
Virginians--men and women both--are a stirring set, and I found if I went
with them on all their eternal excursions, I should bring the consumption
home with me--so I left, day before yesterday, and came back into the
Territory again.  A lot of them had purchased a site for a town on the
Lake shore, and they gave me a lot.  When you come out, I'll build you a
house on it.  The Lake seems more supernaturally beautiful now, than
ever.  It is the masterpiece of the Creation.

The hotel here at the Springs is not so much crowded as usual, and I am
having a very comfortable time of it.  The hot, white steam puffs up out
of fissures in the earth like the jets that come from a steam-boat's
'scape pipes, and it makes a boiling, surging noise like a steam-boat,
too-hence the name.  We put eggs in a handkerchief and dip them in the
springs--they "soft boil" in 2 Minutes, and boil as hard as a rock in
4 minutes.  These fissures extend more than a quarter of a mile, and the
long line of steam columns looks very pretty.  A large bath house is
built over one of the springs, and we go in it and steam ourselves as
long as we can stand it, and then come out and take a cold shower bath.
You get baths, board and lodging, all for $25 a week--cheaper than living
in Virginia without baths.....
                                   Yrs aft
                                             MARK.


     It was now the autumn of 1863.  Mark Twain was twenty-eight years
     old.  On the Coast he had established a reputation as a gaily
     original newspaper writer.  Thus far, however, he had absolutely no
     literary standing, nor is there any evidence that he had literary
     ambitions; his work was unformed, uncultivated--all of which seems
     strange, now, when we realize that somewhere behind lay the
     substance of immortality.  Rudyard Kipling at twenty-eight had done
     his greatest work.

     Even Joseph Goodman, who had a fine literary perception and a deep
     knowledge of men, intimately associated with Mark Twain as he was,
     received at this time no hint of his greater powers.  Another man on
     the staff of the Enterprise, William Wright, who called himself "Dan
     de Quille," a graceful humorist, gave far more promise, Goodman
     thought, of future distinction.

     It was Artemus Ward who first suspected the value of Mark Twain's
     gifts, and urged him to some more important use of them.  Artemus in
     the course of a transcontinental lecture tour, stopped in Virginia
     City, and naturally found congenial society on the Enterprise staff.
     He had intended remaining but a few days, but lingered three weeks,
     a period of continuous celebration, closing only with the holiday
     season.  During one night of final festivities, Ward slipped away
     and gave a performance on his own account.  His letter to Mark
     Twain, from Austin, Nevada, written a day or two later, is most
     characteristic.


                   Artemus Ward's letter to Mark Twain:

                                             AUSTIN, Jan. 1, '64.
MY DEAREST LOVE,--I arrived here yesterday a.m. at 2 o'clock.  It is a
wild, untamable place, full of lionhearted boys.  I speak tonight.  See
small bills.

Why did you not go with me and save me that night?--I mean the night I
left you after that dinner party.  I went and got drunker, beating, I may
say, Alexander the Great, in his most drinkinist days, and I blackened my
face at the Melodeon, and made a gibbering, idiotic speech.  God-dam it!
I suppose the Union will have it.  But let it go.  I shall always
remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as all others must or
rather cannot be, as it were.

Love to Jo. Goodman and Dan.  I shall write soon, a powerfully convincing
note to my friends of "The Mercury."  Your notice, by the way, did much
good here, as it doubtlessly will elsewhere.  The miscreants of the Union
will be batted in the snout if they ever dare pollute this rapidly rising
city with their loathsome presence.

Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor.

Do not, sir--do not flatter yourself that you are the only
chastely-humorous writer onto the Pacific slopes.

Good-bye, old boy--and God bless you!  The matter of which I spoke to you
so earnestly shall be just as earnestly attended to--and again with very
many warm regards for Jo. and Dan., and regards to many of the good
friends we met.
                         I am Faithfully, gratefully yours,
                                                  ARTEMUS WARD.


     The Union which Ward mentions was the rival Virginia.  City paper;
     the Mercury was the New York Sunday Mercury, to which he had urged
     Mark Twain to contribute.  Ward wrote a second letter, after a siege
     of illness at Salt Lake City.  He was a frail creature, and three
     years later, in London, died of consumption.  His genius and
     encouragement undoubtedly exerted an influence upon Mark Twain.
     Ward's second letter here follows.


                      Artemus Ward to S. L. Clemens:

                                        SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 21, '64.
MY DEAR MARK,--I have been dangerously ill for the past two weeks here,
of congestive fever.  Very grave fears were for a time entertained of my
recovery, but happily the malady is gone, though leaving me very, very
weak.  I hope to be able to resume my journey in a week or so.  I think
I shall speak in the Theater here, which is one of the finest
establishments of the kind in America.

The Saints have been wonderfully kind to me, I could not have been better
or more tenderly nursed at home--God bless them!

I am still exceedingly weak--can't write any more.  Love to Jo and Dan,
and all the rest.  Write me at St. Louis.
                                        Always yours,
                                                  ARTEMUS WARD.


     If one could only have Mark Twain's letters in reply to these!  but
     they have vanished and are probably long since dust.  A letter which
     he wrote to his mother assures us that he undertook to follow Ward's
     advice.  He was not ready, however, for serious literary effort.
     The article, sent to the Mercury, was distinctly of the Comstock
     variety; it was accepted, but it apparently made no impression, and
     he did not follow it up.

     For one thing, he was just then too busy reporting the Legislature
     at Carson City and responding to social demands.  From having been a
     scarcely considered unit during the early days of his arrival in
     Carson Mark Twain had attained a high degree of importance in the
     little Nevada capital.  In the Legislature he was a power; as
     correspondent for the Enterprise he was feared and respected as well
     as admired.  His humor, his satire, and his fearlessness were
     dreaded weapons.

     Also, he was of extraordinary popularity.  Orion's wife, with her
     little daughter, Jennie, had come out from the States.  The Governor
     of Nevada had no household in Carson City, and was generally absent.
     Orion Clemens reigned in his stead, and indeed was usually addressed
     as "Governor" Clemens.  His home became the social center of the
     capital, and his brilliant brother its chief ornament.  From the
     roughest of miners of a year before he had become, once more, almost
     a dandy in dress, and no occasion was complete without him.  When
     the two Houses of the Legislature assembled, in January, 1864, a
     burlesque Third House was organized and proposed to hold a session,
     as a church benefit.  After very brief consideration it was decided
     to select Mark Twain to preside at this Third House assembly under
     the title of "Governor," and a letter of invitation was addressed to
     him.  His reply to it follows:


                 To S. Pixley and G. A. Sears, Trustees:

                                        CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864.
GENTLEMEN, Certainly.  If the public can find anything in a grave state
paper worth paying a dollar for, I am willing that they should pay that
amount, or any other; and although I am not a very dusty Christian
myself, I take an absorbing interest in religious affairs, and would
willingly inflict my annual message upon the Church itself if it might
derive benefit thereby.  You can charge what you please; I promise the
public no amusement, but I do promise a reasonable amount of instruction.
I am responsible to the Third House only, and I hope to be permitted to
make it exceedingly warm for that body, without caring whether the
sympathies of the public and the Church be enlisted in their favor, and
against myself, or not.
                                   Respectfully,
                                             MARK TWAIN.


     There is a quality in this letter more suggestive of the later Mark
     Twain than anything that has preceded it.  His Third House address,
     unfortunately, has not been preserved, but those who heard it
     regarded it as a classic.  It probably abounded in humor of the
     frontier sort-unsparing ridicule of the Governor, the Legislature,
     and individual citizens.  It was all taken in good part, of course,
     and as a recognition of his success he received a gold watch, with
     the case properly inscribed to "The Governor of the Third House."
     This was really his first public appearance in a field in which he
     was destined to achieve very great fame.




V

LETTERS 1864-66.  SAN FRANCISCO AND HAWAII

     Life on the Comstock came to an end for Mark Twain in May, 1864.  It
     was the time of The Flour Sack Sanitary Fund, the story of which he
     has told in Roughing It.  He does not, however, refer to the
     troubles which this special fund brought upon himself.  Coming into
     the Enterprise office one night, after a gay day of "Fund"
     celebration, Clemens wrote, for next day's paper, a paragraph
     intended to be merely playful, but which proved highly offending to
     certain ladies concerned with the flour-sack enterprise.  No files
     of the paper exist today, so we cannot judge of the quality of humor
     that stirred up trouble.

     The trouble, however, was genuine enough, Virginia's rival paper
     seized upon the chance to humiliate its enemy, and presently words
     were passed back and forth until nothing was left to write but a
     challenge.  The story of this duel, which did not come off, has been
     quite fully told elsewhere, both by Mark Twain and the present
     writer; but the following letter--a revelation of his inner feelings
     in the matter of his offense--has never before been published.


                     To Mrs. Cutler, in Carson City:

                                        VIRGINIA, May 23rd, 1864.
MRS. W. K.  CUTLER:

MADAM,--I address a lady in every sense of the term.  Mrs. Clemens has
informed me of everything that has occurred in Carson in connection with
that unfortunate item of mine about the Sanitary Funds accruing from the
ball, and from what I can understand, you are almost the only lady in
your city who has understood the circumstances under which my fault was
committed, or who has shown any disposition to be lenient with me.  Had
the note of the ladies been properly worded, I would have published an
ample apology instantly--and possibly I might even have done so anyhow,
had that note arrived at any other time--but it came at a moment when I
was in the midst of what ought to have been a deadly quarrel with the
publishers of the Union, and I could not come out and make public
apologies to any one at such a time.  It is bad policy to do it even now
(as challenges have already passed between myself and a proprietor of the
Union, and the matter is still in abeyance,) but I suppose I had better
say a word or two to show the ladies that I did not wilfully and
maliciously do them a wrong.

But my chief object, Mrs. Cutler, in writing you this note (and you will
pardon the liberty I have taken,) was to thank you very kindly and
sincerely for the consideration you have shown me in this matter, and for
your continued friendship for Mollie while others are disposed to
withdraw theirs on account of a fault for which I alone am responsible.
                              Very truly yours,
                                             SAM. L. CLEMENS.


     The matter did not end with the failure of the duel.  A very strict
     law had just been passed, making it a felony even to send or accept
     a challenge.  Clemens, on the whole, rather tired of Virginia City
     and Carson, thought it a good time to go across the mountains to San
     Francisco.  With Steve Gillis, a printer, of whom he was very fond
     --an inveterate joker, who had been more than half responsible for
     the proposed duel, and was to have served as his second--he took the
     stage one morning, and in due time was in the California metropolis,
     at work on the Morning Call.

     Clemens had been several times in San Francisco, and loved the
     place.  We have no letter of that summer, the first being dated
     several months after his arrival.  He was still working on the Call
     when it was written, and contributing literary articles to the
     Californian, of which Bret Harte, unknown to fame, was editor.
     Harte had his office just above the rooms of the Call, and he and
     Clemens were good friends.  San Francisco had a real literary group
     that, for a time at least, centered around the offices of the Golden
     Era.  In a letter that follows Clemens would seem to have scorned
     this publication, but he was a frequent contributor to it at one
     period.  Joaquin Miller was of this band of literary pioneers; also
     Prentice Mulford, Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, and
     Orpheus C.  Kerr.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                                  Sept. 25, 1864.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--You can see by my picture that this superb
climate agrees with me.  And it ought, after living where I was never out
of sight of snow peaks twenty-four hours during three years.  Here we
have neither snow nor cold weather; fires are never lighted, and yet
summer clothes are never worn--you wear spring clothing the year round.

Steve Gillis, who has been my comrade for two years, and who came down
here with me, is to be married, in a week or two, to a very pretty girl
worth $130,000 in her own right--and then I shall be alone again, until
they build a house, which they will do shortly.

We have been here only four months, yet we have changed our lodgings five
times, and our hotel twice.  We are very comfortably fixed where we are,
now, and have no fault to find with the rooms or with the people--we are
the only lodgers in a well-to-do private family, with one grown daughter
and a piano in the parlor adjoining our room.  But I need a change, and
must move again.  I have taken rooms further down the street.  I shall
stay in this little quiet street, because it is full of gardens and
shrubbery, and there are none but dwelling houses in it.

I am taking life easy, now, and I mean to keep it up for awhile.  I don't
work at night any more.  I told the "Call" folks to pay me $25 a week and
let me work only in daylight.  So I get up at ten every morning, and quit
work at five or six in the afternoon.  You ask if I work for greenbacks?
Hardly.  What do you suppose I could do with greenbacks here?

I have engaged to write for the new literary paper--the "Californian"
--same pay I used to receive on the "Golden Era"--one article a week,
fifty dollars a month.  I quit the "Era," long ago.  It wasn't high-toned
enough.  The "Californian" circulates among the highest class of the
community, and is the best weekly literary paper in the United States
--and I suppose I ought to know.

I work as I always did--by fits and starts.  I wrote two articles last
night for the Californian, so that lets me out for two weeks.  That would
be about seventy-five dollars, in greenbacks, wouldn't it?

Been down to San Jose (generally pronounced Sannozay--emphasis on last
syllable)--today fifty miles from here, by railroad.  Town of 6,000
inhabitants, buried in flowers and shrubbery.  The climate is finer than
ours here, because it is not so close to the ocean, and is protected from
the winds by the coast range.

I had an invitation today, to go down on an excursion to San Luis Obispo,
and from thence to the city of Mexico, to be gone six or eight weeks, or
possibly longer, but I could not accept, on account of my contract to act
as chief mourner or groomsman at Steve's wedding.

I have triumphed.  They refused me and other reporters some information
at a branch of the Coroner's office--Massey's undertaker establishment,
a few weeks ago.  I published the wickedest article on them I ever wrote
in my life, and you can rest assured we got all the information we wanted
after that.

By the new census, San Francisco has a population of 130,000.  They don't
count the hordes of Chinamen.
                                   Yrs aftly,
                                             SAM.


I send a picture for Annie, and one for Aunt Ella--that is, if she will
have it.


     Relations with the Call ceased before the end of the year, though
     not in the manner described in Roughing It.  Mark Twain loved to
     make fiction of his mishaps, and to show himself always in a bad
     light.  As a matter of fact, he left the Call with great
     willingness, and began immediately contributing a daily letter to
     the Enterprise, which brought him a satisfactory financial return.

     In the biographical sketch with which this volume opens, and more
     extendedly elsewhere, has been told the story of the trouble growing
     out of the Enterprise letters, and of Mark Twain's sojourn with
     James Gillis in the Tuolumne Hills.  Also how, in the frowsy hotel
     at Angel's Camp, he heard the frog anecdote that would become the
     corner-stone of his fame.  There are no letters of this period--only
     some note-book entries.  It is probable that he did not write home,
     believing, no doubt, that he had very little to say.

     For more than a year there is not a line that has survived.  Yet it
     had been an important year; the jumping frog story, published in New
     York, had been reprinted East and West, and laughed over in at least
     a million homes.  Fame had not come to him, but it was on the way.

     Yet his outlook seems not to have been a hopeful one.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                        SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I do not know what to write; my life is so
uneventful.  I wish I was back there piloting up and down the river
again.  Verily, all is vanity and little worth--save piloting.

To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused for
thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a
villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on!  "Jim Smiley and His
Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but to please
Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to appear in his
book.

But no matter.  His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally speaking,
and it could be no credit to either of us to appear between its covers.

This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco
Alta:

(Clipping pasted in.)

     "Mark Twain's story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called
     'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,' has set all New York in a roar,
     and he may be said to have made his mark.  I have been asked fifty
     times about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and
     near.  It is voted the best thing of the day.  Cannot the
     Californian afford to keep Mark all to itself?  It should not let
     him scintillate so widely without first being filtered through the
     California press."

The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co.  gave the sketch to the
Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book.

Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in
this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte,
I think, though he denies it, along with the rest.  He wants me to club a
lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, and publish a book.
I wouldn't do it, only he agrees to take all the trouble.  But I want to
know whether we are going to make anything out of it, first.  However, he
has written to a New York publisher, and if we are offered a bargain that
will pay for a month's labor we will go to work and prepare the volume
for the press.
                                   Yours affy,
                                             SAM.


     Bret Harte and Clemens had by this time quit the Californian,
     expecting to contribute to Eastern periodicals.  Clemens, however,
     was not yet through with Coast journalism.  There was much interest
     just at this time in the Sandwich Islands, and he was selected by
     the foremost Sacramento paper to spy out the islands and report
     aspects and conditions there.  His letters home were still
     infrequent, but this was something worth writing.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                   SAN FRANCISCO, March 5th, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I start to do Sandwich Islands day after
tomorrow, (I suppose Annie is geographer enough by this time to find them
on the map), in the steamer "Ajax."  We shall arrive there in about
twelve days.  My friends seem determined that I shall not lack
acquaintances, for I only decided today to go, and they have already sent
me letters of introduction to everybody down there worth knowing.  I am
to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the great cataracts and
the volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters to the
Sacramento Union--for which they pay me as much money as I would get if I
staid at home.

If I come back here I expect to start straight across the continent by
way of the Columbia river, the Pend d'Oreille Lakes, through Montana and
down the Missouri river,--only 200 miles of land travel from San
Francisco to New Orleans.
                              Goodbye for the present.
                                        Yours,
                                                  SAM.


     His home letters from the islands are numerous enough; everything
     there being so new and so delightful that he found joy in telling of
     it; also, he was still young enough to air his triumphs a little,
     especially when he has dined with the Grand Chamberlain and is going
     to visit the King!

     The languorous life of the islands exactly suited Mask Twain.  All
     his life he remembered them--always planning to return, some day, to
     stay there until he died.  In one of his note-books he wrote: "Went
     with Mr. Dam to his cool, vine-shaded home; no care-worn or eager,
     anxious faces in this land of happy contentment.  God, what a
     contrast with California and the Washoe!"

     And again:

     "Oh, Islands there are on the face of the deep
     Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep."

     The letters tell the story of his sojourn, which stretched itself
     into nearly five months.

           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                              HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, April 3, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been here two or three weeks, and like
the beautiful tropical climate better and better.  I have ridden on
horseback all over this island (Oahu) in the meantime, and have visited
all the ancient battle-fields and other places of interest.  I have got a
lot of human bones which I took from one of these battle-fields--I guess
I will bring you some of them.  I went with the American Minister and
took dinner this evening with the King's Grand Chamberlain, who is
related to the royal family, and although darker than a mulatto, he has
an excellent English education and in manners is an accomplished
gentleman.  The dinner was as ceremonious as any I ever attended in
California--five regular courses, and five kinds of wine and one of
brandy.  He is to call for me in the morning with his carriage, and we
will visit the King at the palace--both are good Masons--the King is a
Royal Arch Mason.  After dinner tonight they called in the "singing
girls," and we had some beautiful music; sung in the native tongue.

The steamer I came here in sails tomorrow, and as soon as she is gone I
shall sail for the other islands of the group and visit the great
volcano--the grand wonder of the world.  Be gone two months.
                                        Yrs.
                                                  SAM.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                   WAILUKU SUGAR PLANTATION,
                                   ISLAND OF MAUI, H. I., May 4,1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--11 O'clock at night.--This is the
infernalist darkest country, when the moon don't shine; I stumbled and
fell over my horse's lariat a minute ago and hurt my leg, so I must stay
here tonight.

I got the same leg hurt last week; I said I hadn't got hold of a spirited
horse since I had been on the island, and one of the proprietors loaned
me a big vicious colt; he was altogether too spirited; I went to tighten
the cinch before mounting him, when he let out with his left leg (?) and
kicked me across a ten-acre lot.  A native rubbed and doctored me so well
that I was able to stand on my feet in half an hour.  It was then half
after four and I had an appointment to go seven miles and get a girl and
take her to a card party at five.

I have been clattering around among the plantations for three weeks, now,
and next week I am going to visit the extinct crater of Mount Haleakala
--the largest in the world; it is ten miles to the foot of the mountain;
it rises 10,000 feet above the valley; the crater is 29 miles in
circumference and 1,000 feet deep.  Seen from the summit, the city
of St. Louis would look like a picture in the bottom of it.

As soon as I get back from Haleakala (pronounced Hally-ekka-lah) I will
sail for Honolulu again and thence to the Island of Hawaii (pronounced
Hah-wy-ye,) to see the greatest active volcano in the world--that of
Kilauea (pronounced Kee-low-way-ah)--and from thence back to San
Francisco--and then, doubtless, to the States.  I have been on this trip
two months, and it will probably be two more before I get back to
California.
                                   Yrs affy
                                             SAM.


     He was having a glorious time--one of the most happy, carefree
     adventures of his career.  No form of travel or undertaking could
     discountenance Mark Twain at thirty.


                  To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

                                             HONOLULU, May 22, 1866.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I have just got back from a sea voyage--from the
beautiful island of Maui, I have spent five weeks there, riding backwards
and forwards among the sugar plantations--looking up the splendid scenery
and visiting the lofty crater of Haleakala.  It has been a perfect
jubilee to me in the way of pleasure.

I have not written a single line, and have not once thought of business,
or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness.  Few such months
come in a lifetime.

I set sail again, a week hence, for the island of Hawaii, to see the
great active volcano of Kilauea.  I shall not get back here for four or
five weeks, and shall not reach San Francisco before the latter part of
July.

So it is no use to wait for me to go home.  Go on yourselves.

If I were in the east now, I could stop the publication of a piratical
book which has stolen some of my sketches.

It is late-good-bye, Mollie,
                                   Yr Bro
                                             SAM.


          To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St.  Louis:

                              HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, June 21,1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have just got back from a hard trip through
the Island of Hawaii, begun on the 26th of May and finished on the 18th
of June--only six or seven days at sea--all the balance horse-back, and
the hardest mountain road in the world.  I staid at the volcano about a
week and witnessed the greatest eruption that has occurred for years.
I lived well there.  They charge $4 a day for board, and a dollar or two
extra for guides and horses.  I had a pretty good time.  They didn't
charge me anything.  I have got back sick--went to bed as soon as I
arrived here--shall not be strong again for several days yet.  I rushed
too fast.  I ought to have taken five or six weeks on that trip.

A week hence I start for the Island of Kauai, to be gone three weeks and
then I go back to California.

The Crown Princess is dead and thousands of natives cry and wail and
dance and dance for the dead, around the King's Palace all night and
every night.  They will keep it up for a month and then she will be
buried.

Hon. Anson Burlingame, U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh,
Minister to Japan, with their families and suites, have just arrived here
en route.  They were going to do me the honor to call on me this morning,
and that accounts for my being out of bed now.  You know what condition
my room is always in when you are not around--so I climbed out of bed and
dressed and shaved pretty quick and went up to the residence of the
American Minister and called on them.  Mr. Burlingame told me a good deal
about Hon. Jere Clemens and that Virginia Clemens who was wounded in a
duel.  He was in Congress years with both of them.  Mr. B. sent for his
son, to introduce him--said he could tell that frog story of mine as well
as anybody.  I told him I was glad to hear it for I never tried to tell
it myself without making a botch of it.  At his request I have loaned Mr.
Burlingame pretty much everything I ever wrote.  I guess he will be an
almighty wise man by the time he wades through that lot.

If the New United States Minister to the Sandwich Islands (Hon. Edwin
McCook,) were only here now, so that I could get his views on this new
condition of Sandwich Island politics, I would sail for California at
once.  But he will not arrive for two weeks yet and so I am going to
spend that interval on the island of Kauai.

I stopped three days with Hon. Mr. Cony, Deputy Marshal of the Kingdom,
at Hilo, Hawaii, last week and by a funny circumstance he knew everybody
that I ever knew in Hannibal and Palmyra.  We used to sit up all night
talking and then sleep all day.  He lives like a Prince.  Confound that
Island!  I had a streak of fat and a streak of lean all over it--got lost
several times and had to sleep in huts with the natives and live like a
dog.

Of course I couldn't speak fifty words of the language.  Take it
altogether, though, it was a mighty hard trip.
                                        Yours Affect.
                                                       SAM.


     Burlingame and Van Valkenburgh were on their way to their posts,
     and their coming to the islands just at this time proved a most
     important circumstance to Mark Twain.  We shall come to this
     presently, in a summary of the newspaper letters written to the
     Union.  June 27th he wrote to his mother and sister a letter, only a
     fragment of which survives, in which he tells of the arrival in
     Honolulu of the survivors of the ship Hornet, burned on the line,
     and of his securing the first news report of the lost vessel.


  Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                             HONOLULU, June 27, 1866 .
.  .  .  with a gill of water a day to each man.  I got the whole story
from the third mate and two of the sailors.  If my account gets to the
Sacramento Union first, it will be published first all over the United
States, France, England, Russia and Germany--all over the world; I may
say.  You will see it.  Mr. Burlingame went with me all the time, and
helped me question the men--throwing away invitations to dinner with the
princes and foreign dignitaries, and neglecting all sorts of things to
accommodate me.  You know how I appreciate that kind of thing--especially
from such a man, who is acknowledged to have no superior in the
diplomatic circles of the world, and obtained from China concessions in
favor of America which were refused to Sir Frederick Bruce and Envoys of
France and Russia until procured for them by Burlingame himself--which
service was duly acknowledged by those dignitaries.  He hunted me up as
soon as he came here, and has done me a hundred favors since, and says if
I will come to China in the first trip of the great mail steamer next
January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me facilities
that few men can have there for seeing and learning.  He will give me
letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which will be
of service to me in this matter.  I expect to do all this, but I expect
to go to the States first--and from China to the Paris World's Fair.

Don't show this letter.
                                   Yours affly
                                                  SAM.

P. S.  The crown Princess of this Kingdom will be buried tomorrow with
great ceremony--after that I sail in two weeks for California.


     This concludes Mark Twain's personal letters from the islands.
     Of his descriptive news letters there were about twenty, and they
     were regarded by the readers of the Union as distinctly notable.
     Re-reading those old letters to-day it is not altogether easy to
     understand why.  They were set in fine nonpareil type, for one
     thing, which present-day eyes simply refuse at any price, and the
     reward, by present-day standards, is not especially tempting.

     The letters began in the Union with the issue of April the 16th,
     1866.  The first--of date March 18th--tells of the writer's arrival
     at Honolulu.  The humor in it is not always of a high order; it
     would hardly pass for humor today at all.  That the same man who
     wrote the Hawaiian letters in 1866 (he was then over thirty years
     old) could, two years later, have written that marvelous book, the
     Innocents Abroad, is a phenomenon in literary development.

     The Hawaiian letters, however, do show the transition stage between
     the rough elemental humor of the Comstock and the refined and subtle
     style which flowered in the Innocents Abroad.  Certainly Mark
     Twain's genius was finding itself, and his association with the
     refined and cultured personality of Anson Burlingame undoubtedly
     aided in that discovery.  Burlingame pointed out his faults to him,
     and directed him to a better way.  No more than that was needed at
     such a time to bring about a transformation.

     The Sandwich Islands letters, however, must have been precisely
     adapted to their audience--a little more refined than the log
     Comstock, a little less subtle than the Atlantic public--and they
     added materially to his Coast prestige.  But let us consider a
     sample extract from the first Sandwich Islands letter:


Our little band of passengers were as well and thoughtfully cared for by
the friends they left weeping upon the wharf, as ever were any similar
body of pilgrims.  The traveling outfit conferred upon me began with a
naval uniform, continued with a case of wine, a small assortment of
medicinal liquors and brandy, several boxes of cigars, a bunch of
matches, a fine-toothed comb, and a cake of soap, and ended with a pair
of socks.  (N. B.  I gave the soap to Brown, who bit into it, and then.
shook his head and said that, as a general thing, he liked to prospect
curious, foreign dishes, and find out what they were made of, but he
couldn't go that, and threw it overboard.)

     It is nearly impossible to imagine humor in this extract, yet it is
     a fair sample of the entire letter.

     He improves in his next, at least, in description, and gives us a
     picture of the crater.  In this letter, also, he writes well and
     seriously, in a prophetic strain, of the great trade that is to be
     established between San Francisco and Hawaii, and argues for a line
     of steamers between the ports, in order that the islands might be
     populated by Americans, by which course European trade in that
     direction could be superseded.  But the humor in this letter, such
     as it is, would scarcely provoke a smile to-day.

     As the letters continue, he still urges the fostering of the island
     trade by the United States, finds himself impressed by the work of
     the missionaries, who have converted cannibals to Christians, and
     gives picturesque bits of the life and scenery.

     Hawaii was then dominated chiefly by French and English; though the
     American interests were by no means small.

     Extract from letter No. 4:


Cap. Fitch said "There's the king.  That's him in the buggy.  I know him
as far as I can see him."

I had never seen a king, and I naturally took out a note-book and put him
down: "Tall, slender, dark, full-bearded; green frock-coat, with lapels
and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat, broad gold
band around it; royal costume looks too much like livery; this man is not
as fleshy as I thought he was."

I had just got these notes when Cap. Fitch discovered that he'd got hold
of the wrong king, or rather, that he'd got hold of the king's driver,
or a carriage driver of one of the nobility.  The king wasn't present at
all.  It was a great disappointment to me.  I heard afterwards that the
comfortable, easy-going king, Kamehameha V., had been seen sitting on a
barrel on the wharf, the day before, fishing.  But there was no
consolation in that.  That did not restore me my lost king.


     This has something of the flavor of the man we were to know later;
     the quaint, gentle resignation to disappointment which is one of the
     finest touches in his humor.

     Further on he says: "I had not shaved since I left San Francisco.
     As soon as I got ashore I hunted up a striped pole, and shortly
     found one.  I always had a yearning to be a king.  This may never
     be, I suppose, but, at any rate, it will always be a satisfaction to
     me to know that, if I am not a king, I am the next thing to it.
     I have been shaved by the king's barber."

     Honolulu was a place of cats.  He saw cats of every shade and
     variety.  He says: "I saw cats--tomcats, Mary-Ann cats, bobtailed
     cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats,
     gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats,
     spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats,
     groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, armies of cats,
     multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat,
     and lazy, and sound asleep."  Which illustrates another
     characteristic of the humor we were to know later--the humor of
     grotesque exaggeration, in which he was always strong.

     He found the islands during his periods of inaction conducive to
     indolence.  "If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of
     green leaves," he says, "that swathe the stately tamarind right
     before my door, I would idle less, and write more, I think."

     The Union made good use of his letters.  Sometimes it printed them
     on the front page.  Evidently they were popular from the beginning.
     The Union was a fine, handsome paper--beautiful in its minute
     typography, and in its press-work; more beautiful than most papers
     of to-day, with their machine-set type, their vulgar illustrations,
     and their chain-lightning presses.  A few more extracts:

     "The only cigars here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless,
     flavorless things they call Manilas--ten for twenty-five cents--and
     it would take a thousand of them to be worth half the money.  After
     you have smoked about thirty-five dollars' worth of them in the
     forenoon, you feel nothing but a desperate yearning to go out
     somewhere and take a smoke."

     "Captains and ministers form about half the population.  The third
     fourth is composed of Kanakas and mercantile foreigners and their
     families.  The final fourth is made up of high officers of the
     Hawaiian government, and there are just about enough cats to go
     round."

     In No. 6, April the 2d, he says: "An excursion to Diamond Head, and
     the king's cocoanut grove, was planned to-day, at 4.30 P. M., the
     party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies.  They
     all started at the appointed hour except myself.  Somebody remarked
     that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up.
     It was a fortunate circumstance that Cap. Phillips was there with
     his 'turn-out,' as he calls his top buggy that Cap. Cook brought
     here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Cap. Cook came."

     This bit has something the savor of his subsequent work, but, as a
     rule, the humor compares poorly with that which was to come later.

     In No. 7 he speaks of the natives singing American songs--not always
     to his comfort.  "Marching Through Georgia" was one of their
     favorite airs.  He says: "If it had been all the same to Gen.
     Sherman, I wish he had gone around by the way of the Gulf of Mexico,
     instead of marching through Georgia."

     Letters Nos. 8, 9, and 10 were not of special importance.  In No. 10
     he gives some advice to San Francisco as to the treatment of
     whalers.  He says:

     "If I were going to advise San Francisco as to the best strategy to
     employ in order to secure the whaling trade, I should say, 'Cripple
     your facilities for "pulling" sea captains on any pretence that
     sailors can trump up, and show the whaler a little more
     consideration when he is in port.'"

     In No. 11, May 24th, he tells of a trip to the Kalehi Valley, and
     through historic points.  At one place he looked from a precipice
     over which old Kamehameha I. drove the army of Oahu, three-quarters
     of a century before.

     The vegetation and glory of the tropics attracted him.  "In one open
     spot a vine of a species unknown had taken possession of two tall
     dead stumps, and wound around and about them, and swung out from
     their tops, and twined their meeting tendrils together into a
     faultless arch.  Man, with all his art, could not improve upon its
     symmetry."

     He saw Sam Brannan's palace, "The Bungalow," built by one Shillaber
     of San Francisco at a cost of from thirty to forty thousand dollars.
     In its day it had outshone its regal neighbor, the palace of the
     king, but had fallen to decay after passing into Brannan's hands,
     and had become a picturesque Theban ruin by the time of Mark Twain's
     visit.

     In No. 12, June 20th (written May 23d), he tells of the Hawaiian
     Legislature, and of his trip to the island of Maui, where, as he
     says, he never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place
     good-by so regretfully.

     In No. 13 he continues the Legislature, and gives this picture of
     Minister Harris: "He is six feet high, bony and rather slender;
     long, ungainly arms; stands so straight he leans back a little; has
     small side whiskers; his head long, up and down; he has no command
     of language or ideas; oratory all show and pretence; a big washing
     and a small hang-out; weak, insipid, and a damn fool in general."

     In No. 14, June 22d, published July 16th, he tells of the death and
     burial ceremonies of the Princess Victoria K. K., and, what was to
     be of more importance to him, of the arrival of Anson Burlingame,
     U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh, U. S. Minister to
     Japan.  They were to stay ten or fourteen days, he said, but an
     effort would be made to have them stay over July 4th.

     Speaking of Burlingame: "Burlingame is a man who could be esteemed,
     respected, and popular anywhere, no matter whether he was among
     Christians or cannibals."  Then, in the same letter, comes the great
     incident.  "A letter arrived here yesterday, giving a meagre account
     of the arrival, on the Island of Hawaii, of nineteen poor, starving
     wretches, who had been buffeting a stormy sea, in an open boat, for
     forty-three days.  Their ship, the Hornet, from New York, with a
     quantity of kerosene on board had taken fire and burned in Lat. 2d.
     north, and Long. 35d. west.  When they had been entirely out of
     provisions for a day or two, and the cravings of hunger become
     insufferable, they yielded to the ship-wrecked mariner's fearful and
     awful alternative, and solemnly drew lots to determine who of their
     number should die, to furnish food for his comrades; and then the
     morning mists lifted, and they saw land.  They are being cared for
     at Sanpahoe (Not yet corroborated)."

     The Hornet disaster was fully told in his letter of June 27th.  The
     survivors were brought to Honolulu, and with the assistance of the
     Burlingame party, Clemens, laid up with saddle boils, was carried on
     a stretcher to the hospital, where, aided by Burlingame, he
     interviewed the shipwrecked men, securing material for the most
     important piece of serious writing he had thus far performed.
     Letter No. 15 to the Union--of date June 25th--occupied the most of
     the first page in the issue of July 19.  It was a detailed account
     of the sufferings of officers and crew, as given by the third
     officer and members of the crew.

     From letter No. 15:

In the postscript of a letter which I wrote two or three days ago, and
sent by the ship "Live Yankee," I gave you the substance of a letter
received here from Hilo, by Walker Allen and Co., informing them that a
boat, containing fifteen men in a helpless and starving condition, had
drifted ashore at Sanpahoe, Island of Hawaii, and that they had belonged
to the clipper ship "Hornet"--Cap. Mitchell, master--had been afloat
since the burning of that vessel, about one hundred miles north of the
equator, on the third of May--forty-three days.

The Third Mate, and ten of the seamen have arrived here, and are now in
the hospital.  Cap. Mitchell, one seaman named Antonio Passene, and two
passengers, Samuel and Henry Ferguson, of New York City, eighteen and
twenty-eight years, are still at Hilo, but are expected here within the
week.  In the Captain's modest epitome of the terrible romance you detect
the fine old hero through it.  It reads like Grant.


     Here follows the whole terrible narrative, which has since been
     published in more substantial form, and has been recognized as
     literature.  It occupied three and a half columns on the front page
     of the Union, and, of course, constituted a great beat for that
     paper--a fact which they appreciated to the extent of one hundred
     dollars the column upon the writer's return from the islands.

     In letters Nos. 14. and 15. he gives further particulars of the
     month of mourning for the princess, and funeral ceremonials.  He
     refers to Burlingame, who was still in the islands.  The remaining
     letters are unimportant.

     The Hawaiian episode in Mark Twain's life was one of those spots
     that seemed to him always filled with sunlight.  From beginning to
     end it had been a long luminous dream; in the next letter, written
     on the homeward-bound ship, becalmed under a cloudless sky, we
     realize the fitting end of the experience.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                        ON BOARD SHIP Smyrniote,
                                        AT SEA, July 30, 1866.
DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I write, now, because I must go hard at work as
soon as I get to San Francisco, and then I shall have no time for other
things--though truth to say I have nothing now to write which will be
calculated to interest you much.  We left the, Sandwich Islands eight or
ten days--or twelve days ago--I don't know which, I have been so hard at
work until today (at least part of each day,) that the time has slipped
away almost unnoticed.  The first few days we came at a whooping gait
being in the latitude of the "North-east trades," but we soon ran out of
them.  We used them as long as they lasted-hundred of miles--and came
dead straight north until exactly abreast of San Francisco precisely
straight west of the city in a bee-line--but a long bee-line, as we were
about two thousand miles at sea-consequently, we are not a hundred yards
nearer San Francisco than you are.  And here we lie becalmed on a glassy
sea--we do not move an inch-we throw banana and orange peel overboard and
it lies still on the water by the vessel's side.  Sometimes the ocean is
as dead level as the Mississippi river, and glitters glassily as if
polished--but usually, of course, no matter how calm the weather is, we
roll and surge over the grand ground-swell.  We amuse ourselves tying
pieces of tin to the ship's log and sinking them to see how far we can
distinguish them under water--86 feet was the deepest we could see a
small piece of tin, but a white plate would show about as far down as the
steeple of Dr. Bullard's church would reach, I guess.  The sea is very
dark and blue here.

Ever since we got becalmed--five days--I have been copying the diary of
one of the young Fergusons (the two boys who starved and suffered, with
thirteen others, in an open boat at sea for forty-three days, lately,
after their ship, the "Hornet," was burned on the equator.)  Both these
boys, and Captain Mitchell, are passengers with us.  I am copying the
diary to publish in Harper's Magazine, if I have time to fix it up
properly when I get to San Francisco.

I suppose, from present appearances,--light winds and calms,--that we
shall be two or three weeks at sea, yet--and I hope so--I am in no hurry
to go to work.


                                             Sunday Morning, Aug. 6.
This is rather slow.  We still drift, drift, drift along--at intervals a
spanking breeze and then--drift again--hardly move for half a day.  But I
enjoy it.  We have such snowy moonlight, and such gorgeous sunsets.
And the ship is so easy--even in a gale she rolls very little, compared
to other vessels--and in this calm we could dance on deck, if we chose.
You can walk a crack, so steady is she.  Very different from the Ajax.
My trunk used to get loose in the stateroom and rip and tear around the
place as if it had life in it, and I always had to take my clothes off in
bed because I could not stand up and do it.

There is a ship in sight--the first object we have seen since we left
Honolulu.  We are still 1300 or 1400 miles from land and so anything like
this that varies the vast solitude of the ocean makes all hands
light-hearted and cheerful.  We think the ship is the "Comet," which left
Honolulu several hours before we did.  She is about twelve miles away,
and so we cannot see her hull, but the sailors think it is the Comet
because of some peculiarity about her fore-top-gallant sails.  We have
watched her all the forenoon.

Afternoon We had preaching on the quarter-deck by Rev. Mr. Rising, of
Virginia City, old friend of mine.  Spread a flag on the booby-hatch,
which made a very good pulpit, and then ranged the chairs on either side
against the bulwarks; last Sunday we had the shadow of the mainsail, but
today we were on the opposite tack, close hauled, and had the sun.  I am
leader of the choir on this ship, and a sorry lead it is.  I hope they
will have a better opinion of our music in Heaven than I have down here.
If they don't a thunderbolt will come down and knock the vessel endways.

The other ship is the Comet--she is right abreast three miles away,
sailing on our course--both of us in a dead calm.  With the glasses we
can see what we take to be men and women on her decks.  I am well
acquainted with nearly all her passengers, and being so close seems right
sociable.

Monday 7--I had just gone to bed a little after midnight when the 2d mate
came and roused up the captain and said "The Comet has come round and is
standing away on the other tack."  I went up immediately, and so did all
our passengers, without waiting to dress-men, women and children.  There
was a perceptible breeze.  Pretty soon the other ship swept down upon us
with all her sails set, and made a fine show in the luminous starlight.
She passed within a hundred yards of us, so we could faintly see persons
on her decks.  We had two minutes' chat with each other, through the
medium of hoarse shouting, and then she bore away to windward.

In the morning she was only a little black peg standing out of the glassy
sea in the distant horizon--an almost invisible mark in the bright sky.
Dead calm.  So the ships have stood, all day long--have not moved 100
yards.

Aug. 8--The calm continues.  Magnificent weather. The gentlemen have all
turned boys.  They play boyish games on the poop and quarter-deck.  For
instance: They lay a knife on the fife-rail of the mainmast--stand off
three steps, shut one eye, walk up and strike at it with the fore-finger;
(seldom hit it;) also they lay a knife on the deck and walk seven or
eight steps with eyes close shut, and try to find it.  They kneel--place
elbows against knees--extend hands in front along the deck--place knife
against end of fingers--then clasp hands behind back and bend forward and
try to pick up the knife with their teeth and rise up from knees without
rolling over or losing their balance.  They tie a string to the shrouds
--stand with back against it walk three steps (eyes shut)--turn around
three times and go and put finger on the string; only a military man can
do it.  If you want to know how perfectly ridiculous a grown man looks
performing such absurdities in the presence of ladies, get one to try it.

Afternoon--The calm is no more.  There are three vessels in sight.  It is
so sociable to have them hovering about us on this broad waste of water.
It is sunny and pleasant, but blowing hard.  Every rag about the ship is
spread to the breeze and she is speeding over the sea like a bird.  There
is a large brig right astern of us with all her canvas set and chasing us
at her best.  She came up fast while the winds were light, but now it is
hard to tell whether she gains or not.  We can see the people on the
forecastle with the glass.  The race is exciting.  I am sorry to know
that we shall soon have to quit the vessel and go ashore if she keeps up
this speed.

Friday, Aug. 10--We have breezes and calms alternately.  The brig is two
miles to three astern, and just stays there.  We sail directly east--this
brings the brig, with all her canvas set, almost in the eye of the sun,
when it sets--beautiful.  She looks sharply cut and black as a coal,
against a background of fire and in the midst of a sea of blood.

San Francisco, Aug. 20.--We never saw the Comet again till the 13th, in
the morning, three miles away.  At three o'clock that afternoon, 25 days
out from Honolulu, both ships entered the Golden Gate of San Francisco
side by side, and 300 yards apart.  There was a gale blowing, and both
vessels clapped on every stitch of canvas and swept up through the
channel and past the fortresses at a magnificent gait.

I have been up to Sacramento and squared accounts with the Union.  They
paid me a great deal more than they promised me.
                                   Yrs aff
                                             SAM.




VI.

LETTERS 1866-67.  THE LECTURER.  SUCCESS ON THE COAST.  IN NEW YORK.
THE GREAT OCEAN EXCURSION

     It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco and wrote in his
     note-book, "Home again.  No--not home again--in prison again, and
     all the wild sense of freedom gone.  City seems so cramped and so
     dreary with toil and care and business anxieties.  God help me, I
     wish I were at sea again!"

     The transition from the dreamland of a becalmed sailing-vessel to
     the dull, cheerless realities of his old life, and the uncertainties
     of his future, depressed him--filled him with forebodings.  At one
     moment he felt himself on the verge of suicide--the world seemed so
     little worth while.

     He wished to make a trip around the world, a project that required
     money.  He contemplated making a book of his island letters and
     experiences, and the acceptance by Harper's Magazine of the revised
     version of the Hornet Shipwreck story encouraged this thought.

     Friends urged him to embody in a lecture the picturesque aspect of
     Hawaiian life.  The thought frightened him, but it also appealed to
     him strongly.  He believed he could entertain an audience, once he
     got started on the right track.  As Governor of the Third House at
     Carson City he had kept the audience in hand.  Men in whom he had
     the utmost confidence insisted that he follow up the lecture idea
     and engage the largest house in the city for his purpose.  The
     possibility of failure appalled him, but he finally agreed to the
     plan.

     In Roughing It, and elsewhere, has been told the story of this
     venture--the tale of its splendid success.  He was no longer
     concerned, now, as to his immediate future.  The lecture field was
     profitable.  His audience laughed and shouted.  He was learning the
     flavor of real success and exulting in it.  With Dennis McCarthy,
     formerly one of the partners in the Enterprise, as manager, he made
     a tour of California and Nevada.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and others, in St. Louis:

                                        VIRGINIA CITY, Nov. 1, 1866.
ALL THE FOLKS, AFFECTIONATE GREETING,--You know the flush time's are
past, and it has long been impossible to more than half fill the Theatre
here, with any sort of attraction, but they filled it for me, night
before last--full--dollar all over the house.

I was mighty dubious about Carson, but the enclosed call and some
telegrams set that all right--I lecture there tomorrow night.

They offer a full house and no expense in Dayton--go there next.  Sandy
Baldwin says I have made the most sweeping success of any man he knows
of.

I have lectured in San Francisco, Sacramento, Marysville, Grass Valley,
Nevada, You Bet, Red Dog and Virginia.  I am going to talk in Carson,
Gold Hill, Silver City, Dayton, Washoe, San Francisco again, and again
here if I have time to re-hash the lecture.

Then I am bound for New York--lecture on the Steamer, maybe.

I'll leave toward 1st December--but I'll telegraph you.
                                   Love to all.
                                             Yrs.
                                                  MARK.


His lecture tour continued from October until December, a period of
picturesque incident, the story of which has been recorded elsewhere.
--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, by the same author]--It paid him well;
he could go home now, without shame.  Indeed, from his next letter, full
of the boyish elation which always to his last years was the complement
of his success, we gather that he is going home with special honors
--introductions from ministers and the like to distinguished personages
of the East.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                             SAN F., Dec. 4, 1866.
MY DEAR FOLKS,--I have written to Annie and Sammy and Katie some time
ago--also, to the balance of you.

I called on Rev. Dr. Wadsworth last night with the City College man,
but he wasn't at home.  I was sorry, because I wanted to make his
acquaintance.  I am thick as thieves with the Rev. Stebbings, and I am
laying for the Rev. Scudder and the Rev. Dr. Stone.  I am running on
preachers, now, altogether.  I find them gay.  Stebbings is a regular
brick.  I am taking letters of introduction to Henry Ward Beecher, Rev.
Dr. Tyng, and other eminent parsons in the east.  Whenever anybody offers
me a letter to a preacher, now I snaffle it on the spot.  I shall make
Rev. Dr. Bellows trot out the fast nags of the cloth for me when I get to
New York.  Bellows is an able, upright and eloquent man--a man of
imperial intellect and matchless power--he is Christian in the truest
sense of the term and is unquestionably a brick....

Gen. Drum has arrived in Philadelphia and established his head-quarters
there, as Adjutant Genl. to Maj. Gen. Meade.  Col. Leonard has received a
letter from him in which he offers me a complimentary benefit if I will
come there.  I am much obliged, really, but I am afraid I shan't lecture
much in the States.

The China Mail Steamer is getting ready and everybody says I am throwing
away a fortune in not going in her.  I firmly believe it myself.

I sail for the States in the Opposition steamer of the 5th inst.,
positively and without reserve.  My room is already secured for me, and
is the choicest in the ship.  I know all the officers.

                                   Yrs.  Affy
                                             MARK.


     We get no hint of his plans, and perhaps he had none.  If his
     purpose was to lecture in the East, he was in no hurry to begin.
     Arriving in New York, after an adventurous voyage, he met a number
     of old Californians--men who believed in him--and urged him to
     lecture.  He also received offers of newspaper engagements, and from
     Charles Henry Webb, who had published the Californian, which Bret
     Harte had edited, came the proposal to collect his published
     sketches, including the jumping Frog story, in book form.  Webb
     himself was in New York, and offered the sketches to several
     publishers, including Canton, who had once refused the Frog story by
     omitting it from Artemus Ward's book.  It seems curious that Canton
     should make a second mistake and refuse it again, but publishers
     were wary in those days, and even the newspaper success of the Frog
     story did not tempt him to venture it as the title tale of a book.
     Webb finally declared he would publish the book himself, and
     Clemens, after a few weeks of New York, joined his mother and family
     in St. Louis and gave himself up to a considerable period of
     visiting, lecturing meantime in both Hannibal and Keokuk.

     Fate had great matters in preparation for him.  The Quaker City
     Mediterranean excursion, the first great ocean picnic, was announced
     that spring, and Mark Twain realized that it offered a possible
     opportunity for him to see something of the world.  He wrote at once
     to the proprietors of the Alta-California and proposed that they
     send him as their correspondent.  To his delight his proposition was
     accepted, the Alta agreeing to the twelve hundred dollars passage
     money, and twenty dollars each for letters.

     The Quaker City was not to sail until the 8th of June, but the Alta
     wished some preliminary letters from New York.  Furthermore, Webb
     had the Frog book in press, and would issue it May 1st.  Clemens,
     therefore, returned to New York in April, and now once more being
     urged by the Californians to lecture, he did not refuse.  Frank
     Fuller, formerly Governor of Utah, took the matter in hand and
     engaged Cooper Union for the venture.  He timed it for May 6th,
     which would be a few days after the appearance of Webb's book.
     Clemens was even more frightened at the prospect of this lecture
     than he had been in San Francisco, and with more reason, for in New
     York his friends were not many, and competition for public favor was
     very great.  There are two letters written May 1st, one to his
     people, and one to Bret Harte, in San Francisco; that give us the
     situation.






MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1867-1875

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE



VOLUME II.



                     To Bret Harte, in San Francisco:

                                   WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867.
DEAR BRET,--I take my pen in hand to inform you that I am well and hope
these few lines will find you enjoying the same God's blessing.

The book is out, and is handsome.  It is full of damnable errors of
grammar and deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketch because
I was away and did not read the proofs; but be a friend and say nothing
about these things.  When my hurry is over, I will send you an autograph
copy to pisen the children with.

I am to lecture in Cooper Institute next Monday night.  Pray for me.

We sail for the Holy Land June 8.  Try to write me (to this hotel,) and
it will be forwarded to Paris, where we remain 10 or 15 days.

Regards and best wishes to Mrs. Bret and the family.
                              Truly Yr Friend
                                                  MARK.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                   WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--Don't expect me to write for a while.  My hands are full of
business on account of my lecture for the 6th inst., and everything looks
shady, at least, if not dark.  I have got a good agent--but now after we
have hired Cooper Institute and gone to an expense in one way or another
of $500, it comes out that I have got to play against Speaker Colfax at
Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the double troupe of Japanese jugglers,
the latter opening at the great Academy of Music--and with all this
against me I have taken the largest house in New York and cannot back
water.  Let her slide!  If nobody else cares I don't.

I'll send the book soon.  I am awfully hurried now, but not worried.
                                   Yrs.
                                             SAM.


The Cooper Union lecture proved a failure, and a success.  When it became
evident to Fuller that the venture was not going to pay, he sent out a
flood of complimentaries to the school-teachers of New York City and the
surrounding districts.  No one seems to have declined them.  Clemens
lectured to a jammed house and acquired much reputation.  Lecture
proposals came from several directions, but he could not accept them now.
He wrote home that he was eighteen Alta letters behind and had refused
everything.  Thos. Nast, the cartoonist, then in his first fame, propped
a joint tour, Clemens to lecture while he, Nast, would illustrate with
"lightning" sketches; but even this could not be considered now.  In a
little while he would sail, and the days were overfull.  A letter written
a week before he sailed is full of the hurry and strain of these last
days.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                         WESTMINSTER HOTEL, NEW YORK, June 1, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--I know I ought to write oftener (just got your last,) and
more fully, but I cannot overcome my repugnance to telling what I am
doing or what I expect to do or propose to do.  Then, what have I left to
write about?  Manifestly nothing.

It isn't any use for me to talk about the voyage, because I can have no
faith in that voyage till the ship is under way.  How do I know she will
ever sail?  My passage is paid, and if the ship sails, I sail in her--but
I make no calculations, have bought no cigars, no sea-going clothing
--have made no preparation whatever--shall not pack my trunk till the
morning we sail.  Yet my hands are full of what I am going to do the day
before we sail--and what isn't done that day will go undone.

All I do know or feel, is, that I am wild with impatience to move--move
--move!  Half a dozen times I have wished I had sailed long ago in some
ship that wasn't going to keep me chained here to chafe for lagging ages
while she got ready to go.  Curse the endless delays!  They always kill
me--they make me neglect every duty and then I have a conscience that
tears me like a wild beast.  I wish I never had to stop anywhere a month.
I do more mean things, the moment I get a chance to fold my hands and sit
down than ever I can get forgiveness for.

Yes, we are to meet at Mr. Beach's next Thursday night, and I suppose we
shall have to be gotten up regardless of expense, in swallow-tails, white
kids and everything en regle.

I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson's or anybody else's supervision.
I don't mind it.  I am fixed.  I have got a splendid, immoral,
tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking, godless room-mate who is as good and true
and right-minded a man as ever lived--a man whose blameless conduct and
example will always be an eloquent sermon to all who shall come within
their influence.  But send on the professional preachers--there are none
I like better to converse with.  If they're not narrow minded and bigoted
they make good companions.

I asked them to send the N. Y. Weekly to you--no charge.  I am not going
to write for it.  Like all other, papers that pay one splendidly it
circulates among stupid people and the 'canaille.'  I have made no
arrangement with any New York paper--I will see about that Monday or
Tuesday.
                              Love to all
                                   Good bye,
                                        Yrs affy
                                                  SAM.


     The "immoral" room-mate whose conduct was to be an "eloquent
     example" was Dan Slote, immortalized in the Innocents as "Dan"
     --a favorite on the ship, and later beloved by countless readers.

     There is one more letter, written the night before the Quaker City
     sailed-a letter which in a sense marks the close of the first great
     period of his life--the period of aimless wandering--adventure
     --youth.

     Perhaps a paragraph of explanation should precede this letter.
     Political changes had eliminated Orion in Nevada, and he was now
     undertaking the practice of law.  "Bill Stewart" was Senator
     Stewart, of Nevada, of whom we shall hear again.  The "Sandwich
     Island book," as may be imagined, was made up of his letters to the
     Sacramento Union.  Nothing came of the venture, except some chapters
     in 'Roughing It', rewritten from the material.  "Zeb and John
     Leavenworth" were pilots whom he had known on the river.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family in St. Louis:

                                        NEW YORK, June 7th, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS, I suppose we shall be many a league at sea tomorrow night,
and goodness knows I shall be unspeakably glad of it.

I haven't got anything to write, else I would write it.  I have just
written myself clear out in letters to the Alta, and I think they are the
stupidest letters that were ever written from New York.  Corresponding
has been a perfect drag ever since I got to the states.  If it continues
abroad, I don't know what the Tribune and Alta folks will think.
I have withdrawn the Sandwich Island book--it would be useless to publish
it in these dull publishing times.  As for the Frog book, I don't believe
that will ever pay anything worth a cent.  I published it simply to
advertise myself--not with the hope of making anything out of it.

Well, I haven't anything to write, except that I am tired of staying in
one place--that I am in a fever to get away.  Read my Alta letters--they
contain everything I could possibly write to you.  Tell Zeb and John
Leavenworth to write me.  They can get plenty of gossip from the pilots.

An importing house sent two cases of exquisite champagne aboard the ship
for me today--Veuve Clicquot and Lac d'Or.  I and my room-mate have set
apart every Saturday as a solemn fast day, wherein we will entertain no
light matters of frivolous conversation, but only get drunk.  (That is a
joke.) His mother and sisters are the best and most homelike people I
have yet found in a brown stone front.  There is no style about them,
except in house and furniture.

I wish Orion were going on this voyage, for I believe he could not help
but be cheerful and jolly.  I often wonder if his law business is going
satisfactorily to him, but knowing that the dull season is setting in now
(it looked like it had already set in before) I have felt as if I could
almost answer the question myself--which is to say in plain words, I was
afraid to ask.  I wish I had gone to Washington in the winter instead of
going West.  I could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewart for him,
and that would atone for the loss of my home visit.  But I am so
worthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish anything
that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory.  My mind is stored full of
unworthy conduct toward Orion and towards you all, and an accusing
conscience gives me peace only in excitement and restless moving from
place to place.  If I could say I had done one thing for any of you that
entitled me to your good opinion, (I say nothing of your love, for I am
sure of that, no matter how unworthy of it I may make myself, from Orion
down you have always given me that, all the days of my life, when God
Almighty knows I seldom deserve it,) I believe I could go home and stay
there and I know I would care little for the world's praise or blame.
There is no satisfaction in the world's praise anyhow, and it has no
worth to me save in the way of business.  I tried to gather up its
compliments to send to you, but the work was distasteful and I dropped
it.

You observe that under a cheerful exterior I have got a spirit that is
angry with me and gives me freely its contempt.  I can get away from that
at sea, and be tranquil and satisfied--and so, with my parting love and
benediction for Orion and all of you, I say goodbye and God bless you
all--and welcome the wind that wafts a weary soul to the sunny lands of
the Mediterranean!
                              Yrs.  Forever,
                                             SAM.




VII.

LETTERS 1867.  THE TRAVELER.  THE VOYAGE OF THE "QUAKER CITY"

Mark Twain, now at sea, was writing many letters; not personal letters,
but those unique descriptive relations of travel which would make him his
first great fame--those fresh first impressions preserved to us now as
chapters of The Innocents Abroad.  Yet here and there in the midst of
sight-seeing and reporting he found time to send a brief line to those at
home, merely that they might have a word from his own hand, for he had
ordered the papers to which he was to contribute--the Alta and the New
York Tribune--sent to them, and these would give the story of his
travels.  The home letters read like notebook entries.


          Letters to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:


                                   FAYAL (Azores,) June 20th, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--We are having a lively time here, after a stormy trip.  We
meant to go to San Miguel, but were driven here by stress of weather.
Beautiful climate.
                         Yrs.
                              Affect.
                                        SAM.


                                   GIBRALTAR, June 30th, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--Arrived here this morning, and am clear worn out with
riding and climbing in and over and around this monstrous rock and its
fortifications.  Summer climate and very pleasant.
                                   Yrs.
                                        SAM.


                              TANGIER, MOROCCO, (AFRICA), July 1, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS, Half a dozen of us came here yesterday from Gibraltar and
some of the company took the other direction; went up through Spain, to
Paris by rail.  We decided that Gibraltar and San Roque were all of Spain
that we wanted to see at present and are glad we came here among the
Africans, Moors, Arabs and Bedouins of the desert.  I would not give this
experience for all the balance of the trip combined.  This is the
infernalest hive of infernally costumed barbarians I have ever come
across yet.
                              Yrs.
                                   SAM.


                                        AT SEA, July 2, 1867.
DR. FOLKS,--We are far up the intensely blue and ravishingly beautiful
Mediterranean.  And now we are just passing the island of Minorca.  The
climate is perfectly lovely and it is hard to drive anybody to bed, day
or night.  We remain up the whole night through occasionally, and by this
means enjoy the rare sensation of seeing the sun rise.  But the sunsets
are soft, rich, warm and superb!

We had a ball last night under the awnings of the quarter deck, and the
share of it of three of us was masquerade.  We had full, flowing,
picturesque Moorish costumes which we purchased in the bazaars of
Tangier.
                              Yrs.
                                   SAM.


                                   MARSEILLES, FRANCE, July 5, 1867.
We are here.  Start for Paris tomorrow.  All well.  Had gorgeous 4th of
July jollification yesterday at sea.
                              Yrs.
                                   SAM.


     The reader may expand these sketchy outlines to his heart's content
     by following the chapters in The Innocents Abroad, which is very
     good history, less elaborated than might be supposed.  But on the
     other hand, the next letter adds something of interest to the
     book-circumstances which a modest author would necessarily omit.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                        YALTA, RUSSIA, Aug.  25, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--We have been representing the United States all we knew how
today.  We went to Sebastopol, after we got tired of Constantinople (got
your letter there, and one at Naples,) and there the Commandant and the
whole town came aboard and were as jolly and sociable as old friends.
They said the Emperor of Russia was at Yalta, 30 miles or 40 away, and
urged us to go there with the ship and visit him--promised us a cordial
welcome.  They insisted on sending a telegram to the Emperor, and also a
courier overland to announce our coming.  But we knew that a great
English Excursion party, and also the Viceroy of Egypt, in his splendid
yacht, had been refused an audience within the last fortnight, so we
thought it not safe to try it.  They said, no difference--the Emperor
would hardly visit our ship, because that would be a most extraordinary
favor, and one which he uniformly refuses to accord under any
circumstances, but he would certainly receive us at his palace.  We still
declined.  But we had to go to Odessa, 250 miles away, and there the
Governor General urged us, and sent a telegram to the Emperor, which we
hardly expected to be answered, but it was, and promptly.  So we sailed
back to Yalta.

We all went to the palace at noon, today, (3 miles) in carriages and on
horses sent by the Emperor, and we had a jolly time.  Instead of the
usual formal audience of 15 minutes, we staid 4 hours and were made a
good deal more at home than we could have been in a New York
drawing-room.  The whole tribe turned out to receive our party-Emperor,
Empress, the oldest daughter (Grand-Duchess Marie, a pretty girl of 14,)
a little Grand Duke, her brother, and a platoon of Admirals, Princes,
Peers of the Empire, etc., and in a little while an aid-de-camp arrived
with a request from the Grand Duke Michael, the Emperor's brother, that
we would visit his palace and breakfast with him.  The Emperor also
invited us, on behalf of his absent eldest son and heir (aged 22,) to
visit his palace and consider it a visit to him.  They all talk English
and they were all very neatly but very plainly dressed.  You all dress a
good deal finer than they were dressed.  The Emperor and his family threw
off all reserve and showed us all over the palace themselves.  It is very
rich and very elegant, but in no way gaudy.

I had been appointed chairman of a committee to draught an address to the
Emperor in behalf of the passengers, and as I fully expected, and as they
fully intended, I had to write the address myself.  I didn't mind it,
because I have no modesty and would as soon write to an Emperor as to
anybody else--but considering that there were 5 on the committee I
thought they might have contributed one paragraph among them, anyway.
They wanted me to read it to him, too, but I declined that honor--not
because I hadn't cheek enough (and some to spare,) but because our Consul
at Odessa was along, and also the Secretary of our Legation at St.
Petersburgh, and of course one of those ought to read it.  The Emperor
accepted the address--it was his business to do it--and so many others
have praised it warmly that I begin to imagine it must be a wonderful
sort of document and herewith send you the original draught of it to be
put into alcohol and preserved forever like a curious reptile.

They live right well at the Grand Duke Michael's their breakfasts are not
gorgeous but very excellent--and if Mike were to say the word I would go
there and breakfast with him tomorrow.
                                   Yrs aff
                                             SAM.

P. S.  [Written across the face of the last page.] They had told us it
would be polite to invite the Emperor to visit the ship, though he would
not be likely to do it.  But he didn't give us a chance--he has requested
permission to come on board with his family and all his relations
tomorrow and take a sail, in case it is calm weather.  I can, entertain
them.  My hand is in, now, and if you want any more Emperors feted in
style, trot them out.


     The next letter is of interest in that it gives us the program and
     volume of his work.  With all the sight seeing he was averaging a
     full four letters a week--long letters, requiring careful
     observation and inquiry.  How fresh and impressionable and full of
     vigor he was, even in that fierce southern heat!  No one makes the
     Mediterranean trip in summer to-day, and the thought of adding
     constant letter-writing to steady travel through southern France,
     Italy, Greece, and Turkey in blazing midsummer is stupefying.  And
     Syria and Egypt in September!


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                        CONSTANTINOPLE, Sept. 1, '67.

DEAR FOLKS,--All well.  Do the Alta's come regularly?  I wish I knew
whether my letters reach them or not.  Look over the back papers and see.
I wrote them as follows:
     1 Letter from Fayal, in the Azores Islands.
     1 from Gibraltar, in Spain.
     1 from Tangier, in Africa.
     2 from Paris and Marseilles, in France.
     1 from Genoa, in Italy.
     1 from Milan.
     1 from Lake Como.
     1 from some little place in Switzerland--have forgotten the name.
     4 concerning Lecce, Bergamo, Padua, Verona, Battlefield of Marengo,
Pestachio, and some other cities in Northern Italy.
     2 from Venice.
     1 about Bologna.
     1 from Florence.
     1 from Pisa.
     1 from Leghorn.
     1 from Rome and Civita Vecchia.
     2 from Naples.
     1 about Pazzuoli, where St. Paul landed, the Baths of Nero, and the
ruins of Baia, Virgil's tomb, the Elysian Fields, the Sunken Cities and
the spot where Ulysses landed.
     1 from Herculaneum and Vesuvius.
     1 from Pompeii.
     1 from the Island of Ischia.
     1 concerning the Volcano of Stromboli, the city and Straits of
Messina, the land of Sicily, Scylla and Charybdis etc.
     1 about the Grecian Archipelago.
     1 about a midnight visit to Athens, the Piraeus and the ruins of the
Acropolis.
     1 about the Hellespont, the site of ancient Troy, the Sea of
Marmara, etc.
     2 about Constantinople, the Golden Horn and the beauties of the
Bosphorus.
     1 from Odessa and Sebastopol in Russia, the Black Sea, etc.
     2 from Yalta, Russia, concerning a visit to the Czar.
And yesterday I wrote another letter from Constantinople and
     1 today about its neighbor in Asia, Scatter.  I am not done with
Turkey yet.  Shall write 2 or 3 more.

I have written to the New York Herald 2 letters from Naples, (no name
signed,) and 1 from Constantinople.

To the New York Tribune I have written
     1 from Fayal.
     1 from Civita Vecchia in the Roman States.
     2 from Yalta, Russia.
     And 1 from Constantinople.

I have never seen any of these letters in print except the one to the
Tribune from Fayal and that was not worth printing.

We sail hence tomorrow, perhaps, and my next letters will be mailed at
Smyrna, in Syria.  I hope to write from the Sea of Tiberius, Damascus,
Jerusalem, Joppa, and possibly other points in the Holy Land.  The
letters from Egypt, the Nile and Algiers I will look out for, myself.
I will bring them in my pocket.

They take the finest photographs in the world here.  I have ordered some.
They will be sent to Alexandria, Egypt.

You cannot conceive of anything so beautiful as Constantinople, viewed
from the Golden Horn or the Bosphorus.  I think it must be the handsomest
city in the world.  I will go on deck and look at it for you, directly.
I am staying in the ship, tonight.  I generally stay on shore when we are
in port.  But yesterday I just ran myself down.  Dan Slote, my room-mate,
is on shore.  He remained here while we went up the Black Sea, but it
seems he has not got enough of it yet.  I thought Dan had got the
state-room pretty full of rubbish at last, but a while ago his dragoman
arrived with a bran new, ghastly tomb-stone of the Oriental pattern, with
his name handsomely carved and gilded on it, in Turkish characters.  That
fellow will buy a Circassian slave, next.

I am tired.  We are going on a trip, tomorrow.  I must to bed.  Love to
all.
               Yrs
                    SAM.


               U. S. CONSUL'S OFFICE, BEIRUT, SYRIA, Sept. 11. (1867)
DEAR FOLKS,--We are here, eight of us, making a contract with a dragoman
to take us to Baalbek, then to Damascus, Nazareth, &c.  then to Lake
Genassareth (Sea of Tiberias,) then South through all the celebrated
Scriptural localities to Jerusalem--then to the Dead Sea, the Cave of
Macpelah and up to Joppa where the ship will be.  We shall be in the
saddle three weeks--we have horses, tents, provisions, arms, a dragoman
and two other servants, and we pay five dollars a day apiece, in gold.
                         Love to all, yrs.
                                             SAM.

We leave tonight, at two o'clock in the morning.


     There appear to be no further home letters written from Syria--and
     none from Egypt.  Perhaps with the desert and the delta the heat at
     last became too fearful for anything beyond the actual requirements
     of the day.  When he began his next it was October, and the fiercer
     travel was behind him.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                   CAGHARI, SARDINIA, Oct, 12, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--We have just dropped anchor before this handsome city and--

                                   ALGIERS, AFRICA, Oct. 15.
They would not let us land at Caghari on account of cholera.  Nothing to
write.

                                   MALAGA, SPAIN, Oct.  17.
The Captain and I are ashore here under guard, waiting to know whether
they will let the ship anchor or not.  Quarantine regulations are very
strict here on all vessels coming from Egypt.  I am a little anxious
because I want to go inland to Granada and see the Alhambra.  I can go on
down by Seville and Cordova, and be picked up at Cadiz.

Later: We cannot anchor--must go on.  We shall be at Gibraltar before
midnight and I think I will go horseback (a long days) and thence by rail
and diligence to Cadiz.  I will not mail this till I see the Gibraltar
lights--I begin to think they won't let us in anywhere.

11.30 P. M.--Gibraltar.
At anchor and all right, but they won't let us land till morning--it is a
waste of valuable time.  We shall reach New York middle of November.
                                   Yours,
                                             SAM.


                                        CADIZ, Oct 24, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--We left Gibraltar at noon and rode to Algeciras, (4 hours)
thus dodging the quarantine, took dinner and then rode horseback all
night in a swinging trot and at daylight took a caleche (a wheeled
vehicle) and rode 5 hours--then took cars and traveled till twelve at
night.  That landed us at Seville and we were over the hard part of our
trip, and somewhat tired.  Since then we have taken things comparatively
easy, drifting around from one town to another and attracting a good deal
of attention, for I guess strangers do not wander through Andalusia and
the other Southern provinces of Spain often.  The country is precisely as
it was when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were possible characters.

But I see now what the glory of Spain must have been when it was under
Moorish domination.  No, I will not say that, but then when one is
carried away, infatuated, entranced, with the wonders of the Alhambra and
the supernatural beauty of the Alcazar, he is apt to overflow with
admiration for the splendid intellects that created them.

I cannot write now.  I am only dropping a line to let you know I am well.
The ship will call for us here tomorrow.  We may stop at Lisbon, and
shall at the Bermudas, and will arrive in New York ten days after this
letter gets there.
                                   SAM.

     This is the last personal letter written during that famous first
     sea-gipsying, and reading it our regret grows that he did not put
     something of his Spanish excursion into his book.  He never returned
     to Spain, and he never wrote of it.  Only the barest mention of
     "seven beautiful days" is found in The Innocents Abroad.




VIII.

LETTERS 1867-68.  WASHINGTON AND SAN FRANCISCO. THE PROPOSED BOOK OF
TRAVEL.  A NEW LECTURE

     From Mark Twain's home letters we get several important side-lights
     on this first famous book.  We learn, for in stance, that it was he
     who drafted the ship address to the Emperor--the opening lines of
     which became so wearisome when repeated by the sailors.
     Furthermore, we learn something of the scope and extent of his
     newspaper correspondence, which must have kept him furiously busy,
     done as it was in the midst of super-heated and continuous
     sight-seeing.  He wrote fifty three letters to the Alta-California,
     six to the New York Tribune, and at least two to the New York
     Herald more than sixty, all told, of an average, length of three to
     four thousand words each. Mark Twain always claimed to be a lazy
     man, and certainly he was likely to avoid an undertaking not suited
     to his gifts, but he had energy in abundance for work in his chosen
     field. To have piled up a correspondence of that size in the time,
     and under the circumstances already noted, quality considered, may
     be counted a record in the history of travel letters.

     They made him famous.  Arriving in New York, November 19, 1867, Mark
     Twain found himself no longer unknown to the metropolis, or to any
     portion of America.  Papers East and West had copied his Alta and
     Tribune letters and carried his name into every corner of the States
     and Territories.  He had preached a new gospel in travel literature,
     the gospel of frankness and sincerity that Americans could
     understand.  Also his literary powers had awakened at last.  His
     work was no longer trivial, crude, and showy; it was full of
     dignity, beauty, and power; his humor was finer, worthier.  The
     difference in quality between the Quaker City letters and those
     written from the Sandwich Islands only a year before can scarcely be
     measured.

     He did not remain in New York, but went down to Washington, where he
     had arranged for a private secretaryship with Senator William M.
     Stewart,--[The "Bill" Stewart mentioned in the preceding chapter.]
     whom he had known in Nevada.  Such a position he believed would make
     but little demand upon his time, and would afford him an insight
     into Washington life, which he could make valuable in the shape of
     newspaper correspondence.

     But fate had other plans for him.  He presently received the
     following letter:

                   From Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford
                OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.

                                        HARTFORD, CONN, Nov 21, 1867.
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS Esq.
Tribune Office, New York.

DR. SIR,--We take the liberty to address you this, in place of a letter
which we had recently written and was about to forward to you, not
knowing your arrival home was expected so soon.  We are desirous of
obtaining from you a work of some kind, perhaps compiled from your
letters from the East, &c., with such interesting additions as may be
proper.  We are the publishers of A. D. Richardson's works, and flatter
ourselves that we can give an author as favorable terms and do as full
justice to his productions as any other house in the country.  We are
perhaps the oldest subscription house in the country, and have never
failed to give a book an immense circulation.  We sold about 100,000
copies of Richardson's F. D. & E.  (Field, Dungeon and Escape) and are
now printing 41,000, of "Beyond the Mississippi," and large orders ahead.
If you have any thought of writing a book, or could be induced to do so,
we should be pleased to see you; and will do so.  Will you do us the
favor to reply at once, at your earliest convenience.
                                   Very truly, &c.,
                                                  E. BLISS, Jr.
                                                       Secty.

     Clemens had already the idea of a book in mind and welcomed this
     proposition.


                    To Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford:

                                        WASHINGTON, Dec.  2, 1867.
E. BLISS, Jr. Esq.
Sec'y American Publishing Co.--

DEAR SIR,--I only received your favor of Nov. 21st last night, at the
rooms of the Tribune Bureau here.  It was forwarded from the Tribune
office, New York, where it had lain eight or ten days.  This will be
a sufficient apology for the seeming discourtesy of my silence.

I wrote fifty-two (three) letters for the San Francisco "Alta California"
during the Quaker City excursion, about half of which number have been
printed, thus far.  The "Alta" has few exchanges in the East, and I
suppose scarcely any of these letters have been copied on this side of
the Rocky Mountains.  I could weed them of their chief faults of
construction and inelegancies of expression and make a volume that would
be more acceptable in many respects than any I could now write.  When
those letters were written my impressions were fresh, but now they have
lost that freshness; they were warm then--they are cold, now.  I could
strike out certain letters, and write new ones wherewith to supply their
places.  If you think such a book would suit your purpose, please drop me
a line, specifying the size and general style of the volume; when the
matter ought to be ready; whether it should have pictures in it or not;
and particularly what your terms with me would be, and what amount of
money I might possibly make out of it.  The latter clause has a degree of
importance for me which is almost beyond my own comprehension.  But you
understand that, of course.

I have other propositions for a book, but have doubted the propriety of
interfering with good newspaper engagements, except my way as an author
could be demonstrated to be plain before me.  But I know Richardson, and
learned from him some months ago, something of an idea of the
subscription plan of publishing.  If that is your plan invariably, it
looks safe.

I am on the N. Y. Tribune staff here as an "occasional,", among other
things, and a note from you addressed to
                                   Very truly &c.
                                             SAM L. CLEMENS,

New York Tribune Bureau, Washington, will find me, without fail.


     The exchange of these two letters marked the beginning of one of the
     most notable publishing connections in American literary history.
     The book, however, was not begun immediately.  Bliss was in poor
     health and final arrangements were delayed; it was not until late in
     January that Clemens went to Hartford and concluded the arrangement.

     Meantime, fate had disclosed another matter of even greater
     importance; we get the first hint of it in the following letter,
     though to him its beginning had been earlier--on a day in the blue
     harbor of Smyrna, when young Charles Langdon, a fellow-passenger on
     the Quaker City, had shown to Mark Twain a miniature of young
     Langdon's sister at home:


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                   224 F. STREET, WASH, Jan. 8, 1868.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--And so the old Major has been there, has he?
I would like mighty well to see him.  I was a sort of benefactor to him
once.  I helped to snatch him out when he was about to ride into a
Mohammedan Mosque in that queer old Moorish town of Tangier, in Africa.
If he had got in, the Moors would have knocked his venerable old head
off, for his temerity.

I have just arrived from New York-been there ever since Christmas staying
at the house of Dan Slote my Quaker City room-mate, and having a splendid
time.  Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand, Dan and I, (all Quaker City
night-hawks,) had a blow-out at Dan's' house and a lively talk over old
times.  We went through the Holy Land together, and I just laughed till
my sides ached, at some of our reminiscences.  It was the unholiest gang
that ever cavorted through Palestine, but those are the best boys in the
world.  We needed Moulton badly.  I started to make calls, New Year's
Day, but I anchored for the day at the first house I came to--Charlie
Langdon's sister was there (beautiful girl,) and Miss Alice Hooker,
another beautiful girl, a niece of Henry Ward Beecher's.  We sent the old
folks home early, with instructions not to send the carriage till
midnight, and then I just staid there and worried the life out of those
girls.  I am going to spend a few days with the Langdon's in Elmira, New
York, as soon as I get time, and a few days at Mrs. Hooker's in Hartford,
Conn., shortly.

Henry Ward Beecher sent for me last Sunday to come over and dine (he
lives in Brooklyn, you know,) and I went.  Harriet Beecher Stowe was
there, and Mrs. and Miss Beecher, Mrs. Hooker and my old Quaker City
favorite, Emma Beach.

We had a very gay time, if it was Sunday.  I expect I told more lies than
I have told before in a month.

I went back by invitation, after the evening service, and finished the
blow-out, and then staid all night at Mr. Beach's.  Henry Ward is a
brick.

I found out at 10 o'clock, last night, that I was to lecture tomorrow
evening and so you must be aware that I have been working like sin all
night to get a lecture written.  I have finished it, I call it "Frozen
Truth."  It is a little top-heavy, though, because there is more truth in
the title than there is in the lecture.

But thunder, I mustn't sit here writing all day, with so much business
before me.

Good by, and kind regards to all.
                         Yrs affy
                                   SAM L. CLEMENS.


     Jack Van Nostrand of this letter is "Jack" of the Innocents.  Emma
     Beach was the daughter of Moses S.  Beach, of the 'New York Sun.'
     Later she became the wife of the well-known painter, Abbot H.
     Thayer.

     We do not hear of Miss Langdon again in the letters of that time,
     but it was not because she was absent from his thoughts.  He had
     first seen her with her father and brother at the old St. Nicholas
     Hotel, on lower Broadway, where, soon after the arrival of the
     Quaker City in New York, he had been invited to dine.  Long
     afterward he said: "It is forty years ago; from that day to this she
     has never been out of my mind."

     From his next letter we learn of the lecture which apparently was
     delivered in Washington.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                        WASH. Jan. 9, 1868.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--That infernal lecture is over, thank Heaven!
It came near being a villainous failure.  It was not advertised at all.
The manager was taken sick yesterday, and the man who was sent to tell
me, never got to me till afternoon today.  There was the dickens to pay.
It was too late to do anything--too late to stop the lecture.  I scared
up a door-keeper, and was ready at the proper time, and by pure good luck
a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved!  I hardly knew what I
was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid style.  I was to
have preached again Saturday night, but I won't--I can't get along
without a manager.

I have been in New York ever since Christmas, you know, and now I shall
have to work like sin to catch up my correspondence.

And I have got to get up that book, too.  Cut my letters out of the
Alta's and send them to me in an envelop.  Some, here, that are not
mailed yet, I shall have to copy, I suppose.

I have got a thousand things to do, and am not doing any of them.  I feel
perfectly savage.
                         Good bye
                                   Yrs aff
                                             SAM.


     On the whole, matters were going well with him.  His next letter is
     full of his success--overflowing with the boyish radiance which he
     never quite outgrew.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                        HARTFORD, CONN.  Jan. 24-68.
DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--This is a good week for me.  I stopped in the
Herald office as I came through New York, to see the boys on the staff,
and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week,
impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might have full
swing, and (write) about anybody and everybody I wanted to.  I said I
must have the very fullest possible swing, and he said "all right."
I said "It's a contract--" and that settled that matter.

I'll make it a point to write one letter a week, any-how.

But the best thing that has happened was here.  This great American
Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till I
thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk.  I met Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled way of
dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he gets a chance,
he said, "Now, here, you are one of the talented men of the age--nobody
is going to deny that---but in matters of business, I don't suppose you
know more than enough to came in when it rains.  I'll tell you what to
do, and how to do it."  And he did.

And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid contract
for a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with illustrations, the
manuscript to be placed in the publishers' hands by the middle of July.
My percentage is to be a fifth more than they have ever paid any author,
except Horace Greeley.  Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears
this.

But I had my mind made up to one thing--I wasn't going to touch a book
unless there was money in it, and a good deal of it.  I told them so.
I had the misfortune to "bust out" one author of standing.  They had his
manuscript, with the understanding that they would publish his book if
they could not get a book from me, (they only publish two books at a
time, and so my book and Richardson's Life of Grant will fill the bill
for next fall and winter)--so that manuscript was sent back to its author
today.

These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their books you
can imagine.  I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every week,
as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week--occasionally to the
Tribune and the Magazines (I have a stupid article in the Galaxy, just
issued) but I am not going to write to this, that and the other paper any
more.

The Chicago Tribune wants letters, but I hope and pray I have charged
them so much that they will not close the contract.  I am gradually
getting out of debt, but these trips to New York do cost like sin.
I hope you have cut out and forwarded my printed letters to Washington
--please continue to do so as they arrive.

I have had a tip-top time, here, for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno.
Hooker's family--Beecher's relatives-in a general way of Mr. Bliss, also,
who is head of the publishing firm.) Puritans are mighty straight-laced
and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but the Almighty don't make
any better people.

Love to all-good-bye.  I shall be in New York 3 days--then go on to the
Capital.
                    Yrs affly, especially Ma.,
                                                  Yr SAM.

I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of May.


     No formal contract for the book had been made when this letter was
     written.  A verbal agreement between Bliss and Clemens had been
     reached, to be ratified by an exchange of letters in the near
     future.  Bliss had made two propositions, viz., ten thousand
     dollars, cash in hand, or a 5-per-cent. royalty on the selling price
     of the book.  The cash sum offered looked very large to Mark Twain,
     and he was sorely tempted to accept it.  He had faith, however, in
     the book, and in Bliss's ability to sell it.  He agreed, therefore,
     to the royalty proposition; "The best business judgment I ever
     displayed" he often declared in after years.  Five per cent.
     royalty sounds rather small in these days of more liberal contracts.
     But the American Publishing Company sold its books only by
     subscription, and the agents' commissions and delivery expenses ate
     heavily into the profits.  Clemens was probably correct in saying
     that his percentage was larger than had been paid to any previous
     author except Horace Greeley.  The John Hooker mentioned was the
     husband of Henry Ward Beecher's sister, Isabel.  It was easy to
     understand the Beecher family's robust appreciation of Mark Twain.

     From the office of Dan Slote, his room-mate of the Quaker City
     --"Dan" of the Innocents--Clemens wrote his letter that closed the
     agreement with Bliss.


                    To Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford:

               Office of SLOTE & WOODMAN, Blank Book Manufacturers,
                                   Nos. 119-121 William St.
                                        NEW YORK, January 27, 1868.
Mr. E. Bliss, Jr.
     Sec'y American Publishing Co.
          Hartford Conn.

DEAR SIR, Your favor of Jan. 25th is received, and in reply, I will say
that I accede to your several propositions, viz: That I furnish to the
American Publishing Company, through you, with MSS sufficient for a
volume of 500 to 600 pages, the subject to be the Quaker City, the
voyage, description of places, &c., and also embodying the substance of
the letters written by me during that trip, said MSS to be ready about
the first of August, next, I to give all the usual and necessary
attention in preparing said MSS for the press, and in preparation of
illustrations, in correction of proofs--no use to be made by me of the
material for this work in any way which will conflict with its interest
--the book to be sold by the American Publishing Co., by subscription
--and for said MS and labor on my part said Company to pay me a copyright
of 5 percent, upon the subscription price of the book for all copies
sold.

As further proposed by you, this understanding, herein set forth shall be
considered a binding contract upon all parties concerned, all minor
details to be arranged between us hereafter.
                         Very truly yours,
                                   SAM. L. CLEMENS.


                          (Private and General.)

I was to have gone to Washington tonight, but have held over a day, to
attend a dinner given by a lot of newspaper Editors and literary
scalliwags, at the Westminster Hotel.  Shall go down to-morrow, if I
survive the banquet.
                         Yrs truly
                              SAM. CLEMENS.


     Mark Twain, in Washington, was in line for political preferment: His
     wide acquaintance on the Pacific slope, his new fame and growing
     popularity, his powerful and dreaded pen, all gave him special
     distinction at the capital.  From time to time the offer of one
     office or another tempted him, but he wisely, or luckily, resisted.
     In his letters home are presented some of his problems.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                              224 F. STREET WASHINGTON Feb.  6, 1868.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--For two months there have been some fifty
applications before the government for the postmastership of San
Francisco, which is the heaviest concentration of political power on the
coast and consequently is a post which is much coveted.,

When I found that a personal friend of mine, the Chief Editor of the Alta
was an applicant I said I didn't want it--I would not take $10,000 a year
out of a friend's pocket.

The two months have passed, I heard day before yesterday that a new and
almost unknown candidate had suddenly turned up on the inside track, and
was to be appointed at once.  I didn't like that, and went after his case
in a fine passion.  I hunted up all our Senators and representatives and
found that his name was actually to come from the President early in the
morning.

Then Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me the
President's appointment--and Senator Conness said he would guarantee me
the Senate's confirmation.  It was a great temptation, but it would
render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had to drop the
idea.

I have to spend August and September in Hartford which isn't San
Francisco.  Mr. Conness offers me any choice out of five influential
California offices.  Now, some day or other I shall want an office and
then, just my luck, I can't get it, I suppose.

They want to send me abroad, as a Consul or a Minister.  I said I didn't
want any of the pie.  God knows I am mean enough and lazy enough, now,
without being a foreign consul.

Sometime in the course of the present century I think they will create a
Commissioner of Patents, and then I hope to get a berth for Orion.

I published 6 or 7 letters in the Tribune while I was gone, now I cannot
get them.  I suppose I must have them copied.
                                   Love to all
                                              SAM.


Orion Clemens was once more a candidate for office: Nevada had become a
State; with regularly elected officials, and Orion had somehow missed
being chosen.  His day of authority had passed, and the law having failed
to support him, he was again back at his old occupation, setting type in
St. Louis.  He was, as ever, full of dreams and inventions that would
some day lead to fortune.  With the gift of the Sellers imagination,
inherited by all the family, he lacked the driving power which means
achievement.  More and more as the years went by he would lean upon his
brother for moral and physical support.  The chances for him in
Washington do not appear to have been bright.  The political situation
under Andrew Johnson was not a happy one.


                     To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:

                              224 F. STREET, WASH., Feb. 21. (1868)
MY DEAR BRO.,--I am glad you do not want the clerkship, for that Patent
Office is in such a muddle that there would be no security for the
permanency of a place in it.  The same remark will apply to all offices
here, now, and no doubt will, till the close of the present
administration.

Any man who holds a place here, now, stands prepared at all times to
vacate it.  You are doing, now, exactly what I wanted you to do a year
ago.

We chase phantoms half the days of our lives.

It is well if we learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.

I am in for it.  I must go on chasing them until I marry--then I am done
with literature and all other bosh,--that is, literature wherewith to
please the general public.

I shall write to please myself, then.  I hope you will set type till you
complete that invention, for surely government pap must be nauseating
food for a man--a man whom God has enabled to saw wood and be
independent.  It really seemed to me a falling from grace, the idea of
going back to San Francisco nothing better than a mere postmaster, albeit
the public would have thought I came with gilded honors, and in great
glory.

I only retain correspondence enough, now, to make a living for myself,
and have discarded all else, so that I may have time to spare for the
book.  Drat the thing, I wish it were done, or that I had no other
writing to do.

This is the place to get a poor opinion of everybody in.  There isn't one
man in Washington, in civil office, who has the brains of Anson
Burlingame--and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his great
talents to the world, this government would have discarded him when his
time was up.

There are more pitiful intellects in this Congress!  Oh, geeminy!  There
are few of them that I find pleasant enough company to visit.

I am most infernally tired of Wash.  and its "attractions."  To be busy
is a man's only happiness--and I am--otherwise I should die
                                             Yrs.  aff
                                                  SAM.


     The secretarial position with Senator Stewart was short-lived.  One
     cannot imagine Mark Twain as anybody's secretary, and doubtless
     there was little to be gained on either side by the arrangement.
     They parted without friction, though in later years, when Stewart
     had become old and irascible, he used to recount a list of
     grievances and declare that he had been obliged to threaten violence
     in order to bring Mark to terms; but this was because the author of
     Roughing It had in that book taken liberties with the Senator, to
     the extent of an anecdote and portrait which, though certainly
     harmless enough, had for some reason given deep offense.

     Mark Twain really had no time for secretary work.  For one thing he
     was associated with John Swinton in supplying a Washington letter to
     a list of newspapers, and then he was busy collecting his Quaker
     City letters, and preparing the copy for his book.  Matters were
     going well enough, when trouble developed from an unexpected
     quarter.  The Alta-California had copyrighted the letters and
     proposed to issue them in book form.  There had been no contract
     which would prevent this, and the correspondence which Clemens
     undertook with the Alta management led to nothing.  He knew that he
     had powerful friends among the owners, if he could reach them
     personally, and he presently concluded to return to San Francisco,
     make what arrangement he could, and finish his book there.  It was
     his fashion to be prompt; in his next letter we find him already on
     the way.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                              AT SEA, Sunday, March 15, Lat. 25. (1868)
DEAR FOLKS,--I have nothing to write, except that I am well--that the
weather is fearfully hot-that the Henry Chauncey is a magnificent ship
--that we have twelve hundred, passengers on board--that I have two
staterooms, and so am not crowded--that I have many pleasant friends
here, and the people are not so stupid as on the Quaker City--that we had
Divine Service in the main saloon at 10.30 this morning--that we expect
to meet the upward bound vessel in Latitude 23, and this is why I am
writing now.

We shall reach Aspinwall Thursday morning at 6 o'clock, and San Francisco
less than two weeks later.  I worry a great deal about being obliged to
go without seeing you all, but it could not be helped.

Dan Slote, my splendid room-mate in the Quaker City and the noblest man
on earth, will call to see you within a month.  Make him dine with you
and spend the evening.  His house is my home always in.  New York.
                                             Yrs affy,
                                                  SAM.


The San Francisco trip proved successful.  Once on the ground Clemens had
little difficulty in convincing the Alta publishers that they had
received full value in the newspaper use of the letters, and that the
book rights remained with the author.  A letter to Bliss conveys the
situation.


                    To Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford:

                                        SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, '68.

E.  BLISS, Jr.  Esq.

Dr. SIR,--The Alta people, after some hesitation, have given me
permission to use my printed letters, and have ceased to think of
publishing them themselves in book form.  I am steadily at work, and
shall start East with the completed Manuscript, about the middle of June.

I lectured here, on the trip, the other night-over sixteen hundred
dollars in gold in the house--every seat taken and paid for before night.
                              Yrs truly,
                                        MARK TWAIN.


     But he did not sail in June.  His friends persuaded him to cover his
     lecture circuit of two years before, telling the story of his
     travels.  This he did with considerable profit, being everywhere
     received with great honors.  He ended this tour with a second
     lecture in San Francisco, announced in a droll and characteristic
     fashion which delighted his Pacific admirers, and insured him a
     crowded house.--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap  xlvi, and
     Appendix H.]

     His agreement had been to deliver his MS. about August 1st.
     Returning by the Chauncey, July 28th, he was two days later in
     Hartford, and had placid the copy for the new book in Bliss's hands.
     It was by no means a compilation of his newspaper letters.  His
     literary vision was steadily broadening.  All of the letters had
     been radically edited, some had been rewritten, some entirely
     eliminated.  He probably thought very well of the book, an opinion
     shared by Bliss, but it is unlikely that either of them realized
     that it was to become a permanent classic, and the best selling book
     of travel for at least fifty years.




IX.

LETTERS 1868-70.  COURTSHIP, AND "THE INNOCENTS ABROAD"

     The story of Mark Twain's courtship has been fully told in the
     completer story of his life; it need only be briefly sketched here
     as a setting for the letters of this period.  In his letter of
     January 8th we note that he expects to go to Elmira for a few days
     as soon as he has time.

     But he did not have time, or perhaps did not receive a pressing
     invitation until he had returned with his MS. from California.
     Then, through young Charles Langdon, his Quaker City shipmate, he
     was invited to Elmira.  The invitation was given for a week, but
     through a subterfuge--unpremeditated, and certainly fair enough in
     a matter of love-he was enabled to considerably prolong his visit.
     By the end of his stay he had become really "like one of the
     family," though certainly not yet accepted as such.  The fragmentary
     letter that follows reflects something of his pleasant situation.
     The Mrs. Fairbanks mentioned in this letter had been something more
     than a "shipmother" to Mark Twain.  She was a woman of fine literary
     taste, and Quaker City correspondent for her husband's paper, the
     Cleveland Herald.  She had given Mark Twain sound advice as to his
     letters, which he had usually read to her, and had in no small
     degree modified his early natural tendency to exaggeration and
     outlandish humor.  He owed her much, and never failed to pay her
     tribute.

     Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                   ELMIRA, N.Y.  Aug.  26, 1868.
DEAR FOLKS,--You see I am progressing--though slowly.  I shall be here
a week yet maybe two--for Charlie Langdon cannot get away until his
father's chief business man returns from a journey--and a visit to Mrs.
Fairbanks, at Cleveland, would lose half its pleasure if Charlie were not
along.  Moulton of St. Louis ought to be there too.  We three were Mrs.
F's "cubs," in the Quaker City.  She took good care that we were at
church regularly on Sundays; at the 8-bells prayer meeting every night;
and she kept our buttons sewed on and our clothing in order--and in a
word was as busy and considerate, and as watchful over her family of
uncouth and unruly cubs, and as patient and as long-suffering, withal, as
a natural mother.  So we expect.....

                                        Aug.  25th.
Didn't finish yesterday.  Something called me away.  I am most
comfortably situated here.  This is the pleasantest family I ever knew.
I only have one trouble, and that is they give me too much thought and
too much time and invention to the object of making my visit pass
delightfully.  It needs----

     Just how and when he left the Langdon home the letters do not
     record.  Early that fall he began a lecture engagement with James
     Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, and his engagements
     were often within reach of Elmira.  He had a standing invitation now
     to the Langdon home, and the end of the week often found him there.
     Yet when at last he proposed for the hand of Livy Langdon the
     acceptance was by no means prompt.  He was a favorite in the Langdon
     household, but his suitability as a husband for the frail and gentle
     daughter was questioned.

     However, he was carrying everything, just then, by storm.  The
     largest houses everywhere were crowded to hear him.  Papers spoke of
     him as the coming man of the age, people came to their doors to see
     him pass.  There is but one letter of this period, but it gives us
     the picture.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                             CLEVELAND, Nov. 20, 1868.
DEAR FOLKS,--I played against the Eastern favorite, Fanny Kemble, in
Pittsburgh, last night.  She had 200 in her house, and I had upwards of
1,500.  All the seats were sold (in a driving rain storm, 3 days ago,)
as reserved seats at 25 cents extra, even those in the second and third
tiers--and when the last seat was gone the box office had not been open
more than 2 hours.  When I reached the theatre they were turning people
away and the house was crammed, 150 or 200 stood up, all the evening.

I go to Elmira tonight.  I am simply lecturing for societies, at $100 a
pop.
                         Yrs
                                   SAM.


     It would be difficult for any family to refuse relationship with one
     whose star was so clearly ascending, especially when every
     inclination was in his favor, and the young lady herself encouraged
     his suit.  A provisional engagement was presently made, but it was
     not finally ratified until February of the following year.  Then in
     a letter from one of his lecture points he tells his people
     something of his happiness.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

                                        LOCKPORT, N. Y.  Feb. 27, 1868.
DEAR FOLKS,--I enclose $20 for Ma.  I thought I was getting ahead of her
little assessments of $35 a month, but find I am falling behind with her
instead, and have let her go without money.  Well, I did not mean to do
it.  But you see when people have been getting ready for months in a
quiet way to get married, they are bound to grow stingy, and go to saving
up money against that awful day when it is sure to be needed.  I am
particularly anxious to place myself in a position where I can carry on
my married life in good shape on my own hook, because I have paddled my
own canoe so long that I could not be satisfied now to let anybody help
me--and my proposed father-in-law is naturally so liberal that it would
be just like him to want to give us a start in life.  But I don't want it
that way.  I can start myself.  I don't want any help.  I can run this
institution without any outside assistance, and I shall have a wife who
will stand by me like a soldier through thick and thin, and never
complain.  She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in
Christendom.  I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion
imperatively demands a two-hundred dollar diamond one, and told her it
was typical of her future lot--namely, that she would have to flourish on
substantials rather than luxuries.  (But you see I know the girl--she
don't care anything about luxuries.) She is a splendid girl.  She spends
no money but her usual year's allowance, and she spends nearly every cent
of that on other people.  She will be a good sensible little wife,
without any airs about her.  I don't make intercession for her beforehand
and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in that--you couldn't
help it if you were to try.

I warn you that whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful
nature is her willing slave for evermore.  I take my affidavit on that
statement.  Her father and mother and brother embrace and pet her
constantly, precisely as if she were a sweetheart, instead of a blood
relation.  She has unlimited power over her father, and yet she never
uses it except to make him help people who stand in need of help....

But if I get fairly started on the subject of my bride, I never shall get
through--and so I will quit right here.  I went to Elmira a little over a
week ago, and staid four days and then had to go to New York on business.

                         ......................

     No further letters have been preserved until June, when he is in
     Elmira and with his fiancee reading final proofs on the new book.
     They were having an idyllic good time, of course, but it was a
     useful time, too, for Olivia Langdon had a keen and refined literary
     instinct, and the Innocents Abroad, as well as Mark Twain's other
     books, are better to-day for her influence.

     It has been stated that Mark Twain loved the lecture platform, but
     from his letters we see that even at this early date, when he was at
     the height of his first great vogue as a public entertainer, he had
     no love for platform life.  Undoubtedly he rejoiced in the brief
     periods when he was actually before his audience and could play upon
     it with his master touch, but the dreary intermissions of travel and
     broken sleep were too heavy a price to pay.


              To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis

                                        ELMIRA, June 4. (1868)
DEAR FOLKS,--Livy sends you her love and loving good wishes, and I send
you mine.  The last 3 chapters of the book came tonight--we shall read it
in the morning and then thank goodness, we are done.

In twelve months (or rather I believe it is fourteen,) I have earned just
eighty dollars by my pen--two little magazine squibs and one newspaper
letter--altogether the idlest, laziest 14 months I ever spent in my life.
And in that time my absolute and necessary expenses have been scorchingly
heavy--for I have now less than three thousand six hundred dollars in
bank out of the eight or nine thousand I have made during those months,
lecturing.  My expenses were something frightful during the winter.
I feel ashamed of my idleness, and yet I have had really no inclination
to do anything but court Livy.  I haven't any other inclination yet.
I have determined not to work as hard traveling, any more, as I did last
winter, and so I have resolved not to lecture outside of the 6 New
England States next winter.  My Western course would easily amount to
$10,000, but I would rather make 2 or 3 thousand in New England than
submit again to so much wearing travel.  (I have promised to talk ten
nights for a thousand dollars in the State of New York, provided the
places are close together.) But after all if I get located in a newspaper
in a way to suit me, in the meantime, I don't want to lecture at all next
winter, and probably shan't.  I most cordially hate the lecture field.
And after all, I shudder to think that I may never get out of it.

In all conversations with Gough, and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips and the other old stagers, I could not
observe that they ever expected or hoped to get out of the business.
I don't want to get wedded to it as they are.  Livy thinks we can live on
a very moderate sum and that we'll not need to lecture.  I know very well
that she can live on a small allowance, but I am not so sure about
myself.  I can't scare her by reminding her that her father's family
expenses are forty thousand dollars a year, because she produces the
documents at once to show that precious little of this outlay is on her
account.  But I must not commence writing about Livy, else I shall never
stop.  There isn't such another little piece of perfection in the world
as she is.

My time is become so short, now, that I doubt if I get to California this
summer.  If I manage to buy into a paper, I think I will visit you a
while and not go to Cal. at all.  I shall know something about it after
my next trip to Hartford.  We all go there on the 10th--the whole family
--to attend a wedding, on the 17th.  I am offered an interest in a
Cleveland paper which would pay me $2,300 to $2,500 a year, and a salary
added of $3,000.  The salary is fair enough, but the interest is not
large enough, and so I must look a little further.  The Cleveland folks
say they can be induced to do a little better by me, and urge me to come
out and talk business.  But it don't strike me--I feel little or no
inclination to go.

I believe I haven't anything else to write, and it is bed-time.  I want
to write to Orion, but I keep putting it off--I keep putting everything
off.  Day after day Livy and I are together all day long and until 10 at
night, and then I feel dreadfully sleepy.  If Orion will bear with me and
forgive me I will square up with him yet.  I will even let him kiss Livy.

My love to Mollie and Annie and Sammie and all.  Good-bye.
                              Affectionately,
                                                  SAM.


     It is curious, with his tendency to optimism and general expansion
     of futures, that he says nothing of the possible sales of the new
     book, or of his expectations in that line.  It was issued in July,
     and by June the publishers must have had promising advance orders
     from their canvassers; but apparently he includes none of these
     chickens in his financial forecast.  Even when the book had been out
     a full month, and was being shipped at the rate of several hundreds
     a day, he makes no reference to it in a letter to his sister, other
     than to ask if she has not received a copy.  This, however, was a
     Mark Twain peculiarity.  Writing was his trade; the returns from it
     seldom excited him.  It was only when he drifted into strange and
     untried fields that he began to chase rainbows, to blow iridescent
     bubbles, and count unmined gold.


                     To Mrs.  Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                        BUFFALO, Aug. 20, 1869.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I have only time to write a line.  I got your letter
this morning and mailed it to Livy.  She will be expecting me tonight and
I am sorry to disappoint her so, but then I couldn't well get away.  I
will go next Saturday.

I have bundled up Livy's picture and will try and recollect to mail it
tomorrow.  It is a porcelaintype and I think you will like it.

I am sorry I never got to St. Louis, because I may be too busy to go, for
a long time.  But I have been busy all the time and St. Louis is clear
out of the way, and remote from the world and all ordinary routes of
travel.  You must not place too much weight upon this idea of moving the
capital from Washington.  St. Louis is in some respects a better place
for it than Washington, though there isn't more than a toss-up between
the two after all.  One is dead and the other in a trance.  Washington is
in the centre of population and business, while St. Louis is far removed
from both.  And you know there is no geographical centre any more.  The
railroads and telegraph have done away with all that.  It is no longer
a matter of sufficient importance to be gravely considered by thinking
men.  The only centres, now, are narrowed down to those of intelligence,
capital and population. As I said before Washington is the nearest to
those and you don't have to paddle across a river on ferry boats of a
pattern popular in the dark ages to get to it, nor have to clamber up
vilely paved hills in rascally omnibuses along with a herd of all sorts
of people after you are there. Secondly, the removal of the capital is
one of those old, regular, reliable dodges that are the bread-and meat of
back country congressmen.  It is agitated every year.  It always has
been, it always will be; It is not new in any respect.  Thirdly.  The
Capitol has cost $40,000,000 already and lacks a good deal of being
finished, yet.  There are single stones in the Treasury building (and a
good many of them) that cost twenty-seven thousand dollars apiece--and
millions were spent in the construction of that and the Patent Office and
the other great government buildings.  To move to St. Louis, the country
must throw away a hundred millions of capital invested in those
buildings, and go right to work to spend a hundred millions on new
buildings in St. Louis.  Shall we ever have a Congress, a majority of
whose members are hopelessly insane?  Probably not.  But it is possible
--unquestionably such a thing is possible.  Only I don't believe it will
happen in our time; and I am satisfied the capital will not be moved
until it does happen.  But if St. Louis would donate the ground and the
buildings, it would be a different matter.  No, Pamela, I don't see any
good reason to believe you or I will ever see the capital moved.

I have twice instructed the publishers to send you a book--it was the
first thing I did--long before the proofs were finished.  Write me if it
is not yet done.

Livy says we must have you all at our marriage, and I say we can't.
It will be at Christmas or New Years, when such a trip across the country
would be equivalent to murder & arson & everything else.--And it would
cost five hundred dollars--an amount of money she don't know the value of
now, but will before a year is gone.  She grieves over it, poor little
rascal, but it can't be helped.  She must wait awhile, till I am firmly
on my legs, & then she shall see you.  She says her father and mother
will invite you just as soon as the wedding date is definitely fixed,
anyway--& she thinks that's bound to settle it.  But the ice & snow, &
the long hard journey, & the injudiciousness of laying out any money
except what we are obliged to part with while we are so much in debt,
settles the case differently.  For it is a debt.

.....Mr. Langdon is just as good as bound for $25,000 for me, and has
already advanced half of it in cash.  I wrote and asked whether I had
better send him my note, or a due-bill, or how he would prefer to have
the indebtedness made of record and he answered every other topic in the
letter pleasantly but never replied to that at all.  Still, I shall give
my note into the hands of his business agent here, and pay him the
interest as it falls due.  We must "go slow."  We are not in the
Cleveland Herald.  We are a hundred thousand times better off, but there
isn't so much money in it.

(Remainder missing.)


     In spite of the immediate success of his book--a success the like of
     which had scarcely been known in America-Mark Twain held himself to
     be, not a literary man, but a journalist: He had no plans for
     another book; as a newspaper owner and editor he expected, with his
     marriage, to settle down and devote the rest of his life to
     journalism.  The paper was the Buffalo Express; his interest in it
     was one-third--the purchase price, twenty-five thousand dollars, of
     which he had paid a part, Jervis Langdon, his future father-in-law,
     having furnished cash and security for the remainder.  He was
     already in possession in August, but he was not regularly in Buffalo
     that autumn, for he had agreed with Redpath to deliver his Quaker
     City lecture, and the tour would not end until a short time before
     his wedding-day, February 2, 1870.

     Our next letter hardly belongs in this collection; as it was
     doubtless written with at least the possibility of publication in
     view.  But it is too amusing, too characteristic of Mark Twain, to
     be omitted.  It was sent in response to an invitation from the New
     York Society of California Pioneers to attend a banquet given in New
     York City, October 13, 1869, and was, of course, read to the
     assembled diners.


    To the New York Society of California Pioneers, in New York City:

                                        ELMIRA, October 11, 1869.
GENTLEMEN,--Circumstances render it out of my power to take advantage of
the invitation extended to me through Mr. Simonton, and be present at
your dinner at New York.  I regret this very much, for there are several
among you whom I would have a right to join hands with on the score of
old friendship, and I suppose I would have a sublime general right to
shake hands with the rest of you on the score of kinship in California
ups and downs in search of fortune.

If I were to tell some of my experience, you would recognize California
blood in me; I fancy the old, old story would sound familiar, no doubt.
I have the usual stock of reminiscences.  For instance: I went to
Esmeralda early.  I purchased largely in the "Wide West,"  "Winnemucca,"
and other fine claims, and was very wealthy.  I fared sumptuously on
bread when flour was $200 a barrel and had beans for dinner every Sunday,
when none but bloated aristocrats could afford such grandeur.  But I
finished by feeding batteries in a quartz mill at $15 a week, and wishing
I was a battery myself and had somebody to feed me.  My claims in
Esmeralda are there yet.  I suppose I could be persuaded to sell.

I went to Humboldt District when it was new; I became largely interested
in the "Alba Nueva" and other claims with gorgeous names, and was rich
again--in prospect.  I owned a vast mining property there.  I would not
have sold out for less than $400,000 at that time.  But I will now.
Finally I walked home--200 miles partly for exercise, and partly because
stage fare was expensive.  Next I entered upon an affluent career in
Virginia City, and by a judicious investment of labor and the capital of
friends, became the owner of about all the worthless wild cat mines there
were in that part of the country.  Assessments did the business for me
there.  There were a hundred and seventeen assessments to one dividend,
and the proportion of income to outlay was a little against me.  My
financial barometer went down to 32 Fahrenheit, and the subscriber was
frozen out.

I took up extensions on the main lead-extensions that reached to British
America, in one direction, and to the Isthmus of Panama in the other--and
I verily believe I would have been a rich man if I had ever found those
infernal extensions.  But I didn't.  I ran tunnels till I tapped the
Arctic Ocean, and I sunk shafts till I broke through the roof of
perdition; but those extensions turned up missing every time.  I am
willing to sell all that property and throw in the improvements.

Perhaps you remember that celebrated "North Ophir?"  I bought that mine.
It was very rich in pure silver.  You could take it out in lumps as large
as a filbert.  But when it was discovered that those lumps were melted
half dollars, and hardly melted at that, a painful case of "salting" was
apparent, and the undersigned adjourned to the poorhouse again.

I paid assessments on "Hale and Norcross" until they sold me out, and I
had to take in washing for a living--and the next month that infamous
stock went up to $7,000 a foot.

I own millions and millions of feet of affluent silver leads in Nevada
--in fact the entire undercrust of that country nearly, and if Congress
would move that State off my property so that I could get at it, I would
be wealthy yet.  But no, there she squats--and here am I.  Failing health
persuades me to sell.  If you know of any one desiring a permanent
investment, I can furnish one that will have the virtue of being eternal.

I have been through the California mill, with all its "dips, spurs and
angles, variations and sinuosities."  I have worked there at all the
different trades and professions known to the catalogues.  I have been
everything, from a newspaper editor down to a cow-catcher on a
locomotive, and I am encouraged to believe that if there had been a few
more occupations to experiment on, I might have made a dazzling success
at last, and found out what mysterious designs Providence had in creating
me.

But you perceive that although I am not a Pioneer, I have had a
sufficiently variegated time of it to enable me to talk Pioneer like a
native, and feel like a Forty-Niner.  Therefore, I cordially welcome you
to your old-remembered homes and your long deserted firesides, and close
this screed with the sincere hope that your visit here will be a happy
one, and not embittered by the sorrowful surprises that absence and lapse
of years are wont to prepare for wanderers; surprises which come in the
form of old friends missed from their places; silence where familiar
voices should be; the young grown old; change and decay everywhere; home
a delusion and a disappointment; strangers at hearthstone; sorrow where
gladness was; tears for laughter; the melancholy-pomp of death where the
grace of life has been!

With all good wishes for the Returned Prodigals, and regrets that I
cannot partake of a small piece of the fatted calf (rare and no gravy,)
                         I am yours, cordially,
                                        MARK TWAIN.


     In the next letter we find him in the midst of a sort of confusion
     of affairs, which, in one form or another, would follow him
     throughout the rest of his life.  It was the price of his success
     and popularity, combined with his general gift for being concerned
     with a number of things, and a natural tendency for getting into hot
     water, which becomes more evident as the years and letters pass in
     review.  Orion Clemens, in his attempt to save money for the
     government, had employed methods and agents which the officials at
     Washington did not understand, and refused to recognize.  Instead of
     winning the credit and commendation he had expected, he now found
     himself pursued by claims of considerable proportions.  The "land"
     referred to is the Tennessee tract, the heritage which John Clemens
     had provided for his children.  Mark Twain had long since lost faith
     in it, and was not only willing, but eager to renounce his rights.

     "Nasby" is, of course, David R.  Locke, of the Toledo Blade, whose
     popularity at this time both as a lecturer and writer was very
     great.  Clemens had met him here and there on their platform tour,
     and they had become good friends.  Clemens, in fact, had once
     proposed to Nasby a joint trip to the Pacific coast.

     The California idea had been given up, but both Mark Twain and Nasby
     found engagements enough, and sufficient profit east of the
     Mississippi.  Boston was often their headquarters that winter ('69
     and '70), and they were much together.  "Josh Billings," another of
     Redpath's lecturers, was likewise often to be found in the Lyceum
     offices.  There is a photograph of Mark Twain, Nasby, and Josh
     Billings together.

     Clemens also, that winter, met William Dean Howells, then in the
     early days of his association with the Atlantic Monthly.  The two
     men, so widely different, became firm friends at sight, and it was
     to Howells in the years to come that Mark Twain would write more
     letters, and more characteristic letters, than to any other living
     man.  Howells had favorably reviewed 'The Innocents Abroad,' and
     after the first moment of their introduction had passed Clemens
     said: "When I read that review of yours I felt like the woman who
     said that she was so glad that her baby had come white."  It was not
     the sort of thing that Howells would have said, but it was the sort
     of thing that he could understand and appreciate from Mark Twain.

     In company with Nasby Clemens, that season, also met Oliver Wendell
     Holmes.  Later he had sent Holmes a copy of his book and received a
     pleasantly appreciative reply.  "I always like," wrote Holmes, "to
     hear what one of my fellow countrymen, who is not a Hebrew scholar,
     or a reader of hiero-glyphics, but a good-humored traveler with a
     pair of sharp, twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his
     head, has to say about the things that learned travelers often make
     unintelligible, and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd ....  I
     hope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your
     travels."  A wish that was realized in due time, though it is
     doubtful if Doctor Holmes or any one else at the moment believed
     that a book of that nature and price (it was $3.50 a copy) would
     ever reach such a sale.



                      To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

                                                  BOSTON, Nov. 9, 1869.
MY DEAR SISTER,--Three or four letters just received from home.  My first
impulse was to send Orion a check on my publisher for the money he wants,
but a sober second thought suggested that if he has not defrauded the
government out of money, why pay, simply because the government chooses
to consider him in its debt?  No: Right is right.  The idea don't suit
me.  Let him write the Treasury the state of the case, and tell them he
has no money.  If they make his sureties pay, then I will make the
sureties whole, but I won't pay a cent of an unjust claim.  You talk of
disgrace.  To my mind it would be just as disgraceful to allow one's self
to be bullied into paying that which is unjust.

Ma thinks it is hard that Orion's share of the land should be swept away
just as it is right on the point (as it always has been) of becoming
valuable.  Let her rest easy on that point.  This letter is his ample
authority to sell my share of the land immediately and appropriate the
proceeds--giving no account to me, but repaying the amount to Ma first,
or in case of her death, to you or your heirs, whenever in the future he
shall be able to do it.  Now, I want no hesitation in this matter.  I
renounce my ownership from this date, for this purpose, provided it is
sold just as suddenly as he can sell it.

In the next place--Mr. Langdon is old, and is trying hard to withdraw
from business and seek repose.  I will not burden him with a purchase
--but I will ask him to take full possession of a coal tract of the land
without paying a cent, simply conditioning that he shall mine and throw
the coal into market at his own cost, and pay to you and all of you what
he thinks is a fair portion of the profits accruing--you can do as you
please with the rest of the land.  Therefore, send me (to Elmira,)
information about the coal deposits so framed that he can comprehend the
matter and can intelligently instruct an agent how to find it and go to
work.

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience
--4,000 critics--and on the success of this matter depends my future
success in New England.  But I am not distressed.  Nasby is in the same
boat.  Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture.  He has just
left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was greatly depressed.  I
have convinced him that he has little to fear.

I get just about five hundred more applications to lecture than I can
possibly fill--and in the West they say "Charge all you please, but
come."  I shan't go West at all.  I stop lecturing the 22d of January,
sure.  But I shall talk every night up to that time.  They flood me with
high-priced invitations to write for magazines and papers, and publishers
besiege me to write books.  Can't do any of these things.

I am twenty-two thousand dollars in debt, and shall earn the money and
pay it within two years--and therefore I am not spending any money except
when it is necessary.

I had my life insured for $10,000 yesterday (what ever became of Mr.
Moffett' s life insurance?) "for the benefit of my natural heirs"--the
same being my mother, for Livy wouldn't claim it, you may be sure of
that.  This has taken $200 out of my pocket which I was going to send to
Ma.  But I will send her some, soon.  Tell Orion to keep a stiff upper
lip--when the worst comes to the worst I will come forward.  Must talk in
Providence, R. I., tonight.  Must leave now.  I thank Mollie and Orion
and the rest for your letters, but you see how I am pushed--ought to have
6 clerks.
                              Affectionately,
                                                  SAM.


     By the end of January, 1870 more than thirty thousand copies of the
     Innocents had been sold, and in a letter to his publisher the author
     expressed his satisfaction.


                      To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford:

                                        ELMIRA, Jan. 28 '70.
FRIEND BLISS,--..... Yes, I am satisfied with the way you are running the
book.  You are running it in staving, tip-top, first-class style.  I
never wander into any corner of the country but I find that an agent has
been there before me, and many of that community have read the book.  And
on an average about ten people a day come and hunt me up to thank me and
tell me I'm a benefactor!  I guess this is a part of the programme we
didn't expect in the first place.

I think you are rushing this book in a manner to be proud of; and you
will make the finest success of it that has ever been made with a
subscription book, I believe.  What with advertising, establishing
agencies, &c., you have got an enormous lot of machinery under way and
hard at work in a wonderfully short space of time.  It is easy to see,
when one travels around, that one must be endowed with a deal of genuine
generalship in order to maneuvre a publication whose line of battle
stretches from end to end of a great continent, and whose foragers and
skirmishers invest every hamlet and besiege every village hidden away in
all the vast space between.

I'll back you against any publisher in America, Bliss--or elsewhere.
                                        Yrs as ever
                                                  CLEMENS.


     There is another letter written just at this time which of all
     letters must not be omitted here.  Only five years earlier Mark
     Twain, poor, and comparatively unknown, had been carrying water
     while Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker washed out the pans of dirt in
     search of the gold pocket which they did not find.  Clemens must
     have received a letter from Gillis referring to some particular
     occasion, but it has disappeared; the reply, however, always
     remained one of James Gillis's treasured possessions.


              To James Gillis, in his cabin on Jackass Hill,
                         Tuolumne Co., California:

                                        ELMIRA, N.Y.  Jan.  26, '70.
DEAR JIM,--I remember that old night just as well!  And somewhere among my
relics I have your remembrance stored away.  It makes my heart ache yet
to call to mind some of those days.  Still, it shouldn't--for right in
the depths of their poverty and their pocket-hunting vagabondage lay the
germ of my coming good fortune. You remember the one gleam of jollity
that shot across our dismal sojourn in the rain and mud of Angels' Camp
I mean that day we sat around the tavern stove and heard that chap tell
about the frog and how they filled him with shot.  And you remember how
we quoted from the yarn and laughed over it, out there on the hillside
while you and dear old Stoker panned and washed.  I jotted the story down
in my note-book that day, and would have been glad to get ten or fifteen
dollars for it--I was just that blind.  But then we were so hard up!
I published that story, and it became widely known in America, India,
China, England--and the reputation it made for me has paid me thousands
and thousands of dollars since.  Four or five months ago I bought into
the Express (I have ordered it sent to you as long as you live--and if
the book keeper sends you any bills, you let me hear of it.) I went
heavily in debt never could have dared to do that, Jim, if we hadn't
heard the jumping Frog story that day.

And wouldn't I love to take old Stoker by the hand, and wouldn't I love
to see him in his great specialty, his wonderful rendition of "Rinalds"
in the "Burning Shame!"  Where is Dick and what is he doing?  Give him my
fervent love and warm old remembrances.

A week from today I shall be married to a girl even better, and lovelier
than the peerless "Chapparal Quails."  You can't come so far, Jim, but
still I cordially invite you to come, anyhow--and I invite Dick, too.
And if you two boys were to land here on that pleasant occasion, we would
make you right royally welcome.
                              Truly your friend,
                                        SAML L. CLEMENS.

P. S.  "California plums are good, Jim--particularly when they are
stewed."


     Steve Gillis, who sent a copy of his letter to the writer, added:
     "Dick Stoker--dear, gentle unselfish old Dick-died over three years
     ago, aged 78.  I am sure it will be a melancholy pleasure to Mark to
     know that Dick lived in comfort all his later life, sincerely loved
     and respected by all who knew him.  He never left Jackass Hill.  He
     struck a pocket years ago containing enough not only to build
     himself a comfortable house near his old cabin, but to last him,
     without work, to his painless end.  He was a Mason, and was buried
     by the Order in Sonora.

     "The 'Quails'--the beautiful, the innocent, the wild little Quails
     --lived way out in the Chapparal; on a little ranch near the
     Stanislaus River, with their father and mother.  They were famous
     for their beauty and had many suitors."

     The mention of "California plums" refers to some inedible fruit
     which Gillis once, out of pure goodness of heart, bought of a poor
     wandering squaw, and then, to conceal his motive, declared that they
     were something rare and fine, and persisted in eating them, though
     even when stewed they nearly choked him.




X.

LETTERS 1870-71.  MARK TWAIN IN BUFFALO.  MARRIAGE. THE BUFFALO EXPRESS.
"MEMORANDA."  LECTURES.  A NEW BOOK

     Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia Langdon were married in the Langdon
     home at Elmira, February 2, 1870, and took up their residence in
     Buffalo in a beautiful home, a wedding present from the bride's
     father.  The story of their wedding, and the amusing circumstances
     connected with their establishment in Buffalo, have been told
     elsewhere.--[Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. lxxiv.]

     Mark Twain now believed that he was through with lecturing.  Two
     letters to Redpath, his agent, express his comfortable condition.


                       To James Redpath, in Boston:

                                             BUFFALO, March 22, 1890.
DEAR RED,--I am not going to lecture any more forever.  I have got things
ciphered down to a fraction now.  I know just about what it will cost us
to live and I can make the money without lecturing.  Therefore old man,
count me out.
          Your friend,
                    S.  L.  CLEMENS.


                       To James Redpath, in Boston:

                                   ELMIRA, N. Y.  May 10, 1870.
FRIEND REDPATH,--I guess I am out of the field permanently.

Have got a lovely wife; a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished;
a lovely carriage, and a coachman whose style and dignity are simply
awe-inspiring--nothing less--and I am making more money than necessary
--by considerable, and therefore why crucify myself nightly on the
platform.  The subscriber will have to be excused from the present
season at least.

Remember me to Nasby, Billings and Fall.--[Redpath's partner in the
lecture lyceum.]--Luck to you!  I am going to print your menagerie,
Parton and all, and make comments.

In next Galaxy I give Nasby's friend and mine from Philadelphia (John
Quill, a literary thief) a "hyste."
                         Yours always and after.
                                                  MARK.


     The reference to the Galaxy in the foregoing letter has to do with a
     department called Memoranda, which he had undertaken to conduct for
     the new magazine.  This work added substantially to his income, and
     he believed it would be congenial.  He was allowed free hand to
     write and print what he chose, and some of his best work at this
     time was published in the new department, which he continued for a
     year.

     Mark Twain now seemed to have his affairs well regulated.  His
     mother and sister were no longer far away in St. Louis.  Soon after
     his marriage they had, by his advice, taken up residence at
     Fredonia, New York, where they could be easily visited from Buffalo.

     Altogether, the outlook seemed bright to Mark Twain and his wife,
     during the first months of their marriage.  Then there came a
     change.  In a letter which Clemens wrote to his mother and sister we
     get the first chapter of disaster.


       To Mrs. Jane Clemens, and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:

                                        ELMIRA, N. Y.  June 25, 1870.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--We were called here suddenly by telegram, 3
days ago.  Mr. Langdon is very low.  We have well-nigh lost hope--all of
us except Livy.

Mr. Langdon, whose hope is one of his most prominent characteristics,
says himself, this morning, that his recovery is only a possibility, not
a probability.  He made his will this morning--that is, appointed
executors--nothing else was necessary.  The household is sad enough
Charley is in Bavaria.  We telegraphed Munroe & Co. Paris, to notify
Charley to come home--they sent the message to Munich.  Our message left
here at 8 in the morning and Charley's answer arrived less than eight
hours afterward.  He sailed immediately.

He will reach home two weeks from now.  The whole city is troubled.  As I
write (at the office,) a dispatch arrives from Charley who has reached
London, and will sail thence on 28th.  He wants news.  We cannot send him
any.
                         Affectionately
                                        SAM.

P. S.  I sent $300 to Fredonia Bank for Ma--It is in her name.


     Mrs. Clemens, herself, was not in the best of health at this time,
     but devotion to her father took her to his bedside, where she
     insisted upon standing long, hard watches, the strain of which told
     upon her severely.  Meantime, work must go on; the daily demand of
     the newspaper and the monthly call of the Memoranda could not go
     unheeded.  Also, Bliss wanted a new book, and met Mark Twain at
     Elmira to arrange for it.  In a letter to Orion we learn of this
     project.


                     To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:

                                             ELMIRA, July 15, 1870
MY DEAR BRO.,--Per contract I must have another 600-page book ready for
my publisher Jan.  z, and I only began it today.  The subject of it is a
secret, because I may possibly change it.  But as it stands, I propose to
do up Nevada and Cal., beginning with the trip across the country in the
stage.  Have you a memorandum of the route we took--or the names of any
of the Stations we stopped at?  Do you remember any of the scenes, names,
incidents or adventures of the coach trip?--for I remember next to
nothing about the matter.  Jot down a foolscap page of items for me.
I wish I could have two days' talk with you.

I suppose I am to get the biggest copyright, this time, ever paid on a
subscription book in this country.

Give our love to Mollie.--Mr. Langdon is very low.
                         Yr Bro
                                   SAM.


     The "biggest copyright," mentioned in this letter, was a royalty of
     7 1/2 per cent., which Bliss had agreed to pay, on the retail price
     of the book.  The book was Roughing It, though this title was not
     decided upon until considerably later.  Orion Clemens eagerly
     furnished a detailed memorandum of the route of their overland
     journey, which brought this enthusiastic acknowledgment:


                     To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis:

                                                  BUF., 1870.
DEAR BRO.,--I find that your little memorandum book is going to be ever
so much use to me, and will enable me to make quite a coherent narrative
of the Plains journey instead of slurring it over and jumping 2,000 miles
at a stride.  The book I am writing will sell.  In return for the use of
the little memorandum book I shall take the greatest pleasure in
forwarding to you the third $1,000 which the publisher of the forthcoming
work sends me or the first $1,000, I am not particular--they will both be
in the first quarterly statement of account from the publisher.
                                   In great haste,
                                                  Yr Obliged Bro.
                                                                 SAM.

Love to Mollie.  We are all getting along tolerably well.


     Mr. Langdon died early in August, and Mrs. Clemens returned to
     Buffalo, exhausted in mind and body.  If she hoped for rest now, in
     the quiet of her own home, she was disappointed, as the two brief
     letters that follow clearly show.


                   To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:

                                                  BUFFALO, Aug.  31, 70.
MY DEAR SISTER,--I know I ought to be thrashed for not writing you, but
I have kept putting it off.  We get heaps of letters every day; it is a
comfort to have somebody like you that will let us shirk and be patient
over it.  We got the book and I did think I wrote a line thanking you for
it-but I suppose I neglected it.

We are getting along tolerably well.  Mother [Mrs. Langdon] is here, and
Miss Emma Nye.  Livy cannot sleep since her father's death--but I give
her a narcotic every night and make her.  I am just as busy as I can be
--am still writing for the Galaxy and also writing a book like the
"Innocents" in size and style.  I have got my work ciphered down to days,
and I haven't a single day to spare between this and the date which, by
written contract I am to deliver the M.S. of the book to the publisher.
                             ----In a hurry
                                        Affectionately
                                                  SAM


                     To Orion Clemens, in St, Louis:

                                        BUF.  Sept. 9th, 1870.
MY DEAR BRO,--O here!  I don't want to be consulted at all about Tenn.
I don't want it even mentioned to me.  When I make a suggestion it is for
you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to ask my
advice, opinion or consent about that hated property.  If it was because
I felt the slightest personal interest in the infernal land that I ever
made a suggestion, the suggestion would never be made.

Do exactly as you please with the land--always remember this--that so
trivial a percentage as ten per cent will never sell it.

It is only a bid for a somnambulist.

I have no time to turn round, a young lady visitor (schoolmate of Livy's)
is dying in the house of typhoid fever (parents are in South Carolina)
and the premises are full of nurses and doctors and we are all fagged
out.
                              Yrs.
                                        SAM.


     Miss Nye, who had come to cheer her old schoolmate, had been
     prostrated with the deadly fever soon after her arrival.  Another
     period of anxiety and nursing followed.  Mrs. Clemens, in spite of
     her frail health, devoted much time to her dying friend, until by
     the time the end came she was herself in a precarious condition.
     This was at the end of September.  A little more than a month later,
     November 7th, her first child, Langdon Clemens, was prematurely
     born.  To the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, of Hartford, Mark
     Twain characteristically announced the new arrival.


         To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford, Conn.:

                                        BUFFALO, Nov 12, '70.
DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT,--I came into the world on the 7th inst., and
consequently am about five days old, now.  I have had wretched health
ever since I made my appearance.  First one thing and then another has
kept me under the weather, and as a general thing I have been chilly and
uncomfortable.

I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way.  At birth I only weighed
4 1/2 pounds with my clothes on--and the clothes were the chief feature of
the weight, too, I am obliged to confess.  But I am doing finely,
all things considered.  I was at a standstill for 3 days and a half, but
during the last 24 hours I have gained nearly an ounce, avoirdupois.

They all say I look very old and venerable-and I am aware, myself, that I
never smile.  Life seems a serious thing, what I have seen of it--and my
observation teaches me that it is made up mainly of hiccups, unnecessary
washings, and colic.  But no doubt you, who are old, have long since
grown accustomed and reconciled to what seems to me such a disagreeable
novelty.

My father said, this morning, when my face was in repose and thoughtful,
that I looked precisely as young Edward Twichell of Hartford used to look
some is months ago--chin, mouth, forehead, expression--everything.

My little mother is very bright and cheery, and I guess she is pretty
happy, but I don't know what about.  She laughs a great deal,
notwithstanding she is sick abed.  And she eats a great deal, though she
says that is because the nurse desires it.  And when she has had all the
nurse desires her to have, she asks for more.  She is getting along very
well indeed.

My aunt Susie Crane has been here some ten days or two weeks, but goes
home today, and Granny Fairbanks of Cleveland arrives to take her place.
--[Mrs. Fairbanks, of the Quaker City excursion.]
                                   Very lovingly,
                                             LANGDON CLEMENS.

P. S.  Father said I had better write because you would be more
interested in me, just now, than in the rest of the family.


     Clemens had made the acquaintance of the Rev. Joseph Hopkins
     Twichell and his wife during his several sojourns in Hartford, in
     connection with his book publication, and the two men had
     immediately become firm friends.  Twichell had come to Elmira in
     February to the wedding to assist Rev. Thos. K. Beecher in the
     marriage ceremony.  Joseph Twichell was a devout Christian, while
     Mark Twain was a doubter, even a scoffer, where orthodoxy was
     concerned, yet the sincerity and humanity of the two men drew them
     together; their friendship was lifelong.

     A second letter to Twichell, something more than a month later,
     shows a somewhat improved condition in the Clemens household.


                      To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford:

                                             BUF. Dec. 19th, 1870.
DEAR J. H.,--All is well with us, I believe--though for some days the
baby was quite ill.  We consider him nearly restored to health now,
however.  Ask my brother about us--you will find him at Bliss's
publishing office, where he is gone to edit Bliss's new paper--left here
last Monday.  Make his and his wife's acquaintance.  Take Mrs. T. to see
them as soon as they are fixed.

Livy is up, and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter days
and nights, but I am a bachelor up stairs and don't have to jump up and
get the soothing syrup--though I would as soon do it as not, I assure
you.  (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)

Tell Harmony (Mrs. T.) that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily,
too, although with occasional apprehensions that his loose head will fall
off.  I don't have to quiet him--he hardly ever utters a cry.  He is
always thinking about something.  He is a patient, good little baby.

Smoke?  I always smoke from 3 till 5 Sunday afternoons--and in New York
the other day I smoked a week, day and night.  But when Livy is well I
smoke only those two hours on Sunday.  I'm "boss" of the habit, now, and
shall never let it boss me any more.  Originally, I quit solely on Livy's
account, (not that I believed there was the faintest reason in the
matter, but just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she
wished it, or quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral,) and I
stick to it yet on Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so,
without a pang.  But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T.
didn't mind it if I remember rightly.  Ah, it is turning one's back upon
a kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent to
make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable as
well as useful, to go and quit smoking when then ain't any sufficient
excuse for it!  Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shorten
my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were
wasting their puerile word upon--they little knew how trivial and
valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it!  But I won't
persuade you, Twichell--I won't until I see you again--but then we'll
smoke for a week together, and then shut off again.

I would have gone to Hartford from New York last Saturday, but I got so
homesick I couldn't.  But maybe I'll come soon.

No, Sir, catch me in the metropolis again, to get homesick.

I didn't know Warner had a book out.

We send oceans and continents of love--I have worked myself down, today.
                              Yrs always
                                        MARK.


     With his establishment in Buffalo, Clemens, as already noted, had
     persuaded his sister, now a widow, and his mother, to settle in
     Fredonia, not far away.  Later, he had found a position for Orion,
     as editor of a small paper which Bliss had established.  What with
     these several diversions and the sorrows and sicknesses of his own
     household, we can readily imagine that literary work had been
     performed under difficulties.  Certainly, humorous writing under
     such disturbing conditions could not have been easy, nor could we
     expect him to accept an invitation to be present and make a comic
     speech at an agricultural dinner, even though Horace Greeley would
     preside.  However, he sent to the secretary of the association a
     letter which might be read at the gathering:


       To A.  B.  Crandall, in Woodberry Falls, N. Y., to be read
                       at an agricultural dinner:

                                        BUFFALO, Dec. 26, 1870.
GENTLEMEN,--I thank you very much for your invitation to the Agricultural
dinner, and would promptly accept it and as promptly be there but for the
fact that Mr. Greeley is very busy this month and has requested me to
clandestinely continue for him in The Tribune the articles "What I Know
about Farming."  Consequently the necessity of explaining to the readers
of that journal why buttermilk cannot be manufactured profitably at 8
cents a quart out of butter that costs 60 cents a pound compels my stay
at home until the article is written.
                         With reiterated thanks, I am
                                    Yours truly,
                                             MARK TWAIN.


     In this letter Mark Twain made the usual mistake as to the title of
     the Greeley farming series, "What I Know of Farming" being the
     correct form.

     The Buffalo Express, under Mark Twain's management, had become a
     sort of repository for humorous efforts, often of an indifferent
     order.  Some of these things, signed by nom de plumes, were charged
     to Mark Twain.  When Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee" devastated the
     country, and was so widely parodied, an imitation of it entitled,
     "Three Aces," and signed "Carl Byng," was printed in the Express.
     Thomas Bailey Aldrich, then editor of Every Saturday, had not met
     Mark Twain, and, noticing the verses printed in the exchanges over
     his signature, was one of those who accepted them as Mark Twain's
     work.  He wrote rather an uncomplimentary note in Every Saturday
     concerning the poem and its authorship, characterizing it as a
     feeble imitation of Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee."  Clemens promptly
     protested to Aldrich, then as promptly regretted having done so,
     feeling that he was making too much of a small matter.  Hurriedly he
     sent a second brief note.


         To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, editor of "Every Saturday,"
                         Boston, Massachusetts:

                                        BUFFALO, Jan. 22, 1870.
DEAR SIR,--Please do not publish the note I sent you the other day about
"Hy. Slocum's" plagiarism entitled "Three Aces"--it is not important
enough for such a long paragraph.  Webb writes me that he has put in a
paragraph about it, too--and I have requested him to suppress it.  If you
would simply state, in a line and a half under "Literary Notes," that you
mistook one "Hy.  Slocum" (no, it was one "Carl Byng," I perceive) "Carl
Byng" for Mark Twain, and that it was the former who wrote the plagiarism
entitled "Three Aces," I think that would do a fair justice without any
unseemly display.  But it is hard to be accused of plagiarism--a crime I
never have committed in my life.
                              Yrs.  Truly
                                        MARK TWAIN.


     But this came too late.  Aldrich replied that he could not be
     prevented from doing him justice, as forty-two thousand copies of
     the first note, with the editor's apology duly appended, were
     already in press.  He would withdraw his apology in the next number
     of Every Saturday, if Mark Twain said so.  Mark Twain's response
     this time assumed the proportions of a letter.


                   To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in Boston:

                                   472 DELAWARE ST., BUFFALO, Jan. 28.
DEAR MR. ALDRICH,--No indeed, don't take back the apology!  Hang it, I
don't want to abuse a man's civility merely because he gives me the
chance.

I hear a good deal about doing things on the "spur of the moment"
--I invariably regret the things I do on the spur of the moment.  That
disclaimer of mine was a case in point.  I am ashamed every time I think
of my bursting out before an unconcerned public with that bombastic
pow-wow about burning publishers' letters, and all that sort of imbecility,
and about my not being an imitator, etc.  Who would find out that I am a
natural fool if I kept always cool and never let nature come to the
surface?  Nobody.

But I did hate to be accused of plagiarizing Bret Harte, who trimmed and
trained and schooled me patiently until he changed me from an awkward
utterer of coarse grotesquenesses to a writer of paragraphs and chapters
that have found a certain favor in the eyes of even some of the very
decentest people in the land--and this grateful remembrance of mine ought
to be worth its face, seeing that Bret broke our long friendship a year
ago without any cause or provocation that I am aware of.

Well, it is funny, the reminiscences that glare out from murky corners of
one's memory, now and then, without warning.  Just at this moment a
picture flits before me: Scene--private room in Barnum's Restaurant,
Virginia, Nevada; present, Artemus Ward, Joseph T.  Goodman, (editor and
proprietor Daily "Enterprise"), and "Dan de Quille" and myself, reporters
for same; remnants of the feast thin and scattering, but such tautology
and repetition of empty bottles everywhere visible as to be offensive to
the sensitive eye; time, 2.30 A.M.; Artemus thickly reciting a poem about
a certain infant you wot of, and interrupting himself and being
interrupted every few lines by poundings of the table and shouts of
"Splendid, by Shorzhe!"  Finally, a long, vociferous, poundiferous and
vitreous jingling of applause announces the conclusion, and then Artemus:
"Let every man 'at loves his fellow man and 'preciates a poet 'at loves
his fellow man, stan' up!--Stan' up and drink health and long life to
Thomas Bailey Aldrich!--and drink it stanning!" (On all hands fervent,
enthusiastic, and sincerely honest attempts to comply.) Then Artemus:
"Well--consider it stanning, and drink it just as ye are!"  Which was
done.

You must excuse all this stuff from a stranger, for the present, and when
I see you I will apologize in full.

Do you know the prettiest fancy and the neatest that ever shot through
Harte's brain?  It was this:  When they were trying to decide upon a
vignette for the cover of the Overland, a grizzly bear (of the arms of
the State of California) was chosen.  Nahl Bras. carved him and the page
was printed, with him in it, looking thus: [Rude sketch of a grizzly
bear.]

As a bear, he was a success--he was a good bear--.  But then, it was
objected, that he was an objectless bear--a bear that meant nothing in
particular, signified nothing,--simply stood there snarling over his
shoulder at nothing--and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and
ill-natured intruder upon the fair page.  All hands said that--none were
satisfied.  They hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as much
to have him there when there was no paint to him.  But presently Harte
took a pencil and drew these two simple lines under his feet and behold
he was a magnificent success!--the ancient symbol of California savagery
snarling at the approaching type of high and progressive Civilization,
the first Overland locomotive!: [Sketch of a small section of railway
track.]

I just think that was nothing less than inspiration itself.

Once more I apologize, and this time I do it "stanning!"
                         Yrs.  Truly
                              SAML. L. CLEMENS.


     The "two simple lines," of course, were the train rails under the
     bear's feet, and completed the striking cover design of the Overland
     monthly.

     The brief controversy over the "Three Aces" was the beginning of
     along and happy friendship between Aldrich and Mark Twain.  Howells,
     Aldrich, Twichell, and Charles Dudley Warner--these were Mark
     Twain's intimates, men that he loved, each for his own special charm
     and worth.

     Aldrich he considered the most brilliant of living men.

     In his reply to Clemens's letter, Aldrich declared that he was glad
     now that, for the sake of such a letter, he had accused him falsely,
     and added:

     "Mem.  Always abuse people.

     "When you come to Boston, if you do not make your presence manifest
     to me, I'll put in a !! in 'Every Saturday' to the effect that
     though you are generally known as Mark Twain your favorite nom de
     plume is 'Barry Gray.'"

     Clemens did not fail to let Aldrich know when he was in Boston
     again, and the little coterie of younger writers forgathered to give
     him welcome.

     Buffalo agreed with neither Mrs. Clemens nor the baby.  What with
     nursing and anguish of mind, Mark Twain found that he could do
     nothing on the new book, and that he must give up his magazine
     department.  He had lost interest in his paper and his surroundings
     in general.  Journalism and authorship are poor yoke-mates.  To
     Onion Clemens, at this time editing Bliss's paper at Hartford, he
     explained the situation.


                      To Onion Clemens, in Hartford:

                                             BUFFALO, 4th 1871.
MY DEAR BRO,--What I wanted of the "Liar" Sketch, was to work it into the
California book--which I shall do.  But day before yesterday I concluded
to go out of the Galaxy on the strength of it, so I have turned it into
the last Memoranda I shall ever write, and published it as a "specimen
chapter" of my forthcoming book.

I have written the Galaxy people that I will never furnish them another
article long or short, for any price but $500.00 cash--and have requested
them not to ask me for contributions any more, even at that price.

I hope that lets them out, for I will stick to that.  Now do try and
leave me clear out of the 'Publisher' for the present, for I am
endangering my reputation by writing too much--I want to get out of the
public view for awhile.

I am still nursing Livy night and day and cannot write anything.  I am
nearly worn out.  We shall go to Elmira ten days hence (if Livy can
travel on a mattress then,) and stay there till I have finished the
California book--say three months.  But I can't begin work right away
when I get there--must have a week's rest, for I have been through 30
days' terrific siege.

That makes it after the middle of March before I can go fairly to work
--and then I'll have to hump myself and not lose a moment.  You and Bliss
just put yourselves in my place and you will see that my hands are full
and more than full.

When I told Bliss in N. Y. that I would write something for the Publisher
I could not know that I was just about to lose fifty days.  Do you see
the difference it makes?  Just as soon as ever I can, I will send some
of the book M.S. but right in the first chapter I have got to alter the
whole style of one of my characters and re-write him clear through to
where I am now.  It is no fool of a job, I can tell you, but the book
will be greatly bettered by it.  Hold on a few days--four or five--and
I will see if I can get a few chapters fixed to send to Bliss.

I have offered this dwelling house and the Express for sale, and when we
go to Elmira we leave here for good.  I shall not select a new home till
the book is finished, but we have little doubt that Hartford will be the
place.

We are almost certain of that.  Ask Bliss how it would be to ship our
furniture to Hartford, rent an upper room in a building and unbox it and
store it there where somebody can frequently look after it.  Is not the
idea good?  The furniture is worth $10,000 or $12,000 and must not be
jammed into any kind of a place and left unattended to for a year.

The first man that offers $25,000 for our house can take it--it cost
that.  What are taxes there?  Here, all bunched together--of all kinds,
they are 7 per cent--simply ruin.

The things you have written in the Publisher are tip-top.
                         In haste,
                                   Yr Bro
                                             SAM


     There are no further letters until the end of April, by which time
     the situation had improved.  Clemens had sold his interest in the
     Express (though at a loss), had severed his magazine connection, and
     was located at Quarry Farm, on a beautiful hilltop above Elmira, the
     home of Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Theodore Crane.  The pure air
     and rest of that happy place, where they were to spend so many
     idyllic summers, had proved beneficial to the sick ones, and work on
     the new book progressed in consequence.  Then Mark Twain's old
     editor, "Joe" Goodman, came from Virginia City for a visit, and his
     advice and encouragement were of the greatest value.  Clemens even
     offered to engage Goodman on a salary, to remain until he had
     finished his book.  Goodman declined the salary, but extended his
     visit, and Mark Twain at last seems to have found himself working
     under ideal conditions.  He jubilantly reports his progress.


                      To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford:

                                   ELMIRA, Monday.  May 15th 1871
FRIEND BLISS,--Yrs rec'd enclosing check for $703.35  The old "Innocents"
holds out handsomely.

I have MS. enough on hand now, to make (allowing for engravings) about
400 pages of the book--consequently am two-thirds done.  I intended to
run up to Hartford about the middle of the week and take it along;
because it has chapters in it that ought by all means to be in the
prospectus; but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work, now
(a thing I have not experienced for months) that I can't bear to lose a
single moment of the inspiration.  So I will stay here and peg away as
long as it lasts.  My present idea is to write as much more as I have
already written, and then cull from the mass the very best chapters and
discard the rest.  I am not half as well satisfied with the first part of
the book as I am with what I am writing now.  When I get it done I want
to see the man who will begin to read it and not finish it.  If it falls
short of the "Innocents" in any respect I shall lose my guess.

When I was writing the "Innocents" my daily stunt was 30 pages of MS and
I hardly ever got beyond it; but I have gone over that nearly every day
for the last ten.  That shows that I am writing with a red-hot interest.
Nothing grieves me now--nothing troubles me, nothing bothers me or gets
my attention--I don't think of anything but the book, and I don't have an
hour's unhappiness about anything and don't care two cents whether school
keeps or not.  It will be a bully book.  If I keep up my present lick
three weeks more I shall be able and willing to scratch out half of the
chapters of the Overland narrative--and shall do it.

You do not mention having received my second batch of MS, sent a week or
two ago--about 100 pages.

If you want to issue a prospectus and go right to canvassing, say the
word and I will forward some more MS--or send it by hand--special
messenger.  Whatever chapters you think are unquestionably good, we will
retain of course, so they can go into a prospectus as well one time as
another.  The book will be done soon, now.  I have 1200 pages of MS
already written and am now writing 200 a week--more than that, in fact;
during the past week wrote 23 one day, then 30, 33, 35, 52, and 65.
--How's that?

It will be a starchy book, and should be full of snappy pictures
--especially pictures worked in with the letterpress.  The dedication
will be worth the price of the volume--thus:

                           To the Late Cain.
                        This Book is Dedicated:

Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect;
not on account of sympathy with him, for his bloody deed placed him
without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking: but out of a mere human
commiseration for him that it was his misfortune to live in a dark age
that knew not the beneficent Insanity Plea.

I think it will do.
                         Yrs.  CLEMENS.

P. S.--The reaction is beginning and my stock is looking up.  I am
getting the bulliest offers for books and almanacs; am flooded with
lecture invitations, and one periodical offers me $6,000 cash for 12
articles, of any length and on any subject, treated humorously or
otherwise.


     The suggested dedication "to the late Cain" may have been the
     humoristic impulse of the moment.  At all events, it did not
     materialize.

     Clemens's enthusiasm for work was now such that he agreed with
     Redpath to return to the platform that autumn, and he began at once
     writing lectures.  His disposal of the Buffalo paper had left him
     considerably in debt, and platforming was a sure and quick method of
     retrenchment.  More than once in the years ahead Mark Twain would
     return to travel and one-night stands to lift a burden of debt.
     Brief letters to Redpath of this time have an interest and even a
     humor of their own.


                   Letters to James Redpath, in Boston:

                                        ELMIRA, June 27, 1871.
DEAR RED,--Wrote another lecture--a third one-today.  It is the one I am
going to deliver.  I think I shall call it "Reminiscences of Some
Pleasant Characters Whom I Have Met," (or should the "whom" be left out?)
It covers my whole acquaintance--kings, lunatics, idiots and all.
Suppose you give the item a start in the Boston papers.  If I write fifty
lectures I shall only choose one and talk that one only.

No sir: Don't you put that scarecrow (portrait) from the Galaxy in, I
won't stand that nightmare.
                              Yours,
                                        MARK.


                                        ELMIRA, July 10, 1871.
DEAR REDPATH,--I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church
yet.  People are afraid to laugh in a church.  They can't be made to do
it in any possible way.

Success to Fall's carbuncle and many happy returns.
                              Yours,
                                        MARK.


                         To Mr. Fall, in Boston:

                                        ELMIRA, N. Y. July 20, 1871.
FRIEND FALL,--Redpath tells me to blow up.  Here goes!  I wanted you to
scare Rondout off with a big price.  $125 ain't big.  I got $100 the
first time I ever talked there and now they have a much larger hall.
It is a hard town to get to--I run a chance of getting caught by the ice
and missing next engagement.  Make the price $150 and let them draw out.
                              Yours
                                        MARK


                   Letters to James Redpath, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Tuesday Aug. 8, 1871.
DEAR RED,--I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener.
People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man
is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of
foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.  See?
Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give rigid
instructions to confine me to New England; next week, send me to Arizona;
the next week withdraw my name; the next week give you full untrammelled
swing; and the week following modify it.  You must try to keep the run of
my mind, Redpath, it is your business being the agent, and it always was
too many for me.  It appears to me to be one of the finest pieces of
mechanism I have ever met with.  Now about the West, this week, I am
willing that you shall retain all the Western engagements.  But what I
shall want next week is still with God.

Let us not profane the mysteries with soiled hands and prying eyes of
sin.
                              Yours,
                                        MARK.

P. S.  Shall be here 2 weeks, will run up there when Nasby comes.


                                        ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 15, 1871.
DEAR REDPATH,--I wish you would get me released from the lecture at
Buffalo.  I mortally hate that society there, and I don't doubt they
hired me.  I once gave them a packed house free of charge, and they never
even had the common politeness to thank me.  They left me to shift for
myself, too, a la Bret Harte at Harvard.  Get me rid of Buffalo!
Otherwise I'll have no recourse left but to get sick the day I lecture
there.  I can get sick easy enough, by the simple process of saying the
word--well never mind what word--I am not going to lecture there.
                              Yours,
                                   MARK.


                                        BUFFALO, Sept. 26, 1871.
DEAR REDPATH,--We have thought it all over and decided that we can't
possibly talk after Feb. 2.

We shall take up our residence in Hartford 6 days from now
                              Yours
                                   MARK.




XI.

LETTERS 1871-72.  REMOVAL TO HARTFORD.  A LECTURE TOUR.  "ROUGHING IT."
FIRST LETTER TO HOWELLS

     The house they had taken in Hartford was the Hooker property on
     Forest Street, a handsome place in a distinctly literary
     neighborhood.  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and
     other well-known writers were within easy walking distance; Twichell
     was perhaps half a mile away.

     It was the proper environment for Mark Twain.  He settled his little
     family there, and was presently at Redpath's office in Boston, which
     was a congenial place, as we have seen before.  He did not fail to
     return to the company of Nasby, Josh Billings, and those others of
     Redpath's "attractions" as long and as often as distance would
     permit.  Bret Harte, who by this time had won fame, was also in
     Boston now, and frequently, with Howells, Aldrich, and Mark Twain,
     gathered in some quiet restaurant corner for a luncheon that lasted
     through a dim winter afternoon--a period of anecdote, reminiscence,
     and mirth.  They were all young then, and laughed easily.  Howells,
     has written of one such luncheon given by Ralph Keeler, a young
     Californian--a gathering at which James T. Fields was present
     "Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and
     aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager
     laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning
     shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our
     joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly."

     But a lecture circuit cannot be restricted to the radius of Boston.
     Clemens was presently writing to Redpath from Washington and points
     farther west.


                       To James Redpath, in Boston:

                                   WASHINGTON, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 1871.
DEAR RED,--I have come square out, thrown "Reminiscences" overboard, and
taken "Artemus Ward, Humorist," for my subject.  Wrote it here on Friday
and Saturday, and read it from MS last night to an enormous house.  It
suits me and I'll never deliver the nasty, nauseous "Reminiscences" any
more.
                              Yours,
                                   MARK.


     The Artemus Ward lecture lasted eleven days, then he wrote:


                     To Redpath and Fall, in Boston:

                                   BUFFALO DEPOT, Dec. 8, 1871.
REDPATH & FALL, BOSTON,--Notify all hands that from this time I shall
talk nothing but selections from my forthcoming book "Roughing It."
Tried it last night.  Suits me tip-top.
                                   SAM'L L. CLEMENS.


     The Roughing It chapters proved a success, and continued in high
     favor through the rest of the season.


                       To James Redpath, in Boston:

                                   LOGANSPORT, IND.  Jan. 2, 1872.
FRIEND REDPATH,--Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in
Indianapolis last night--a perfectly jammed house, just as I have had all
the time out here.  I like the new lecture but I hate the "Artemus Ward"
talk and won't talk it any more.  No man ever approved that choice of
subject in my hearing, I think.

Give me some comfort.  If I am to talk in New York am I going to have a
good house?  I don't care now to have any appointments cancelled.  I'll
even "fetch" those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture.

Have paid up $4000 indebtedness.  You are the, last on my list.  Shall
begin to pay you in a few days and then I shall be a free man again.
                              Yours,
                                        MARK.


     With his debts paid, Clemens was anxious to be getting home.  Two
     weeks following the above he wrote Redpath that he would accept no
     more engagements at any price, outside of New England, and added,
     "The fewer engagements I have from this time forth the better I
     shall be pleased."  By the end of February he was back in Hartford,
     refusing an engagement in Boston, and announcing to Redpath, "If I
     had another engagement I'd rot before I'd fill it."  From which we
     gather that he was not entirely happy in the lecture field.

     As a matter of fact, Mark Twain loathed the continuous travel and
     nightly drudgery of platform life.  He was fond of entertaining, and
     there were moments of triumph that repaid him for a good deal, but
     the tyranny of a schedule and timetables was a constant
     exasperation.

     Meantime, Roughing It had appeared and was selling abundantly.  Mark
     Twain, free of debt, and in pleasant circumstances, felt that the
     outlook was bright.  It became even more so when, in March, the
     second child, a little girl, Susy, was born, with no attending
     misfortunes.  But, then, in the early summer little Langdon died.
     It was seldom, during all of Mark Twain's life, that he enjoyed more
     than a brief period of unmixed happiness.

     It was in June of that year that Clemens wrote his first letter to
     William Dean Howells the first of several hundred that would follow
     in the years to come, and has in it something that is characteristic
     of nearly all the Clemens-Howells letters--a kind of tender
     playfulness that answered to something in Howells's make-up, his
     sense of humor, his wide knowledge of a humanity which he pictured
     so amusingly to the world.


                   To William Dean Howells, in Boston:

                                             HARTFORD, June 15, 1872.
FRIEND HOWELLS,--Could you tell me how I could get a copy of your
portrait as published in Hearth and Home?  I hear so much talk about it
as being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in that
journal, that I feel a strong desire to see it.  Is it suitable for
framing?  I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but they
say that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the edition
and now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which has now
begun.  Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not be
without that portrait for any consideration.  He says his children get up
in the night and yell for it.  I would give anything for a copy of that
portrait to put up in my parlor.  I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bret
Harte's, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms that come
every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened and
humbled and made more resigned to the will of God.  If I had yours to put
up alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more souls to
earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition, than
any other kind of warning would.  Where in the nation can I get that
portrait?  Here are heaps of people that want it,--that need it.  There
is my uncle.  He wants a copy.  He is lying at the point of death.  He
has been lying at the point of death for two years.  He wants a copy--and
I want him to have a copy.  And I want you to send a copy to the man that
shot my dog.  I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct.

Now you send me that portrait.  I am sending you mine, in this letter;
and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired.  People who are
judges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not been
equalled in this country, and an expression which has not been approached
in any.
                                   Yrs truly,
                                             S. L. CLEMENS.

P. S.  62,000 copies of "Roughing It" sold and delivered in 4 months.


     The Clemens family did not spend the summer at Quarry Farm that
     year.  The sea air was prescribed for Mrs. Clemens and the baby, and
     they went to Saybrook, Connecticut, to Fenwick Hall.  Clemens wrote
     very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps
     made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form.

     His mind, however, was otherwise active.  He was always more or less
     given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of
     one which he brought to comparative perfection.

     He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this
     was his purpose of a projected trip to England.


                      To Orion Clemens, in Hartford:

                                        FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN.
                                        Aug. 11, 1872.
MY DEAR BRO.--I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug. 21.

But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention--hence this
note, which you will preserve.  It is this--a self-pasting scrap-book
--good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not come along and
ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elastic veststrap.

The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is:  1.  One never has paste
or gum tragacanth handy;  2.  Mucilage won't stick, or stay, 4 weeks;
3.  Mucilage sucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable;
4.  To daub and paste 3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and
tiresome.  My idea is this: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or
coated with gum-stickum of some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush,
rag or tongue, and dab on your scraps like postage stamps.

Lay on the gum in columns of stripes.

Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broad as
your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2
stripes--so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gum
than your scrap or scraps will cover--then you may shut up the book and
the leaves won't stick together.

Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter--postmark ought to be good
evidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention.

I'll put it into Dan Slote's hands and tell him he must send you all over
America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers--so don't buy
into a newspaper.  The name of this thing is "Mark Twain's Self-Pasting
Scrapbook."

All well here.  Shall be up a P. M.  Tuesday.  Send the carriage.
                                   Yr Bro.
                                             S.  L.  CLEMENS.


     The Dan Slote of this letter is, of course, his old Quaker City
     shipmate, who was engaged in the blank-book business, the firm being
     Slote & Woodman, located at 119 and 121 William Street, New York.




XII.

LETTERS 1872-73.  MARK TWAIN IN ENGLAND.  LONDON HONORS.  ACQUAINTANCE
WITH DR. JOHN BROWN.  A LECTURE TRIUMPH.  "THE GILDED AGE"

     Clemens did, in fact, sail for England on the given date, and was
     lavishly received there.  All literary London joined in giving him a
     good time.  He had not as yet been received seriously by the older
     American men of letters, but England made no question as to his
     title to first rank.  Already, too, they classified him as of the
     human type of Lincoln, and reveled in him without stint.  Howells
     writes: "In England, rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him.
     Lord Mayors, Lord Chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were
     his hosts."

     He was treated so well and enjoyed it all so much that he could not
     write a book--the kind of book he had planned.  One could not poke
     fun at a country or a people that had welcomed him with open arms.
     He made plenty of notes, at first, but presently gave up the book
     idea and devoted himself altogether to having a good time.

     He had one grievance--a publisher by the name of Hotten, a sort of
     literary harpy, of which there were a great number in those days of
     defective copyright, not merely content with pilfering his early
     work, had reprinted, under the name of Mark Twain, the work of a
     mixed assortment of other humorists, an offensive volume bearing the
     title, Screamers and Eye-openers, by Mark Twain.

     They besieged him to lecture in London, and promised him overflowing
     houses.  Artemus Ward, during his last days, had earned London by
     storm with his platform humor, and they promised Mark Twain even
     greater success.  For some reason, however, he did not welcome the
     idea; perhaps there was too much gaiety.  To Mrs. Clemens he wrote:


                      To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

                                             LONDON, Sep. 15, 1872.
Livy, darling, everybody says lecture-lecture-lecture--but I have not the
least idea of doing it--certainly not at present.  Mr. Dolby, who took
Dickens to America, is coming to talk business to me tomorrow, though I
have sent him word once before, that I can't be hired to talk here,
because I have no time to spare.

There is too much sociability--I do not get along fast enough with work.
Tomorrow I lunch with Mr. Toole and a Member of Parliament--Toole is the
most able Comedian of the day.  And then I am done for a while.  On
Tuesday I mean to hang a card to my keybox, inscribed--"Gone out of the
City for a week"--and then I shall go to work and work hard.  One can't
be caught in a hive of 4,000,000 people, like this.

I have got such a perfectly delightful razor.  I have a notion to buy
some for Charley, Theodore and Slee--for I know they have no such razors
there.  I have got a neat little watch-chain for Annie--$20.

I love you my darling.  My love to all of you.
                                                  SAML.


     That Mark Twain should feel and privately report something of his
     triumphs we need not wonder at.  Certainly he was never one to give
     himself airs, but to have the world's great literary center paying
     court to him, who only ten years before had been penniless and
     unknown, and who once had been a barefoot Tom Sawyer in Hannibal,
     was quite startling.  It is gratifying to find evidence of human
     weakness in the following heart-to-heart letter to his publisher,
     especially in view of the relating circumstances.


                      To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford:

                                             LONDON, Sept. 28, 1872.
FRIEND BLISS,--I have been received in a sort of tremendous way, tonight,
by the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the Sheriffs
of London--mine being (between you and me) a name which was received with
a flattering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long list of
guests was called.

I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support and
assistance of my excellent friend Sir John Bennett--and I want you to
paste the enclosed in a couple of the handsomest copies of the
"Innocents" and "Roughing It," and send them to him.  His address is

          "Sir John Bennett,
               Cheapside,
                    London."
                         Yrs Truly
                              S. L. CLEMENS.


     The "relating circumstances" were these: At the abovementioned
     dinner there had been a roll-call of the distinguished guests
     present, and each name had been duly applauded.  Clemens, conversing
     in a whisper with his neighbor, Sir John Bennett, did not give very
     close attention to the names, applauding mechanically with the
     others.

     Finally, a name was read that brought out a vehement hand-clapping.
     Mark Twain, not to be outdone in cordiality, joined vigorously, and
     kept his hands going even after the others finished.  Then,
     remarking the general laughter, he whispered to Sir John: "Whose
     name was that we were just applauding?"

     "Mark Twain's."

     We may believe that the "friendly support" of Sir John Bennett was
     welcome for the moment.  But the incident could do him no harm; the
     diners regarded it as one of his jokes, and enjoyed him all the more
     for it.

     He was ready to go home by November, but by no means had he had
     enough of England.  He really had some thought of returning there
     permanently.  In a letter to Mrs. Crane, at Quarry Farm, he wrote:

     "If you and Theodore will come over in the Spring with Livy and me,
     and spend the summer you will see a country that is so beautiful
     that you will be obliged to believe in Fairyland..... and Theodore
     can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now as they looked
     five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the British Museum
     that were made before Christ was born; and in the customs of their
     public dinners, and the ceremonies of every official act, and the
     dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of
     all the centuries that have dragged their lagging decades over
     England since the Heptarchy fell asunder.  I would a good deal
     rather live here if I could get the rest of you over."

     In a letter home, to his mother and sister, we get a further picture
     of his enjoyment.


                  To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett:

                                             LONDON, Nov. 6, 1872.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been so everlasting busy that I
couldn't write--and moreover I have been so unceasingly lazy that I
couldn't have written anyhow.  I came here to take notes for a book, but
I haven't done much but attend dinners and make speeches.  But have had a
jolly good time and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they
make a stranger feel entirely at home--and they laugh so easily that it
is a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here.  I have made hundreds of
friends; and last night in the crush of the opening of the New Guild-hall
Library and Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar face every few
steps.  Nearly 4,000 people, of both sexes, came and went during the
evening, so I had a good opportunity to make a great many new
acquaintances.

Livy is willing to come here with me next April and stay several months
--so I am going home next Tuesday.  I would sail on Saturday, but that is
the day of the Lord Mayor's annual grand state dinner, when they say 900
of the great men of the city sit down to table, a great many of them in
their fine official and court paraphernalia, so I must not miss it.
However, I may yet change my mind and sail Saturday.  I am looking at a
fine Magic lantern which will cost a deal of money, and if I buy it Sammy
may come and learn to make the gas and work the machinery, and paint
pictures for it on glass.  I mean to give exhibitions for charitable
purposes in Hartford, and charge a dollar a head.
                    In a hurry,
                              Ys affly
                                        SAM.


     He sailed November 12th on the Batavia, arriving in New York two
     weeks later.  There had been a presidential election in his absence.
     General Grant had defeated Horace Greeley, a result, in some measure
     at least, attributed to the amusing and powerful pictures of the
     cartoonist, Thomas Nast.  Mark Twain admired Greeley's talents, but
     he regarded him as poorly qualified for the nation's chief
     executive.  He wrote:


                    To Th. Nast, in Morristown, N. J.:

                                             HARTFORD, Nov. 1872.
Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for
Grant--I mean, rather, for civilization and progress.  Those pictures
were simply marvelous, and if any man in the land has a right to hold his
head up and be honestly proud of his share in this year's vast events
that man is unquestionably yourself.  We all do sincerely honor you, and
are proud of you.
                                   MARK TWAIN.


     Perhaps Mark Twain was too busy at this time to write letters.  His
     success in England had made him more than ever popular in America,
     and he could by no means keep up with the demands on him.  In
     January he contributed to the New York Tribune some letters on the
     Sandwich Islands, but as these were more properly articles they do
     not seem to belong here.

     He refused to go on the lecture circuit, though he permitted Redpath
     to book him for any occasional appearance, and it is due to one of
     these special engagements that we have the only letter preserved
     from this time.  It is to Howells, and written with that
     exaggeration with which he was likely to embellish his difficulties.
     We are not called upon to believe that there were really any such
     demonstrations as those ascribed to Warner and himself.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                   FARMINGTON AVE, Hartford Feb. 27.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am in a sweat and Warner is in another.  I told
Redpath some time ago I would lecture in Boston any two days he might
choose provided they were consecutive days--

I never dreamed of his choosing days during Lent since that was his
special horror--but all at once he telegraphs me, and hollers at me in
all manner of ways that I am booked for Boston March 5 of all days in the
year--and to make matters just as mixed and uncertain as possible, I
can't find out to save my life whether he means to lecture me on the 6th
or not.

Warner's been in here swearing like a lunatic, and saying he had written
you to come on the 4th,--and I said, "You leather-head, if I talk in
Boston both afternoon and evening March 5, I'll have to go to Boston the
4th,"--and then he just kicked up his heels and went off cursing after a
fashion I never heard of before.

Now let's just leave this thing to Providence for 24 hours--you bet it
will come out all right.
                                   Yours ever
                                             MARK.


     He was writing a book with Warner at this time--The Gilded Age
     --the two authors having been challenged by their wives one night at
     dinner to write a better book than the current novels they had been
     discussing with some severity.  Clemens already had a story in his
     mind, and Warner agreed to collaborate in the writing.  It was begun
     without delay.  Clemens wrote the first three hundred and
     ninety-nine pages, and read there aloud to Warner, who took up the
     story at this point and continued it through twelve chapters, after
     which they worked alternately, and with great enjoyment.  They also
     worked rapidly, and in April the story was completed.  For a
     collaboration by two men so different in temperament and literary
     method it was a remarkable performance.

     Another thing Mark Twain did that winter was to buy some land on
     Farmington Avenue and begin the building of a home.  He had by no
     means given up returning to England, and made his plans to sail with
     Mrs. Clemens and Susy in May.  Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira
     --[Later Mrs. John B. Stanchfield, of New York.]--a girlhood friend
     of Mrs. Clemens--was to accompany them.

     The Daily Graphic heard of the proposed journey, and wrote, asking
     for a farewell word.  His characteristic reply is the only letter of
     any kind that has survived from that spring.


         To the Editor of "The Daily Graphic," in New York City:

                                        HARTFORD, Apl. 17, 1873.
ED. GRAPHIC,--Your note is received.  If the following two lines which I
have cut from it are your natural handwriting, then I understand you to
ask me "for a farewell letter in the name of the American people."  Bless
you, the joy of the American people is just a little premature; I haven't
gone yet.  And what is more, I am not going to stay, when I do go.

Yes, it is true.  I am only going to remain beyond the sea, six months,
that is all.  I love stir and excitement; and so the moment the spring
birds begin to sing, and the lagging weariness of summer to threaten,
I grow restless, I get the fidgets; I want to pack off somewhere where
there's something going on.  But you know how that is--you must have felt
that way.  This very day I saw the signs in the air of the coming
dullness, and I said to myself, "How glad I am that I have already
chartered a steamship!"  There was absolutely nothing in the morning
papers.  You can see for yourself what the telegraphic headings were:

     BY TELEGRAPH

A Father Killed by His Son

A Bloody Fight in Kentucky

A Court House Fired, and
Negroes Therein Shot
while Escaping

A Louisiana Massacre

An Eight-year-old murderer
Two to Three Hundred Men Roasted Alive!

A Town in a State of General Riot

A Lively Skirmish in Indiana
(and thirty other similar headings.)

The items under those headings all bear date yesterday, Apl. 16 (refer to
your own paper)--and I give you my word of honor that that string of
commonplace stuff was everything there was in the telegraphic columns
that a body could call news.  Well, said I to myself this is getting
pretty dull; this is getting pretty dry; there don't appear to be
anything going on anywhere; has this progressive nation gone to sleep?
Have I got to stand another month of this torpidity before I can begin to
browse among the lively capitals of Europe?

But never mind-things may revive while I am away.  During the last two
months my next-door neighbor, Chas. Dudley Warner, has dropped his
"Back-Log Studies," and he and I have written a bulky novel in
partnership. He has worked up the fiction and I have hurled in the facts.
I consider it one of the most astonishing novels that ever was written.
Night after night I sit up reading it over and over again and crying.  It
will be published early in the Fall, with plenty of pictures.  Do you
consider this an advertisement?--and if so, do you charge for such things
when a man is your friend?
                         Yours truly,
                                   SAML.  L.  CLEMENS,
                                   "MARK TWAIN,"


     An amusing, even if annoying, incident happened about the time of
     Mark Twain's departure.  A man named Chew related to Twichell a most
     entertaining occurrence.  Twichell saw great possibilities in it,
     and suggested that Mark Twain be allowed to make a story of it,
     sharing the profits with Chew.  Chew agreed, and promised to send
     the facts, carefully set down.  Twichell, in the mean time, told the
     story to Clemens, who was delighted with it and strongly tempted to
     write it at once, while he was in the spirit, without waiting on
     Chew.  Fortunately, he did not do so, for when Chew's material came
     it was in the form of a clipping, the story having been already
     printed in some newspaper.  Chew's knowledge of literary ethics
     would seem to have been slight.  He thought himself entitled to
     something under the agreement with Twichell.  Mark Twain, by this
     time in London, naturally had a different opinion.


                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

                                                  LONDON, June 9, '73.
DEAR OLD JOE,--I consider myself wholly at liberty to decline to pay Chew
anything, and at the same time strongly tempted to sue him into the
bargain for coming so near ruining me.  If he hadn't happened to send me
that thing in print, I would have used the story (like an innocent fool)
and would straightway have been hounded to death as a plagiarist.  It
would have absolutely destroyed me. I cannot conceive of a man being such
a hopeless ass (after serving as a legislative reporter, too) as to
imagine that I or any other literary man in his senses would consent to
chew over old stuff that had already been in print.  If that man weren't
an infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our petition would have
been, "It has been in print."  It makes me as mad as the very Old Harry
every time I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape I have
had at his hands.  Confound Mr. Chew, with all my heart!  I'm willing
that he should have ten dollars for his trouble of warming over his cold
victuals--cheerfully willing to that--but no more.  If I had had him near
when his letter came, I would have got out my tomahawk and gone for him.
He didn't tell the story half as well as you did, anyhow.

I wish to goodness you were here this moment--nobody in our parlor but
Livy and me,--and a very good view of London to the fore.  We have a
luxuriously ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd floor,
our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place and our parlor having a
noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland
Place and the crook that joins it to Regent Street.)

9 P.M.  Full twilight--rich sunset tints lingering in the west.

I am not going to write anything--rather tell it when I get back.  I love
you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I've got, anyway.  And I
mean to keep that fresh all the time.
                                   Lovingly
                                             MARK.

P. S.--Am luxuriating in glorious old Pepy's Diary, and smoking.


     Letters are exceedingly scarce through all this period.  Mark Twain,
     now on his second visit to London, was literally overwhelmed with
     honors and entertainment; his rooms at the Langham were like a
     court.  Such men as Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais,
     and Charles Kingsley hastened to call.  Kingsley and others gave him
     dinners.  Mrs. Clemens to her sister wrote: "It is perfectly
     discouraging to try to write you."

     The continuous excitement presently told on her.  In July all
     further engagements were canceled, and Clemens took his little
     family to Scotland, for quiet and rest.  They broke the journey at
     York, and it was there that Mark Twain wrote the only letter
     remaining from this time.


       Part of a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, N.  Y.:

For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with its
crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew no wheeled
vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper stories far
overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say three hundred
years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the ivy-grown,
foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary's Abbey,
suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of
Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast
Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows,
preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and
courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these
centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here
and there of King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with
Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundred
years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffins and
sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary tower of stone that
still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed by the shadows every
day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissed and caressed them every
lagging day since the Roman Emperor's soldiers placed them here in the
times when Jesus the Son of Mary walked the streets of Nazareth a youth,
with no more name or fame than the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down
this street this moment.

     Their destination was Edinburgh, where they remained a month.  Mrs.
     Clemens's health gave way on their arrival there, and her husband,
     knowing the name of no other physician in the place, looked up Dr.
     John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends, and found in him not only
     a skilful practitioner, but a lovable companion, to whom they all
     became deeply attached.  Little Susy, now seventeen months old,
     became his special favorite.  He named her Megalops, because of her
     great eyes.

     Mrs. Clemens regained her strength and they returned to London.
     Clemens, still urged to lecture, finally agreed with George Dolby to
     a week's engagement, and added a promise that after taking his wife
     and daughter back to America he would return immediately for a more
     extended course.  Dolby announced him to appear at the Queen's
     Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, for the week of October 13-18, his
     lecture to be the old Sandwich Islands talk that seven years before
     had brought him his first success.  The great hall, the largest in
     London, was thronged at each appearance, and the papers declared
     that Mark Twain had no more than "whetted the public appetite" for
     his humor.  Three days later, October 1873, Clemens, with his
     little party, sailed for home.  Half-way across the ocean he wrote
     the friend they had left in Scotland:


                     To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

                                        MID-ATLANTIC, Oct. 30, 1873.
OUR DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR,--We have plowed a long way over the sea,
and there's twenty-two hundred miles of restless water between us, now,
besides the railway stretch.  And yet you are so present with us, so
close to us that a span and a whisper would bridge the distance.

The first three days were stormy, and wife, child, maid, and Miss
Spaulding were all sea-sick 25 hours out of the 24, and I was sorry I
ever started.  However, it has been smooth, and balmy, and sunny and
altogether lovely for a day or two now, and at night there is a broad
luminous highway stretching over the sea to the moon, over which the
spirits of the sea are traveling up and down all through the secret night
and having a genuine good time, I make no doubt.

Today they discovered a "collie" on board!  I find (as per advertisement
which I sent you) that they won't carry dogs in these ships at any price.
This one has been concealed up to this time.  Now his owner has to pay
L10 or heave him overboard.  Fortunately the doggie is a performing
doggie and the money will be paid.  So after all it was just as well you
didn't intrust your collie to us.

A poor little child died at midnight and was buried at dawn this morning
--sheeted and shotted, and sunk in the middle of the lonely ocean in
water three thousand fathoms deep.  Pity the poor mother.
                                        With our love.
                                                  S. L. CLEMENS.


     Mark Twain was back in London, lecturing again at the Queen's
     Concert Rooms, after barely a month's absence.  Charles Warren
     Stoddard, whom he had known in California, shared his apartment at
     the Langham, and acted as his secretary--a very necessary office,
     for he was besieged by callers and bombarded with letters.

     He remained in London two months, lecturing steadily at Hanover
     Square to full houses.  It is unlikely that there is any other
     platform record to match it.  One letter of this period has been
     preserved.  It is written to Twichell, near the end of his
     engagement.


                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

                                             LONDON, Jan. 5 1874.
MY DEAR OLD JOE,--I knew you would be likely to graduate into an ass if
I came away; and so you have--if you have stopped smoking.  However, I
have a strong faith that it is not too late, yet, and that the
judiciously managed influence of a bad example will fetch you back again.

I wish you had written me some news--Livy tells me precious little.  She
mainly writes to hurry me home and to tell me how much she respects me:
but she's generally pretty slow on news.  I had a letter from her along
with yours, today, but she didn't tell me the book is out.  However, it's
all right.  I hope to be home 20 days from today, and then I'll see her,
and that will make up for a whole year's dearth of news.  I am right down
grateful that she is looking strong and "lovelier than ever."  I only
wish I could see her look her level best, once--I think it would be a
vision.

I have just spent a good part of this day browsing through the Royal
Academy Exhibition of Landseer's paintings.  They fill four or five great
salons, and must number a good many hundreds.  This is the only
opportunity ever to see them, because the finest of them belong to the
queen and she keeps them in her private apartments.  Ah, they're
wonderfully beautiful!  There are such rich moonlights and dusks in "The
Challenge" and "The Combat;" and in that long flight of birds across a
lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or sunrise--for no man can ever tell
tother from which in a picture, except it has the filmy morning mist
breathing itself up from the water).  And there is such a grave
analytical profundity in the faces of "The Connoisseurs;" and such pathos
in the picture of the fawn suckling its dead mother, on a snowy waste,
with only the blood in the footprints to hint that she is not asleep.
And the way he makes animals absolute flesh and blood--insomuch that if
the room were darkened ever so little and a motionless living animal
placed beside a painted one, no man could tell which was which.

I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and suggest
a cartoon for Punch.  It was this.  In one of the Academy salons (in the
suite where these pictures are), a fine bust of Landseer stands on a
pedestal in the centre of the room.  I suggest that some of Landseer's
best known animals be represented as having come down out of their frames
in the moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in mourning
attitudes.

Well, old man, I am powerful glad to hear from you and shall be powerful
glad to see you and Harmony.  I am not going to the provinces because I
cannot get halls that are large enough.  I always felt cramped in Hanover
Square Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe and respect
of that prodigious place, and wonder that I could fill it so long.

I am hoping to be back in 20 days, but I have so much to go home to and
enjoy with a jubilant joy, that it seems hardly possible that it can ever
come to pass in so uncertain a world as this.

I have read the novel--[The Gilded Age, published during his absence,
December, 1873.]--here, and I like it.  I have made no inquiries about
it, though.  My interest in a book ceases with the printing of it.
                                   With a world of love,
                                             SAML.




XIII.

LETTERS 1874.  HARTFORD AND ELMIRA.  A NEW STUDY.  BEGINNING "TOM
SAWYER."  THE SELLERS PLAY.

Naturally Redpath would not give him any peace now.  His London success
must not be wasted.  At first his victim refused point-blank, and with
great brevity.  But he was overborne and persuaded, and made occasional
appearances, wiring at last this final defiant word:


                  Telegram to James Redpath, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, March 3, 1874.
JAMES REDPATH,--Why don't you congratulate me?

I never expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursday night.
                                        MARK.


     That he was glad to be home again we may gather from a letter sent
     at this time to Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh.


                     To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

                                        FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD
                                        Feby.  28, 1874.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--We are all delighted with your commendations of the
Gilded Age-and the more so because some of our newspapers have set forth
the opinion that Warner really wrote the book and I only added my name to
the title page in order to give it a larger sale.  I wrote the first
eleven chapters, every word and every line.  I also wrote chapters 24,
25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 21, 42,  43,  45, 51, 52.  53, 57,
59, 60, 61, 62, and portions of 35, 49 and 56.  So I wrote 32 of the 63
chapters entirely and part of 3 others beside.

The fearful financial panic hit the book heavily, for we published it in
the midst of it.  But nevertheless in the 8 weeks that have now elapsed
since the day we published, we have sold 40,000 copies; which gives
L3,000 royalty to be divided between the authors.  This is really the
largest two-months' sale which any American book has ever achieved
(unless one excepts the cheaper editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin).  The
average price of our book is 16 shillings a copy--Uncle Tom was 2
shillings a copy.  But for the panic our sale would have been doubled,
I verily believe.  I do not believe the sale will ultimately go over
100,000 copies.

I shipped to you, from Liverpool, Barley's Illustrations of Judd's
"Margaret" (the waiter at the Adelphi Hotel agreeing to ship it securely
per parcel delivery,) and I do hope it did not miscarry, for we in
America think a deal of Barley's--[Felix Octavius Carr barley, 1822-1888,
illustrator of the works of Irving, Cooper, etc.  Probably the most
distinguished American illustrator of his time.]--work.  I shipped the
novel ("Margaret") to you from here a week ago.

Indeed I am thankful for the wife and the child--and if there is one
individual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly and
uniformly and unceasingly happy than I am I defy the world to produce him
and prove him.  In my opinion, he doesn't exist.  I was a mighty rough,
coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me 4 years ago, and
I may still be, to the rest of the world, but not to her.  She has made a
very creditable job of me.

Success to the Mark Twain Club!-and the novel shibboleth of the Whistle.
Of course any member rising to speak would be required to preface his
remark with a keen respectful whistle at the chair-the chair recognizing
the speaker with an answering shriek, and then as the speech proceeded
its gravity and force would be emphasized and its impressiveness
augmented by the continual interjection of whistles in place of
punctuation-pauses; and the applause of the audience would be manifested
in the same way ....

They've gone to luncheon, and I must follow.  With strong love from us
both.
                    Your friend,
                                   SAML. L. CLEMENS.


     These were the days when the Howells and Clemens families began
     visiting back and forth between Boston and Hartford, and sometimes
     Aldrich came, though less frequently, and the gatherings at the
     homes of Warner and Clemens were full of never-to-be-forgotten
     happiness.  Of one such visit Howells wrote:

     "In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such
     days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round.  There was
     constant running in and out of friendly houses, where the lively
     hosts and guests called one another by their christian names or
     nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at
     doors.  Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he
     satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another
     sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which
     enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance."

     It was the delight of such a visit that kept Clemens constantly
     urging its repetition.  One cannot but feel the genuine affection of
     these letters.


                      To W. D.  Howells, in Boston:

                                                  Mch. 1, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Now you will find us the most reasonable people in the
world.  We had thought of precipitating upon you George Warner and wife
one day; Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Chas. Perkins
and wife another.  Only those--simply members of our family, they are.
But I'll close the door against them all--which will "fix" all of the lot
except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to climb in at the back window
than nothing.

And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please, talk
when you please, read when you please.  Mrs. Howells may even go to New
York Saturday if she feels that she must, but if some gentle, unannoying
coaxing can beguile her into putting that off a few days, we shall be
more than glad, for I do wish she and Mrs. Clemens could have a good
square chance to get acquainted with each other.  But first and last and
all the time, we want you to feel untrammeled and wholly free from
restraint, here.

The date suits--all dates suit.
                              Yrs ever
                                        MARK.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                         FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Mch. 20, 1876.
DEAR HOWELLS,--You or Aldrich or both of you must come to Hartford to
live.  Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just where
we drive in to go to our new house) will sell for $16,000 or $17,000.
The lot is 85 feet front and 150 deep--long time and easy payments on the
purchase?  You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can't
you?  Come, will one of you boys buy that house?  Now say yes.

Mrs. Clemens is an invalid yet, but is getting along pretty fairly.

We send best regards.
                              MARK.


     April found the Clemens family in Elmira.  Mrs. Clemens was not
     over-strong, and the cares of house-building were many.  They went
     early, therefore, remaining at the Langdon home in the city until
     Quarry Farm should feel a touch of warmer sun, Clemens wrote the
     news to Doctor Brown.


                     To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

                                   ELMIRA, N. Y., April 27, '86.
DEAR DOCTOR,--This town is in the interior of the State of New York
--and was my wife's birth-place.  We are here to spend the whole summer.
Although it is so near summer, we had a great snow-storm yesterday, and
one the day before.  This is rather breaking in upon our plans, as it may
keep us down here in the valley a trifle longer than we desired.  It gets
fearfully hot here in the summer, so we spend our summers on top of a
hill 6 or 700 feet high, about two or three miles from here--it never
gets hot up there.

Mrs. Clemens is pretty strong, and so is the "little wifie" barring a
desperate cold in the head the child grows in grace and beauty
marvellously.  I wish the nations of the earth would combine in a baby
show and give us a chance to compete.  I must try to find one of her
latest photographs to enclose in this.  And this reminds me that Mrs.
Clemens keeps urging me to ask you for your photograph and last night she
said, "and be sure to ask him for a photograph of his sister, and
Jock-but say Master Jock--do not be headless and forget that courtesy; he
is Jock in our memories and our talk, but he has a right to his title
when a body uses his name in a letter."  Now I have got it all in--I
can't have made any mistake this time.  Miss Clara Spaulding looked in, a
moment, yesterday morning, as bright and good as ever.  She would like to
lay her love at your feet if she knew I was writing--as would also fifty
friends of ours whom you have never seen, and whose homage is as fervent
as if the cold and clouds and darkness of a mighty sea did not lie
between their hearts and you.  Poor old Rab had not many "friends" at
first, but if all his friends of today could gather to his grave from the
four corners of the earth what a procession there would be!  And Rab's
friends are your friends.

I am going to work when we get on the hill-till then I've got to lie
fallow, albeit against my will.  We join in love to you and yours.
                                   Your friend ever,
                                             SAML. L. CLEMENS.

P. S.  I enclose a specimen of villainy.  A man pretends to be my brother
and my lecture agent--gathers a great audience together in a city more
than a thousand miles from here, and then pockets the money and elopes,
leaving the audience to wait for the imaginary lecturer!  I am after him
with the law.


     It was a historic summer at the Farm.  A new baby arrived in June; a
     new study was built for Mark Twain by Mrs. Crane, on the hillside
     near the old quarry; a new book was begun in it--The Adventures of
     Tom Sawyer--and a play, the first that Mark Twain had really
     attempted, was completed--the dramatization of The Gilded Age.

     An early word went to Hartford of conditions at the Farm.


                 To Rev. and Mrs. Twichell, in Hartford:

                                             ELMIRA, June 11, 1874.

MY DEAR OLD JOE AND HARMONY,--The baby is here and is the great American
Giantess--weighing 7 3/4 pounds.  We had to wait a good long time for
her, but she was full compensation when she did come.

The Modoc was delighted with it, and gave it her doll at once.  There is
nothing selfish about the Modoc.  She is fascinated with the new baby.
The Modoc rips and tears around out doors, most of the time, and
consequently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian.  She
is bosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on
the place.  Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up
the hill through the red clover beds to the summer-house, there was a
long procession of these fowls stringing contentedly after her, led by a
stately rooster who can look over the Modoc's head.  The devotion of
these vassals has been purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and
so the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever she
goes.

Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw.  It is
octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled with a spacious
window, and it sits perched in complete isolation on top of an elevation
that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant
blue hills.  It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofa and a
table and three or four chairs--and when the storms sweep down the remote
valley and the lightning flashes above the hills beyond, and the rain
beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it!  It stands
500 feet above the valley and 2 1/2 miles from it.

However one must not write all day.  We send continents of love to you
and yours.
                         Affectionately
                                        MARK.


     We have mentioned before that Clemens had settled his mother and
     sister at Fredonia, New York, and when Mrs. Clemens was in condition
     to travel he concluded to pay them a visit.

     It proved an unfortunate journey; the hot weather was hard on Mrs.
     Clemens, and harder still, perhaps, on Mark Twain's temper.  At any
     period of his life a bore exasperated him, and in these earlier days
     he was far more likely to explode than in his mellower age.  Remorse
     always followed--the price he paid was always costly.  We cannot
     know now who was the unfortunate that invited the storm, but in the
     next letter we get the echoes of it and realize something of its
     damage.


           To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia:

                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 15.
MX DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I came away from Fredonia ashamed of myself;
--almost too much humiliated to hold up my head and say good-bye.  For I
began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you socially in
your village.  I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brained bore
and apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that I was
satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive an apology
with magnanimity.

Pamela appalled me by saying people had hinted that they wished to visit
Livy when she came, but that she had given them no encouragement.
I feared that those people would merely comprehend that their courtesies
were not wanted, and yet not know exactly why they were not wanted.

I came away feeling that in return for your constant and tireless efforts
to secure our bodily comfort and make our visit enjoyable, I had basely
repaid you by making you sad and sore-hearted and leaving you so.  And
the natural result has fallen to me likewise--for a guilty conscience has
harassed me ever since, and I have not had one short quarter of an hour
of peace to this moment.

You spoke of Middletown.  Why not go there and live?  Mr. Crane says it
is only about a hundred miles this side of New York on the Erie road.
The fact that one or two of you might prefer to live somewhere else is
not a valid objection--there are no 4 people who would all choose the
same place--so it will be vain to wait for the day when your tastes shall
be a unit.  I seriously fear that our visit has damaged you in Fredonia,
and so I wish you were out of it.

The baby is fat and strong, and Susie the same.  Susie was charmed with
the donkey and the doll.
                    Ys affectionately
                                        SAML.

P. S.--DEAR MA AND PAMELA--I am mainly grieved because I have been rude
to a man who has been kind to you--and if you ever feel a desire to
apologize to him for me, you may be sure that I will endorse the apology,
no matter how strong it may be.  I went to his bank to apologize to him,
but my conviction was strong that he was not man enough to know how to
take an apology and so I did not make it.


     William Dean Howells was in those days writing those vividly
     realistic, indeed photographic stories which fixed his place among
     American men of letters.  He had already written 'Their Wedding
     Journey' and 'A Chance Acquaintance' when 'A Foregone Conclusion'
     appeared.  For the reason that his own work was so different, and
     perhaps because of his fondness for the author, Clemens always
     greatly admired the books of Howells.  Howells's exact observation
     and his gift for human detail seemed marvelous to Mark Twain, who
     with a bigger brush was inclined to record the larger rather than
     the minute aspects of life.  The sincerity of his appreciation of
     Howells, however, need not be questioned, nor, for that matter, his
     detestation of Scott.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 22, 1874.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I have just finished reading the 'Foregone Conclusion' to
Mrs. Clemens and we think you have even outdone yourself.  I should think
that this must be the daintiest, truest, most admirable workmanship that
was ever put on a story.  The creatures of God do not act out their
natures more unerringly than yours do.  If your genuine stories can die,
I wonder by what right old Walter Scott's artificialities shall continue
to live.

I brought Mrs. Clemens back from her trip in a dreadfully broken-down
condition--so by the doctor's orders we unpacked the trunks sorrowfully
to lie idle here another month instead of going at once to Hartford and
proceeding to furnish the new house which is now finished.  We hate to
have it go longer desolate and tenantless, but cannot help it.

By and by, if the madam gets strong again, we are hoping to have the
Grays there, and you and the Aldrich households, and Osgood, down to
engage in an orgy with them.
                              Ys Ever
                                        MARK


     Howells was editor of the Atlantic by this time, and had been urging
     Clemens to write something suitable for that magazine.  He had done
     nothing, however, until this summer at Quarry Farm.  There, one
     night in the moonlight, Mrs. Crane's colored cook, who had been a
     slave, was induced to tell him her story.  It was exactly the story
     to appeal to Mark Twain, and the kind of thing he could write.  He
     set it down next morning, as nearly in her own words and manner as
     possible, without departing too far from literary requirements.

     He decided to send this to Howells.  He did not regard it very
     highly, but he would take the chance.  An earlier offering to the
     magazine had been returned.  He sent the "True Story," with a brief
     note:


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, Sept. 2, '74.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....I enclose also a "True Story" which has no humor
in it.  You can pay as lightly as you choose for that, if you want it,
for it is rather out of my line.  I have not altered the old colored
woman's story except to begin at the beginning, instead of the middle, as
she did--and traveled both ways.....
                                   Yrs Ever
                                             MARK.

     But Howells was delighted with it.  He referred to its "realest kind
     of black talk," and in another place added, "This little story
     delights me more and more.  I wish you had about forty of them."

     Along with the "True Story" Mark Twain had sent the "Fable for Good
     Old Boys and Girls"; but this Howells returned, not, as he said,
     because he didn't like it, but because the Atlantic on matters of
     religion was just in that "Good Lord, Good Devil condition when a
     little fable like yours wouldn't leave it a single Presbyterian,
     Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Millerite paying
     subscriber, while all the deadheads would stick to it and abuse it
     in the denominational newspapers!"

     But the shorter MS. had been only a brief diversion.  Mark Twain was
     bowling along at a book and a play.  The book was Tom Sawyer, as
     already mentioned, and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age.
     Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel
     Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from
     California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his
     character in a play written for John T. Raymond.  Clemens had taken
     out dramatic copyright on the book, and immediately stopped the
     performance by telegraph.  A correspondence between the author and
     the dramatist followed, leading to a friendly arrangement by which
     the latter agreed to dispose of his version to Mark Twain.  A good
     deal of discussion from time to time having arisen over the
     authorship of the Sellers play, as presented by Raymond, certain
     among the letters that follow may be found of special interest.
     Meanwhile we find Clemens writing to Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh,
     on these matters and events in general.  The book MS., which he
     mentions as having put aside, was not touched again for nearly a
     year.


                     To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

                                   QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N. Y.
                                   Sept.  4, 1874.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an
average, for sometime now, on a book (a story) and consequently have been
so wrapped up in it and so dead to anything else, that I have fallen
mighty short in letter-writing.  But night before last I discovered that
that day's chapter was a failure, in conception, moral truth to nature,
and execution--enough blemish to impair the excellence of almost any
chapter--and so I must burn up the day's work and do it all over again.
It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself dry.  So I
knocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change.  I haven't had
an idea or a fancy for two days, now--an excellent time to write to
friends who have plenty of ideas and fancies of their own, and so will
prefer the offerings of the heart before those of the head.  Day after
to-morrow I go to a neighboring city to see a five-act-drama of mine
brought out, and suggest amendments in it, and would about as soon spend
a night in the Spanish Inquisition as sit there and be tortured with all
the adverse criticisms I can contrive to imagine the audience is
indulging in.  But whether the play be successful or not, I hope I shall
never feel obliged to see it performed a second time.  My interest in my
work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.

I have invented and patented a pretty good sort of scrap-book (I think)
but I have backed down from letting it be known as mine just at present
--for I can't stand being under discussion on a play and a scrap-book at
the same time!

I shall be away two days, and then return to take our tribe to New York,
where we shall remain five days buying furniture for the new house, and
then go to Hartford and settle solidly down for the winter.  After all
that fallow time I ought to be able to go to work again on the book.
We shall reach Hartford about the middle of September, I judge.

We have spent the past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, six
hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N. Y., and overlooking
that town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and the new
baby).  This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm
because there's a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs. Crane.

A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views,
and I shall send you the result per this mail.

My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big
windows, one little one, and a wide doorway (the latter opening upon the
distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers
down with brickbats and write in the midst of the hurricanes, clothed in
the same thin linen we make shirts of.  The study is nearly on the peak
of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular wall of
rock left where they used to quarry stones.  On the peak of the hill is
an old arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you call the
"American Creeper"--its green is almost bloodied with red.  The Study is
30 yards below the old arbor and 200 yards above the dwelling-house-it is
remote from all noises.....

Now isn't the whole thing pleasantly situated?

In the picture of me in the study you glimpse (through the left-hand
window) the little rock bluff that rises behind the pond, and the bases
of the little trees on top of it.  The small square window is over the
fireplace; the chimney divides to make room for it.  Without the
stereoscope it looks like a framed picture.  All the study windows have
Venetian blinds; they long ago went out of fashion in America but they
have not been replaced with anything half as good yet.

The study is built on top of a tumbled rock-heap that has morning-glories
climbing about it and a stone stairway leading down through and dividing
it.

There now--if you have not time to read all this, turn it over to "Jock"
and drag in the judge to help.

Mrs. Clemens must put in a late picture of Susie--a picture which she
maintains is good, but which I think is slander on the child.

We revisit the Rutland Street home many a time in fancy, for we hold
every individual in it in happy and grateful memory.
                              Goodbye,
                                   Your friend,
                                        SAML. L. CLEMENS.

P. S.--I gave the P. O. Department a blast in the papers about sending
misdirected letters of mine back to the writers for reshipment, and got a
blast in return, through a New York daily, from the New York postmaster.
But I notice that misdirected letters find me, now, without any
unnecessary fooling around.


     The new house in Hartford was now ready to be occupied, and in a
     letter to Howells, written a little more than a fortnight after the
     foregoing, we find them located in "part" of it.  But what seems
     more interesting is that paragraph of the letter which speaks of
     close friendly relations still existing with the Warners, in that it
     refutes a report current at this time that there was a break between
     Clemens and Warner over the rights in the Sellers play.  There was,
     in fact, no such rupture.  Warner, realizing that he had no hand in
     the character of Sellers, and no share in the work of dramatization,
     generously yielded all claim to any part of the returns.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                         FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Sept. 20, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--All right, my boy, send proof sheets here.  I amend
dialect stuff by talking and talking and talking it till it sounds right
--and I had difficulty with this negro talk because a negro sometimes
(rarely) says "goin" and sometimes "gwyne," and they make just such
discrepancies in other words--and when you come to reproduce them on
paper they look as if the variation resulted from the writer's
carelessness.  But I want to work at the proofs and get the dialect as
nearly right as possible.

We are in part of the new house.  Goodness knows when we'll get in the
rest of it--full of workmen yet.

I worked a month at my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday.
I believe it will go.  The newspapers have been complimentary.  It is
simply a setting for the one character, Col. Sellers--as a play I guess
it will not bear a critical assault in force.

The Warners are as charming as ever.  They go shortly to the devil for a
year--(which is but a poetical way of saying they are going to afflict
themselves with the unsurpassable--(bad word) of travel for a spell.)
I believe they mean to go and see you, first-so they mean to start from
heaven to the other place; not from earth.  How is that?

I think that is no slouch of a compliment--kind of a dim religious light
about it.  I enjoy that sort of thing.
                                   Yrs ever
                                             MARK.


     Raymond, in a letter to the Sun, stated that not "one line" of the
     California dramatization had been used by Mark Twain, "except that
     which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age."  Clemens himself, in a
     statement that he wrote for the Hartford Post, but suppressed,
     probably at the request of his wife, gave a full history of the
     play's origin, a matter of slight interest to-day.

     Sellers on the stage proved a great success.  The play had no
     special merit as a literary composition, but the character of
     Sellers delighted the public, and both author and actor were richly
     repaid for their entertainment.




XIV.

LETTERS 1874.  MISSISSIPPI CHAPTERS.  VISITS TO BOSTON.
A JOKE ON ALDRICH

"Couldn't you send me some such story as that colored one for our January
number--that is, within a month?" wrote Howells, at the end of September,
and during the week following Mark Twain struggled hard to comply, but
without result.  When the month was nearly up he wrote:


                      To W. D.  Howells, in Boston:

                                             HARTFORD, Oct. 23, 1874.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have delayed thus long, hoping I might do something
for the January number and Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me day
by day with urgings to go to work and do that something, but it's no use
--I find I can't.  We are in such a state of weary and endless confusion
that my head won't go.  So I give it up.....
                              Yrs ever,
                                        MARK.


     But two hours later, when he had returned from one of the long walks
     which he and Twichell so frequently took together, he told a
     different story.


Later, P.M.  HOME, 24th '74.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I take back the remark that I can't write for the Jan.
number.  For Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods and I got
to telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and
grandeur as I saw them (during 5 years) from the pilothouse.  He said
"What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!" I hadn't thought of that
before.  Would you like a series of papers to run through 3 months or 6
or 9?--or about 4 months, say?
                         Yrs ever,
                                   MARK.


     Howells himself had come from a family of pilots, and rejoiced in
     the idea.  A few days later Mark Twain forwarded the first
     instalment of the new series--those wonderful chapters that begin,
     now, with chapter four in the Mississippi book.  Apparently he was
     not without doubt concerning the manuscript, and accompanied it with
     a brief line.


                      To W.  D.  Howells, in Boston:

DEAR HOWELLS,--Cut it, scarify it, reject it handle it with entire
freedom.
                         Yrs ever,
                                   MARK.


     But Howells had no doubts as to the quality of the new find.  He
     declared that the "piece" about the Mississippi was capital, that it
     almost made the water in their ice-pitcher turn muddy as he read it.
     "The sketch of the low-lived little town was so good that I could
     have wished that there was more of it.  I want the sketches, if you
     can make them, every month."

     The "low-lived little town" was Hannibal, and the reader can turn to
     the vivid description of it in the chapter already mentioned.

     In the same letter Howells refers to a "letter from Limerick," which
     he declares he shall keep until he has shown it around--especially
     to Aldrich and Osgood.

     The "letter from Limerick" has to do with a special episode.
     Mention has just been made of Mark Twain's walk with Twichell.
     Frequently their walks were extended tramps, and once in a daring
     moment one or the other of them proposed to walk to Boston.  The
     time was November, and the bracing air made the proposition seem
     attractive.  They were off one morning early, Twichell carrying a
     little bag, and Clemens a basket of luncheon.  A few days before,
     Clemens had written Redpath that the Rev. J. H. Twichell and he
     expected to start at eight o'clock Thursday morning "to walk to
     Boston in twenty-four hours--or more.  We shall telegraph Young's
     Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow for a low average
     of pedestrianism."

     They did not get quite to Boston.  In fact, they got only a little
     farther than the twenty-eight miles they made the first day.
     Clemens could hardly walk next morning, but they managed to get to
     North Ashford, where they took a carriage for the nearest railway
     station.  There they telegraphed to Redpath and Howells that they
     would be in Boston that evening.  Howells, of course, had a good
     supper and good company awaiting them at his home, and the
     pedestrians spent two happy days visiting and recounting their
     adventures.

     It was one morning, at his hotel, that Mark Twain wrote the Limerick
     letter.  It was addressed to Mrs. Clemens, but was really intended
     for Howells and Twichell and the others whom it mentions.  It was an
     amusing fancy, rather than a letter, but it deserves place here.


          To Mrs. Clemens---intended for Howells, Aldrich, etc.

                                   BOSTON, Nov. 16, 1935. [1874]
DEAR LIVY, You observe I still call this beloved old place by the name it
had when I was young.  Limerick!  It is enough to make a body sick.

The gentlemen-in-waiting stare to see me sit here telegraphing this
letter to you, and no doubt they are smiling in their sleeves.  But let
them!  The slow old fashions are good enough for me, thank God, and I
will none other.  When I see one of these modern fools sit absorbed,
holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that a
thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it,
it makes me frantic with rage; and then am I more implacably fixed and
resolved than ever, to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you
what I communicate in ten sends by the new way if I would so debase
myself.  And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of
idiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads "communing," I
tug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me the
blessed relief of suffocation.  In our old day such a gathering talked
pure drivel and "rot," mostly, but better that, a thousand times, than
these dreary conversational funerals that oppress our spirits in this mad
generation.

It is sixty years since I was here before.  I walked hither, then, with
my precious old friend.  It seems incredible, now, that we did it in two
days, but such is my recollection.  I no longer mention that we walked
back in a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face of
the hearer.  Men were men in those old times.  Think of one of the
puerile organisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat.

My air-ship was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loaded
with the usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so I
was nearly an hour on my journey.  But by the goodness of God thirteen of
the missionaries were crippled and several killed, so I was content to
lose the time.  I love to lose time, anyway, because it brings soothing
reminiscences of the creeping railroad days of old, now lost to us
forever.

Our game was neatly played, and successfully.--None expected us, of
course.  You should have seen the guards at the ducal palace stare when
I said, "Announce his grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Rt. Hon.
the Earl of Hartford."  Arrived within, we were all eyes to see the Duke
of Cambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might remember their faces,
and they ours.  In a moment, they came tottering in; he, bent and
withered and bald; she blooming with wholesome old age.  He peered
through his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice: "Come to
my arms!  Away with titles--I'll know ye by no names but Twain and
Twichell!  Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear,
the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: God bless you, old
Howells what is left of you!"

We talked late that night--none of your silent idiot "communings" for us
--of the olden time.  We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our
tongues and drank till the lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow
past that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him and resumed its sweeter
forgotten name of New York.  In truth he almost got back into his ancient
religion, too, good Jesuit, as he has always been since O'Mulligan the
First established that faith in the Empire.

And we canvassed everybody.  Bailey Aldrich, Marquis of Ponkapog, came
in, got nobly drunk, and told us all about how poor Osgood lost his
earldom and was hanged for conspiring against the second Emperor--but
he didn't mention how near he himself came to being hanged, too, for
engaging in the same enterprise.  He was as chaffy as he was sixty years
ago, too, and swore the Archbishop and I never walked to Boston--but
there was never a day that Ponkapog wouldn't lie, so be it by the grace
of God he got the opportunity.

The Lord High Admiral came in, a hale gentleman close upon seventy and
bronzed by the suns and storms of many climes and scarred with the wounds
got in many battles, and I told him how I had seen him sit in a high
chair and eat fruit and cakes and answer to the name of Johnny.  His
granddaughter (the eldest) is but lately warned to the youngest of the
Grand Dukes, and so who knows but a day may come when the blood of the
Howells's may reign in the land?  I must not forget to say, while I think
of it, that your new false teeth are done, my dear, and your wig.  Keep
your head well bundled with a shawl till the latter comes, and so cheat
your persecuting neuralgias and rheumatisms.  Would you believe it?--the
Duchess of Cambridge is deafer than you--deafer than her husband.  They
call her to breakfast with a salvo of artillery; and usually when it
thunders she looks up expectantly and says "come in....."

The monument to the author of "Gloverson and His Silent partners" is
finished.  It is the stateliest and the costliest ever erected to the
memory of any man.  This noble classic has now been translated into all
the languages of the earth and is adored by all nations and known to all
creatures.  Yet I have conversed as familiarly with the author of it as I
do with my own great-grandchildren.

I wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog.  I love them as dearly
as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots.
It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes
three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered
them over three or four times the evening before.  Ponkapog still writes
poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it.  Perhaps his
best effort of late years is this:

               "O soul, soul, soul of mine:
               Soul, soul, soul of thine!
               Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine,
               And sing thy lauds in crystal wine!"

This he goes about repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuch
that he is become a sore affliction to all that know him.

But I must desist.  There are drafts here, everywhere and my gout is
something frightful.  My left foot hath resemblance to a snuff-bladder.
                         God be with you.
                                        HARTFORD.

These to Lady Hartford, in the earldom of Hartford, in the upper portion
of the city of Dublin.


     One may imagine the joy of Howells and the others in this ludicrous
     extravaganza, which could have been written by no one but Mark
     Twain.  It will hardly take rank as prophecy, though certainly true
     forecast in it is not wholly lacking.

     Clemens was now pretty well satisfied with his piloting story, but
     he began to have doubts as to its title, "Old Times on the
     Mississippi."  It seemed to commit him to too large an undertaking.


                      To W.  D.  Howells, in Boston:

                                                  Dec. 3, 1874.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Let us change the heading to "Piloting on the Miss in
the Old Times"--or to "Steamboating on the M. in Old Times"--or to
"Personal Old Times on the Miss."--We could change it for Feb. if now
too late for Jan.--I suggest it because the present heading is too
pretentious, too broad and general.  It seems to command me to deliver a
Second Book of Revelation to the world, and cover all the Old Times the
Mississippi (dang that word, it is worse than "type" or "Egypt ") ever
saw--whereas here I have finished Article No. III and am about to start
on No. 4.  and yet I have spoken of nothing but of Piloting as a science
so far; and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject.
And I don't care to.  Any muggins can write about Old Times on the Miss.
of 500 different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble
about the piloting of that day--and no man ever has tried to scribble
about it yet.  Its newness pleases me all the time--and it is about the
only new subject I know of.  If I were to write fifty articles they would
all be about pilots and piloting--therefore let's get the word Piloting
into the heading.  There's a sort of freshness about that, too.
                                   Ys ever,
                                             MARK.


     But Howells thought the title satisfactory, and indeed it was the
     best that could have been selected for the series.  He wrote every
     few days of his delight in the papers, and cautioned the author not
     to make an attempt to please any "supposed Atlantic audience,"
     adding, "Yarn it off into my sympathetic ear."  Clemens replied:


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             H't'f'd.  Dec. 8, 1874.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It isn't the Atlantic audience that distresses me; for
it is the only audience that I sit down before in perfect serenity (for
the simple reason that it doesn't require a "humorist" to paint himself
striped and stand on his head every fifteen minutes.) The trouble was,
that I was only bent on "working up an atmosphere" and that is to me a
most fidgety and irksome thing, sometimes.  I avoid it, usually, but in
this case it was absolutely necessary, else every reader would be
applying the atmosphere of his own or sea experiences, and that shirt
wouldn't fit, you know.

I could have sent this Article II a week ago, or more, but I couldn't
bring myself to the drudgery of revising and correcting it.  I have been
at that tedious work 3 hours, now, and by George but I am glad it is
over.

Say--I am as prompt as a clock, if I only know the day a thing is wanted
--otherwise I am a natural procrastinaturalist.  Tell me what day and
date you want Nos. 3 and 4, and I will tackle and revise them and they'll
be there to the minute.

I could wind up with No. 4., but there are some things more which I am
powerfully moved to write.  Which is natural enough, since I am a person
who would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting, if the madam
would stand it.  I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time.

My wife was afraid to write you--so I said with simplicity, "I will give
you the language--and ideas."  Through the infinite grace of God there
has not been such another insurrection in the family before as followed
this.  However, the letter was written, and promptly, too--whereas,
heretofore she has remained afraid to do such things.

With kind regards to Mrs. Howells,
                         Yrs ever,
                                   MARK.


     The "Old Times" papers appeared each month in the Atlantic until
     July, 1875, and take rank to-day with Mark Twain's best work.  When
     the first number appeared, John Hay wrote: "It is perfect; no more
     nor less.  I don't see how you do it."  Which was reported to
     Howells, who said: "What business has Hay, I should like to know,
     praising a favorite of mine?  It's interfering."

     These were the days when the typewriter was new.  Clemens and
     Twichell, during their stay in Boston, had seen the marvel in
     operation, and Clemens had been unable to resist owning one.  It was
     far from being the perfect machine of to-day; the letters were all
     capitals, and one was never quite certain, even of those.  Mark
     Twain, however, began with enthusiasm and practised faithfully.  On
     the day of its arrival he wrote two letters that have survived, the
     first to his brother, the other to Howells.


             Typewritten letter to W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                   HARTFORD, Dec. 9, 1874.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I want to add a short paragraph to article No. 1, when
the proof comes.  Merely a line or two, however.

I don't know whether I am going to make this typewriting machine go or
nto: that last word was intended for n-not; but I guess I shall make some
sort of a succss of it before I run it very long.  I am so thick-fingered
that I miss the keys.

You needn't a swer this; I am only practicing to get three; another
slip-up there; only practici?ng to get the hang of the thing.  I notice
I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters and punctuation marks.
I am simply using you for a target to bang at.  Blame my cats but this
thing requires genius in order to work it just right.
                         Yours ever,
                                        (M)ARK.



     Knowing Mark Twain, Howells wrote: "When you get tired of the
     machine send it to me."  Clemens naturally did get tired of the
     machine; it was ruining his morals, he said.  He presently offered
     it to Howells, who by this time hesitated, but eventually yielded
     and accepted it.  If he was blasted by its influence the fact has
     not been recorded.

     One of the famous Atlantic dinners came along in December.  "Don't
     you dare to refuse that invitation," wrote Howells, "to meet
     Emerson, Aldrich, and all those boys at the Parker House, at six
     o'clock, Tuesday, December 15th.  Come!"

     Clemens had no desire to refuse; he sent word that he would come,
     and followed it with a characteristic line.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                                  HARTFORD, Sunday.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I want you to ask Mrs. Howells to let you stay all
night at the Parker House and tell lies and have an improving time, and
take breakfast with me in the morning.  I will have a good room for you,
and a fire.  Can't you tell her it always makes you sick to go home late
at night, or something like that?  That sort of thing rouses Mrs.
Clemens's sympathies, easily; the only trouble is to keep them up.
Twichell and I talked till 2 or 3 in the morning, the night we supped at
your house and it restored his health, on account of his being drooping
for some time and made him much more robuster than what he was before.
Will Mrs. Howells let you?
                              Yrs ever,
                                        S. L. C.

     Aldrich had issued that year a volume of poems, and he presented
     Clemens with a copy of it during this Boston visit.  The letter of
     appreciation which follows contains also reference to an amusing
     incident; but we shall come to that presently.


                   To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.

                                        FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.
                                        Dec.  18, 1874.
MY DEAR ALDRICH,--I read the "Cloth of Gold" through, coming down in the
cars, and it is just lightning poetry--a thing which it gravels me to say
because my own efforts in that line have remained so persistently
unrecognized, in consequence of the envy and jealousy of this generation.
"Baby Bell" always seemed perfection, before, but now that I have
children it has got even beyond that.  About the hour that I was reading
it in the cars, Twichell was reading it at home and forthwith fell upon
me with a burst of enthusiasm about it when I saw him.  This was
pleasant, because he has long been a lover of it.

"Thos. Bailey Aldrich responded" etc., "in one of the brightest speeches
of the evening."

That is what the Tribune correspondent says.  And that is what everybody
that heard it said.  Therefore, you keep still.  Don't ever be so unwise
as to go on trying to unconvince those people.

I've been skating around the place all day with some girls, with Mrs.
Clemens in the window to do the applause.  There would be a power of fun
in skating if you could do it with somebody else's muscles.--There are
about twenty boys booming by the house, now, and it is mighty good to
look at.

I'm keeping you in mind, you see, in the matter of photographs.  I have
a couple to enclose in this letter and I want you to say you got them,
and then I shall know I have been a good truthful child.

I am going to send more as I ferret them out, about the place.--And I
won't forget that you are a "subscriber."

The wife and I unite in warm regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich.
                              Yrs ever,
                                        S. L. CLEMENS.


     A letter bearing the same date as the above went back to Howells, we
     find, in reference to still another incident, which perhaps should
     come first.

     Mark Twain up to this time had worn the black "string" necktie of
     the West--a decoration which disturbed Mrs. Clemens, and invited
     remarks from his friends.  He had persisted in it, however, up to
     the date of the Atlantic dinner, when Howells and Aldrich decided
     that something must be done about it.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Dec.  18, 1874.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I left No. 3, (Miss. chapter) in my eldest's reach, and
it may have gone to the postman and it likewise may have gone into the
fire.  I confess to a dread that the latter is the case and that that
stack of MS will have to be written over again.  If so, O for the return
of the lamented Herod!

You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful--Mrs.
Clemens.  For months--I may even say years--she had shown unaccountable
animosity toward my neck-tie, even getting up in the night to take it
with the tongs and blackguard it--sometimes also going so far as to
threaten it.

When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neck-ties, and that they
were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of happiness
until she found I was going to frame them; then all the venom in her
nature gathered itself together,--insomuch that I, being near to a door,
went without, perceiving danger.

Now I wear one of the new neck-ties, nothing being sacred in Mrs.
Clemens's eyes that can be perverted to a gaud that shall make the person
of her husband more alluring than it was aforetime.

Jo Twichell was the delightedest old boy I ever saw, when he read the
words you had written in that book.  He and I went to the Concert of the
Yale students last night and had a good time.

Mrs. Clemens dreads our going to New Orleans, but I tell her she'll have
to give her consent this time.

With kindest regards unto ye both.
                              Yrs ever,
                                        S. L. CLEMENS.


     The reference to New Orleans at the end of this letter grew
     naturally out of the enthusiasm aroused by the Mississippi papers.
     The more Clemens wrote about the river the more he wished to revisit
     it and take Howells with him.  Howells was willing enough to go and
     they eventually arranged to take their wives on the excursion.  This
     seemed all very well and possible, so long as the time was set for
     some date in the future still unfixed.  But Howells was a busy
     editor, and it was much more easy for him to promise good-naturedly
     than to agree on a definite time of departure.  He explained at
     length why he could not make the journey, and added: "Forgive me
     having led you on to fix a time; I never thought it would come to
     that; I supposed you would die, or something.  I am really more
     sorry and ashamed than I can make it appear."  So the beautiful plan
     was put aside, though it was not entirely abandoned for a long time.

     We now come to the incident mentioned in Mark Twain's letter to
     Aldrich, of December the 18th.  It had its beginning at the Atlantic
     dinner, where Aldrich had abused Clemens for never sending him any
     photographs of himself.  It was suggested by one or the other that
     his name be put down as a "regular subscriber" for all Mark Twain
     photographs as they "came out."  Clemens returned home and hunted up
     fifty-two different specimens, put each into an envelope, and began
     mailing them to him, one each morning.  When a few of them had
     arrived Aldrich wrote, protesting.

     "The police," he said, "have a way of swooping down on that kind of
     publication.  The other day they gobbled up an entire edition of
     'The Life in New York.'"

     Whereupon Clemens bundled up the remaining collection--forty-five
     envelopes of photographs and prints-and mailed them together.

     Aldrich wrote, now, violently declaring the perpetrator of the
     outrage to be known to the police; that a sprawling yellow figure
     against a green background had been recognized as an admirable
     likeness of Mark Twain, alias the jumping Frog, a well-known
     Californian desperado, formerly the chief of Henry Plummer's band of
     road agents in Montana.  The letter was signed, "T. Bayleigh, Chief
     of Police."  On the back of the envelope "T. Bayleigh" had also
     written that it was "no use for the person to send any more letters,
     as the post-office at that point was to be blown up.  Forty-eight
     hogs-head of nitroglycerine had been syrupticiously introduced into
     the cellar of the building, and more was expected.  R.W.E.  H.W.L.
     O.W.H., and other conspirators in masks have been seen flitting
     about the town for some days past.  The greatest excitement combined
     with the most intense quietness reigns at Ponkapog."




XV.

LETTERS FROM HARTFORD, 1875.  MUCH CORRESPONDENCE WITH HOWELLS

Orion Clemens had kept his job with Bliss only a short time.  His mental
make-up was such that it was difficult for him to hold any position long.
He meant to do well, but he was unfortunate in his efforts.  His ideas
were seldom practical, his nature was yielding and fickle.  He had
returned to Keokuk presently, and being convinced there was a fortune in
chickens, had prevailed upon his brother to purchase for him a little
farm not far from the town.  But the chicken business was not lively and
Orion kept the mail hot with manuscripts and propositions of every sort,
which he wanted his brother to take under advisement.

Certainly, to Mark Twain Orion Clemens was a trial.  The letters of the
latter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of some
rainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty that
somewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold.  Only, now and then, there is
a letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some golden
vision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch.  Such
depression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, new
enthusiasm, and with a new letter inviting his "brother Sam's" interest
and investment.  Yet, his fear of incurring his brother's displeasure was
pitiful, regardless of the fact that he constantly employed the very
means to insure that result.  At one time Clemens made him sign a sworn
agreement that he would not suggest any plan or scheme of investment for
the period of twelve months.  Orion must have kept this agreement.  He
would have gone to the stake before he would have violated an oath, but
the stake would have probably been no greater punishment than his
sufferings that year.

On the whole, Samuel Clemens was surprisingly patient and considerate
with Orion, and there was never a time that he was not willing to help.
Yet there were bound to be moments of exasperation; and once, when his
mother, or sister, had written, suggesting that he encourage his
brother's efforts, he felt moved to write at considerable freedom.


        To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.:

                                             HARTFORD, Sunday, 1875.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I Saw Gov. Newell today and he said he was
still moving in the matter of Sammy's appointment--[As a West Point
cadet.]--and would stick to it till he got a result of a positive nature
one way or the other, but thus far he did not know whether to expect
success or defeat.

Ma, whenever you need money I hope you won't be backward about saying so
--you can always have it.  We stint ourselves in some ways, but we have
no desire to stint you.  And we don't intend to, either.

I can't "encourage" Orion.  Nobody can do that, conscientiously, for the
reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off on some
new wild-goose chase.  Would you encourage in literature a man who, the
older he grows the worse he writes?  Would you encourage Orion in the
glaring insanity of studying law?  If he were packed and crammed full of
law, it would be worthless lumber to him, for his is such a capricious
and ill-regulated mind that he would apply the principles of the law with
no more judgment than a child of ten years.  I know what I am saying.
I laid one of the plainest and simplest of legal questions before Orion
once, and the helpless and hopeless mess he made of it was absolutely
astonishing.  Nothing aggravates me so much as to have Orion mention law
or literature to me.

Well, I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change
his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent under
wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him.

I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter around
his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and impossible
projects at the rate of 365 a year--which is his customary average.
He says he did well in Hannibal!  Now there is a man who ought to be
entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments and activities of a hen
farm--

If you ask me to pity Orion, I can do that.  I can do it every day and
all day long.  But one can't "encourage" quick-silver, because the
instant you put your finger on it it isn't there.  No, I am saying too
much--he does stick to his literary and legal aspirations; and he
naturally would select the very two things which he is wholly and
preposterously unfitted for.  If I ever become able, I mean to put Orion
on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a pension.
That is best for him.  Let him consider it a periodical loan, and pay
interest out of the principal.  Within a year's time he would be looking
upon himself as a benefactor of mine, in the way of furnishing me a good
permanent investment for money, and that would make him happy and
satisfied with himself.  If he had money he would share with me in a
moment and I have no disposition to be stingy with him.
                                   Affly
                                        SAM.
Livy sends love.


     The New Orleans plan was not wholly dead at this time.  Howells
     wrote near the end of January that the matter was still being
     debated, now and then, but was far from being decided upon.  He
     hoped to go somewhere with Mrs. Howells for a brief time in March,
     he said.  Clemens, in haste, replied:


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             HARTFORD, Jan.  26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When Mrs. Clemens read your letter she said: "Well,
then, wherever they go, in March, the direction will be southward and so
they must give us a visit on the way."  I do not know what sort of
control you may be under, but when my wife speaks as positively as that,
I am not in the habit of talking back and getting into trouble.  Situated
as I am, I would not be able to understand, now, how you could pass by
this town without feeling that you were running a wanton risk and doing a
daredevil thing.  I consider it settled that you are to come in March,
and I would be sincerely sorry to learn that you and Mrs. Howells feel
differently about it.

The piloting material has been uncovering itself by degrees, until it has
exposed such a huge hoard to my view that a whole book will be required
to contain it if I use it.  So I have agreed to write the book for Bliss.
--[The book idea was later given up for the time being.]--I won't be
able to run the articles in the Atlantic later than the September number,
for the reason that a subscription book issued in the fall has a much
larger sale than if issued at any other season of the year.  It is funny
when I reflect that when I originally wrote you and proposed to do from 6
to 9 articles for the magazine, the vague thought in my mind was that 6
might exhaust the material and 9 would be pretty sure to do it.  Or
rather it seems to me that that was my thought--can't tell at this
distance.  But in truth 9 chapters don't now seem to more than open up
the subject fairly and start the yarn to wagging.

I have been sick a-bed several days, for the first time in 21 years.
How little confirmed invalids appreciate their advantages.  I was able to
read the English edition of the Greville Memoirs through without
interruption, take my meals in bed, neglect all business without a pang,
and smoke 18 cigars a day.  I try not to look back upon these 21 years
with a feeling of resentment, and yet the partialities of Providence do
seem to me to be slathered around (as one may say) without that gravity
and attention to detail which the real importance of the matter would
seem to suggest.
                              Yrs ever
                                        MARK.


     The New Orleans idea continued to haunt the letters.  The thought of
     drifting down the Mississippi so attracted both Clemens and Howells,
     that they talked of it when they met, and wrote of it when they were
     separated.  Howells, beset by uncertainties, playfully tried to put
     the responsibility upon his wife.  Once he wrote: "She says in the
     noblest way, 'Well, go to New Orleans, if you want to so much' (you
     know the tone).  I suppose it will do if I let you know about the
     middle of February?"

     But they had to give it up in the end.  Howells wrote that he had
     been under the weather, and on half work the whole winter.  He did
     not feel that he had earned his salary, he said, or that he was
     warranted in taking a three weeks' pleasure trip.  Clemens offered
     to pay all the expenses of the trip, but only indefinite
     postponement followed.  It would be seven years more before Mark
     Twain would return to the river, and then not with Howells.

     In a former chapter mention has been made of Charles Warren
     Stoddard, whom Mark Twain had known in his California days.  He was
     fond of Stoddard, who was a facile and pleasing writer of poems and
     descriptive articles.  During the period that he had been acting as
     Mark Twain's secretary in London, he had taken pleasure in
     collecting for him the news reports of the celebrated Tichborn
     Claimant case, then in the English courts.  Clemens thought of
     founding a story on it, and did, in fact, use the idea, though 'The
     American Claimant,' which he wrote years later, had little or no
     connection with the Tichborn episode.


                            To C. W. Stoddard:

                                        HARTFORD, Feb. 1, 1875.
DEAR CHARLEY,--All right about the Tichborn scrapbooks; send them along
when convenient.  I mean to have the Beecher-Tilton trial scrap-book as a
companion.....

I am writing a series of 7-page articles for the Atlantic at $20 a page;
but as they do not pay anybody else as much as that, I do not complain
(though at the same time I do swear that I am not content.)  However the
awful respectability of the magazine makes up.

I have cut your articles about San Marco out of a New York paper (Joe
Twichell saw it and brought it home to me with loud admiration,) and sent
it to Howells.  It is too bad to fool away such good literature in a
perishable daily journal.

Do remember us kindly to Lady Hardy and all that rare family--my wife and
I so often have pleasant talks about them.
                         Ever your friend,
                                   SAML. L. CLEMENS.


     The price received by Mark Twain for the Mississippi papers, as
     quoted in this letter, furnishes us with a realizing sense of the
     improvement in the literary market, with the advent of a flood of
     cheap magazines and the Sunday newspaper.  The Atlantic page
     probably contained about a thousand words, which would make his
     price average, say, two cents per word.  Thirty years later, when
     his fame was not much more extended, his pay for the same matter
     would have been fifteen times as great, that is to say, at the rate
     of thirty cents per word.  But in that early time there were no
     Sunday magazines--no literary magazines at all except the Atlantic,
     and Harpers, and a few fashion periodicals.  Probably there were
     news-stands, but it is hard to imagine what they must have looked
     like without the gay pictorial cover-femininity that to-day pleases
     and elevates the public and makes author and artist affluent.

     Clemens worked steadily on the river chapters, and Howells was
     always praising him and urging him to go on.  At the end of January
     he wrote: "You're doing the science of piloting splendidly.  Every
     word's interesting.  And don't you drop the series 'til you've got
     every bit of anecdote and reminiscence into it."


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Feb. 10, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your praises of my literature gave me the solidest
gratification; but I never did have the fullest confidence in my critical
penetration, and now your verdict on S-----has knocked what little I did
have gully-west!  I didn't enjoy his gush, but I thought a lot of his
similes were ever so vivid and good.  But it's just my luck; every time I
go into convulsions of admiration over a picture and want to buy it right
away before I've lost the chance, some wretch who really understands art
comes along and damns it.  But I don't mind.  I would rather have my
ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have got so much more
of it.

I send you No. 5 today.  I have written and re-written the first half of
it three different times, yesterday and today, and at last Mrs. Clemens
says it will do.  I never saw a woman so hard to please about things she
doesn't know anything about.
                              Yours ever,
                                        MARK.


     Of course, the reference to his wife's criticism in this is tenderly
     playful, as always--of a pattern with the severity which he pretends
     for her in the next.


                   To Mrs. W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                                            1875
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens is delighted to get the pictures, and so
am I.  I can perceive in the group, that Mr. Howells is feeling as I so
often feel, viz: "Well, no doubt I am in the wrong, though I do not know
how or where or why--but anyway it will be safest to look meek, and walk
circumspectly for a while, and not discuss the thing."  And you look
exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said, "Indeed I do not wonder
that you can frame no reply: for you know only too well, that your
conduct admits of no excuse, palliation or argument--none!"

I shall just delight in that group on account of the good old human
domestic spirit that pervades it--bother these family groups that put on
a state aspect to get their pictures taken in.

We want a heliotype made of our eldest daughter.  How soft and rich and
lovely the picture is.  Mr. Howells must tell me how to proceed in the
matter.
                    Truly Yours
                         SAM. L. CLEMENS.


     In the next letter we have a picture of Susy--[This spelling of the
     name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred.  It appears as
     "Susie" in most of the earlier letters.]--Clemens's third birthday,
     certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender
     today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence,
     if these lines should survive that long.  The letter is to her uncle
     Charles Langdon, the "Charlie" of the Quaker City.  "Atwater" was
     associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira.  "The play"
     is, of course, "The Gilded Age."


                      To Charles Langdon, in Elmira:

                                                  Mch. 19, 1875.
DEAR CHARLIE,--Livy, after reading your letter, used her severest form of
expression about Mr. Atwater--to wit: She did not "approve" of his
conduct.  This made me shudder; for it was equivalent to Allie
Spaulding's saying "Mr. Atwater is a mean thing;" or Rev. Thomas
Beecher's saying "Damn that Atwater," or my saying "I wish Atwater was
three hundred million miles in----!"

However, Livy does not often get into one of these furies, God be
thanked.

In Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago,
the play paid me an average of nine hundred dollars a week.  In smaller
towns the average is $400 to $500.

This is Susie's birth-day.  Lizzie brought her in at 8.30 this morning
(before we were up) hooded with a blanket, red curl-papers in her hair, a
great red japonica, in one hand (for Livy) and a yellow rose-bud nestled
in violets (for my buttonhole) in the other--and she looked wonderfully
pretty.  She delivered her memorials and received her birth-day kisses.
Livy laid her japonica, down to get a better "holt" for kissing-which
Susie presently perceived, and became thoughtful: then said sorrowfully,
turning the great deeps of her eyes upon her mother: "Don't you care for
you wow?"

Right after breakfast we got up a rousing wood fire in the main hall
(it is a cold morning) illuminated the place with a rich glow from all
the globes of the newell chandelier, spread a bright rug before the fire,
set a circling row of chairs (pink ones and dove-colored) and in the
midst a low invalid-table covered with a fanciful cloth and laden with
the presents--a pink azalia in lavish bloom from Rosa; a gold inscribed
Russia-leather bible from Patrick and Mary; a gold ring (inscribed) from
"Maggy Cook;" a silver thimble (inscribed with motto and initials) from
Lizzie; a rattling mob of Sunday clad dolls from Livy and Annie, and a
Noah's Ark from me, containing 200 wooden animals such as only a human
being could create and only God call by name without referring to the
passenger list.  Then the family and the seven servants assembled there,
and Susie and the "Bay" arrived in state from above, the Bay's head being
fearfully and wonderfully decorated with a profusion of blazing red
flowers and overflowing cataracts of lycopodium.  Wee congratulatory
notes accompanied the presents of the servants.  I tell you it was a
great occasion and a striking and cheery group, taking all the
surroundings into account and the wintry aspect outside.

(Remainder missing.)


     There was to be a centennial celebration that year of the battles of
     Lexington and Concord, and Howells wrote, urging Clemens and his
     wife to visit them and attend it.  Mrs. Clemens did not go, and
     Clemens and Howells did not go, either--to the celebration.  They
     had their own ideas about getting there, but found themselves unable
     to board the thronged train at Concord, and went tramping about in
     the cold and mud, hunting a conveyance, only to return at length to
     the cheer of the home, defeated and rather low in spirits.

     Twichell, who went on his own hook, had no such difficulties.  To
     Howells, Mark Twain wrote the adventures of this athletic and
     strenuous exponent of the gospel.

     The "Winnie" mentioned in this letter was Howells's daughter
     Winifred.  She had unusual gifts, but did not live to develop them.


                      To W.  D.  Howells, in Boston:

                         FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.  Apl. 23, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I've got Mrs. Clemens's picture before me, and hope I
shall not forget to send it with this.

Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took midnight
train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by rail at 7.30
A. M.  for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P. M., seeing
everything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw everything
there; traveled on top of a train to Boston, (with hundreds in company)
deluged with dust, smoke and cinders; yelled and hurrahed all the way
like a schoolboy; lay flat down to dodge numerous bridges, and sailed
into the depot, howling with excitement and as black as a chimney-sweep;
got to Young's Hotel at 7 P. M.; sat down in reading-room and immediately
fell asleep; was promptly awakened by a porter who supposed he was drunk;
wandered around an hour and a half; then took 9 P. M. train, sat down in
smoking car and remembered nothing more until awakened by conductor as
the train came into Hartford at 1.30 A. M.  Thinks he had simply a
glorious time--and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the world.
He would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge, but was too dirty.
I wouldn't have wanted him there--his appalling energy would have been an
insufferable reproach to mild adventurers like you and me.

Well, he is welcome to the good time he had--I had a deal better one.
My narrative has made Mrs. Clemens wish she could have been there.--When
I think over what a splendid good sociable time I had in your house I
feel ever so thankful to the wise providence that thwarted our several
ably-planned and ingenious attempts to get to Lexington.  I am coming
again before long, and then she shall be of the party.

Now you said that you and Mrs. Howells could run down here nearly any
Saturday.  Very well then, let us call it next Saturday, for a "starter."
Can you do that?  By that time it will really be spring and you won't
freeze.  The birds are already out; a small one paid us a visit
yesterday.  We entertained it and let it go again, Susie protesting.

The spring laziness is already upon me--insomuch that the spirit begins
to move me to cease from Mississippi articles and everything else and
give myself over to idleness until we go to New Orleans.  I have one
article already finished, but somehow it doesn't seem as proper a chapter
to close with as the one already in your hands.  I hope to get in a mood
and rattle off a good one to finish with--but just now all my moods are
lazy ones.

Winnie's literature sings through me yet!  Surely that child has one of
these "futures" before her.

Now try to come--will you?

With the warmest regards of the two of us--
                         Yrs ever,
                              S. L. CLEMENS.

Mrs. Clemens sent a note to Mrs. Howells, which will serve as a pendant
to the foregoing.


              From Mrs. Clemens to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:

MY DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,--Don't dream for one instant that my not getting a
letter from you kept me from Boston.  I am too anxious to go to let such
a thing as that keep me.

Mr. Clemens did have such a good time with you and Mr. Howells.
He evidently has no regret that he did not get to the Centennial.  I was
driven nearly distracted by his long account of Mr. Howells and his
wanderings.  I would keep asking if they ever got there, he would never
answer but made me listen to a very minute account of everything that
they did.  At last I found them back where they started from.

If you find misspelled words in this note, you will remember my infirmity
and not hold me responsible.
                         Affectionately yours,
                                        LIVY L. CLEMENS.

In spite of his success with the Sellers play and his itch to follow it
up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be his literary limitations.
All his life he was inclined to consider himself wanting in the finer
gifts of character-shading and delicate portrayal.  Remembering Huck
Finn, and the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether
agree with him.  Certainly, he was never qualified to delineate those
fine artificialities of life which we are likely to associate with
culture, and perhaps it was something of this sort that caused the
hesitation confessed in the letter that follows.  Whether the plan
suggested interested Howells or not we do not know.  In later years
Howells wrote a novel called The Story of a Play; this may have been its
beginning.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                         FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Apl. 26, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--An actor named D. H. Harkins has been here to ask me to
put upon paper a 5-act play which he has been mapping out in his mind for
3 or 4 years.   He sat down and told me his plot all through, in a clear,
bright way, and I was a deal taken with it; but it is a line of
characters whose fine shading and artistic development requires an abler
hand than mine; so I easily perceived that I must not make the attempt.
But I liked the man, and thought there was a good deal of stuff in him;
and therefore I wanted his play to be written, and by a capable hand,
too.  So I suggested you, and said I would write and see if you would be
willing to undertake it.  If you like the idea, he will call upon you in
the course of two or three weeks and describe his plot and his
characters.  Then if it doesn't strike you favorably, of course you can
simply decline; but it seems to me well worth while that you should hear
what he has to say.  You could also "average" him while he talks, and
judge whether he could play your priest--though I doubt if any man can do
that justice.

Shan't I write him and say he may call?  If you wish to communicate
directly with him instead, his address is "Larchmont Manor, Westchester
Co., N. Y."

Do you know, the chill of that 19th of April seems to be in my bones yet?
I am inert and drowsy all the time.  That was villainous weather for a
couple of wandering children to be out in.
                                        Ys ever
                                                  MARK.


     The sinister typewriter did not find its way to Howells for nearly a
     year.  Meantime, Mark Twain had refused to allow the manufacturers
     to advertise his ownership.  He wrote to them:


                                        HARTFORD, March 19, 1875.
Please do not use my name in any way.  Please do not even divulge the
fact that I own a machine.  I have entirely stopped using the typewriter,
for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody
without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe
the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc.,
etc.  I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know
I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.


     Three months later the machine was still in his possession.  Bliss
     had traded a twelve-dollar saddle for it, but apparently showed
     little enthusiasm in his new possession.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                                  June 25, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Patrick to get some carpenters and box the
machine and send it to you--and found that Bliss had sent for the machine
and earned it off.

I have been talking to you and writing to you as if you were present when
I traded the machine to Bliss for a twelve-dollar saddle worth $25
(cheating him outrageously, of course--but conscience got the upper hand
again and I told him before I left the premises that I'd pay for the
saddle if he didn't like the machine--on condition that he donate said
machine to a charity)

This was a little over five weeks ago--so I had long ago concluded that
Bliss didn't want the machine and did want the saddle--wherefore I jumped
at the chance of shoving the machine off onto you, saddle or no saddle so
I got the blamed thing out of my sight.

The saddle hangs on Tara's walls down below in the stable, and the
machine is at Bliss's grimly pursuing its appointed mission, slowly and
implacably rotting away another man's chances for salvation.

I have sent Bliss word not to donate it to a charity (though it is a pity
to fool away a chance to do a charity an ill turn,) but to let me know
when he has got his dose, because I've got another candidate for
damnation.  You just wait a couple of weeks and if you don't see the
Type-Writer come tilting along toward Cambridge with an unsatisfied
appetite in its eye, I lose my guess.

Don't you be mad about this blunder, Howells--it only comes of a bad
memory, and the stupidity which is inseparable from true genius.  Nothing
intentionally criminal in it.
                              Yrs ever
                                        MARK.


     It was November when Howells finally fell under the baleful
     influence of the machine.  He wrote:

     "The typewriter came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to
     have its effect on me.  Of course, it doesn't work: if I can
     persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won't
     get down again without digital assistance.  The treadle refuses to
     have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don't know how to
     get the roller to turn with the paper.  Nevertheless I have begun
     several letters to My d-a-r lemans, as it prefers to spell your
     respected name, and I don't despair yet of sending you something in
     its beautiful handwriting--after I've had a man out from the agent's
     to put it in order.  It's fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes
     my time like an old friend."

     The Clemens family remained in Hartford that summer, with the
     exception of a brief season at Bateman's Point, R. I., near
     Newport.  By this time Mark Twain had taken up and finished the Tom
     Sawyer story begun two years before.  Naturally he wished Howells to
     consider the MS.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             HARTFORD, July 5th, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have finished the story and didn't take the chap
beyond boyhood.  I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but
autobiographically--like Gil Blas.  I perhaps made a mistake in not
writing it in the first person.  If I went on, now, and took him into
manhood, he would just like like all the one-horse men in literature and
the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him.  It is not a boy's
book, at all.  It will only be read by adults.  It is only written for
adults.

Moreover the book is plenty long enough as it stands.  It is about 900
pages of MS, and may be 1000 when I shall have finished "working up"
vague places; so it would make from 130 to 150 pages of the Atlantic
--about what the Foregone Conclusion made, isn't it?

I would dearly like to see it in the Atlantic, but I doubt if it would
pay the publishers to buy the privilege, or me to sell it.  Bret Harte
has sold his novel (same size as mine, I should say) to Scribner's
Monthly for $6,500 (publication to begin in September, I think,) and he
gets a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent from Bliss in book form afterwards.  He
gets a royalty of ten per cent on it in England (issued in serial
numbers) and the same royalty on it in book form afterwards, and is to
receive an advance payment of five hundred pounds the day the first No.
of the serial appears.  If I could do as well, here, and there, with
mine, it might possibly pay me, but I seriously doubt it though it is
likely I could do better in England than Bret, who is not widely known
there.

You see I take a vile, mercenary view of things--but then my household
expenses are something almost ghastly.

By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in
the first person) but not Tom Sawyer--he would not be a good character
for it.

I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, and see
if you don't really decide that I am right in closing with him as a boy
--and point out the most glaring defects for me.  It is a tremendous favor
to ask, and I expect you to refuse and would be ashamed to expect you to
do otherwise.  But the thing has been so many months in my mind that it
seems a relief to snake it out.  I don't know any other person whose
judgment I could venture to take fully and entirely.  Don't hesitate
about saying no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have
honest need to blush if you said yes.

Osgood and I are "going for" the puppy G---- on infringement of
trademark.  To win one or two suits of this kind will set literary folks
on a firmer bottom.  I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes's poem.
Wouldn't it be gorgeous to sue R---- for petty larceny?  I will promise
to go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts from
a blind pedlar.
                         Yrs ever,
                                   CLEMENS.


     Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story,
     adding: "You've no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day.
     I'm sorry that you can't do it for the Atlantic, but I
     succumb. Perhaps you will do Boy No. 2 for us."  Clemens,
     conscience-stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS. out of reach
     of temptation.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                                  July 13, 1875
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just as soon as you consented I realized all the
atrocity of my request, and straightway blushed and weakened.
I telegraphed my theatrical agent to come here and carry off the MS and
copy it.

But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows: dramatize it,
if you perceive that you can, and take, for your remuneration, half of
the first $6000 which I receive for its representation on the stage.  You
could alter the plot entirely, if you chose.  I could help in the work,
most cheerfully, after you had arranged the plot.  I have my eye upon two
young girls who can play "Tom" and "Huck."  I believe a good deal of a
drama can be made of it.  Come--can't you tackle this in the odd hours of
your vacation?  or later, if you prefer?

I do wish you could come down once more before your holiday.  I'd give
anything!
                    Yrs ever,
                              MARK.


Howells wrote that he had no time for the dramatization and urged Clemens
to undertake it himself.  He was ready to read the story, whenever it
should arrive.  Clemens did not hurry, however, The publication of Tom
Sawyer could wait.  He already had a book in press--the volume of
Sketches New and Old, which he had prepared for Bliss several years
before.

Sketches was issued that autumn, and Howells gave it a good notice
--possibly better than it deserved.

Considered among Mark Twain's books to-day, the collection of sketches
does not seem especially important.  With the exception of the frog story
and the "True Story" most of those included--might be spared.  Clemens
himself confessed to Howells that He wished, when it was too late, that
he had destroyed a number of them.  The book, however, was distinguished
in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's first utterance in print on
the subject of copyright, a matter in which he never again lost interest.
The absurdity and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and
irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely instrumental
in their improvement.  In the book his open petition to Congress that all
property rights, as well as literary ownership, should be put on the
copyright basis and limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years,"
was more or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes, it
was founded on reason and justice.

He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in the direction
of international copyright.  It was to be a petition signed by the
leading American authors, asking the United States to declare itself to
be the first to stand for right and justice by enacting laws against the
piracy of foreign books.  It was a rather utopian scheme, as most schemes
for moral progress are, in their beginning.  It would not be likely ever
to reach Congress, but it would appeal to Howells and his Cambridge
friends.  Clemens wrote, outlining his plan of action.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Sept. 18, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My plan is this--you are to get Mr. Lowell and Mr.
Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you must
sign it yourself and get Mr. Whittier to do likewise.  Then Holmes will
sign--he said he would if he didn't have to stand at the head.  Then I'm
fixed.  I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages and send him
personally to every author of distinction in the country, and corral the
rest of the signatures.  Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed
(about a thousand copies) and move upon the President and Congress in
person, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely the
agent of better and wiser men--men whom the country cannot venture to
laugh at.

I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if he
should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should blush
--but still I would frame it.)

Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votes
enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was
offered.  This I would try through my leader and my friends there.

And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with
noble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers do steal but not from foreign
authors--Not from foreign authors!"

You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simple
fact that the moral law is "Thou shalt not steal"--no matter what Europe
may do.

I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit
of American booksellers, anyway.

If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making
copyright perpetual, some day.  There would be no sort of use in it,
since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright
term--no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his
rights--which is something.

If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a
sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.

The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, and said that the
fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr. Bushnell.

I have lost my old petition, (which was brief) but will draft and enclose
another--not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance.  I want
Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (and the ideas too,) if he will do it.

Say--Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November--telegraphs
that Beecher's and Nast's withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind of
a place.  So I guess I'll do that old "Roughing It" lecture over again in
November and repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it.

Can I take a carriage after the lecture and go out and stay with you that
night, provided you find at that distant time that it will not
inconvenience you?  Is Aldrich home yet?
                              With love to you all
                                        Yrs ever,
                                             S. L. C.


     Of course the petition never reached Congress.  Holmes's comment
     that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as
     high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many
     others.  The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his
     purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled.  Meantime,
     Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and
     brought grateful acknowledgment from the author.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                   HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--That is a perfectly superb notice.  You can easily
believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before.  The newspaper
praises bestowed upon the "Innocents Abroad" were large and generous, but
somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the parties who
furnished them.  You know how that is, yourself, from reading the
newspaper notices of your own books.  They gratify a body, but they
always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the critic's
good words could not safely be depended upon as authority.  Yours is the
recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country; from its
decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decree of yours
before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right down proud
of.  Mrs. Clemens says, "Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can
be."  (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling
the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it means that
she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she
fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore
been brave enough to utter.)  You see, the thing that gravels her is that
I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely
covered my case--which she denies with venom.

The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am
waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations.
We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward
some are to come from Elmira.  I judge that we shall then be free to go
Bostonward.  I should be just delighted; because we could visit in
comfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping--did it all in New
York last week, and a tremendous pull it was too.

Mrs. C. said the other day, "We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk;
for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again
until we have been there."  I was gratified to see that there was one
string, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge.  But I will do her the
justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent
of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it.  I want her to get
started, now, before children's diseases are fashionable again, because
they always play such hob with visiting arrangements.
                              With love to you all
                                        Yrs Ever
                                             S. L. CLEMENS.


     Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone.  Women require
     more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells
     seem to have exchanged visits infrequently.  For Mark Twain,
     perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with
     him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him
     into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing.
     In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge.  In
     the one that follows they seem to have made it--with certain
     results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment.


                      To W.  D.  Howells, in Boston:

                                                  Oct. 4, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We had a royal good time at your house, and have had a
royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and with the
neighbors.

Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheery
respite from household and nursery cares.  I do hope that Mrs. Howells's
didn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her cares and
responsibilities.  Of course I didn't expect to get through without
committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken
the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment
went on.  I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about
her coffee when it was "a good deal better than we get at home."
I "caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her
the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS when the
printers are done with it.  I "caught it" once more for personating that
drunken Col. James.  I "caught it" for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's
picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm,
I confessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you that we
hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton,
&c., &c., &c., the Madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute.
Then she said:

"How could you, Youth!  The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--"

"Oh, Howells won't mind it!  You don't know Howells.  Howells is a man
who--" She was gone.  But George was the first person she stumbled on in
the hall, so she took it out of George.  I was glad of that, because it
saved the babies.

I've got another rattling good character for my novel!  That great work
is mulling itself into shape gradually.

Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligently
laying up material for a letter to her.
                              Yrs ever
                                        MARK.


     The "George" of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a
     valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque
     character, who "one day came to wash windows," as Clemens used to
     say, "and remained eighteen years."  The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's
     severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast
     with the reality of her gentle heart.

     Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it
     in Howells's hands.  Howells had begged to be allowed to see the
     story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so.
     She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest
     faith in Howells's opinion.

     It was a gratifying one when it came.  Howells wrote: "I finished
     reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to
     the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off.  It's
     altogether the best boy's story I ever read.  It will be an immense
     success.  But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's
     story.  Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you
     should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up
     point of view, you give the wrong key to it....  The adventures
     are enchanting.  I wish I had been on that island.  The
     treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and
     splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially.
     Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to
     jumping in the right places"--meaning that he would have an advance
     review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of
     criticism in America.

     Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time.  Howells was
     always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a
     willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and
     Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch.  The
     "proof" referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Herewith is the proof.  In spite of myself, how
awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words
where one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against.
I shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't
look out.  (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously
fear getting so bad as that.  I never shall drop so far toward his and
Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying "It must have been wiser to
have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt
that he would have been supported by those who should have &c.  &c.  &c.")
The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being a
deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that I have
charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in turn
reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a bran
new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at once it
flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago and
told me about it!  Aha!  So much for self-righteousness!  I am well
repaid.  Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in the
waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an
unstolen way.  I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the
world, without knowing it.

It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well.  I mean to see to
it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the
other notices.  Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue
as a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I.  It is surely the
correct idea.  As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off
and adding nothing in its place.  Something told me that the book was
done when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to put Huck's
life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in a
paragraph was resisted.  Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclose
money for it.  If it should get lost it will be no great matter.

Company interfered last night, and so "Private Theatricals" goes over
till this evening, to be read aloud.  Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story
will take that all out.  This is going to be a splendid winter night for
fireside reading, anyway.

I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the
misery of having to do it all over again.  We--all send love to you--all.
                              Yrs ever
                                        MARK.


The "story" referred to may have been any one of several begun by him at
this time.  His head was full of ideas for literature of every sort.
Many of his beginnings came to nothing, for the reason that he started
wrong, or with no definitely formed plan.  Others of his literary
enterprises were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for the
offense they might give in one way or another, however worthy the
intention behind them.  Once he wrote a burlesque on family history "The
Autobiography of a Damned Fool."  "Livy wouldn't have it," he said later,
"so I gave it up."  The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the
check she put upon his fantastic or violent impulses.  She was his
public, his best public--clearheaded and wise.  That he realized this,
and was willing to yield, was by no means the least of his good fortunes.
We may believe that he did not always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes
only out of love for her.  In the letter which he wrote her on her
thirtieth birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean in
his life.


                To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:

                                        HARTFORD, November 27, 1875.
Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success
in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made
preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world.  Every
day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can
never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a
regret that we were ever joined.  You are dearer to me to-day, my child,
than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were
dearer then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more
dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this
precious progression will continue on to the end.

Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their
gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing
that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.

So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that
brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!

                              Always Yours
                                        S. L. C.






MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1876-1885

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE



VOLUME III.


XVI.

LETTERS, 1876, CHIEFLY TO W. D. HOWELLS.  LITERATURE AND POLITICS.
PLANNING A PLAY WITH BRET HARTE

     The Monday Evening Club of Hartford was an association of most of
     the literary talent of that city, and it included a number of very
     distinguished members.  The writers, the editors, the lawyers, and
     the ministers of the gospel who composed it were more often than not
     men of national or international distinction.  There was but one
     paper at each meeting, and it was likely to be a paper that would
     later find its way into some magazine.

     Naturally Mark Twain was one of its favorite members, and his
     contributions never failed to arouse interest and discussion.  A
     "Mark Twain night" brought out every member.  In the next letter we
     find the first mention of one of his most memorable contributions--a
     story of one of life's moral aspects.  The tale, now included in his
     collected works, is, for some reason, little read to-day; yet the
     curious allegory, so vivid in its seeming reality, is well worth
     consideration.


                      To W.  D.  Howells, in Boston:

                                             HARTFORD, Jan. 11, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Indeed we haven't forgotten the Howellses, nor scored
up a grudge of any kind against them; but the fact is I was under the
doctor's hands for four weeks on a stretch and have been disabled from
working for a week or so beside.  I thought I was well, about ten days
ago, so I sent for a short-hand writer and dictated answers to a bushel
or so of letters that had been accumulating during my illness.  Getting
everything shipshape and cleared up, I went to work next day upon an
Atlantic article, which ought to be worth $20 per page (which is the
price they usually pay for my work, I believe) for although it is only 70
pages MS (less than two days work, counting by bulk,) I have spent 3 more
days trimming, altering and working at it.  I shall put in one more day's
polishing on it, and then read it before our Club, which is to meet at
our house Monday evening, the 24th inst.  I think it will bring out
considerable discussion among the gentlemen of the Club--though the title
of the article will not give them much notion of what is to follow,--this
title being "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in
Connecticut"--which reminds me that today's Tribune says there will be a
startling article in the current Atlantic, in which a being which is
tangible bud invisible will figure-exactly the case with the sketch of
mine which I am talking about!  However, mine can lie unpublished a year
or two as well as not--though I wish that contributor of yours had not
interfered with his coincidence of heroes.

But what I am coming at, is this: won't you and Mrs. Howells come down
Saturday the 22nd and remain to the Club on Monday night?  We always have
a rattling good time at the Club and we do want you to come, ever so
much.  Will you?  Now say you will.  Mrs. Clemens and I are persuading
ourselves that you twain will come.

My volume of sketches is doing very well, considering the times; received
my quarterly statement today from Bliss, by which I perceive that 20,000
copies have been sold--or rather, 20,000 had been sold 3 weeks ago; a lot
more, by this time, no doubt.

I am on the sick list again--and was, day before yesterday--but on the
whole I am getting along.
                              Yrs ever
                                        MARK


     Howells wrote that he could not come down to the club meeting,
     adding that sickness was "quite out of character" for Mark Twain,
     and hardly fair on a man who had made so many other people feel
     well.  He closed by urging that Bliss "hurry out" 'Tom Sawyer.'
     "That boy is going to make a prodigious hit."  Clemens answered:


                      To W.  D.  Howells, in Boston.

                                             HARTFORD, Jan. 18, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks, and ever so many, for the good opinion of 'Tom
Sawyer.'  Williams has made about 300 rattling pictures for it--some of
them very dainty.  Poor devil, what a genius he has and how he does
murder it with rum.  He takes a book of mine, and without suggestion from
anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it.

There was never a man in the world so grateful to another as I was to you
day before yesterday, when I sat down (in still rather wretched health)
to set myself to the dreary and hateful task of making final revision of
Tom Sawyer, and discovered, upon opening the package of MS that your
pencil marks were scattered all along.  This was splendid, and swept away
all labor.  Instead of reading the MS, I simply hunted out the pencil
marks and made the emendations which they suggested.  I reduced the boy
battle to a curt paragraph; I finally concluded to cut the Sunday school
speech down to the first two sentences, leaving no suggestion of satire,
since the book is to be for boys and girls; I tamed the various
obscenities until I judged that they no longer carried offense.  So, at a
single sitting I began and finished a revision which I had supposed would
occupy 3 or 4.  days and leave me mentally and physically fagged out at
the end.  I was careful not to inflict the MS upon you until I had
thoroughly and painstakingly revised it.  Therefore, the only faults left
were those that would discover themselves to others, not me--and these
you had pointed out.

There was one expression which perhaps you overlooked.  When Huck is
complaining to Tom of the rigorous system in vogue at the widow's, he
says the servants harass him with all manner of compulsory decencies, and
he winds up by saying: "and they comb me all to hell."  (No exclamation
point.) Long ago, when I read that to Mrs. Clemens, she made no comment;
another time I created occasion to read that chapter to her aunt and her
mother (both sensitive and loyal subjects of the kingdom of heaven, so to
speak) and they let it pass.  I was glad, for it was the most natural
remark in the world for that boy to make (and he had been allowed few
privileges of speech in the book;) when I saw that you, too, had let it
go without protest, I was glad, and afraid; too--afraid you hadn't
observed it.  Did you?  And did you question the propriety of it?  Since
the book is now professedly and confessedly a boy's and girl's hook, that
darn word bothers me some, nights, but it never did until I had ceased to
regard the volume as being for adults.

Don't bother to answer now, (for you've writing enough to do without
allowing me to add to the burden,) but tell me when you see me again!

Which we do hope will be next Saturday or Sunday or Monday.  Couldn't you
come now and mull over the alterations which you are going to make in
your MS, and make them after you go back?  Wouldn't it assist the work if
you dropped out of harness and routine for a day or two and have that
sort of revivification which comes of a holiday-forgetfulness of the
work-shop?  I can always work after I've been to your house; and if you
will come to mine, now, and hear the club toot their various horns over
the exasperating metaphysical question which I mean to lay before them in
the disguise of a literary extravaganza, it would just brace you up like
a cordial.

(I feel sort of mean trying to persuade a man to put down a critical
piece of work at a critical time, but yet I am honest in thinking it
would not hurt the work nor impair your interest in it to come under the
circumstances.) Mrs. Clemens says, "Maybe the Howellses could come Monday
if they cannot come Saturday; ask them; it is worth trying."  Well, how's
that?  Could you?  It would be splendid if you could.  Drop me a postal
card--I should have a twinge of conscience if I forced you to write a
letter, (I am honest about that,)--and if you find you can't make out to
come, tell me that you bodies will come the next Saturday if the thing is
possible, and stay over Sunday.
                                   Yrs ever
                                             MARK.


     Howells, however, did not come to the club meeting, but promised to
     come soon when they could have a quiet time to themselves together.
     As to Huck's language, he declared:

     "I'd have that swearing out in an instant.  I suppose I didn't
     notice it because the locution was so familiar to my Western sense,
     and so exactly the thing that Huck would say."  Clemens changed the
     phrase to, "They comb me all to thunder," and so it stands to-day.

     The "Carnival of Crime," having served its purpose at the club,
     found quick acceptance by Howells for the Atlantic.  He was so
     pleased with it, in fact, that somewhat later he wrote, urging that
     its author allow it to be printed in a dainty book, by Osgood, who
     made a specialty of fine publishing.  Meantime Howells had written
     his Atlantic notice of Tom Sawyer, and now inclosed Clemens a proof
     of it.  We may judge from the reply that it was satisfactory.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                                  Apl 3, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is a splendid notice and will embolden weak-kneed
journalistic admirers to speak out, and will modify or shut up the
unfriendly.  To "fear God and dread the Sunday school" exactly described
that old feeling which I used to have, but I couldn't have formulated it.
I want to enclose one of the illustrations in this letter, if I do not
forget it.  Of course the book is to be elaborately illustrated, and I
think that many of the pictures are considerably above the American
average, in conception if not in execution.

I do not re-enclose your review to you, for you have evidently read and
corrected it, and so I judge you do not need it.  About two days after
the Atlantic issues I mean to begin to send books to principal journals
and magazines.

I read the "Carnival of Crime" proof in New York when worn and witless
and so left some things unamended which I might possibly have altered had
I been at home.  For instance, "I shall always address you in your own
S-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l, baby."  I saw that you objected to something
there, but I did not understand what!  Was it that it was too personal?
Should the language be altered?--or the hyphens taken out?  Won't you
please fix it the way it ought to be, altering the language as you
choose, only making it bitter and contemptuous?

"Deuced" was not strong enough; so I met you halfway with "devilish."

Mrs. Clemens has returned from New York with dreadful sore throat, and
bones racked with rheumatism.  She keeps her bed.  "Aloha nui!" as the
Kanakas say.
                         MARK.


     Henry Irving once said to Mark Twain: "You made a mistake by not
     adopting the stage as a profession.  You would have made even a
     greater actor than a writer."

     Mark Twain would have made an actor, certainly, but not a very
     tractable one.  His appearance in Hartford in "The Loan of a Lover"
     was a distinguished event, and his success complete, though he made
     so many extemporaneous improvements on the lines of thick-headed
     Peter Spuyk, that he kept the other actors guessing as to their
     cues, and nearly broke up the performance.  It was, of course, an
     amateur benefit, though Augustin Daly promptly wrote, offering to
     put it on for a long run.

     The "skeleton novelette" mentioned in the next letter refers to a
     plan concocted by Howells and Clemens, by which each of twelve
     authors was to write a story, using the same plot, "blindfolded" as
     to what the others had written.  It was a regular "Mark Twain"
     notion, and it is hard to-day to imagine Howells's continued
     enthusiasm in it.  Neither he nor Clemens gave up the idea for a
     long time.  It appears in their letters again and again, though
     perhaps it was just as well for literature that it was never carried
     out.


                      To W.  D.  Howells, in Boston:

                                             Apl.  22, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS, You'll see per enclosed slip that I appear for the first
time on the stage next Wednesday.  You and Mrs. H. come down and you
shall skip in free.

I wrote my skeleton novelette yesterday and today.  It will make a little
under 12 pages.

Please tell Aldrich I've got a photographer engaged, and tri-weekly issue
is about to begin.  Show him the canvassing specimens and beseech him to
subscribe.
                    Ever yours,
                              S. L. C.


     In his next letter Mark Twain explains why Tom Sawyer is not to
     appear as soon as planned.  The reference to "The Literary
     Nightmare" refers to the "Punch, Conductor, Punch with Care" sketch,
     which had recently appeared in the Atlantic.  Many other versifiers
     had had their turn at horse-car poetry, and now a publisher was
     anxious to collect it in a book, provided he could use the Atlantic
     sketch.  Clemens does not tell us here the nature of Carlton's
     insult, forgiveness of which he was not yet qualified to grant, but
     there are at least two stories about it, or two halves of the same
     incident, as related afterward by Clemens and Canton.  Clemens said
     that when he took the Jumping Frog book to Carlton, in 1867, the
     latter, pointing to his stock, said, rather scornfully: "Books?
     I don't want your book; my shelves are full of books now," though
     the reader may remember that it was Carlton himself who had given
     the frog story to the Saturday Press and had seen it become famous.
     Carlton's half of the story was that he did not accept Mark Twain's
     book because the author looked so disreputable.  Long afterward,
     when the two men met in Europe, the publisher said to the now rich
     and famous author: "Mr. Clemens, my one claim on immortality is that
     I declined your first book."


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Apl. 25, 1876
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks for giving me the place of honor.

Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on time
--the engravers assisting, as usual.  I went down to see how much of a
delay there was going to be, and found that the man had not even put a
canvasser on, or issued an advertisement yet--in fact, that the
electrotypes would not all be done for a month!  But of course the main
fact was that no canvassing had been done--because a subscription harvest
is before publication, (not after, when people have discovered how bad
one's book is.)

Well, yesterday I put in the Courant an editorial paragraph stating that
Tam Sawyer is "ready to issue, but publication is put off in order to
secure English copyright by simultaneous publication there and here.  The
English edition is unavoidably delayed."

You see, part of that is true.  Very well.  When I observed that my
"Sketches" had dropped from a sale of 6 or 7000 a month down to 1200 a
month, I said "this ain't no time to be publishing books; therefore, let
Tom lie still till Autumn, Mr. Bliss, and make a holiday book of him to
beguile the young people withal."

I shall print items occasionally, still further delaying Tom, till I ease
him down to Autumn without shock to the waiting world.

As to that "Literary Nightmare" proposition.  I'm obliged to withhold
consent, for what seems a good reason--to wit: A single page of horse-car
poetry is all that the average reader can stand, without nausea; now, to
stack together all of it that has been written, and then add it to my
article would be to enrage and disgust each and every reader and win the
deathless enmity of the lot.

Even if that reason were insufficient, there would still be a sufficient
reason left, in the fact that Mr. Carlton seems to be the publisher of
the magazine in which it is proposed to publish this horse-car matter.
Carlton insulted me in Feb. 1867, and so when the day arrives that sees
me doing him a civility I shall feel that I am ready for Paradise, since
my list of possible and impossible forgivenesses will then be complete.

Mrs. Clemens says my version of the blindfold novelette "A Murder and A
Marriage" is "good."  Pretty strong language--for her.

The Fieldses are coming down to the play tomorrow, and they promise to
get you and Mrs. Howells to come too, but I hope you'll do nothing of the
kind if it will inconvenience you, for I'm not going to play either
strikingly bad enough or well enough to make the journey pay you.

My wife and I think of going to Boston May 7th to see Anna Dickinson's
debut on the 8th.  If I find we can go, I'll try to get a stage box and
then you and Mrs. Howells must come to Parker's and go with us to the
crucifixion.

(Is that spelt right?--somehow it doesn't look right.)

With our very kindest regards to the whole family.
                              Yrs ever,
                                        MARK.


     The mention of Anna Dickinson, at the end of this letter, recalls a
     prominent reformer and lecturer of the Civil War period.  She had
     begun her crusades against temperance and slavery in 1857, when she
     was but fifteen years old, when her success as a speaker had been
     immediate and extraordinary.  Now, in this later period, at the age
     of thirty-four, she aspired to the stage--unfortunately for her, as
     her gifts lay elsewhere.  Clemens and Howells knew Miss Dickinson,
     and were anxious for the success which they hardly dared hope for.
     Clemens arranged a box party.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                                       May 4, '76.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I shall reach Boston on Monday the 8th, either at
4:30 p.m. or 6 p.m.  (Which is best?) and go straight to Parker's.
If you and Mrs. Howells cannot be there by half past 4, I'll not plan to
arrive till the later train-time (6,) because I don't want to be there
alone--even a minute.  Still, Joe Twichell will doubtless go with me
(forgot that,) he is going to try hard to.  Mrs. Clemens has given up
going, because Susy is just recovering from about the savagest assault of
diphtheria a child ever did recover from, and therefore will not be
entirely her healthy self again by the 8th.

Would you and Mrs. Howells like to invite Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich?  I have
a large proscenium box--plenty of room.  Use your own pleasure about it
--I mainly (that is honest,) suggest it because I am seeking to make
matters pleasant for you and Mrs. Howells.  I invited Twichell because I
thought I knew you'd like that.  I want you to fix it so that you and the
Madam can remain in Boston all night; for I leave next day and we can't
have a talk, otherwise.  I am going to get two rooms and a parlor; and
would like to know what you decide about the Aldriches, so as to know
whether to apply for an additional bedroom or not.

Don't dine that evening, for I shall arrive dinnerless and need your
help.

I'll bring my Blindfold Novelette, but shan't exhibit it unless you
exhibit yours.  You would simply go to work and write a novelette that
would make mine sick.  Because you would know all about where my weak
points lay.  No, Sir, I'm one of these old wary birds!

Don't bother to write a letter--3 lines on a postal card is all that I
can permit from a busy man.
                         Yrs ever
                                   MARK.

P. S.  Good!  You'll not have to feel any call to mention that debut in
the Atlantic--they've made me pay the grand cash for my box!--a thing
which most managers would be too worldly-wise to do, with journalistic
folks.  But I'm most honestly glad, for I'd rather pay three prices, any
time, than to have my tongue half paralyzed with a dead-head ticket.

Hang that Anna Dickinson, a body can never depend upon her debuts!  She
has made five or six false starts already.  If she fails to debut this
time, I will never bet on her again.


     In his book, My Mark Twain, Howells refers to the "tragedy" of Miss
     Dickinson's appearance.  She was the author of numerous plays, some
     of which were successful, but her career as an actress was never
     brilliant.

     At Elmira that summer the Clemenses heard from their good friend
     Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh, and sent eager replies.


                     To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

                              ELMIRA, NEW YORK, U. S. June 22, 1876.
DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR,--It was a perfect delight to see the well-known
handwriting again!  But we so grieve to know that you are feeling
miserable.  It must not last--it cannot last.  The regal summer is come
and it will smile you into high good cheer; it will charm away your
pains, it will banish your distresses.  I wish you were here, to spend
the summer with us.  We are perched on a hill-top that overlooks a little
world of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy
uplands veiled in the haze of distance.  We have no neighbors.  It is the
quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew caves and
live in the sun.  Doctor, if you'd only come!

I will carry your letter to Mrs. C. now, and there will be a glad woman,
I tell you!  And she shall find one of those pictures to put in this for
Mrs. Barclays and if there isn't one here we'll send right away to
Hartford and get one.  Come over, Doctor John, and bring the Barclays,
the Nicolsons and the Browns, one and all!
                         Affectionately,
                                        SAML. L. CLEMENS.


     From May until August no letters appear to have passed between
     Clemens and Howells; the latter finally wrote, complaining of the
     lack of news.  He was in the midst of campaign activities, he said,
     writing a life of Hayes, and gaily added: "You know I wrote the life
     of Lincoln, which elected him."  He further reported a comedy he had
     completed, and gave Clemens a general stirring up as to his own
     work.

     Mark Twain, in his hillside study, was busy enough.  Summer was his
     time for work, and he had tried his hand in various directions.  His
     mention of Huck Finn in his reply to Howells is interesting, in that
     it shows the measure of his enthusiasm, or lack of it, as a gauge of
     his ultimate achievement


                      To  W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 9, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I was just about to write you when your letter came
--and not one of those obscene postal cards, either, but reverently, upon
paper.

I shall read that biography, though the letter of acceptance was amply
sufficient to corral my vote without any further knowledge of the man.
Which reminds me that a campaign club in Jersey City wrote a few days ago
and invited me to be present at the raising of a Tilden and Hendricks
flag there, and to take the stand and give them some "counsel."  Well, I
could not go, but gave them counsel and advice by letter, and in the
kindliest terms as to the raising of the flag--advised them "not to raise
it."

Get your book out quick, for this is a momentous time.  If Tilden is
elected I think the entire country will go pretty straight to--Mrs.
Howells's bad place.

I am infringing on your patent--I started a record of our children's
sayings, last night.  Which reminds me that last week I sent down and got
Susie a vast pair of shoes of a most villainous pattern, for I discovered
that her feet were being twisted and cramped out of shape by a smaller
and prettier article.  She did not complain, but looked degraded and
injured.  At night her mamma gave her the usual admonition when she was
about to say her prayers--to wit:

"Now, Susie--think about God."

"Mamma, I can't, with those shoes."

The farm is perfectly delightful this season.  It is as quiet and
peaceful as a South Sea Island.  Some of the sunsets which we have
witnessed from this commanding eminence were marvelous.  One evening a
rainbow spanned an entire range of hills with its mighty arch, and from a
black hub resting upon the hill-top in the exact centre, black rays
diverged upward in perfect regularity to the rainbow's arch and created a
very strongly defined and altogether the most majestic, magnificent and
startling half-sunk wagon wheel you can imagine.  After that, a world of
tumbling and prodigious clouds came drifting up out of the West and took
to themselves a wonderfully rich and brilliant green color--the decided
green of new spring foliage.  Close by them we saw the intense blue of
the skies, through rents in the cloud-rack, and away off in another
quarter were drifting clouds of a delicate pink color.  In one place hung
a pall of dense black clouds, like compacted pitch-smoke.  And the
stupendous wagon wheel was still in the supremacy of its unspeakable
grandeur.  So you see, the colors present in the sky at once and the same
time were blue, green, pink, black, and the vari-colored splendors of the
rainbow.  All strong and decided colors, too.  I don't know whether this
weird and astounding spectacle most suggested heaven, or hell.  The
wonder, with its constant, stately, and always surprising changes, lasted
upwards of two hours, and we all stood on the top of the hill by my study
till the final miracle was complete and the greatest day ended that we
ever saw.

Our farmer, who is a grave man, watched that spectacle to the end, and
then observed that it was "dam funny."

The double-barreled novel lies torpid.  I found I could not go on with
it.  The chapters I had written were still too new and familiar to me.
I may take it up next winter, but cannot tell yet; I waited and waited to
see if my interest in it would not revive, but gave it up a month ago and
began another boys' book--more to be at work than anything else.  I have
written 400 pages on it--therefore it is very nearly half done.  It is
Huck Finn's Autobiography.  I like it only tolerably well, as far as I
have got, and may possibly pigeonhole or burn the MS when it is done.

So the comedy is done, and with a "fair degree of satisfaction."  That
rejoices me, and makes me mad, too--for I can't plan a comedy, and what
have you done that God should be so good to you?  I have racked myself
baldheaded trying to plan a comedy harness for some promising characters
of mine to work in, and had to give it up.  It is a noble lot of blooded
stock and worth no end of money, but they must stand in the stable and be
profitless.  I want to be present when the comedy is produced and help
enjoy the success.

Warner's book is mighty readable, I think.
                         Love to yez.
                              Yrs ever
                                             MARK


     Howells promptly wrote again, urging him to enter the campaign for
     Hayes.  "There is not another man in this country," he said, "who
     could help him so much as you."  The "farce" which Clemens refers to
     in his reply, was "The Parlor Car," which seems to have been about
     the first venture of Howells in that field.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, August 23, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am glad you think I could do Hayes any good, for I
have been wanting to write a letter or make a speech to that end.  I'll
be careful not to do either, however, until the opportunity comes in a
natural, justifiable and unlugged way; and shall not then do anything
unless I've got it all digested and worded just right.  In which case I
might do some good--in any other I should do harm.  When a humorist
ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than
another man or he works harm to his cause.

The farce is wonderfully bright and delicious, and must make a hit.  You
read it to me, and it was mighty good; I read it last night and it was
better; I read it aloud to the household this morning and it was better
than ever.  So it would be worth going a long way to see it well played;
for without any question an actor of genius always adds a subtle
something to any man's work that none but the writer knew was there
before.  Even if he knew it.  I have heard of readers convulsing
audiences with my "Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man."  If there is
anything really funny in the piece, the author is not aware of it.

All right--advertise me for the new volume.  I send you herewith a sketch
which will make 3 pages of the Atlantic.  If you like it and accept it,
you should get it into the December No. because I shall read it in public
in Boston the 13th and 14th of Nov.  If it went in a month earlier it
would be too old for me to read except as old matter; and if it went in a
month later it would be too old for the Atlantic--do you see?  And if you
wish to use it, will you set it up now, and send me three proofs?--one
to correct for Atlantic, one to send to Temple Bar (shall I tell them to
use it not earlier than their November No.) and one to use in practising
for my Boston readings.

We must get up a less elaborate and a much better skeleton-plan for the
Blindfold Novels and make a success of that idea.  David Gray spent
Sunday here and said we could but little comprehend what a rattling stir
that thing would make in the country.  He thought it would make a mighty
strike.  So do I.  But with only 8 pages to tell the tale in, the plot
must be less elaborate, doubtless.  What do you think?

When we exchange visits I'll show you an unfinished sketch of Elizabeth's
time which shook David Gray's system up pretty exhaustively.
                                        Yrs ever,
                                                  MARK.


     The MS. sketch mentioned in the foregoing letter was "The
     Canvasser's Tale," later included in the volume, Tom Sawyer Abroad,
     and Other Stories.  It is far from being Mark Twain's best work, but
     was accepted and printed in the Atlantic.  David Gray was an able
     journalist and editor whom Mark Twain had known in Buffalo.

     The "sketch of Elizabeth's time" is a brilliant piece of writing
     --an imaginary record of conversation and court manners in the good
     old days of free speech and performance, phrased in the language of
     the period.  Gray, John Hay, Twichell, and others who had a chance
     to see it thought highly of it, and Hay had it set in type and a few
     proofs taken for private circulation.  Some years afterward a West
     Point officer had a special font of antique type made for it, and
     printed a hundred copies.  But the present-day reader would hardly
     be willing to include "Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen
     Elizabeth" in Mark Twain's collected works.

     Clemens was a strong Republican in those days, as his letters of
     this period show.  His mention of the "caves" in the next is another
     reference to "The Canvasser's Tale."


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             Sept.  14, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, the collection of caves was the origin of it.
I changed it to echoes because these being invisible and intangible,
constituted a still more absurd species of property, and yet a man could
really own an echo, and sell it, too, for a high figure--such an echo as
that at the Villa Siminetti, two miles from Milan, for instance.
My first purpose was to have the man make a collection of caves and
afterwards of echoes; but perceived that the element of absurdity and
impracticability was so nearly identical as to amount to a repetition of
an idea.....

I will not, and do not, believe that there is a possibility of Hayes's
defeat, but I want the victory to be sweeping.....

It seems odd to find myself interested in an election.  I never was
before.  And I can't seem to get over my repugnance to reading or
thinking about politics, yet.  But in truth I care little about any
party's politics--the man behind it is the important thing.

You may well know that Mrs. Clemens liked the Parlor Car--enjoyed it ever
so much, and was indignant at you all through, and kept exploding into
rages at you for pretending that such a woman ever existed--closing each
and every explosion with "But it is just what such a woman would do."
--"It is just what such a woman would say."  They all voted the Parlor
Car perfection--except me.  I said they wouldn't have been allowed to
court and quarrel there so long, uninterrupted; but at each critical
moment the odious train-boy would come in and pile foul literature all
over them four or five inches deep, and the lover would turn his head
aside and curse--and presently that train-boy would be back again (as on
all those Western roads) to take up the literature and leave prize candy.

Of course the thing is perfect, in the magazine, without the train-boy;
but I was thinking of the stage and the groundlings.  If the dainty
touches went over their heads, the train-boy and other possible
interruptions would fetch them every time.  Would it mar the flow of the
thing too much to insert that devil?  I thought it over a couple of hours
and concluded it wouldn't, and that he ought to be in for the sake of the
groundlings (and to get new copyright on the piece.)

And it seemed to me that now that the fourth act is so successfully
written, why not go ahead and write the 3 preceding acts?  And then after
it is finished, let me put into it a low-comedy character (the girl's or
the lover's father or uncle) and gobble a big pecuniary interest in your
work for myself.  Do not let this generous proposition disturb your rest
--but do write the other 3 acts, and then it will be valuable to
managers.  And don't go and sell it to anybody, like Harte, but keep it
for yourself.

Harte's play can be doctored till it will be entirely acceptable and then
it will clear a great sum every year.  I am out of all patience with
Harte for selling it.  The play entertained me hugely, even in its
present crude state.
                         Love to you all.
                                   Yrs ever,
                                             MARK


     Following the Sellers success, Clemens had made many attempts at
     dramatic writing.  Such undertakings had uniformly failed, but he
     had always been willing to try again.  In the next letter we get the
     beginning of what proved his first and last direct literary
     association, that is to say, collaboration, with Bret Harte.
     Clemens had great admiration for Harte's ability and believed that
     between them they could turn out a successful play.  Whether or not
     this belief was justified will appear later.  Howells's biography of
     Hayes, meanwhile, had not gone well.  He reported that only two
     thousand copies had been sold in what was now the height of the
     campaign.  "There's success for you," he said; "it makes me despair
     of the Republic."

     Clemens, on his part, had made a speech for Hayes that Howells
     declared had put civil-service reform in a nutshell; he added: "You
     are the only Republican orator, quoted without distinction of party
     by all the newspapers."


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Oct. 11, 1876.
MY DEAR HOWELLS, This is a secret, to be known to nobody but you (of
course I comprehend that Mrs. Howells is part of you) that Bret Harte
came up here the other day and asked me to help him write a play and
divide the swag, and I agreed.  I am to put in Scotty Briggs (See Buck
Fanshaw's Funeral, in "Roughing It.") and he is to put in a Chinaman (a,
wonderfully funny creature, as Bret presents him--for 5 minutes--in his
Sandy Bar play.)  This Chinaman is to be the character of the play, and
both of us will work on him and develop him.  Bret is to draw a plot, and
I am to do the same; we shall use the best of the two, or gouge from both
and build a third.  My plot is built--finished it yesterday--six days'
work, 8 or 9 hours a day, and has nearly killed me.

Now the favor I ask of you is that you will have the words "Ah Sin, a
Drama," printed in the middle of a note-paper page and send the same to
me, with Bill.  We don't want anybody to know that we are building this
play.  I can't get this title page printed here without having to lie so
much that the thought of it is disagreeable to one reared as I have been.
And yet the title of the play must be printed--the rest of the
application for copyright is allowable in penmanship.

We have got the very best gang of servants in America, now.  When George
first came he was one of the most religious of men.  He had but one
fault--young George Washington's.  But I have trained him; and now it
fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens's heart to hear George stand at that front
door and lie to the unwelcome visitor.  But your time is valuable; I must
not dwell upon these things.....I'll ask Warner and Harte if they'll do
Blindfold Novelettes.  Some time I'll simplify that plot.  All it needs
is that the hanging and the marriage shall not be appointed for the same
day.  I got over that difficulty, but it required too much MS to
reconcile the thing--so the movement of the story was clogged.

I came near agreeing to make political speeches with our candidate for
Governor the 16th and 23 inst., but I had to give up the idea, for Harte
and I will be here at work then.
                              Yrs ever,
                                        MARK


     Mark Twain was writing few letters these days to any one but
     Howells, yet in November he sent one to an old friend of his youth,
     Burrough, the literary chair-maker who had roomed with him in the
     days when he had been setting type for the St. Louis Evening News.


                      To Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis:

                                             HARTFORD, Nov. 1, 1876.
MY DEAR BURROUGHS,--As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 20
years ago.  The portrait is correct.  You think I have grown some; upon
my word there was room for it.  You have described a callow fool, a
self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he is
remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right.
Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense
and pitiful chuckle-headedness--and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of
it all.  That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average
Southerner is at 60 today.  Northerners, too, of a certain grade.  It is
of children like this that voters are made.  And such is the primal
source of our government!  A man hardly knows whether to swear or cry
over it.

I think I comprehend the position there--perfect freedom to vote just as
you choose, provided you choose to vote as other people think--social
ostracism, otherwise.  The same thing exists here, among the Irish.
An Irish Republican is a pariah among his people.  Yet that race find
fault with the same spirit in Know-Nothingism.

Fortunately a good deal of experience of men enabled me to choose my
residence wisely.  I live in the freest corner of the country.  There are
no social disabilities between me and my Democratic personal friends.
We break the bread and eat the salt of hospitality freely together and
never dream of such a thing as offering impertinent interference in each
other's political opinions.

Don't you ever come to New York again and not run up here to see me.  I
Suppose we were away for the summer when you were East; but no matter,
you could have telegraphed and found out.  We were at Elmira N. Y. and
right on your road, and could have given you a good time if you had
allowed us the chance.

Yes, Will Bowen and I have exchanged letters now and then for several
years, but I suspect that I made him mad with my last--shortly after you
saw him in St. Louis, I judge.  There is one thing which I can't stand
and won't stand, from many people.  That is sham sentimentality--the kind
a school-girl puts into her graduating composition; the sort that makes
up the Original Poetry column of a country newspaper; the rot that deals
in the "happy days of yore," the "sweet yet melancholy past," with its
"blighted hopes" and its "vanished dreams" and all that sort of drivel.
Will's were always of this stamp.  I stood it years.  When I get a letter
like that from a grown man and he a widower with a family, it gives me
the stomach ache.  And I just told Will Bowen so, last summer.  I told
him to stop being 16 at 40; told him to stop drooling about the sweet yet
melancholy past, and take a pill.  I said there was but one solitary
thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is
the past--can't be restored.  Well, I exaggerated some of these truths a
little--but only a little--but my idea was to kill his sham
sentimentality once and forever, and so make a good fellow of him again.
I went to the unheard-of trouble of re-writing the letter and saying the
same harsh things softly, so as to sugarcoat the anguish and make it a
little more endurable and I asked him to write and thank me honestly for
doing him the best and kindliest favor that any friend ever had done him
--but he hasn't done it yet.  Maybe he will, sometime.  I am grateful to
God that I got that letter off before he was married (I get that news
from you) else he would just have slobbered all over me and drowned me
when that event happened.

I enclose photograph for the young ladies.  I will remark that I do not
wear seal-skin for grandeur, but because I found, when I used to lecture
in the winter, that nothing else was able to keep a man warm sometimes,
in these high latitudes.  I wish you had sent pictures of yourself and
family--I'll trade picture for picture with you, straight through, if you
are commercially inclined.
                    Your old friend,
                              SAML L. CLEMENS.




XVII.

LETTERS, 1877.  TO BERMUDA WITH TWICHELL.  PROPOSITION TO TH. NAST.
THE WHITTIER DINNER

     Mark Twain must have been too busy to write letters that winter.
     Those that have survived are few and unimportant.  As a matter of
     fact, he was writing the play, "Ah Sin," with Bret Harte, and
     getting it ready for production. Harte was a guest in the Clemens
     home while the play was being written, and not always a pleasant
     one.  He was full of requirements, critical as to the 'menage,' to
     the point of sarcasm.  The long friendship between Clemens and Harte
     weakened under the strain of collaboration and intimate daily
     intercourse, never to renew its old fiber.  It was an unhappy
     outcome of an enterprise which in itself was to prove of little
     profit.  The play, "Ah Sin," had many good features, and with
     Charles T. Parsloe in an amusing Chinese part might have been made a
     success, if the two authors could have harmoniously undertaken the
     needed repairs.  It opened in Washington in May, and a letter from
     Parsloe, written at the moment, gives a hint of the situation.


                From Charles T. Parsloe to S. L. Clemens:

                                   WASHINGTON, D. C.  May 11th, 1877.
MR. CLEMENS,--I forgot whether I acknowledged receipt of check by
telegram.  Harte has been here since Monday last and done little or
nothing yet, but promises to have something fixed by tomorrow morning.
We have been making some improvements among ourselves.  The last act is
weak at the end, and I do hope Mr. Harte will have something for a good
finish to the piece.  The other acts I think are all right, now.

Hope you have entirely recovered.  I am not very well myself, the
excitement of a first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance with
Harte that I have is too much for a beginner.  I ain't used to it.  The
houses have been picking up since Tuesday Mr. Ford has worked well and
hard for us.
               Yours in, haste,
                    CHAS. THOS.  PARSLOE.


     The play drew some good houses in Washington, but it could not hold
     them for a run.  Never mind what was the matter with it; perhaps a
     very small change at the right point would have turned it into a
     fine success.  We have seen in a former letter the obligation which
     Mark Twain confessed to Harte--a debt he had tried in many ways to
     repay--obtaining for him a liberal book contract with Bliss;
     advancing him frequent and large sums of money which Harte could
     not, or did not, repay; seeking to advance his fortunes in many
     directions.  The mistake came when he introduced another genius into
     the intracacies of his daily life.  Clemens went down to Washington
     during the early rehearsals of "Ah Sin."

     Meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes had been elected President, and
     Clemens one day called with a letter of introduction from Howells,
     thinking to meet the Chief Executive.  His own letter to Howells,
     later, probably does not give the real reason of his failure, but it
     will be amusing to those who recall the erratic personality of
     George Francis Train.  Train and Twain were sometimes confused by
     the very unlettered; or pretendedly, by Mark Twain's friends.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        BALTIMORE, May 1, '77.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Found I was not absolutely needed in Washington so I
only staid 24 hours, and am on my way home, now.  I called at the White
House, and got admission to Col. Rodgers, because I wanted to inquire
what was the right hour to go and infest the, President.  It was my luck
to strike the place in the dead waste and middle of the day, the very
busiest time.  I perceived that Mr. Rodgers took me for George Francis
Train and had made up his mind not to let me get at the President; so at
the end of half an hour I took my letter of introduction from the table
and went away.  It was a great pity all round, and a great loss to the
nation, for I was brim full of the Eastern question.  I didn't get to see
the President or the Chief Magistrate either, though I had sort of a
glimpse of a lady at a window who resembled her portraits.
                                   Yrs ever,
                                             MARK.

     Howells condoled with him on his failure to see the President,
     "but," he added, "if you and I had both been there, our combined
     skill would have no doubt procured us to be expelled from the White
     House by Fred Douglass.  But the thing seems to be a complete
     failure as it was."  Douglass at this time being the Marshal of
     Columbia, gives special point to Howells's suggestion.

     Later, in May, Clemens took Twichell for an excursion to Bermuda.
     He had begged Howells to go with them, but Howells, as usual, was
     full of literary affairs.  Twichell and Clemens spent four glorious
     days tramping the length and breadth of the beautiful island, and
     remembered it always as one of their happiest adventures.  "Put it
     down as an Oasis!" wrote Twichell on his return, "I'm afraid I shall
     not see as green a spot again soon.  And it was your invention and
     your gift.  And your company was the best of it.  Indeed, I never
     took more comfort in being with you than on this journey, which, my
     boy, is saying a great deal."


     To Howells, Clemens triumphantly reported the success of the
     excursion.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                              FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, May 29, 1877.
Confound you, Joe Twichell and I roamed about Bermuda day and night and
never ceased to gabble and enjoy.  About half the talk was--"It is a
burning shame that Howells isn't here."  "Nobody could get at the very
meat and marrow of this pervading charm and deliciousness like Howells;"
"How Howells would revel in the quaintness, and the simplicity of this
people and the Sabbath repose of this land."  "What an imperishable
sketch Howells would make of Capt. West the whaler, and Capt. Hope with
the patient, pathetic face, wanderer in all the oceans for 42 years,
lucky in none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his ship
--resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this."  "What a rattling chapter
Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert eye and
military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old landlady;
and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting clergyman; and
the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music in vogue there
--and forty other things which we shall leave untouched or touched but
lightly upon, we not being worthy."  "Dam Howells for not being here!"
(this usually from me, not Twichell.)

O, your insufferable pride, which will have a fall some day!  If you had
gone with us and let me pay the $50 which the trip and the board and the
various nicknacks and mementoes would cost, I would have picked up enough
droppings from your conversation to pay me 500 per cent profit in the way
of the several magazine articles which I could have written, whereas I
can now write only one or two and am therefore largely out of pocket by
your proud ways.  Ponder these things.  Lord, what a perfectly bewitching
excursion it was!  I traveled under an assumed name and was never
molested with a polite attention from anybody.
                         Love to you all.
                                        Yrs ever
                                                  MARK


     Aldrich, meantime, had invited the Clemenses to Ponkapog during the
     Bermuda absence, and Clemens hastened to send him a line expressing
     regrets.  At the close he said:


                  To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.:

                              FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, June 3, 1877.
Day after tomorrow we leave for the hills beyond Elmira, N. Y.  for the
summer, when I shall hope to write a book of some sort or other to beat
the people with.  A work similar to your new one in the Atlantic is what
I mean, though I have not heard what the nature of that one is.  Immoral,
I suppose.  Well, you are right.  Such books sell best, Howells says.
Howells says he is going to make his next book indelicate.  He says he
thinks there is money in it.  He says there is a large class of the
young, in schools and seminaries who--But you let him tell you.  He has
ciphered it all down to a demonstration.

With the warmest remembrances to the pair of you
                                   Ever Yours
                                        SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.


     Clemens would naturally write something about Bermuda, and began at
     once, "Random Notes of an Idle Excursion," and presently completed
     four papers, which Howells eagerly accepted for the Atlantic.  Then
     we find him plunging into another play, this time alone.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, June 27, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should not like the first 2 chapters, send them
to me and begin with Chapter 3--or Part 3, I believe you call these
things in the magazine.  I have finished No. 4., which closes the series,
and will mail it tomorrow if I think of it.  I like this one, I liked the
preceding one (already mailed to you some time ago) but I had my doubts
about 1 and 2.  Do not hesitate to squelch them, even with derision and
insult.

Today I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning--principal
character, that old detective--I skeletoned the first act and wrote the
second, today; and am dog-tired, now.  Fifty-four close pages of MS in 7
hours.  Once I wrote 55 pages at a sitting--that was on the opening
chapters of the "Gilded Age" novel.  When I cool down, an hour from now,
I shall go to zero, I judge.
                              Yrs ever,
                                        MARK.


     Clemens had doubts as to the quality of the Bermuda papers, and with
     some reason.  They did not represent him at his best.  Nevertheless,
     they were pleasantly entertaining, and Howells expressed full
     approval of them for Atlantic use.  The author remained troubled.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, July 4,1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is splendid of you to say those pleasant things.
But I am still plagued with doubts about Parts 1 and 2.  If you have any,
don't print.  If otherwise, please make some cold villain like Lathrop
read and pass sentence on them.  Mind, I thought they were good, at
first--it was the second reading that accomplished its hellish purpose on
me.  Put them up for a new verdict.  Part 4 has lain in my pigeon-hole a
good while, and when I put it there I had a Christian's confidence in 4
aces in it; and you can be sure it will skip toward Connecticut tomorrow
before any fatal fresh reading makes me draw my bet.

I've piled up 151 MS pages on my comedy.  The first, second and fourth
acts are done, and done to my satisfaction, too.  Tomorrow and next day
will finish the 3rd act and the play.  I have not written less than 30
pages any day since I began.  Never had so much fun over anything in my
life-never such consuming interest and delight.  (But Lord bless you the
second reading will fetch it!)  And just think!--I had Sol Smith Russell
in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and hang it he has gone
off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie.

I read everything about the President's doings there with exultation.

I wish that old ass of a private secretary hadn't taken me for George
Francis Train.  If ignorance were a means of grace I wouldn't trade that
gorilla's chances for the Archbishop of Canterbury's.

I shall call on the President again, by and by.  I shall go in my war
paint; and if I am obstructed the nation will have the unusual spectacle
of a private secretary with a pen over one ear a tomahawk over the other.

I read the entire Atlantic this time.  Wonderful number.  Mrs. Rose Terry
Cooke's story was a ten-strike.  I wish she would write 12 old-time New
England tales a year.

Good times to you all!  Mind if you don't run here for a few days you
will go to hence without having had a fore-glimpse of heaven.

                                             MARK.


     The play, "Ah Sin," that had done little enough in Washington, was
     that summer given another trial by Augustin Daly, at the Fifth
     Avenue Theater, New York, with a fine company.  Clemens had
     undertaken to doctor the play, and it would seem to have had an
     enthusiastic reception on the opening night.  But it was a summer
     audience, unspoiled by many attractions.  "Ah Sin" was never a
     success in the New York season--never a money-maker on the road.

     The reference in the first paragraph of the letter that follows is
     to the Bermuda chapters which Mark Twain was publishing
     simultaneously in England and America.


                                             ELMIRA, Aug 3,1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have mailed one set of the slips to London, and told
Bentley you would print Sept. 15, in October Atlantic, and he must not
print earlier in Temple Bar.  Have I got the dates and things right?

I am powerful glad to see that No. 1 reads a nation sight better in print
than it did in MS.  I told Bentley we'd send him the slips, each time, 6
weeks before day of publication.  We can do that can't we?  Two months
ahead would be still better I suppose, but I don't know.

"Ah Sin" went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue.  The reception of Col.
Sellers was calm compared to it.

*The criticisms were just; the criticisms of the great New York dailies
are always just, intelligent, and square and honest--notwithstanding,
by a blunder which nobody was seriously to blame for, I was made to say
exactly the opposite of this in a newspaper some time ago.  Never said it
at all, and moreover I never thought it.  I could not publicly correct it
before the play appeared in New York, because that would look as if I had
really said that thing and then was moved by fears for my pocket and my
reputation to take it back.  But I can correct it now, and shall do it;
for now my motives cannot be impugned.  When I began this letter, it had
not occurred to me to use you in this connection, but it occurs to me
now.  Your opinion and mine, uttered a year ago, and repeated more than
once since, that the candor and ability of the New York critics were
beyond question, is a matter which makes it proper enough that I should
speak through you at this time.  Therefore if you will print this
paragraph somewhere, it may remove the impression that I say unjust
things which I do not think, merely for the pleasure of talking.

There, now, Can't you say--

"In a letter to Mr. Howells of the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Twain describes
the reception of the new comedy 'Ali Sin,' and then goes on to say:" etc.

Beginning at the star with the words, "The criticisms were just."  Mrs.
Clemens says, "Don't ask that of Mr. Howells--it will be disagreeable to
him."  I hadn't thought of it, but I will bet two to one on the
correctness of her instinct.  We shall see.

Will you cut that paragraph out of this letter and precede it with the
remarks suggested (or with better ones,) and send it to the Globe or some
other paper?  You can't do me a bigger favor; and yet if it is in the
least disagreeable, you mustn't think of it.  But let me know, right
away, for I want to correct this thing before it grows stale again.
I explained myself to only one critic (the World)--the consequence was a
noble notice of the play.  This one called on me, else I shouldn't have
explained myself to him.

I have been putting in a deal of hard work on that play in New York, but
it is full of incurable defects.

My old Plunkett family seemed wonderfully coarse and vulgar on the stage,
but it was because they were played in such an outrageously and
inexcusably coarse way.  The Chinaman is killingly funny.  I don't know
when I have enjoyed anything as much as I did him.  The people say there
isn't enough of him in the piece.  That's a triumph--there'll never be
any more of him in it.

John Brougham said, "Read the list of things which the critics have
condemned in the piece, and you have unassailable proofs that the play
contains all the requirements of success and a long life."

That is true.  Nearly every time the audience roared I knew it was over
something that would be condemned in the morning (justly, too) but must
be left in--for low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the
kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the
drawing-room can't support the play by itself.

There was as much money in the house the first two nights as in the first
ten of Sellers.  Haven't heard from the third--I came away.
                                   Yrs ever,
                                             MARK.


     In a former letter we have seen how Mark Twain, working on a story
     that was to stand as an example of his best work, and become one of
     his surest claims to immortality (The Adventures of Huckleberry
     Finn), displayed little enthusiasm in his undertaking.  In the
     following letter, which relates the conclusion of his detective
     comedy, we find him at the other extreme, on very tiptoe with
     enthusiasm over something wholly without literary value or dramatic
     possibility.  One of the hall-marks of genius is the inability to
     discriminate as to the value of its output.  "Simon Wheeler, Amateur
     Detective" was a dreary, absurd, impossible performance, as wild and
     unconvincing in incident and dialogue as anything out of an asylum
     could well be.  The title which he first chose for it, "Balaam's
     Ass," was properly in keeping with the general scheme.  Yet Mark
     Twain, still warm with the creative fever, had the fullest faith in
     it as a work of art and a winner of fortune.  It would never see the
     light of production, of course.  We shall see presently that the
     distinguished playwright, Dion Boucicault, good-naturedly
     complimented it as being better than "Ahi Sin."  One must wonder
     what that skilled artist really thought, and how he could do even
     this violence to his conscience.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        ELMIRA, Wednesday P.M.  (1877)
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's finished.  I was misled by hurried mis-paging.
There were ten pages of notes, and over 300 pages of MS when the play was
done.  Did it in 42 hours, by the clock; 40 pages of the Atlantic--but
then of course it's very "fat."  Those are the figures, but I don't
believe them myself, because the thing's impossible.

But let that pass.  All day long, and every day, since I finished (in the
rough) I have been diligently altering, amending, re-writing, cutting
down.  I finished finally today.  Can't think of anything else in the way
of an improvement.  I thought I would stick to it while the interest was
hot--and I am mighty glad I did.  A week from now it will be frozen--then
revising would be drudgery.  (You see I learned something from the fatal
blunder of putting "Ah Sin" aside before it was finished.)

She's all right, now.  She reads in two hours and 20 minutes and will
play not longer than 2 3/4 hours.  Nineteen characters; 3 acts; (I
bunched 2 into 1.)

Tomorrow I will draw up an exhaustive synopsis to insert in the printed
title-page for copyrighting, and then on Friday or Saturday I go to New
York to remain a week or ten days and lay for an actor.  Wish you could
run down there and have a holiday.  'Twould be fun.

My wife won't have "Balaam's Ass"; therefore I call the piece "Cap'n
Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective."
                                   Yrs
                                        MARK.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  29, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just got your letter last night.  No, dern that
article,--[One of the Bermuda chapters.]--it made me cry when I read it
in proof, it was so oppressively and ostentatiously poor.  Skim your eye
over it again and you will think as I do.  If Isaac and the prophets of
Baal can be doctored gently and made permissible, it will redeem the
thing: but if it can't, let's burn all of the articles except the
tail-end of it and use that as an introduction to the next article--as I
suggested in my letter to you of day before yesterday.  (I had this proof
from Cambridge before yours came.)

Boucicault says my new play is ever so much better than "Ah Sin;" says
the Amateur detective is a bully character, too.  An actor is chawing
over the play in New York, to see if the old Detective is suited to his
abilities.  Haven't heard from him yet.

If you've got that paragraph by you yet, and if in your judgment it would
be good to publish it, and if you absolutely would not mind doing it,
then I think I'd like to have you do it--or else put some other words in
my mouth that will be properer, and publish them.  But mind, don't think
of it for a moment if it is distasteful--and doubtless it is.  I value
your judgment more than my own, as to the wisdom of saying anything at
all in this matter.  To say nothing leaves me in an injurious position
--and yet maybe I might do better to speak to the men themselves when I
go to New York.  This was my latest idea, and it looked wise.

We expect to leave here for home Sept. 4, reaching there the 8th--but we
may be delayed a week.

Curious thing.  I read passages from my play, and a full synopsis, to
Boucicault, who was re-writing a play, which he wrote and laid aside 3 or
4 years ago.  (My detective is about that age, you know.) Then he read a
passage from his play, where a real detective does some things that are
as idiotic as some of my old Wheeler's performances.  Showed me the
passages, and behold, his man's name is Wheeler!  However, his Wheeler
is not a prominent character, so we'll not alter the names.  My Wheeler's
name is taken from the old jumping Frog sketch.

I am re-reading Ticknor's diary, and am charmed with it, though I still
say he refers to too many good things when he could just as well have
told them.  Think of the man traveling 8 days in convoy and familiar
intercourse with a band of outlaws through the mountain fastnesses of
Spain--he the fourth stranger they had encountered in thirty years--and
compressing this priceless experience into a single colorless paragraph
of his diary!  They spun yarns to this unworthy devil, too.

I wrote you a very long letter a day or two ago, but Susy Crane wanted to
make a copy of it to keep, so it has not gone yet.  It may go today,
possibly.

We unite in warm regards to you and yours.
                              Yrs ever,
                                        MARK.


     The Ticknor referred to in a former letter was Professor George
     Ticknor, of Harvard College, a history-writer of distinction.  On
     the margin of the "Diary" Mark Twain once wrote, "Ticknor is a
     Millet, who makes all men fall in love with him."  And adds: "Millet
     was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and then he admired
     and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without
     knowing it) had created in them.  Perhaps it would be strictly truer
     of these two men to say that they bore within them the divine
     something in whose presence the evil in people fled away and hid
     itself, while all that was good in them came spontaneously forward
     out of the forgotten walls and comers in their systems where it was
     accustomed to hide."

     It is Frank Millet, the artist, he is speaking of--a knightly soul
     whom all the Clemens household loved, and who would one day meet his
     knightly end with those other brave men that found death together
     when the Titanic went down.

     The Clemens family was still at Quarry Farm at the end of August,
     and one afternoon there occurred a startling incident which Mark
     Twain thought worth setting down in practically duplicate letters to
     Howells and to Dr. John Brown.  It may be of interest to the reader
     to know that John T. Lewis, the colored man mentioned, lived to a
     good old age--a pensioner of the Clemens family and, in the course
     of time, of H. H. Rogers.  Howells's letter follows.  It is the
     "very long letter" referred to in the foregoing.


                  To W. D. Howells and wife, in Boston:

                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 25 '77.
MY DEAR HOWELLSES,--I thought I ought to make a sort of record of it for
further reference; the pleasantest way to do that would be to write it to
somebody; but that somebody would let it leak into print and that we wish
to avoid.  The Howellses would be safe--so let us tell the Howellses
about it.

Day before yesterday was a fine summer day away up here on the summit.
Aunt Marsh and Cousin May Marsh were here visiting Susie Crane and Livy
at our farmhouse.  By and by mother Langdon came up the hill in the "high
carriage" with Nora the nurse and little Jervis (Charley Langdon's little
boy)--Timothy the coachman driving.  Behind these came Charley's wife and
little girl in the buggy, with the new, young, spry, gray horse--a
high-stepper.  Theodore Crane arrived a little later.

The Bay and Susy were on hand with their nurse, Rosa.  I was on hand,
too.  Susy Crane's trio of colored servants ditto--these being Josie,
house-maid; Aunty Cord, cook, aged 62, turbaned, very tall, very broad,
very fine every way (see her portrait in "A True Story just as I Heard
It" in my Sketches;) Chocklate (the laundress) (as the Bay calls her--she
can't say Charlotte,) still taller, still more majestic of proportions,
turbaned, very black, straight as an Indian--age 24.  Then there was the
farmer's wife (colored) and her little girl, Susy.

Wasn't it a good audience to get up an excitement before?  Good
excitable, inflammable material?

Lewis was still down town, three miles away, with his two-horse wagon,
to get a load of manure.  Lewis is the farmer (colored).  He is of mighty
frame and muscle, stocky, stooping, ungainly, has a good manly face and a
clear eye.  Age about 45--and the most picturesque of men, when he sits
in his fluttering work-day rags, humped forward into a bunch, with his
aged slouch hat mashed down over his ears and neck.  It is a spectacle to
make the broken-hearted smile.  Lewis has worked mighty hard and remained
mighty poor.  At the end of each whole year's toil he can't show a gain
of fifty dollars.  He had borrowed money of the Cranes till he owed them
$700 and he being conscientious and honest, imagine what it was to him to
have to carry this stubborn, helpless load year in and year out.

Well, sunset came, and Ida the young and comely (Charley Langdon's wife)
and her little Julia and the nurse Nora, drove out at the gate behind the
new gray horse and started down the long hill--the high carriage
receiving its load under the porte cochere.  Ida was seen to turn her
face toward us across the fence and intervening lawn--Theodore waved
good-bye to her, for he did not know that her sign was a speechless
appeal for help.

The next moment Livy said, "Ida's driving too fast down hill!"  She
followed it with a sort of scream, "Her horse is running away!"

We could see two hundred yards down that descent.  The buggy seemed to
fly.  It would strike obstructions and apparently spring the height of a
man from the ground.

Theodore and I left the shrieking crowd behind and ran down the hill
bare-headed and shouting.  A neighbor appeared at his gate--a tenth of a
second too late! the buggy vanished past him like a thought.  My last
glimpse showed it for one instant, far down the descent, springing high
in the air out of a cloud of dust, and then it disappeared.  As I flew
down the road my impulse was to shut my eyes as I turned them to the
right or left, and so delay for a moment the ghastly spectacle of
mutilation and death I was expecting.

I ran on and on, still spared this spectacle, but saying to myself:
"I shall see it at the turn of the road; they never can pass that turn
alive."  When I came in sight of that turn I saw two wagons there bunched
together--one of them full of people.  I said, "Just so--they are staring
petrified at the remains."

But when I got amongst that bunch, there sat Ida in her buggy and nobody
hurt, not even the horse or the vehicle.  Ida was pale but serene.  As I
came tearing down, she smiled back over her shoulder at me and said,
"Well, we're alive yet, aren't we?"  A miracle had been performed
--nothing else.

You see Lewis, the prodigious, humped upon his front seat, had been
toiling up, on his load of manure; he saw the frantic horse plunging down
the hill toward him, on a full gallop, throwing his heels as high as a
man's head at every jump.  So Lewis turned his team diagonally across the
road just at the "turn," thus making a V with the fence--the running
horse could not escape that, but must enter it.  Then Lewis sprang to the
ground and stood in this V.  He gathered his vast strength, and with a
perfect Creedmoor aim he seized the gray horse's bit as he plunged by and
fetched him up standing!

It was down hill, mind you.  Ten feet further down hill neither Lewis nor
any other man could have saved them, for they would have been on the
abrupt "turn," then.  But how this miracle was ever accomplished at all,
by human strength, generalship and accuracy, is clean beyond my
comprehension--and grows more so the more I go and examine the ground and
try to believe it was actually done.  I know one thing, well; if Lewis
had missed his aim he would have been killed on the spot in the trap he
had made for himself, and we should have found the rest of the remains
away down at the bottom of the steep ravine.

Ten minutes later Theodore and I arrived opposite the house, with the
servants straggling after us, and shouted to the distracted group on the
porch, "Everybody safe!"

Believe it?  Why how could they?  They knew the road perfectly.  We might
as well have said it to people who had seen their friends go over
Niagara.

However, we convinced them; and then, instead of saying something, or
going on crying, they grew very still--words could not express it, I
suppose.

Nobody could do anything that night, or sleep, either; but there was a
deal of moving talk, with long pauses between pictures of that flying
carriage, these pauses represented--this picture intruded itself all the
time and disjointed the talk.

But yesterday evening late, when Lewis arrived from down town he found
his supper spread, and some presents of books there, with very
complimentary writings on the fly-leaves, and certain very complimentary
letters, and more or less greenbacks of dignified denomination pinned to
these letters and fly-leaves,--and one said, among other things, (signed
by the Cranes) "We cancel $400 of your indebtedness to us," &c. &c.

(The end thereof is not yet, of course, for Charley Langdon is West and
will arrive ignorant of all these things, today.)

The supper-room had been kept locked and imposingly secret and mysterious
until Lewis should arrive; but around that part of the house were
gathered Lewis's wife and child, Chocklate, Josie, Aunty Cord and our
Rosa, canvassing things and waiting impatiently.  They were all on hand
when the curtain rose.

Now, Aunty Cord is a violent Methodist and Lewis an implacable Dunker
--Baptist.  Those two are inveterate religious disputants.  The
revealments having been made Aunty Cord said with effusion--

"Now, let folks go on saying there ain't no God!  Lewis, the Lord sent
you there to stop that horse."

Says Lewis:

"Then who sent the horse there in sich a shape?"

But I want to call your attention to one thing.  When Lewis arrived the
other evening, after saving those lives by a feat which I think is the
most marvelous of any I can call to mind--when he arrived, hunched up on
his manure wagon and as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody
wanted to go and see how he looked.  They came back and said he was
beautiful.  It was so, too--and yet he would have photographed exactly as
he would have done any day these past 7 years that he has occupied this
farm.

                                                       Aug. 27.
P. S.  Our little romance in real life is happily and satisfactorily
completed.  Charley has come, listened, acted--and now John T. Lewis has
ceased to consider himself as belonging to that class called "the poor."

It has been known, during some years, that it was Lewis's purpose to buy
a thirty dollar silver watch some day, if he ever got where he could
afford it.  Today Ida has given him a new, sumptuous gold Swiss
stem-winding stop-watch; and if any scoffer shall say, "Behold this thing
is out of character," there is an inscription within, which will silence
him; for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the watch, not
the watch the wearer.

I was asked beforehand, if this would be a wise gift, and I said "Yes,
the very wisest of all;" I know the colored race, and I know that in
Lewis's eyes this fine toy will throw the other more valuable
testimonials far away into the shade.  If he lived in England the Humane
Society would give him a gold medal as costly as this watch, and nobody
would say: "It is out of character."  If Lewis chose to wear a town
clock, who would become it better?

Lewis has sound common sense, and is not going to be spoiled.  The
instant he found himself possessed of money, he forgot himself in a plan
to make his old father comfortable, who is wretchedly poor and lives down
in Maryland.  His next act, on the spot, was the proffer to the Cranes of
the $300 of his remaining indebtedness to them.  This was put off by them
to the indefinite future, for he is not going to be allowed to pay that
at all, though he doesn't know it.

A letter of acknowledgment from Lewis contains a sentence which raises it
to the dignity of literature:

"But I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine providence saw fit to
use me as a instrument for the saving of those presshious lives, the
honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed."

That is well said.
                    Yrs ever
                                   MARK.


     Howells was moved to use the story in the.  "Contributors' Club,"
     and warned Clemens against letting it get into the newspapers.  He
     declared he thought it one of the most impressive things he had ever
     read.  But Clemens seems never to have allowed it to be used in any
     form.  In its entirety, therefore, it is quite new matter.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        HARTFORD, Sept.  19, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I don't really see how the story of the runaway horse
could read well with the little details of names and places and things
left out.  They are the true life of all narrative.  It wouldn't quite
do to print them at this time.  We'll talk about it when you come.
Delicacy--a sad, sad false delicacy--robs literature of the best two
things among its belongings.  Family-circle narrative and obscene
stories.  But no matter; in that better world which I trust we are all
going to I have the hope and belief that they will not be denied us.

Say--Twichell and I had an adventure at sea, 4 months ago, which I did
not put in my Bermuda articles, because there was not enough to it.  But
the press dispatches bring the sequel today, and now there's plenty to
it.  A sailless, wasteless, chartless, compassless, grubless old
condemned tub that has been drifting helpless about the ocean for 4
months and a half, begging bread and water like any other tramp, flying a
signal of distress permanently, and with 13 innocent, marveling
chuckleheaded Bermuda niggers on board, taking a Pleasure Excursion!  Our
ship fed the poor devils on the 25th of last May, far out at sea and left
them to bullyrag their way to New York--and now they ain't as near New
York as they were then by 250 miles!  They have drifted 750 miles and are
still drifting in the relentless Gulf Stream!  What a delicious magazine
chapter it would make--but I had to deny myself.  I had to come right out
in the papers at once, with my details, so as to try to raise the
government's sympathy sufficiently to have better succor sent them than
the cutter Colfax, which went a little way in search of them the other
day and then struck a fog and gave it up.

If the President were in Washington I would telegraph him.

When I hear that the "Jonas Smith" has been found again, I mean to send
for one of those darkies, to come to Hartford and give me his adventures
for an Atlantic article.

Likely you will see my today's article in the newspapers.
                                   Yrs ever,
                                             MARK.

The revenue cutter Colfax went after the Jonas Smith, thinking there was
mutiny or other crime on board.  It occurs to me now that, since there is
only mere suffering and misery and nobody to punish, it ceases to be a
matter which (a republican form of) government will feel authorized to
interfere in further.  Dam a republican form of government.


     Clemens thought he had given up lecturing for good; he was
     prosperous and he had no love for the platform.  But one day an idea
     popped into his head: Thomas Nast, the "father of the American
     cartoon," had delivered a successful series of illustrated lectures
     --talks for which he made the drawings as he went along.  Mark
     Twain's idea was to make a combination with Nast.  His letter gives
     us the plan in full.


                    To Thomas Nast, Morristown, N. J.:

                                             HARTFORD, CONN. 1877.
MY DEAR NAST,--I did not think I should ever stand on a platform again
until the time was come for me to say "I die innocent."  But the same old
offers keep arriving.  I have declined them all, just as usual, though
sorely tempted, as usual.

Now, I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but because
(1) traveling alone is so heartbreakingly dreary, and (2) shouldering the
whole show is such a cheer-killing responsibility.

Therefore, I now propose to you what you proposed to me in 1867, ten
years ago (when I was unknown) viz., that you stand on the platform and
make pictures, and I stand by you and blackguard the audience.  I should
enormously enjoy meandering around (to big towns--don't want to go to the
little ones) with you for company.

My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the spoils,
but put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles, and say to the
artist and lecturer, "Absorb these."

For instance--[Here follows a plan and a possible list of cities to be
visited.  The letter continues]

Call the gross receipts $100,000 for four months and a half, and the
profit from $60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large enough,
and leave it to the public to reduce them.)

I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns that town, and last
winter when I made a little reading-trip he only paid me $300 and
pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a concert)
cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn't afford any more.  I could get up
a better concert with a barrel of cats.

I have imagined two or three pictures and concocted the accompanying
remarks to see how the thing would go.  I was charmed.

Well, you think it over, Nast, and drop me a line.  We should have some
fun.
                    Yours truly,
                         SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.


     The plan came to nothing.  Nast, like Clemens, had no special taste
     for platforming, and while undoubtedly there would have been large
     profits in the combination, the promise of the venture did not
     compel his acceptance.

     In spite of his distaste for the platform Mark Twain was always
     giving readings and lectures, without charge, for some worthy
     Hartford cause.  He was ready to do what he could to help an
     entertainment along, if he could do it in his own way--an original
     way, sometimes, and not always gratifying to the committee, whose
     plans were likely to be prearranged.

     For one thing, Clemens, supersensitive in the matter of putting
     himself forward in his own town, often objected to any special
     exploitation of his name.  This always distressed the committee, who
     saw a large profit to their venture in the prestige of his fame.
     The following characteristic letter was written in self-defense
     when, on one such occasion, a committee had become sufficiently
     peevish to abandon a worthy enterprise.


               To an Entertainment Committee, in Hartford:

                                        Nov. 9.
E. S. SYKES, Esq:

Dr. SIR,--Mr. Burton's note puts upon me all the blame of the destruction
of an enterprise which had for its object the succor of the Hartford
poor.  That is to say, this enterprise has been dropped because of the
"dissatisfaction with Mr. Clemens's stipulations."  Therefore I must be
allowed to say a word in my defense.

There were two "stipulations"--exactly two.  I made one of them; if the
other was made at all, it was a joint one, from the choir and me.

My individual stipulation was, that my name should be kept out of the
newspapers.  The joint one was that sufficient tickets to insure a good
sum should be sold before the date of the performance should be set.
(Understand, we wanted a good sum--I do not think any of us bothered
about a good house; it was money we were after)

Now you perceive that my concern is simply with my individual
stipulation.  Did that break up the enterprise?

Eugene Burton said he would sell $300 worth of the tickets himself.--Mr.
Smith said he would sell $200 or $300 worth himself.  My plan for Asylum
Hill Church would have ensured $150 from that quarter.--All this in the
face of my "Stipulation."  It was proposed to raise $1000; did my
stipulation render the raising of $400 or $500 in a dozen churches
impossible?

My stipulation is easily defensible.  When a mere reader or lecturer has
appeared 3 or 4 times in a town of Hartford's size, he is a good deal
more than likely to get a very unpleasant snub if he shoves himself
forward about once or twice more.  Therefore I long ago made up my mind
that whenever I again appeared here, it should be only in a minor
capacity and not as a chief attraction.

Now, I placed that harmless and very justifiable stipulation before the
committee the other day; they carried it to headquarters and it was
accepted there.  I am not informed that any objection was made to it, or
that it was regarded as an offense.  It seems late in the day, now, after
a good deal of trouble has been taken and a good deal of thankless work
done by the committees, to, suddenly tear up the contract and then turn
and bowl me down from long range as being the destroyer of it.

If the enterprise has failed because of my individual stipulation, here
you have my proper and reasonable reasons for making that stipulation.

If it has failed because of the joint stipulation, put the blame there,
and let us share it collectively.

I think our plan was a good one.  I do not doubt that Mr. Burton still
approves of it, too.  I believe the objections come from other quarters,
and not from him.  Mr. Twichell used the following words in last Sunday's
sermon, (if I remember correctly):

"My hearers, the prophet Deuteronomy says this wise thing: 'Though ye
plan a goodly house for the poor, and plan it with wisdom, and do take
off your coats and set to to build it, with high courage, yet shall the
croaker presently come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat on,) and
say, Verily this plan is not well planned--and he will go his way; and
the obstructionist will come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat
on,) and say, Behold, this is but a sick plan--and he will go his way;
and the man that knows it all will come, and lift up his voice, (having
his coat on,) and say, Lo, call they this a plan? then will he go his
way; and the places which knew him once shall know him no more forever,
because he was not, for God took him.  Now therefore I say unto you,
Verily that house will not be budded.  And I say this also: He that
waiteth for all men to be satisfied with his plan, let him seek eternal
life, for he shall need it.'"

This portion of Mr. Twichell's sermon made a great impression upon me,
and I was grieved that some one had not wakened me earlier so that I
might have heard what went before.

                                   S. L. CLEMENS.


     Mr. Sykes (of the firm of Sykes & Newton, the Allen House Pharmacy)
     replied that he had read the letter to the committee and that it had
     set those gentlemen right who had not before understood the
     situation.  "If others were as ready to do their part as yourself
     our poor would not want assistance," he said, in closing.

     We come now to an incident which assumes the proportions of an
     episode-even of a catastrophe--in Mark Twain's career.  The disaster
     was due to a condition noted a few pages earlier--the inability of
     genius to judge its own efforts.  The story has now become history
     --printed history--it having been sympathetically told by Howells in
     My Mark Twain, and more exhaustively, with a report of the speech
     that invited the lightning, in a former work by the present writer.

     The speech was made at John Greenleaf Whittier's seventieth birthday
     dinner, given by the Atlantic staff on the evening of December 17,
     1877.  It was intended as a huge joke--a joke that would shake the
     sides of these venerable Boston deities, Longfellow, Emerson,
     Holmes, and the rest of that venerated group.  Clemens had been a
     favorite at the Atlantic lunches and dinners--a speech by him always
     an event.  This time he decided to outdo himself.

     He did that, but not in the way he had intended.  To use one of his
     own metaphors, he stepped out to meet the rainbow and got struck by
     lightning.  His joke was not of the Boston kind or size.  When its
     full nature burst upon the company--when the ears of the assembled
     diners heard the sacred names of Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes
     lightly associated with human aspects removed--oh, very far removed
    --from Cambridge and Concord, a chill fell upon the diners that
     presently became amazement, and then creeping paralysis.  Nobody
     knew afterward whether the great speech that he had so gaily planned
     ever came to a natural end or not.  Somebody--the next on the
     program--attempted to follow him, but presently the company melted
     out of the doors and crept away into the night.

     It seemed to Mark Twain that his career had come to an end.  Back in
     Hartford, sweating and suffering through sleepless nights, he wrote
     Howells his anguish.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                                  Sunday Night.  1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My sense of disgrace does not abate.  It grows.  I see
that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies--a list of
humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, and which
keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies.

I feel that my misfortune has injured me all over the country; therefore
it will be best that I retire from before the public at present.  It will
hurt the Atlantic for me to appear in its pages, now.  So it is my
opinion and my wife's that the telephone story had better be suppressed.
Will you return those proofs or revises to me, so that I can use the same
on some future occasion?

It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech and saw
no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much.
And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me!
It burns me like fire to think of it.

The whole matter is a dreadful subject--let me drop it here--at least on
paper.
                         Penitently yrs,
                                        MARK.


     Howells sent back a comforting letter.  "I have no idea of dropping
     you out of the Atlantic," he wrote; "and Mr. Houghton has still
     less, if possible.  You are going to help and not hurt us many a
     year yet, if you will....  You are not going to be floored by it;
     there is more justice than that, even in this world."

     Howells added that Charles Elliot Norton had expressed just the
     right feeling concerning the whole affair, and that many who had not
     heard the speech, but read the newspaper reports of it, had found it
     without offense.

     Clemens wrote contrite letters to Holmes, Emerson, and Longfellow,
     and received most gracious acknowledgments.  Emerson, indeed, had
     not heard the speech: His faculties were already blurred by the
     mental mists that would eventually shut him in.  Clemens wrote again
     to Howells, this time with less anguish.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                             HARTFORD, Friday, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter was a godsend; and perhaps the welcomest
part of it was your consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you
discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston--rightly,
too, for my offense was yet too new, then.  Warner has tried to hold up
our hands like the good fellow he is, but poor Twichell could not say a
word, and confessed that he would rather take nearly any punishment than
face Livy and me.  He hasn't been here since.

It is curious, but I pitched early upon Mr. Norton as the very man who
would think some generous thing about that matter, whether he said it or
not.  It is splendid to be a man like that--but it is given to few to be.

I wrote a letter yesterday, and sent a copy to each of the three.  I
wanted to send a copy to Mr. Whittier also, since the offense was done
also against him, being committed in his presence and he the guest of the
occasion, besides holding the well-nigh sacred place he does in his
people's estimation; but I didn't know whether to venture or not, and so
ended by doing nothing.  It seemed an intrusion to approach him, and even
Livy seemed to have her doubts as to the best and properest way to do in
the case.  I do not reverence Mr. Emerson less, but somehow I could
approach him easier.

Send me those proofs, if you have got them handy; I want to submit them
to Wylie; he won't show them to anybody.

Had a very pleasant and considerate letter from Mr. Houghton, today, and
was very glad to receive it.

You can't imagine how brilliant and beautiful that new brass fender is,
and how perfectly naturally it takes its place under the carved oak.  How
they did scour it up before they sent it!  I lied a good deal about it
when I came home--so for once I kept a secret and surprised Livy on a
Christmas morning!

I haven't done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner; have only
moped around.  But I'm going to try tomorrow.  How could I ever have.

Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool.  But then I am God's fool, and
all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Livy and I join in the warmest regards to you and yours,
                                        Yrs ever,
                                                  MARK.

Longfellow, in his reply, said: "I do not believe anybody was much hurt.
Certainly I was not, and Holmes tells me he was not.  So I think you may
dismiss the matter from your mind without further remorse."

Holmes wrote: "It never occurred to me for a moment to take offense, or
feel wounded by your playful use of my name."

Miss Ellen Emerson replied for her father (in a letter to Mrs. Clemens)
that the speech had made no impression upon him, giving at considerable
length the impression it had made on herself and other members of the
family.

     Clearly, it was not the principals who were hurt, but only those who
     held them in awe, though one can realize that this would not make it
     much easier for Mark Twain.




XVIII.

LETTERS FROM EUROPE, 1878-79.  TRAMPING WITH TWICHELL.  WRITING A NEW
TRAVEL BOOK.  LIFE IN MUNICH

     Whether the unhappy occurrence at the Whittier dinner had anything
     to do with Mark Twain's resolve to spend a year or two in Europe
     cannot be known now.  There were other good reasons for going, one
     in particular being a demand for another book of travel.  It was
     also true, as he explains in a letter to his mother, that his days
     were full of annoyances, making it difficult for him to work.  He
     had a tendency to invest money in almost any glittering enterprise
     that came along, and at this time he was involved in the promotion
     of a variety of patent rights that brought him no return other than
     assessment and vexation.

     Clemens's mother was by this time living with her son Onion and his
     wife, in Iowa.


                  To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 17, 1878
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole
world; and yet I grow worse and worse all the time.  My conscience
blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not
writing other folks.

Life has come to be a very serious matter with me.  I have a badgered,
harassed feeling, a good part of my time.  It comes mainly of business
responsibilities and annoyances, and the persecution of kindly letters
from well meaning strangers--to whom I must be rudely silent or else put
in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers.  There are other
things also that help to consume my time and defeat my projects.  Well,
the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home.  This cuts my income
down.  Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe and fly
to some little corner of Europe and budge no more until I shall have
completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs.  Please
say nothing about this at present.

We propose to sail the 11th of April.  I shall go to Fredonia to meet
you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip I am afraid.
However, we shall see.  I will hope she can go.

Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him.  We are all well, and
send love to you all.
                              Affly,
                                        SAM.


     He was writing few letters at this time, and doing but little work.
     There were always many social events during the winter, and what
     with his European plans and a diligent study of the German language,
     which the entire family undertook, his days and evenings were full
     enough.  Howells wrote protesting against the European travel and
     berating him for his silence:

     "I never was in Berlin and don't know any family hotel there.
     I should be glad I didn't, if it would keep you from going.  You
     deserve to put up at the Sign of the Savage in Vienna.  Really, it's
     a great blow to me to hear of that prospected sojourn.  It's a
     shame.  I must see you, somehow, before you go.  I'm in dreadfully
     low spirits about it.

     "I was afraid your silence meant something wicked."

     Clemens replied promptly, urging a visit to Hartford, adding a
     postscript for Mrs. Howells, characteristic enough to warrant
     preservation.


                    P. S. to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:

                                                       Feb. '78.
DEAR MRS. HOWELLS.  Mrs. Clemens wrote you a letter, and handed it to me
half an hour ago, while I was folding mine to Mr. Howells.  I laid that
letter on this table before me while I added the paragraph about R,'s
application.  Since then I have been hunting and swearing, and swearing
and hunting, but I can't find a sign of that letter.  It is the most
astonishing disappearance I ever heard of.  Mrs. Clemens has gone off
driving--so I will have to try and give you an idea of her communication
from memory.  Mainly it consisted of an urgent desire that you come to
see us next week, if you can possibly manage it, for that will be a
reposeful time, the turmoil of breaking up beginning the week after.  She
wants you to tell her about Italy, and advise her in that connection, if
you will.  Then she spoke of her plans--hers, mind you, for I never have
anything quite so definite as a plan.  She proposes to stop a fortnight
in (confound the place, I've forgotten what it was,) then go and live in
Dresden till sometime in the summer; then retire to Switzerland for the
hottest season, then stay a while in Venice and put in the winter in
Munich.  This program subject to modifications according to
circumstances.  She said something about some little by-trips here and
there, but they didn't stick in my memory because the idea didn't charm
me.

(They have just telephoned me from the Courant office that Bayard Taylor
and family have taken rooms in our ship, the Holsatia, for the 11th
April.)

Do come, if you possibly can!--and remember and don't forget to avoid
letting Mrs. Clemens find out I lost her letter.  Just answer her the
same as if you had got it.
                              Sincerely yours
                                             S. L. CLEMENS.


     The Howellses came, as invited, for a final reunion before the
     breaking up.  This was in the early half of March; the Clemenses
     were to sail on the 11th of the following month.

     Orion Clemens, meantime, had conceived a new literary idea and was
     piling in his MS. as fast as possible to get his brother's judgment
     on it before the sailing-date.  It was not a very good time to send
     MS., but Mark Twain seems to have read it and given it some
     consideration.  "The Journey in Heaven," of his own, which he
     mentions, was the story published so many years later under the
     title of "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven."  He had began it in
     1868, on his voyage to San Francisco, it having been suggested by
     conversations with Capt.  Ned Wakeman, of one of the Pacific
     steamers.  Wakeman also appears in 'Roughing It,' Chap.  L, as Capt.
     Ned Blakely, and again in one of the "Rambling Notes of an Idle
     Excursion," as "Captain Hurricane Jones."


                       To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:

                                             HARTFORD, Mch.  23, 1878.
MY DEAR BRO.,--Every man must learn his trade--not pick it up.
God requires that he learn it by slow and painful processes.  The
apprentice-hand, in black-smithing, in medicine, in literature, in
everything, is a thing that can't be hidden.  It always shows.

But happily there is a market for apprentice work, else the "Innocents
Abroad" would have had no sale.  Happily, too, there's a wider market for
some sorts of apprentice literature than there is for the very best of
journey-work.  This work of yours is exceedingly crude, but I am free to
say it is less crude than I expected it to be, and considerably better
work than I believed you could do, it is too crude to offer to any
prominent periodical, so I shall speak to the N. Y. Weekly people.  To
publish it there will be to bury it.  Why could not same good genius have
sent me to the N. Y. Weekly with my apprentice sketches?

You should not publish it in book form at all--for this reason: it is
only an imitation of Verne--it is not a burlesque.  But I think it may be
regarded as proof that Verne cannot be burlesqued.

In accompanying notes I have suggested that you vastly modify the first
visit to hell, and leave out the second visit altogether.  Nobody would,
or ought to print those things.  You are not advanced enough in
literature to venture upon a matter requiring so much practice.  Let me
show you what a man has got to go through:

Nine years ago I mapped out my "Journey in Heaven."  I discussed it with
literary friends whom I could trust to keep it to themselves.

I gave it a deal of thought, from time to time.  After a year or more I
wrote it up.  It was not a success.  Five years ago I wrote it again,
altering the plan.  That MS is at my elbow now.  It was a considerable
improvement on the first attempt, but still it wouldn't do--last year and
year before I talked frequently with Howells about the subject, and he
kept urging me to do it again.

So I thought and thought, at odd moments and at last I struck what I
considered to be the right plan!  Mind I have never altered the ideas,
from the first--the plan was the difficulty.  When Howells was here last,
I laid before him the whole story without referring to my MS and he said:
"You have got it sure this time.  But drop the idea of making mere
magazine stuff of it.  Don't waste it.  Print it by itself--publish it
first in England--ask Dean Stanley to endorse it, which will draw some of
the teeth of the religious press, and then reprint in America."  I doubt
my ability to get Dean Stanley to do anything of the sort, but I shall do
the rest--and this is all a secret which you must not divulge.

Now look here--I have tried, all these years, to think of some way of
"doing" hell too--and have always had to give it up.  Hell, in my book,
will not occupy five pages of MS I judge--it will be only covert hints,
I suppose, and quickly dropped, I may end by not even referring to it.

And mind you, in my opinion you will find that you can't write up hell so
it will stand printing.  Neither Howells nor I believe in hell or the
divinity of the Savior, but no matter, the Savior is none the less a
sacred Personage, and a man should have no desire or disposition to refer
to him lightly, profanely, or otherwise than with the profoundest
reverence.

The only safe thing is not to introduce him, or refer to him at all,
I suspect.  I have entirely rewritten one book 3 (perhaps 4.) times,
changing the plan every time--1200 pages of MS. wasted and burned--and
shall tackle it again, one of these years and maybe succeed at last.
Therefore you need not expect to get your book right the first time.
Go to work and revamp or rewrite it.  God only exhibits his thunder and
lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.  These are
God's adjectives.  You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases
to get under the bed, by and by.

Mr. Perkins will send you and Ma your checks when we are gone.  But don't
write him, ever, except a single line in case he forgets the checks--for
the man is driven to death with work.

I see you are half promising yourself a monthly return for your book.
In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch.  How many
of mine I have counted! and never a one of them but failed!  It is much
better to hedge disappointment by not counting.--Unexpected money is a
delight.  The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.

My time in America is growing mighty short.  Perhaps we can manage in
this way: Imprimis, if the N. Y. Weekly people know that you are my
brother, they will turn that fact into an advertisement--a thing of value
to them, but not to you and me.  This must be prevented.  I will write
them a note to say you have a friend near Keokuk, Charles S. Miller,
who has a MS for sale which you think is a pretty clever travesty on
Verne; and if they want it they might write to him in your care.  Then if
any correspondence ensues between you and them, let Mollie write for you
and sign your name--your own hand writing representing Miller's.  Keep
yourself out of sight till you make a strike on your own merits there is
no other way to get a fair verdict upon your merits.

Later-I've written the note to Smith, and with nothing in it which he can
use as an advertisement.  I'm called--Good bye-love to you both.

We leave here next Wednesday for Elmira: we leave there Apl. 9 or 10--and
sail 11th
                         Yr Bro.
                                   SAM.


     In the letter that follows the mention of Annie and Sam refers, of
     course, to the children of Mrs. Moffett, who had been, Pamela
     Clemens.  They were grown now, and Annie Moffett was married to
     Charles L.  Webster, who later was to become Mark Twain's business
     partner.  The Moffetts and Websters were living in Fredonia at this
     time, and Clemens had been to pay them a good-by visit.  The Taylor
     dinner mentioned was a farewell banquet given to Bayard Taylor, who
     had been appointed Minister to Germany, and was to sail on the ship
     with Mark Twain.  Mark Twain's mother was visiting in Fredonia when
     this letter was written.


                    To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Fredonia:

                                                  Apr.  7, '78.
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have told Livy all about Annie's beautiful house, and
about Sam and Charley, and about Charley's ingenious manufactures and his
strong manhood and good promise, and how glad I am that he and Annie
married.  And I have told her about Annie's excellent house-keeping, also
about the great Bacon conflict; (I told you it was a hundred to one that
neither Livy nor the European powers had heard of that desolating
struggle.)

And I have told her how beautiful you are in your age and how bright your
mind is with its old-time brightness, and how she and the children would
enjoy you.  And I have told her how singularly young Pamela is looking,
and what a fine large fellow Sam is, and how ill the lingering syllable
"my" to his name fits his port and figure.

Well, Pamela, after thinking it over for a day or so, I came near
inquiring about a state-room in our ship for Sam, to please you, but my
wiser former resolution came back to me.  It is not for his good that he
have friends in the ship.  His conduct in the Bacon business shows that
he will develop rapidly into a manly man as soon as he is cast loose from
your apron strings.

You don't teach him to push ahead and do and dare things for himself, but
you do just the reverse.  You are assisted in your damaging work by the
tyrannous ways of a village--villagers watch each other and so make
cowards of each other.  After Sam shall have voyaged to Europe by
himself, and rubbed against the world and taken and returned its cuffs,
do you think he will hesitate to escort a guest into any whisky-mill in
Fredonia when he himself has no sinful business to transact there?
No, he will smile at the idea.  If he avoids this courtesy now from
principle, of course I find no fault with it at all--only if he thinks it
is principle he may be mistaken; a close examination may show it is only
a bowing to the tyranny of public opinion.

I only say it may--I cannot venture to say it will.  Hartford is not a
large place, but it is broader than to have ways of that sort.  Three or
four weeks ago, at a Moody and Sankey meeting, the preacher read a letter
from somebody "exposing" the fact that a prominent clergyman had gone
from one of those meetings, bought a bottle of lager beer and drank it on
the premises (a drug store.)

A tempest of indignation swept the town.  Our clergymen and everybody
else said the "culprit" had not only done an innocent thing, but had done
it in an open, manly way, and it was nobody's right or business to find
fault with it.  Perhaps this dangerous latitude comes of the fact that we
never have any temperance "rot" going on in Hartford.

I find here a letter from Orion, submitting some new matter in his story
for criticism.  When you write him, please tell him to do the best he can
and bang away.  I can do nothing further in this matter, for I have but 3
days left in which to settle a deal of important business and answer a
bushel and a half of letters.  I am very nearly tired to death.

I was so jaded and worn, at the Taylor dinner, that I found I could not
remember 3 sentences of the speech I had memorized, and therefore got up
and said so and excused myself from speaking.  I arrived here at 3
o'clock this morning.  I think the next 3 days will finish me.  The idea
of sitting down to a job of literary criticism is simply ludicrous.

A young lady passenger in our ship has been placed under Livy's charge.
Livy couldn't easily get out of it, and did not want to, on her own
account, but fully expected I would make trouble when I heard of it.
But I didn't.  A girl can't well travel alone, so I offered no objection.
She leaves us at Hamburg.  So I've got 6 people in my care, now--which is
just 6 too many for a man of my unexecutive capacity.  I expect nothing
else but to lose some of them overboard.

We send our loving good-byes to all the household and hope to see you
again after a spell.
                         Affly Yrs.
                                        SAM.


     There are no other American letters of this period.  The Clemens
     party, which included Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, sailed as
     planned, on the Holsatia, April 11, 1878.  As before stated, Bayard
     Taylor was on the ship; also Murat Halstead and family.  On the eve
     of departure, Clemens sent to Howells this farewell word:

     "And that reminds me, ungrateful dog that I am, that I owe as much
     to your training as the rude country job-printer owes to the city
     boss who takes him in hand and teaches him the right way to handle
     his art.  I was talking to Mrs. Clemens about this the other day,
     and grieving because I never mentioned it to you, thereby seeming to
     ignore it, or to be unaware of it.  Nothing that has passed under
     your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my
     other stuff does need so much."

     A characteristic tribute, and from the heart.

     The first European letter came from Frankfort, a rest on their way
     to Heidelberg.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                   FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, May 4, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I only propose to write a single line to say we are
still around.  Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of
being "out of it all."  I think I foretaste some of the advantages of
being dead.  Some of the joy of it.  I don't read any newspapers or care
for them.  When people tell me England has declared war, I drop the
subject, feeling that it is none of my business; when they tell me Mrs.
Tilton has confessed and Mr. B. denied, I say both of them have done that
before, therefore let the worn stub of the Plymouth white-wash brush be
brought out once more, and let the faithful spit on their hands and get
to work again regardless of me--for I am out of it all.

We had 2 almost devilish weeks at sea (and I tell you Bayard Taylor is a
really lovable man--which you already knew) then we staid a week in the
beautiful, the very beautiful city of Hamburg; and since then we have
been fooling along, 4 hours per day by rail, with a courier, spending the
other 20 in hotels whose enormous bedchambers and private parlors are an
overpowering marvel to me: Day before yesterday, in Cassel, we had a love
of a bedroom ,31 feet long, and a parlor with 2 sofas, 12 chairs, a
writing desk and 4 tables scattered around, here and there in it.  Made
of red silk, too, by George.

The times and times I wish you were along!  You could throw some fun into
the journey; whereas I go on, day by day, in a smileless state of solemn
admiration.

What a paradise this is!  What clean clothes, what good faces, what
tranquil contentment, what prosperity, what genuine freedom, what superb
government.  And I am so happy, for I am responsible for none of it.  I
am only here to enjoy.  How charmed I am when I overhear a German word
which I understand.  With love from us 2 to you 2.

                                             MARK.

P. S.  We are not taking six days to go from Hamburg to Heidelberg
because we prefer it.  Quite on the contrary.  Mrs. Clemens picked up a
dreadful cold and sore throat on board ship and still keeps them in
stock--so she could only travel 4 hours a day.  She wanted to dive
straight through, but I had different notions about the wisdom of it.
I found that 4 hours a day was the best she could do.  Before I forget
it, our permanent address is Care Messrs. Koester & Co., Backers,
Heidelberg.  We go there tomorrow.

Poor Susy!  From the day we reached German soil, we have required Rosa to
speak German to the children--which they hate with all their souls.  The
other morning in Hanover, Susy came to us (from Rosa, in the nursery) and
said, in halting syllables, "Papa, vie viel uhr ist es?"--then turned
with pathos in her big eyes, and said, "Mamma, I wish Rosa was made in
English."

(Unfinished)


     Frankfort was a brief halting-place, their destination being
     Heidelberg.  They were presently located there in the beautiful
     Schloss hotel, which overlooks the old castle with its forest
     setting, the flowing Neckar, and the distant valley of the Rhine.
     Clemens, who had discovered the location, and loved it, toward the
     end of May reported to Howells his felicities.


               Part of letter to W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                   SCHLOSS-HOTEL HEIDELBERG,
                                   Sunday, a. m., May 26, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--....divinely located.  From this airy porch among the
shining groves we look down upon Heidelberg Castle, and upon the swift
Neckar, and the town, and out over the wide green level of the Rhine
valley--a marvelous prospect.  We are in a Cul-de-sac formed of
hill-ranges and river; we are on the side of a steep mountain; the river
at our feet is walled, on its other side, (yes, on both sides,) by a
steep and wooded mountain-range which rises abruptly aloft from the
water's edge; portions of these mountains are densely wooded; the plain
of the Rhine, seen through the mouth of this pocket, has many and
peculiar charms for the eye.

Our bedroom has two great glass bird-cages (enclosed balconies) one
looking toward the Rhine valley and sunset, the other looking up the
Neckar cul-de-sac, and naturally we spend nearly all our time in these
--when one is sunny the other is shady.  We have tables and chairs in
them; we do our reading, writing, studying, smoking and suppering in
them.

The view from these bird-cages is my despair.  The pictures change from
one enchanting aspect to another in ceaseless procession, never keeping
one form half an hour, and never taking on an unlovely one.

And then Heidelberg on a dark night!  It is massed, away down there,
almost right under us, you know, and stretches off toward the valley.
Its curved and interlacing streets are a cobweb, beaded thick with
lights--a wonderful thing to see; then the rows of lights on the arched
bridges, and their glinting reflections in the water; and away at the far
end, the Eisenbahnhof, with its twenty solid acres of glittering
gas-jets, a huge garden, as one may say, whose every plant is a flame.

These balconies are the darlingest things.  I have spent all the morning
in this north one.  Counting big and little, it has 256 panes of glass in
it; so one is in effect right out in the free sunshine, and yet sheltered
from wind and rain--and likewise doored and curtained from whatever may
be going on in the bedroom.  It must have been a noble genius who devised
this hotel.  Lord, how blessed is the repose, the tranquillity of this
place!  Only two sounds; the happy clamor of the birds in the groves, and
the muffled music of the Neckar, tumbling over the opposing dykes.  It is
no hardship to lie awake awhile, nights, for this subdued roar has
exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon a roof.  It is so healing
to the spirit; and it bears up the thread of one's imaginings as the
accompaniment bears up a song.

While Livy and Miss Spaulding have been writing at this table, I have sat
tilted back, near by, with a pipe and the last Atlantic, and read Charley
Warner's article with prodigious enjoyment.  I think it is exquisite.
I think it must be the roundest and broadest and completest short essay
he has ever written.  It is clear, and compact, and charmingly done.

The hotel grounds join and communicate with the Castle grounds; so we and
the children loaf in the winding paths of those leafy vastnesses a great
deal, and drink beer and listen to excellent music.

When we first came to this hotel, a couple of weeks ago, I pointed to a
house across the river, and said I meant to rent the centre room on the
3d floor for a work-room.  Jokingly we got to speaking of it as my
office; and amused ourselves with watching "my people" daily in their
small grounds and trying to make out what we could of their dress, &c.,
without a glass.  Well, I loafed along there one day and found on that
house the only sign of the kind on that side of the river: "Moblirte
Wohnung zu Vermiethen!" I went in and rented that very room which I had
long ago selected.  There was only one other room in the whole
double-house unrented.

(It occurs to me that I made a great mistake in not thinking to deliver a
very bad German speech, every other sentence pieced out with English, at
the Bayard Taylor banquet in New York.  I think I could have made it one
of the features of the occasion.)--[He used this plan at a gathering of
the American students in Heidelberg, on July 4th, with great effect; so
his idea was not wasted.]

We left Hartford before the end of March, and I have been idle ever
since.  I have waited for a call to go to work--I knew it would come.
Well, it began to come a week ago; my note-book comes out more and more
frequently every day since; 3 days ago I concluded to move my manuscript
over to my den.  Now the call is loud and decided at last.  So tomorrow I
shall begin regular, steady work, and stick to it till middle of July or
1st August, when I look for Twichell; we will then walk about Germany 2
or 3 weeks, and then I'll go to work again--(perhaps in Munich.)

We both send a power of love to the Howellses, and we do wish you were
here.  Are you in the new house?  Tell us about it.
                                             Yrs Ever
                                                  MARK.


     There has been no former mention in the letters of the coming of
     Twichell; yet this had been a part of the European plan.  Mark Twain
     had invited his walking companion to make a tramp with him through
     Europe, as his guest.  Material for the new book would grow faster
     with Twichell as a companion; and these two in spite of their widely
     opposed views concerning Providence and the general scheme of
     creation, were wholly congenial comrades.  Twichell, in Hartford,
     expecting to receive the final summons to start, wrote: "Oh, my! do
     you realize, Mark, what a symposium it is to be?  I do.  To begin
     with, I am thoroughly tired, and the rest will be worth everything.
     To walk with you and talk with you for weeks together--why, it's my
     dream of luxury."

     August 1st brought Twichell, and the friends set out without delay
     on a tramp through the Black Forest, making short excursions at
     first, but presently extending them in the direction of Switzerland.
     Mrs. Clemens and the others remained in Heidelberg, to follow at
     their leisure.  To Mrs. Clemens her husband sent frequent reports of
     their wanderings.  It will be seen that their tramp did not confine
     itself to pedestrianism, though they did, in fact, walk a great
     deal, and Mark Twain in a note to his mother declared, "I loathe all
     travel, except on foot."  The reports to Mrs. Clemens follow:


                 Letters to Mrs. Clemens, in Heidelberg:

                              ALLERHEILIGEN  Aug. 5, 1878   8:30 p.m.
Livy darling, we had a rattling good time to-day, but we came very near
being left at Baden-Baden, for instead of waiting in the waiting-room, we
sat down on the platform to wait where the trains come in from the other
direction.  We sat there full ten minutes--and then all of a sudden it
occurred to me that that was not the right place.

On the train the principal of the big English school at Nauheim (of which
Mr. Scheiding was a teacher), introduced himself to me, and then he
mapped out our day for us (for today and tomorrow) and also drew a map
and gave us directions how to proceed through Switzerland.  He had his
entire school with him, taking them on a prodigious trip through
Switzerland--tickets for the round trip ten dollars apiece.  He has done
this annually for 10 years.  We took a post carriage from Aachen to
Otterhofen for 7 marks--stopped at the "Pflug" to drink beer, and saw
that pretty girl again at a distance.  Her father, mother, and two
brothers received me like an ancient customer and sat down and talked as
long as I had any German left.  The big room was full of red-vested
farmers (the Gemeindrath of the district, with the Burgermeister at the
head,) drinking beer and talking public business.  They had held an
election and chosen a new member and had been drinking beer at his
expense for several hours.  (It was intensely Black-foresty.)

There was an Australian there (a student from Stuttgart or somewhere,)
and Joe told him who I was and he laid himself out to make our course
plain, for us--so I am certain we can't get lost between here and
Heidelberg.

We walked the carriage road till we came to that place where one sees the
foot path on the other side of the ravine, then we crossed over and took
that.  For a good while we were in a dense forest and judged we were
lost, but met a native women who said we were all right.  We fooled along
and got there at 6 p.m.--ate supper, then followed down the ravine to the
foot of the falls, then struck into a blind path to see where it would
go, and just about dark we fetched up at the Devil's Pulpit on top of the
hills.  Then home.  And now to bed, pretty sleepy.  Joe sends love and I
send a thousand times as much, my darling.
                                                  S. L. C.


                                                  HOTEL GENNIN.
Livy darling, we had a lovely day jogged right along, with a good horse
and sensible driver--the last two hours right behind an open carriage
filled with a pleasant German family--old gentleman and 3 pretty
daughters.  At table d'hote tonight, 3 dishes were enough for me, and
then I bored along tediously through the bill of fare, with a back-ache,
not daring to get up and bow to the German family and leave.  I meant to
sit it through and make them get up and do the bowing; but at last Joe
took pity on me and said he would get up and drop them a curtsy and put
me out of my misery.  I was grateful.  He got up and delivered a
succession of frank and hearty bows, accompanying them with an atmosphere
of good-fellowship which would have made even an English family
surrender.  Of course the Germans responded--then I got right up and they
had to respond to my salaams, too.  So "that was done."

We walked up a gorge and saw a tumbling waterfall which was nothing to
Giessbach, but it made me resolve to drop you a line and urge you to go
and see Giessbach illuminated.  Don't fail--but take a long day's rest,
first.  I love you, sweetheart.
                                             SAML.


                                   OVER THE GEMMI PASS.
                                   4.30 p.m.  Saturday, Aug. 24, 1878.
Livy darling, Joe and I have had a most noble day.  Started to climb (on
foot) at 8.30 this morning among the grandest peaks!  Every half hour
carried us back a month in the season.  We left them harvesting 2d crop
of hay.  At 9 we were in July and found ripe strawberries; at 9.30 we
were in June and gathered flowers belonging to that month; at 10 we were
in May and gathered a flower which appeared in Heidelberg the 17th of
that month; also forget-me-nots, which disappeared from Heidelberg about
mid-May; at 11.30 we were in April (by the flowers;) at noon we had rain
and hail mixed, and wind and enveloping fogs, and considered it March; at
12.30 we had snowbanks above us and snowbanks below us, and considered it
February.  Not good February, though, because in the midst of the wild
desolation the forget-me-not still bloomed, lovely as ever.

What a flower garden the Gemmi Pass is!  After I had got my hands full
Joe made me a paper bag, which I pinned to my lapel and filled with
choice specimens.  I gathered no flowers which I had ever gathered before
except 4 or 5 kinds.  We took it leisurely and I picked all I wanted to.
I mailed my harvest to you a while ago.  Don't send it to Mrs. Brooks
until you have looked it over, flower by flower.  It will pay.

Among the clouds and everlasting snows I found a brave and bright little
forget-me-not growing in the very midst of a smashed and tumbled
stone-debris, just as cheerful as if the barren and awful domes and
ramparts that towered around were the blessed walls of heaven.  I thought
how Lilly Warner would be touched by such a gracious surprise, if she,
instead of I, had seen it.  So I plucked it, and have mailed it to her
with a note.

Our walk was 7 hours--the last 2 down a path as steep as a ladder,
almost, cut in the face of a mighty precipice.  People are not allowed to
ride down it.  This part of the day's work taxed our knees, I tell you.
We have been loafing about this village (Leukerbad) for an hour, now we
stay here over Sunday.  Not tired at all.  (Joe's hat fell over the
precipice--so he came here bareheaded.) I love you, my darling.

                                             SAML.


                                        ST. NICHOLAS, Aug. 26th, '78.
Livy darling, we came through a-whooping today, 6 hours tramp up steep
hills and down steep hills, in mud and water shoe-deep, and in a steady
pouring rain which never moderated a moment.  I was as chipper and fresh
as a lark all the way and arrived without the slightest sense of fatigue.
But we were soaked and my shoes full of water, so we ate at once,
stripped and went to bed for 2 1/2 hours while our traps were thoroughly
dried, and our boots greased in addition.  Then we put our clothes on hot
and went to table d'hote.

Made some nice English friends and shall see them at Zermatt tomorrow.

Gathered a small bouquet of new flowers, but they got spoiled.  I sent
you a safety-match box full of flowers last night from Leukerbad.

I have just telegraphed you to wire the family news to me at Riffel
tomorrow.  I do hope you are all well and having as jolly a time as we
are, for I love you, sweetheart, and also, in a measure, the Bays.
--[Little Susy's word for "babies."]--Give my love to Clara Spaulding
and also to the cubs.
                                          SAML.


     This, as far as it goes, is a truer and better account of the
     excursion than Mark Twain gave in the book that he wrote later.  A
     Tramp Abroad has a quality of burlesque in it, which did not belong
     to the journey at all, but was invented to satisfy the craving for
     what the public conceived to be Mark Twain's humor.  The serious
     portions of the book are much more pleasing--more like himself.
     The entire journey, as will be seen, lasted one week more than a
     month.

     Twichell also made his reports home, some of which give us
     interesting pictures of his walking partner.  In one place he wrote:
     "Mark is a queer fellow.  There is nothing he so delights in as a
     swift, strong stream.  You can hardly get him to leave one when once
     he is within the influence of its fascinations."

     Twichell tells how at Kandersteg they were out together one evening
     where a brook comes plunging down from Gasternthal and how he pushed
     in a drift to see it go racing along the current.  "When I got back
     to the path Mark was running down stream after it as hard as he
     could go, throwing up his hands and shouting in the wildest ecstasy,
     and when a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam
     below he would jump up and down and yell.  He said afterward that he
     had not been so excited in three months."

     In other places Twichell refers to his companion's consideration for
     the feeling of others, and for animals.  "When we are driving, his
     concern is all about the horse.  He can't bear to see the whip used,
     or to see a horse pull hard."

After the walk over Gemmi Pass he wrote: "Mark to-day was immensely
absorbed in flowers.  He scrambled around and gathered a great variety,
and manifested the intensest pleasure in them.  He crowded a pocket of
his note-book with his specimens, and wanted more room."

Whereupon Twichell got out his needle and thread and some stiff paper he
had and contrived the little paper bag to hang to the front of his vest.

The tramp really ended at Lausanne, where Clemens joined his party, but a
short excursion to Chillon and Chamonix followed, the travelers finally
separating at Geneva, Twichell to set out for home by way of England,
Clemens to remain and try to write the story of their travels.  He
hurried a good-by letter after his comrade:


                        To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell:

                                                       (No date)
DEAR OLD JOE,--It is actually all over!  I was so low-spirited at the
station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to
accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant
tramping and talking at an end.  Ah, my boy! it has been such a rich
holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honest obligations to you
for coming.  I am putting out of my mind all memory of the times when I
misbehaved toward you and hurt you: I am resolved to consider it
forgiven, and to store up and remember only the charming hours of the
journeys and the times when I was not unworthy to be with you and share a
companionship which to me stands first after Livy's.  It is justifiable
to do this; for why should I let my small infirmities of disposition live
and grovel among my mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the
Alps?

Livy can't accept or endure the fact that you are gone.  But you are,
and we cannot get around it.  So take our love with you, and bear it also
over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both.

                                                  MARK.


     From Switzerland the Clemens party worked down into Italy,
     sight-seeing, a diversion in which Mark Twain found little enough of
     interest.  He had seen most of the sights ten years before, when his
     mind was fresh.  He unburdened himself to Twichell and to Howells,
     after a period of suffering.


                     To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

                                                  ROME, Nov. 3, '78.
DEAR JOE,--.....I have received your several letters, and we have
prodigiously enjoyed them.  How I do admire a man who can sit down and
whale away with a pen just the same as if it was fishing--or something
else as full of pleasure and as void of labor.  I can't do it; else, in
common decency, I would when I write to you.  Joe, if I can make a book
out of the matter gathered in your company over here, the book is safe;
but I don't think I have gathered any matter before or since your visit
worth writing up.  I do wish you were in Rome to do my sightseeing for
me.  Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more.  That
is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in; but there
are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living.
Livy and Clara Spaulding are having a royal time worshiping the old
Masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.

A friend waits for me.  A power of love to you all.
                                                  Amen.
                                                       MARK.


     In his letter to Howells he said: "I wish I could give those sharp
     satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man
     can't write successful satire except he be in a calm, judicial
     good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the
     opera, and I hate the old masters.  In truth, I don't ever seem to
     be in a good-enough humor with anything to satirize it.  No, I want
     to stand up before it and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a
     club and pound it to rags and pulp.  I have got in two or three
     chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed to do it without showing
     temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me!"

     From Italy the Clemens party went to Munich, where they had arranged
     in advance for winter quarters.  Clemens claims, in his report of
     the matter to Howells, that he took the party through without the
     aid of a courier, though thirty years later, in some comment which
     he set down on being shown the letter, he wrote concerning this
     paragraph: "Probably a lie."  He wrote, also, that they acquired a
     great affection for Fraulein Dahlweiner: "Acquired it at once and it
     outlasted the winter we spent in her house."


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                   No 1a, Karlstrasse, 2e Stock.
                                   Care Fraulein Dahlweiner.
                                   MUNICH, Nov. 17, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We arrived here night before last, pretty well fagged:
an 8-hour pull from Rome to Florence; a rest there of a day and two
nights; then 5 1/2 hours to Bologna; one night's rest; then from noon to
10:30 p.m.  carried us to Trent, in the Austrian Tyrol, where the
confounded hotel had not received our message, and so at that miserable
hour, in that snowy region, the tribe had to shiver together in fireless
rooms while beds were prepared and warmed, then up at 6 in the morning
and a noble view of snow-peaks glittering in the rich light of a full
moon while the hotel-devils lazily deranged a breakfast for us in the
dreary gloom of blinking candles; then a solid 12 hours pull through the
loveliest snow ranges and snow-draped forest--and at 7 p.m. we hauled up,
in drizzle and fog, at the domicile which had been engaged for us ten
months before.  Munich did seem the horriblest place, the most desolate
place, the most unendurable place!--and the rooms were so small, the
conveniences so meagre, and the porcelain stoves so grim, ghastly,
dismal, intolerable!  So Livy and Clara (Spaulding) sat down forlorn,
and cried, and I retired to a private, place to pray.  By and by we all
retired to our narrow German beds; and when Livy and I finished talking
across the room, it was all decided that we would rest 24 hours then pay
whatever damages were required, and straightway fly to the south of
France.

But you see, that was simply fatigue.  Next morning the tribe fell in
love with the rooms, with the weather, with Munich, and head over heels
in love with Fraulein Dahlweiner.  We got a larger parlor--an ample one
--threw two communicating bedrooms into one, for the children, and now we
are entirely comfortable.  The only apprehension, at present, is that the
climate may not be just right for the children, in which case we shall
have to go to France, but it will be with the sincerest regret.

Now I brought the tribe through from Rome, myself.  We never had so
little trouble before.  The next time anybody has a courier to put out to
nurse, I shall not be in the market.

Last night the forlornities had all disappeared; so we gathered around
the lamp, after supper, with our beer and my pipe, and in a condition of
grateful snugness tackled the new magazines.  I read your new story
aloud, amid thunders of applause, and we all agreed that Captain Jenness
and the old man with the accordion-hat are lovely people and most
skillfully drawn--and that cabin-boy, too, we like.  Of course we are all
glad the girl is gone to Venice--for there is no place like Venice.  Now
I easily understand that the old man couldn't go, because you have a
purpose in sending Lyddy by herself: but you could send the old man over
in another ship, and we particularly want him along.  Suppose you don't
need him there?  What of that?  Can't you let him feed the doves?
Can't you let him fall in the canal occasionally?  Can't you let his
good-natured purse be a daily prey to guides and beggar-boys?  Can't you
let him find peace and rest and fellowship under Pere Jacopo's kindly
wing? (However, you are writing the book, not I--still, I am one of the
people you are writing it for, you understand.) I only want to insist, in
a friendly way, that the old man shall shed his sweet influence
frequently upon the page--that is all.

The first time we called at the convent, Pere Jacopo was absent; the next
(Just at this moment Miss Spaulding spoke up and said something about
Pere Jacopo--there is more in this acting of one mind upon another than
people think) time, he was there, and gave us preserved rose-leaves to
eat, and talked about you, and Mrs. Howells, and Winnie, and brought out
his photographs, and showed us a picture of "the library of your new
house," but not so--it was the study in your Cambridge house.  He was
very sweet and good.  He called on us next day; the day after that we
left Venice, after a pleasant sojourn Of 3 or 4 weeks.  He expects to
spend this winter in Munich and will see us often, he said.

Pretty soon, I am going to write something, and when I finish it I shall
know whether to put it to itself or in the "Contributors' Club."  That
"Contributors' Club" was a most happy idea.  By the way, I think that the
man who wrote the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 643 has said
a mighty sound and sensible thing.  I wish his suggestion could be
adopted.

It is lovely of you to keep that old pipe in such a place of honor.

While it occurs to me, I must tell you Susie's last.  She is sorely
badgered with dreams; and her stock dream is that she is being eaten up
by bears.  She is a grave and thoughtful child, as you will remember.
Last night she had the usual dream.  This morning she stood apart (after
telling it,) for some time, looking vacantly at the floor, and absorbed
in meditation.  At last she looked up, and with the pathos of one who
feels he has not been dealt by with even-handed fairness, said "But
Mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear, but always the person."

It would not have occurred to me that there might be an advantage, even
in a dream, in occasionally being the eater, instead of always the party
eaten, but I easily perceived that her point was well taken.

I'm sending to Heidelberg for your letter and Winnie's, and I do hope
they haven't been lost.

My wife and I send love to you all.
                                   Yrs ever,
                                             MARK.


     The Howells story, running at this time in the Atlantic, and so much
     enjoyed by the Clemens party, was "The Lady of the Aroostook."  The
     suggestions made for enlarging the part of the "old man" are
     eminently characteristic.

     Mark Twain's forty-third birthday came in Munich, and in his letter
     conveying this fact to his mother we get a brief added outline of
     the daily life in that old Bavarian city.  Certainly, it would seem
     to have been a quieter and more profitable existence than he had
     known amid the confusion of things left behind in, America.


            To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in America:

                                             No. 1a Karlstrasse,
                                             Dec. 1, MUNICH.  1878.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I broke the back of life yesterday and
started down-hill toward old age.  This fact has not produced any effect
upon me that I can detect.

I suppose we are located here for the winter.  I have a pleasant
work-room a mile from here where I do my writing.  The walk to and from
that place gives me what exercise I need, and all I take.  We staid three
weeks in Venice, a week in Florence, a fortnight in Rome, and arrived
here a couple of weeks ago.  Livy and Miss Spaulding are studying drawing
and German, and the children have a German day-governess.  I cannot see
but that the children speak German as well as they do English.

Susie often translates Livy's orders to the servants.  I cannot work and
study German at the same time: so I have dropped the latter, and do not
even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the news.

We have all pretty good health, latterly, and have seldom had to call the
doctor.  The children have been in the open air pretty constantly for
months now.  In Venice they were on the water in the gondola most of the
time, and were great friends with our gondolier; and in Rome and Florence
they had long daily tramps, for Rosa is a famous hand to smell out the
sights of a strange place.  Here they wander less extensively.

The family all join in love to you all and to Orion and Mollie.
                                   Affly
                                        Your son
                                                  SAM.




XIX.

LETTERS 1879.  RETURN TO AMERICA.  THE GREAT GRANT REUNION

Life went on very well in Munich.  Each day the family fell more in love
with Fraulein Dahlweiner and her house.

Mark Twain, however, did not settle down to his work readily.  His
"pleasant work-room" provided exercise, but no inspiration.  When he
discovered he could not find his Swiss note-book he was ready to give up
his travel-writing altogether.  In the letter that follows we find him
much less enthusiastic concerning his own performances than over the
story by Howells, which he was following in the Atlantic.

The "detective" chapter mentioned in this letter was not included in
'A Tramp Abroad.'  It was published separately, as 'The Stolen White
Elephant' in a volume bearing that title.  The play, which he had now
found "dreadfully witless and flat," was no other than "Simon Wheeler,
Detective," which he had once regarded so highly.  The "Stewart" referred
to was the millionaire merchant, A. T. Stewart, whose body was stolen in
the expectation of reward.


                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

                                        MUNICH, Jan. 21, (1879)
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's no use, your letter miscarried in some way and is
lost.  The consul has made a thorough search and says he has not been
able to trace it.  It is unaccountable, for all the letters I did not
want arrived without a single grateful failure.  Well, I have read-up,
now, as far as you have got, that is, to where there's a storm at sea
approaching,--and we three think you are clear, out-Howellsing Howells.
If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see
what is lacking.  It is all such truth--truth to the life; every where
your pen falls it leaves a photograph.  I did imagine that everything had
been said about life at sea that could be said, but no matter, it was all
a failure and lies, nothing but lies with a thin varnish of fact,--only
you have stated it as it absolutely is.  And only you see people and
their ways, and their insides and outsides as they are, and make them
talk as they do talk.  I think you are the very greatest artist in these
tremendous mysteries that ever lived.  There doesn't seem to be anything
that can be concealed from your awful all-seeing eye.  It must be a
cheerful thing for one to live with you and be aware that you are going
up and down in him like another conscience all the time.  Possibly you
will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead a hundred
years,--it is the fate of the Shakespeares and of all genuine prophets,
--but then your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe.  You're not
a weed, but an oak; not a summer-house, but a cathedral.  In that day I
shall still be in the Cyclopedias, too, thus: "Mark Twain; history and
occupation unknown--but he was personally acquainted with Howells."
There--I could sing your praises all day, and feel and believe every bit
of it.

My book is half finished; I wish to heaven it was done.  I have given up
writing a detective novel--can't write a novel, for I lack the faculty;
but when the detectives were nosing around after Stewart's loud remains,
I threw a chapter into my present book in which I have very extravagantly
burlesqued the detective business--if it is possible to burlesque that
business extravagantly.  You know I was going to send you that detective
play, so that you could re-write it.  Well I didn't do it because I
couldn't find a single idea in it that could be useful to you.  It was
dreadfully witless and flat.  I knew it would sadden you and unfit you
for work.

I have always been sorry we threw up that play embodying Orion which you
began.  It was a mistake to do that.  Do keep that MS and tackle it
again.  It will work out all right; you will see.  I don't believe that
that character exists in literature in so well-developed a condition as
it exists in Orion's person.  Now won't you put Orion in a story?  Then
he will go handsomely into a play afterwards.  How deliciously you could
paint him--it would make fascinating reading--the sort that makes a
reader laugh and cry at the same time, for Orion is as good and
ridiculous a soul as ever was.

Ah, to think of Bayard Taylor!  It is too sad to talk about.  I was so
glad there was not a single sting and so many good praiseful words in the
Atlantic's criticism of Deukalion.
                                   Love to you all
                                             Yrs Ever
                                                  MARK

We remain here till middle of March.


     In 'A Tramp Abroad' there is an incident in which the author
     describes himself as hunting for a lost sock in the dark, in a vast
     hotel bedroom at Heilbronn.  The account of the real incident, as
     written to Twichell, seems even more amusing.

     The "Yarn About the Limburger Cheese and the Box of Guns," like "The
     Stolen White Elephant," did not find place in the travel-book, but
     was published in the same volume with the elephant story, added to
     the rambling notes of "An Idle Excursion."

     With the discovery of the Swiss note-book, work with Mark Twain was
     going better.  His letter reflects his enthusiasm.


                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:

                                                  MUNICH, Jan 26 '79.
DEAR OLD JOE,--Sunday.  Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the
right time.  It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12
noon.  Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later;
I took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and
read, and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear.  There
is more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the
petitioner is so apt to be in earnest.  I was peculiarly alive to his
performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night I
awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable
hours, I gave it up.  I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep
from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark.  Slowly but
surely I got on garment after garment--all down to one sock; I had one
slipper on and the other in my hand.  Well, on my hands and knees I crept
softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and
among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept it
up and kept it up.  At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock,"
but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and
stronger,--and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down
on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off
with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me.  I could see
the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and
could give me no information as to where I was.  But I had one comfort
--I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if
the night lasted long enough.  So I started again and softly pawed all
over the place,--and sure enough at the end of half an hour I laid my
hand on the missing article.  I rose joyfully up and butted the wash-bowl
and pitcher off the stand and simply raised----so to speak.  Livy
screamed, then said, "Who is that? what is the matter?" I said "There
ain't anything the matter--I'm hunting for my sock."  She said, "Are you
hunting for it with a club?"

I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided
and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves.
So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the
adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper
a good deal to my satisfaction.

I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago.  When it was first lost I was
glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of
writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would
render the writing of this one simply impossible, and let me gracefully
out; I was about to write to Bliss and propose some other book, when the
confounded thing turned up, and down went my heart into my boots.  But
there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work--tore up a great part
of the MS written in Heidelberg,--wrote and tore up,--continued to write
and tear up,--and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my
pen got the old swing again!

Since then I'm glad Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss
note-book than I did, for I like my work, now, exceedingly, and often
turn out over 30 MS pages a day and then quit sorry that Heaven makes the
days so short.

One of my discouragements had been the belief that my interest in this
tour had been so slender that I couldn't gouge matter enough out of it to
make a book.  What a mistake.  I've got 900 pages written (not a word in
it about the sea voyage) yet I stepped my foot out of Heidelberg for the
first time yesterday,--and then only to take our party of four on our
first pedestrian tour--to Heilbronn.  I've got them dressed elaborately
in walking costume--knapsacks, canteens, field-glasses, leather leggings,
patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats, with long tails
hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks.  They go all the way
to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance vegetable cart drawn
by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on a raft; and if other
people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian excursion, they
themselves shall not be conscious of it.--This trip will take 100 pages
or more,--oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is everything, not
the material, and I already seem to see 300 pages rising before me on
that trip.  Then, I propose to leave Heidelberg for good.  Don't you see,
the book (1800 MS pages,) may really be finished before I ever get to
Switzerland?

But there's one thing; I want to tell Frank Bliss and his father to be
charitable toward me in,--that is, let me tear up all the MS I want to,
and give me time to write more.  I shan't waste the time--I haven't the
slightest desire to loaf, but a consuming desire to work, ever since I
got back my swing.  And you see this book is either going to be compared
with the Innocents Abroad, or contrasted with it, to my disadvantage.
I think I can make a book that will be no dead corpse of a thing and I
mean to do my level best to accomplish that.

My crude plans are crystalizing.  As the thing stands now, I went to
Europe for three purposes.  The first you know, and must keep secret,
even from the Blisses; the second is to study Art; and the third to
acquire a critical knowledge of the German language.  My MS already shows
that the two latter objects are accomplished.  It shows that I am moving
about as an Artist and a Philologist, and unaware that there is any
immodesty in assuming these titles.  Having three definite objects has
had the effect of seeming to enlarge my domain and give me the freedom of
a loose costume.  It is three strings to my bow, too.

Well, your butcher is magnificent.  He won't stay out of my mind.--I keep
trying to think of some way of getting your account of him into my book
without his being offended--and yet confound him there isn't anything you
have said which he would see any offense in,--I'm only thinking of his
friends--they are the parties who busy themselves with seeing things for
people.  But I'm bound to have him in.  I'm putting in the yarn about the
Limburger cheese and the box of guns, too--mighty glad Howells declined
it.  It seems to gather richness and flavor with age.  I have very nearly
killed several companies with that narrative,--the American Artists Club,
here, for instance, and Smith and wife and Miss Griffith (they were here
in this house a week or two.)  I've got other chapters that pretty nearly
destroyed the same parties, too.

O, Switzerland! the further it recedes into the enriching haze of time,
the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer of it and
the glory and majesty and solemnity and pathos of it grow.  Those
mountains had a soul; they thought; they spoke,--one couldn't hear it
with the ears of the body, but what a voice it was!--and how real.  Deep
down in my memory it is sounding yet.  Alp calleth unto Alp!--that
stately old Scriptural wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's
ocean.  How puny we were in that awful presence--and how painless it was
to be so; how fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the
sense of our unspeakable insignificance.  And Lord how pervading were the
repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the
invisible Great Spirit of the Mountains.

Now what is it?  There are mountains and mountains and mountains in this
world--but only these take you by the heart-strings.  I wonder what the
secret of it is.  Well, time and time again it has seemed to me that I
must drop everything and flee to Switzerland once more.  It is a longing
--a deep, strong, tugging longing--that is the word.  We must go again,
Joe.--October days, let us get up at dawn and breakfast at the tower.  I
should like that first rate.

Livy and all of us send deluges of love to you and Harmony and all the
children.  I dreamed last night that I woke up in the library at home and
your children were frolicing around me and Julia was sitting in my lap;
you and Harmony and both families of Warners had finished their welcomes
and were filing out through the conservatory door, wrecking Patrick's
flower pots with their dress skirts as they went.  Peace and plenty abide
with you all!
                                        MARK.

I want the Blisses to know their part of this letter, if possible.  They
will see that my delay was not from choice.


     Following the life of Mark Twain, whether through his letters or
     along the sequence of detailed occurrence, we are never more than a
     little while, or a little distance, from his brother Orion.  In one
     form or another Orion is ever present, his inquiries, his proposals,
     his suggestions, his plans for improving his own fortunes, command
     our attention.  He was one of the most human creatures that ever
     lived; indeed, his humanity excluded every form of artificiality
     --everything that needs to be acquired.  Talented, trusting,
     child-like, carried away by the impulse of the moment, despite a
     keen sense of humor he was never able to see that his latest plan
     or project was not bound to succeed.
The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 15
