DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit India.
This has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may
unload from my conscience a debt long due to you. Years ago you
came from India to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time. It
has always been my purpose to return that visit & that great
compliment some day. I shall arrive next January & you must be
ready. I shall come riding my ayah with his tusks adorned with
silver bells & ribbons & escorted by a troop of native howdahs
richly clad & mounted upon a herd of wild bungalows; & you must be
on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I shall be thirsty.
To the press he gave this parting 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 brain, and a
merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws
of insolvency and 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 100 cents on the dollar and its debts never
outlaw. 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 meant, when I began, to give my
creditors all the benefit of this, but I am beginning to feel that I
am gaining something from it, too, and that my dividends, if not
available for banking purposes, may be even more satisfactory than
theirs.
There was one creditor, whose name need, not be “handed down to infamy,”
who had refused to consent to any settlement except immediate payment
in full, and had pursued with threatened attachment of earnings and
belongings, until Clemens, exasperated, had been disposed to turn over
to his creditors all remaining properties and let that suffice, once and
for all. But this was momentary. He had presently instructed Mr. Rogers
to “pay Shylock in full,” and to assure any others that he would pay
them, too, in the end. But none of the others annoyed him.
It was on the afternoon of August 23, 1895, that they were off at
last. Major Pond and his wife lunched with them on board and waved them
good-by as long as they could see the vessel. The far voyage which was
to carry them for the better part of the year to the under side of the
world had begun.