am glad to see that they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay when
I had no white hairs in my head and more hair than Reid has now.
Those were days of joy and hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the
Tribune. I went there once in that old building, and I looked all around
and I finally found a door ajar and looked in. It wasn't Reid or Hay
there, but it was Horace Greeley. Those were in the days when Horace
Greeley was a king. That was the first time I ever saw him and the last.
I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was
a fine presence there somewhere. He tried to smile, but he was out of
smiles. He looked at me a moment, and said:
“What in H—-do you want?”
He began with that word “H.” That's a long word and a profane word. I
don't remember what the word was now, but I recognized the power of
it. I had never used that language myself, but at that moment I was
converted. It has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. If a
man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous
occasions. When you have that word at your command let trouble come.
But later Hay rose, and you know what summit Whitelaw Reid has reached,
and you see me. Those two men have regulated troubles of nations and
conferred peace upon mankind. And in my humble way, of which I am quite
vain, I was the principal moral force in all those great international
movements. These great men illustrated what I say. Look at us great
people—we all come from the dregs of society. That's what can be done in
this country. That's what this country does for you.
Choate here—he hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the
same, and he can do it so felicitously, too. I said long ago he was the
handsomest man America ever produced. May the progress of civilization
always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past!
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 try 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.