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 March 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 help 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: