Then Shelley writes a poem--a chant of grief over the hard fate which

obliges him now to leave his paradise and take up with his wife again.

It seems to intimate that the paradise is cooling towards him; that he is

warned off by acclamation; that he must not even venture to tempt with

one last tear his friend Cornelia's ungentle mood, for her eye is glazed

and cold and dares not entreat her lover to stay:

Exhibit E

"Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!'

Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood;

Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy

stay:

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude."

Back to the solitude of his now empty home, that is!

"Away! away! to thy sad and silent home;

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth."

. . . . . . . .

But he will have rest in the grave by-and-by. Until that time comes,

the charms of Bracknell will remain in his memory, along with Mrs.

Boinville's voice and Cornelia Turner's smile:

"Thou in the grave shalt rest--yet, till the phantoms flee

Which that house and hearth and garden made dear to thee ere while,

Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free

From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile."

We cannot wonder that Harriet could not stand it. Any of us would have

left. We would not even stay with a cat that was in this condition.

Even the Boinvilles could not endure it; and so, as we have seen, they

gave this one notice.

"Early in May, Shelley was in London. He did not yet despair

of reconciliation with Harriet, nor had he ceased to love her."

Shelley's poems are a good deal of trouble to his biographer. They are

constantly inserted as "evidence," and they make much confusion. As soon

as one of them has proved one thing, another one follows and proves quite

a different thing. The poem just quoted shows that he was in love with

Cornelia, but a month later he is in love with Harriet again, and there

is a poem to prove it.

"In this piteous appeal Shelley declares that he has now no

grief but one--the grief of having known and lost his wife's

love."

Exhibit F

"Thy look of love has power to calm

The stormiest passion of my soul."

But without doubt she had been reserving her looks of love a good part of

the time for ten months, now--ever since he began to lavish his own on

Cornelia Turner at the end of the previous July. He does really seem to

have already forgotten Cornelia's merits in one brief month, for he

eulogizes Harriet in a way which rules all competition out:

"Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,

Amid a world of hate."

He complains of her hardness, and begs her to make the concession of

a "slight endurance"--of his waywardness, perhaps--for the sake of

"a fellow-being's lasting weal." But the main force of his appeal is

in his closing stanza, and is strongly worded:

"O tract for once no erring guide!

Bid the remorseless feeling flee;

'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,

'Tis anything but thee;

I deign a nobler pride to prove,

And pity if thou canst not love."

This is in May--apparently towards the end of it. Harriet and Shelley

were corresponding all the time. Harriet got the poem--a copy exists in

her own handwriting; she being the only gentle and kind person amid a

world of hate, according to Shelley's own testimony in the poem, we are

permitted to think that the daily letters would presently have melted

that kind and gentle heart and brought about the reconciliation, if there

had been time but there wasn't; for in a very few days--in fact, before

the 8th of June--Shelley was in love with another woman.

And so--perhaps while Harriet was walking the floor nights, trying to get

her poem by heart--her husband was doing a fresh one--for the other girl

--Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin--with sentiments like these in it:

Exhibit G

To spend years thus and be rewarded,

As thou, sweet love, requited me

When none were near.

. . . thy lips did meet

Mine tremblingly; . . ,

"Gentle and good and mild thou art,

Nor can I live if thou appear

Aught but thyself." . . .

And so on. "Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and

Shelley that each was inexpressibly dear to the other." Yes, Shelley had

found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in

the graveyard. But that is nothing; it was better than wooing her in her

nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other children.

However, she was a child in years only. From the day that she set her

masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more. If she had occupied

the only kind and gentle Harriet's place in March it would have been a

thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boinville rookery and read the

riot act. That holiday of Shelley's would have been of short duration,

and Cornelia's hair would have been as gray as her mother's when the

services were over.

Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner Street with Shelley on that

8th of June. They passed through Godwin's little debt-factory of a book-

shop and went up-stairs hunting for the proprietor. Nobody there.

Shelley strode about the room impatiently, making its crazy floor quake

under him. Then a door "was partially and softly opened. A thrilling

voice called 'Shelley!' A thrilling voice answered, 'Mary!' And he

darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting

King. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale, indeed, and with

a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at

that time, had called him out of the room."

This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg. The thrill of the voices

shows that the love of Shelley and Mary was already upward of a fortnight

old; therefore it had been born within the month of May--born while

Harriet was still trying to get her poem by heart, we think. I must not

be asked how I know so much about that thrill; it is my secret. The

biographer and I have private ways of finding out things when it is

necessary to find them out and the customary methods fail.

Shelley left London that day, and was gone ten days. The biographer

conjectures that he spent this interval with Harriet in Bath. It would

be just like him. To the end of his days he liked to be in love with two

women at once. He was more in love with Miss Hitchener when he married

Harriet than he was with Harriet, and told the lady so with simple and

unostentatious candor. He was more in love with Cornelia than he was

with Harriet in the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814, yet he

supplied both of them with love poems of an equal temperature meantime;

he loved Mary and Harriet in June, and while getting ready to run off

with the one, it is conjectured that he put in his odd time trying to get

reconciled to the other; by-and-by, while still in love with Mary, he

will make love to her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the

visitation of God, through the medium of clandestine letters, and she

will answer with letters that are for no eye but his own.

When Shelley encountered Mary Godwin he was looking around for another

paradise. He had, tastes of his own, and there were features about the

Godwin establishment that strongly recommended it. Godwin was an

advanced thinker and an able writer. One of his romances is still read,

but his philosophical works, once so esteemed, are out of vogue now;

their authority was already declining when Shelley made his acquaintance

--that is, it was declining with the public, but not with Shelley. They

had been his moral and political Bible, and they were that yet. Shelley

the infidel would himself have claimed to be less a work of God than a

work of Godwin. Godwin's philosophies had formed his mind and interwoven

themselves into it and become a part of its texture; he regarded himself

as Godwin's spiritual son. Godwin was not without self-appreciation;

indeed, it may be conjectured that from his point of view the last

syllable of his name was surplusage. He lived serene in his lofty world

of philosophy, far above the mean interests that absorbed smaller men,

and only came down to the ground at intervals to pass the hat for alms to

pay his debts with, and insult the man that relieved him. Several of his

principles were out of the ordinary. For example, he was opposed to

marriage. He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but

theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to

live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working

model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, by applying the

principle in his own family; the matter took a different and surprising

aspect then. The late Matthew Arnold said that the main defect in

Shelley's make-up was that he was destitute of the sense of humor. This

episode must have escaped Mr. Arnold's attention.

But we have said enough about the head of the new paradise. Mrs. Godwin

is described as being in several ways a terror; and even when her soul

was in repose she wore green spectacles. But I suspect that her main

unattractiveness was born of the fact that she wrote the letters that are

out in the appendix-basket in the back yard--letters which are an outrage

and wholly untrustworthy, for they say some kind things about poor

Harriet and tell some disagreeable truths about her husband; and these

things make the fabulist grit his teeth a good deal.

Next we have Fanny Godwin--a Godwin by courtesy only; she was Mrs.

Godwin's natural daughter by a former friend. She was a sweet and

winning girl, but she presently wearied of the Godwin paradise, and

poisoned herself.

Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she preferred to call herself)

Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. She was very

young and pretty and accommodating, and always ready to do what she could

to make things pleasant. After Shelley ran off with her part-sister

Mary, she became the guest of the pair, and contributed a natural child

to their nursery--Allegra. Lord Byron was the father.

We have named the several members and advantages of the new paradise in

Skinner Street, with its crazy book-shop underneath. Shelley was all

right now, this was a better place than the other; more variety anyway,

and more different kinds of fragrance. One could turn out poetry here

without any trouble at all.

The way the new love-match came about was this:

Shelley told Mary all his aggravations and sorrows and griefs, and about

the wet-nurse and the bonnetshop and the surgeon and the carriage, and

the sister-in-law that blocked the London game, and about Cornelia and

her mamma, and how they had turned him out of the house after making so

much of him; and how he had deserted Harriet and then Harriet had

deserted him, and how the reconciliation was working along and Harriet

getting her poem by heart; and still he was not happy, and Mary pitied

him, for she had had trouble herself. But I am not satisfied with this.

It reads too much like statistics. It lacks smoothness and grace, and is

too earthy and business-like. It has the sordid look of a trades-union

procession out on strike. That is not the right form for it. The book

does it better; we will fall back on the book and have a cake-walk:

"It was easy to divine that some restless grief possessed him;

Mary herself was not unlearned in the lore of pain. His

generous zeal in her father's behalf, his spiritual sonship to

Godwin, his reverence for her mother's memory, were guarantees

with Mary of his excellence.--[What she was after was

guarantees of his excellence. That he stood ready to desert

his wife and child was one of them, apparently.]--The new

friends could not lack subjects of discourse, and underneath

their words about Mary's mother, and 'Political Justice,' and

'Rights of Woman,' were two young hearts, each feeling towards

the other, each perhaps unaware, trembling in the direction of

the other. The desire to assuage the suffering of one whose

happiness has grown precious to us may become a hunger of the

spirit as keen as any other, and this hunger now possessed

Mary's heart; when her eyes rested unseen on Shelley, it was

with a look full of the ardor of a 'soothing pity.'"

Yes, that is better and has more composure. That is just the way it

happened. He told her about the wet-nurse, she told him about political

justice; he told her about the deadly sister-in-law, she told him about

her mother; he told her about the bonnet-shop, she murmured back about

the rights of woman; then he assuaged her, then she assuaged him; then he

assuaged her some more, next she assuaged him some more; then they both

assuaged one another simultaneously; and so they went on by the hour

assuaging and assuaging and assuaging, until at last what was the result?

They were in love. It will happen so every time.

"He had married a woman who, as he now persuaded himself, had

never truly loved him, who loved only his fortune and his rank,

and who proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery."

I think that that is not quite fair to Harriet. We have no certainty

that she knew Cornelia had turned him out of the house. He went back to

Cornelia, and Harriet may have supposed that he was as happy with her as

ever. Still, it was judicious to begin to lay on the whitewash, for

Shelley is going to need many a coat of it now, and the sooner the reader

becomes used to the intrusion of the brush the sooner he will get

reconciled to it and stop fretting about it.

After Shelley's (conjectured) visit to Harriet at Bath--8th of June to

18th--"it seems to have been arranged that Shelley should henceforth

join the Skinner Street household each day at dinner."

Nothing could be handier than this; things will swim along now.

"Although now Shelley was coming to believe that his wedded

union with Harriet was a thing of the past, he had not ceased

to regard her with affectionate consideration; he wrote to her

frequently, and kept her informed of his whereabouts."

We must not get impatient over these curious inharmoniousnesses and

irreconcilabilities in Shelley's character. You can see by the

biographer's attitude towards them that there is nothing objectionable

about them. Shelley was doing his best to make two adoring young

creatures happy: he was regarding the one with affectionate consideration

by mail, and he was assuaging the other one at home.

"Unhappy Harriet, residing at Bath, had perhaps never desired

that the breach between herself and her husband should be

irreparable and complete."

I find no fault with that sentence except that the "perhaps" is not

strictly warranted. It should have been left out. In support--or shall

we say extenuation?--of this opinion I submit that there is not

sufficient evidence to warrant the uncertainty which it implies. The

only "evidence" offered that Harriet was hard and proud and standing out

against a reconciliation is a poem--the poem in which Shelley beseeches

her to "bid the remorseless feeling flee" and "pity" if she "cannot

love." We have just that as "evidence," and out of its meagre materials

the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coliseum;

conjectures which convince him, the prosecuting attorney, but ought to

fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury.

Shelley's love-poems may be very good evidence, but we know well that

they are "good for this day and train only." We are able to believe that

they spoke the truth for that one day, but we know by experience that

they could not be depended on to speak it the next. The very

supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so

suddenly by the poet's plunge into an adoring passion for Mary Godwin

that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy

person could have gotten to the bank with it.

Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness--these may sometimes reside

in a young wife and mother of nineteen, but they are not charged against

Harriet Shelley outside of that poem, and one has no right to insert them

into her character on such shadowy "evidence" as that. Peacock knew

Harriet well, and she has a flexible and persuadable look, as painted by

him:

"Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and demeanor such

manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature that to be once

in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her

husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.

If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in

retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed

the change of scene."

"Perhaps" she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable and

complete. The truth is, we do not even know that there was any breach at

all at this time. We know that the husband and wife went before the

altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and cherish each

other until death--and this may be regarded as a sort of reconciliation

itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges. Then Harriet went away, and

the sister-in-law removed herself from her society. That was in April.

Shelley wrote his "appeal" in May, but the corresponding went right along

afterwards. We have a right to doubt that the subject of it was a

"reconciliation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that she needed to be

reconciled and that her husband was trying to persuade her to it--as the

biographer has sought to make us believe, with his Coliseum of

conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry. For we have

"evidence" now--not poetry and conjecture. When Shelley had been dining

daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the

love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days earlier,

he forgot to write Harriet; forgot it the next day and the next. During

four days Harriet got no letter from him. Then her fright and anxiety

rose to expression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shelley's publisher

which seems to reveal to us that Shelley's letters to her had been the

customary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had carried no

appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to:

"BATH (postmark July 7, 1814).

"MY DEAR SIR,--You will greatly oblige me by giving the

enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble you, but it is

now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an

age. Will you write by return of post and tell me what has

become of him? as I always fancy something dreadful has

happened if I do not hear from him. If you tell me that he is

well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you

or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful

state of suspense. You are his friend and you can feel for me.

"I remain yours truly,

"H. S."

Even without Peacock's testimony that "her whole aspect and demeanor were

manifest emanations of a pure and truthful nature," we should hold this

to be a truthful letter, a sincere letter, a loving letter; it bears

those marks; I think it is also the letter of a person accustomed to

receiving letters from her husband frequently, and that they have been of

a welcome and satisfactory sort, too, this long time back--ever since the

solemn remarriage and reconciliation at the altar most likely.

The biographer follows Harriet's letter with a conjecture.

He conjectures that she "would now gladly have retraced her steps."

Which means that it is proven that she had steps to retrace--proven by

the poem. Well, if the poem is better evidence than the letter, we must

let it stand at that.

Then the biographer attacks Harriet Shelley's honor--by authority of

random and unverified gossip scavengered from a group of people whose

very names make a person shudder: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her

part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron; Godwin, the philosophical

tramp, who gathers his share of it from a shadow--that is to say, from a

person whom he shirks out of naming. Yet the biographer dignifies this

sorry rubbish with the name of "evidence."

Nothing remotely resembling a distinct charge from a named person

professing to know is offered among this precious "evidence."

1. "Shelley believed" so and so.

2. Byron's discarded mistress says that Shelley told Mary Godwin so and

so, and Mary told her.

3. "Shelley said" so and so--and later "admitted over and over again

that he had been in error."

4. The unspeakable Godwin "wrote to Mr. Baxter" that he knew so and so

"from unquestionable authority"--name not furnished.

How-any man in his right mind could bring himself to defile the grave of

a shamefully abused and defenceless girl with these baseless

fabrications, this manufactured filth, is inconceivable. How any man, in

his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to persuade

anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do anything

but scoff at it and deride it, is astonishing.

The charge insinuated by these odious slanders is one of the most

difficult of all offences to prove; it is also one which no man has a

right to mention even in a whisper about any woman, living or dead,

unless he knows it to be true, and not even then unless he can also prove

it to be true. There is no justification for the abomination of putting

this stuff in the book.

Against Harriet Shelley's good name there is not one scrap of tarnishing

evidence, and not even a scrap of evil gossip, that comes from a source

that entitles it to a hearing.

On the credit side of the account we have strong opinions from the people

who knew her best. Peacock says:

"I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my most

decided conviction that her conduct as a wife was as pure, as

true, as absolutely faultless, as that of any who for such

conduct are held most in honor."

Thornton Hunt, who had picked and published slight flaws in Harriet's

character, says, as regards this alleged large one:

"There is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal

against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley."

Trelawney says:

"I was assured by the evidence of the few friends who knew both

Shelley and his wife--Hookham, Hogg, Peacock, and one of the

Godwins--that Harriet was perfectly innocent of all offence."

What excuse was there for raking up a parcel of foul rumors from

malicious and discredited sources and flinging them at this dead girl's

head? Her very defencelessness should have been her protection. The

fact that all letters to her or about her, with almost every scrap of her

own writing, had been diligently mislaid, leaving her case destitute of a

voice, while every pen-stroke which could help her husband's side had

been as diligently preserved, should have excused her from being brought

to trial. Her witnesses have all disappeared, yet we see her summoned in

her grave-clothes to plead for the life of her character, without the

help of an advocate, before a disqualified judge and a packed jury.

Harriet Shelley wrote her distressed letter on the 7th of July. On the

28th her husband ran away with Mary Godwin and her part-sister Claire to

the Continent. He deserted his wife when her confinement was

approaching. She bore him a child at the end of November, his mistress

bore him another one something over two months later. The truants were

back in London before either of these events occurred.

On one occasion, presently, Shelley was so pressed for money to support

his mistress with that he went to his wife and got some money of his that

was in her hands--twenty pounds. Yet the mistress was not moved to

gratitude; for later, when the wife was troubled to meet her engagements,

the mistress makes this entry in her diary:

"Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman. Now we shall

have to change our lodgings."

The deserted wife bore the bitterness and obloquy of her situation two

years and a quarter; then she gave up, and drowned herself. A month

afterwards the body was found in the water. Three weeks later Shelley

married his mistress.

I must here be allowed to italicize a remark of the biographer's

concerning Harriet Shelley:

"That no act of Shelley's during the two years which

immediately preceded her death tended to cause the rash act

which brought her life to its close seems certain."

Yet her husband had deserted her and her children, and was living with a

concubine all that time! Why should a person attempt to write biography

when the simplest facts have no meaning to him? This book is littered

with as crass stupidities as that one--deductions by the page which bear

no discoverable kinship to their premises.

The biographer throws off that extraordinary remark without any

perceptible disturbance to his serenity; for he follows it with a

sentimental justification of Shelley's conduct which has not a pang of

conscience in it, but is silky and smooth and undulating and pious--

a cake-walk with all the colored brethren at their best. There may be

people who can read that page and keep their temper, but it is doubtful.

Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise

worshipfully noble and beautiful. It even stands out indestructibly

gracious and lovely from the ruck of these disastrous pages, in spite of

the fact that they expose and establish his responsibility for his

forsaken wife's pitiful fate--a responsibility which he himself tacitly

admits in a letter to Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his taking up

with Mary Godwin as an act which Eliza "might excusably regard as the

cause of her sister's ruin."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES

by Mark Twain

The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's

novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works

which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and

scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with

either of them as a finished whole.

The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight.

They were pure works of art.--Prof. Lounsbury.

The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.

. . . One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty

Bumppo . . . .

The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the

delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his

youth up.--Prof. Brander Matthews.

Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction

yet produced by America.--Wilkie Collins.

It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English

Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and

Wilkie Collies to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having

read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent

and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the

restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences

against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic

fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of

them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the

Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of

the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is

not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes

have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to

develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in

the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the

corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in

the Deerslayer tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive,

shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also

has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation,

the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings

would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a

discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of

relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be

interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the

people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has

been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a

personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage

shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention

in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated,

gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering

in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel

in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the

Deerslayer tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the

reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by

either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is

persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves

to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle,

the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and

reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep

interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he

shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad

ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in

it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned

together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly

defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given

emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These

require that the author shall:

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer

tale.

Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such

as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and

indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of

stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices

for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with,

and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things

and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread

in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail.

Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick.

Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently

was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his

effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book

of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds

and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is

in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure

to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on,

but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and

find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the

Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the

delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the

other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples.

Cooper was a sailor--a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a

vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a

particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there

which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure

woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For

several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought

to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either

buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet

or so--and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place

he loses some "females"--as he always calls women--in the edge of a wood

near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to

show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid

people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannonblast, and a

cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their

feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very different

with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he

doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball

across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a

daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing

things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For

instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced

Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through

the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor

I could ever have guessed out the way to find it. It was very different

with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running

stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were

that person's moccasin-tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it

would have done in all other like cases--no, even the eternal laws of

Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of

woodcraft on the reader.

We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's

books "reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention." As a rule, I am

quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud

his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular statement

needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper

hadn't any more invention than a horse; and I don't mean a high-class

horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse. It would be very difficult to

find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books, and still more

difficult to find one of any kind which he has failed to render absurd by

his handling of it. Look at the episodes of "the caves"; and at the

celebrated scuffle between Maqua and those others on the table-land a few

days later; and at Hurry Harry's queer water-transit from the castle to

the ark; and at Deerslayer's half-hour with his first corpse; and at the

quarrel between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; and at--but choose for

yourself; you can't go amiss.

If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked

better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly.

Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably

from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was

splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw

nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who

cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working

at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation." In the

Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it

flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along

for no given reason; and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be

required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the

brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become

"the narrowest part of the stream." This shrinkage is not accounted for.

The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks

and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If

Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed

that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it.

Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place,

for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less

than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a "sapling" to the

form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its

foliage. They are "laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is coming

up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the

stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake; its

rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes

the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions "it was

little more than a modern canal-boat." Let us guess, then, that it was

about one hundred and forty feet long. It was of "greater breadth than

common." Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. This

leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as

itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space

to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle.

A low-roofed log dwelling occupies "two-thirds of the ark's length"--a

dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of

vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms--each forty-five feet long

and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the

Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime,

at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's

exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to

accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on

each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to

be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by

climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when

the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things,

but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are

marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error

about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.

The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet

long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the

arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the

rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a

minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling a

minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would

take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it

up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their

chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian,

warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he

had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he

judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually

what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow.

It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there

unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have

made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the

construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost five Indians.

The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain

what the five did--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.

No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No.

2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it.

Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then

No, 4. jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then

even No. 5 made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian. In the

matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the

Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow

episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill,

because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of

fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's

inadequacy as an observer.

The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for inaccurate

observation in the account of the shooting-match in The Pathfinder.

"A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its

head having been first touched with paint."

The color of the paint is not stated--an important omission, but Cooper

deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an

important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the

marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter what

its color might be.

How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly? A hundred yards? It

is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is

a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nailhead at that distance,

for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see

a fly or a nailhead at fifty yards--one hundred and fifty feet. Can the

reader do it?

The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the

Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge

off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way into

the target--and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far

enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is

to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer Hawkeye--Long-Rifle-Leather-Stocking-

Pathfinder-Bumppo before the ladies.

"'Be all ready to clench it, boys I' cried out Pathfinder,

stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant.

'Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is

gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though

it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench!'

"The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was

buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead."

There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command a

ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back with us.

The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is

not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made

Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle; and not only that,

but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself. He

had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not

only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, "Be ready to

clench." Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat

with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.

Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very

first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was

standing with the group of marksmen, observing--a hundred yards from the

target, mind; one jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the

bull's-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no

result this time. There was a laugh. "It's a dead miss," said Major

Lundie. Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in

that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his, "No, Major, he has

covered jasper's bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble

to examine the target."

Wasn't it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly through

the air and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did; for

nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have

any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply

sanity, and these were all Cooper people.

"The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his 'quickness and

accuracy of sight'" (the italics [''] are mine) "was so

profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration

the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a

dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact.

There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster's

bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and that,

too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be

certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly

established by discovering one bullet over the other in the

stump against which the target was placed."

They made a "minute" examination; but never mind, how could they know

that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one

out? for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more

than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the

Pathfinder's turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and

fires.

But, alas! here is a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable

disappointment--for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing

there but that same old bullet-hole!

"'If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, 'I

should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target!'"

As nobody had missed it yet, the "also" was not necessary; but never mind

about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.

"'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, 'that would be a risky

declaration. I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was

in it; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving

down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name

Pathfinder.'

"A shout from the target announced the truth of this

assertion."

Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder

speaks again, as he "now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by

the females":

"'That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target

touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the

wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger."

The miracle is at last complete. He knew--doubtless saw--at the distance

of a hundred yards--that his bullet had passed into the hole without

fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole--three

bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the

target. Everybody knew this--somehow or other--and yet nobody had dug

any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer, but he is

interesting. He is certainly always that, no matter what happens. And

he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when

he is. This is a considerable merit.

The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern

ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths

would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a

person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to

spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a

rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs

of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by

attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk

wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted

mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy

with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.

Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue.

Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many

other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who

talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the

seventh, and can't help himself. In the Deerslayer story he lets

Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other

times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him

if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic

answer:

"'She's in the forest-hanging from the boughs of the trees, in

a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that

float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the

woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst--and in all

the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!'"

And he preceded that, a little before, with this:

"'It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a

fri'nd.'"

And this is another of his remarks:

"'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in

the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or

if my inimy had only been a bear'"--and so on.

We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief

comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but

Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the

French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort:

"'Point de quartier aux coquins!' cried an eager pursuer, who

seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.

"'Stand firm and be ready, my gallant Goths!' suddenly

exclaimed a voice above them; wait to see the enemy; fire low,

and sweep the glacis.'

"'Father? father!' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist;

it is I! Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!'

"'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of

parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and

rolling back in solemn echo. ''Tis she! God has restored me my

children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, Goths, to

the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive

off these dogs of France with your steel!'"

Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear

for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He

keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor

ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you

perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he

doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear

was satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some

circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are

gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses

"verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for

"marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for

"primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued";

"dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact,"

for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for

"determine"; "mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for

"factitious"; "materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for

"deepening"; "increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for

"enclosed"; "treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped";

"softened," for "replaced"; "rejoined," for "remarked"; "situation," for

"condition"; "different," for "differing"; "insensible," for

"unsentient"; "brevity," for "celerity"; "distrusted," for "suspicious";

"mental imbecility," for "imbecility"; "eyes," for "sight";

"counteracting," for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies," for "obsequies."

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could

write English, but they are all dead now--all dead but Lounsbury.

I don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still

he makes it, for he says that Deerslayer is a "pure work of art."

Pure, in that connection, means faultless--faultless in all details and

language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's

English with the English which he writes himself--but it is plain that he

didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's

is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my

heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our

language, and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even

Cooper ever wrote.

I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work

of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every

detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me

that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence,

or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of

reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words

they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that

they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations

are--oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime

against the language.

Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.

ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET

by Mark Twain

CONTENTS:

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US

He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much

does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who

were his parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon

us--advertisedly in our own special interest--a natural apprehension

moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector?

I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the

newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a

whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that

our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon

the land.

"His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well

timed."

"He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and

profitably studied."

These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore

public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to

whether so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as

70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and

pull it through without assistance.

I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament,

and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly

tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that

there was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I

became more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up

in my mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his

equipment? What was his method?

He had gotten his equipment in France.

Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an

Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists.

The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and

studies their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently

able to group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families

by nice shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he

labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group

names, and is now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result

he intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out.

It may be true, but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer

about it if he had the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant

System, but subject to error.

The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a

Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to

be all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often

able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad

observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is

then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's

chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no

more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new ways

which it will prefer to its own.

To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply

be France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark

--almost Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing

France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about

railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in

that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of

Fulton's date--1809. Postal service? No. France is a back number

there. Telegraphy? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No.

Magazining? No, that is our own specialty. Government? No; Liberty,

Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too

variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our

climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves.

Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and

when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book.

I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment?

But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,

except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as

well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They

feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that

they had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar.

And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was

sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a

gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have

been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are

pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may

say, with little recurrent shivers of joy--subdued joy, so to speak, not

the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each

other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and

thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar

and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the

interviewer: "It was severe--yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how

true it was; and it will do us so much good!"

If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed

to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know

ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be

an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should

understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself--that would

be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to

himself. But to explain the bug to the bug--that is quite a different

matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows himself

better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.

A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that

that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its

interior--its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a

knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four

or six--absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years and

years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;

sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its

loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and

shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,

its adorations--of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the national

name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples

through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the

life of a people and make a valuable report--the native novelist. This

expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have fifteen

conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time. This

native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been

absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is

derived from conscious "observation"? The amount is so slight that it

counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital

of the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation

--absorption. The native expert's intentional observation of manners,

speech, character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows

what they mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be

astonished to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the

elusive shades of these subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes

a foreigner, with a foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State

whose life is familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived.

Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious

absorption, and put both of them into his tales alive. But when he came

from the Pacific to the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from

study-conscious observation--his failure was absolutely monumental.

Newport is a disastrous place for the unacclimated observer, evidently.

To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize

the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life

of a few people grouped in a certain place--his own place--and that is

one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and

the people of the whole nation--the life of a group in a New England

village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village;

in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty

States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in

a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to;

and the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the

Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the

Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the

Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the

Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the

Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists,

the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners.

And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the

soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and

not anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character,

manners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.

"'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its

vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.

'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',

and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the

church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the

suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite

sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the

great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of

Newport for those who choose to see it."--M. Paul Bourget.

[The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he has

undertaken. "Records" is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use

of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word is 'fastes'.

I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he expected to find the great

"American soul" secreted behind the ostentatious of Newport; and that he

was going to get it out and examine it, and generalize it, and

psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery: "the

nature of the people" of the United States of America. We have been

accused of being a nation addicted to inventing wild schemes. I trust

that we shall be allowed to retire to second place now.

There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled

"American." There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend,

or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles,

or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a

particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or

face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or

disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can

rationally be generalized as "American."

Whenever you have found what seems to be an "American" peculiarity, you

have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in the social

scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can cross the

Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious drift, or

sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of face,

but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and west,

where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with everything

else which one might propose to call "American." M. Bourget thinks he

has found the American Coquette. If he had really found her he would

also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in

other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the

same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our coquette;

I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels,

and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen ours.

He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was a

Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her,

and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls

"types," and labeled them in his usual scientific way with "formulas"

--brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a person blink, sometimes,

they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are pretty far-fetched,

but that is not an important matter; they surprise, they compel

admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his efforts have

called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of the

coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:

THE COLLECTOR.

THE EQUILIBREE.

THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.

THE BLUFFER.

THE GIRL-BOY.

If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been

obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen

them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further

and furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also

light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his

note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the

world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them

genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the

native the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make

that novel and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any

American can tell him--any American to whom he will show his anecdotes.

It was "put up" on him, as we say. It was a jest--to be plain, it was a

series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and

contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they

have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies.

M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a

type of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for

these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is

always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a

rule, and always the spirit of treachery.

In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted

to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little

frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the

situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his

confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.

But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame

himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to

exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save

himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such

daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have

worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction

that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite

unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in

his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted

was "significant" facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the

source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of

conspiracy against him almost from the start--a conspiracy to freight him

up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed brains could

invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him

things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they

did not excite his. Consider this:

"There is not in all the United States an entirely nude

statue."

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a

reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a

little further before he added it to his catch. What does the present

observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with

this innocent comment:

"This small fact is strangely significant."

It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.

Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present

of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his

suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for

strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it.

If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:

"If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he

is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in

a tribute."

Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised;

one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be

ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a "tribute." I think a

little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like this:

A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be

ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not

like to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this

formula: the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of

argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for

suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed,

and regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.

I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is

too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great

art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at

half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies

and dissolves them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the

charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will

explain an American girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn

for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person wants

answered.

It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can

be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the

name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are.

Perhaps one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and

German gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American

temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two

--the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in

other countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal

with us, but that is the case in some other countries. We have no

monopoly of it; it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a

single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide

name "American." That is the national devotion to ice-water. All

Germans drink beer, but the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither

of those peoples is the beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand

alone in having a drink that nobody likes but ourselves. When we have

been a month in Europe we lose our craving for it, and we finally tell

the hotel folk that they needn't provide it any more. Yet we hardly

touch our native shore again, winter or summer, before we are eager for

it. The reasons for this state of things have not been psychologized

yet. I drop the hint and say no more.

It is my belief that there are some "national" traits and things

scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have

lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the

dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever

since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts

about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a

few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If

people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our

women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them

how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot

tell them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those

missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into

this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let

fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:

"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied

to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all

the weaknesses of the French soul."

You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession;

a science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high

Parisian existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if

it can be taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those

pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the

education which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene

summits of our high Parisian life.

I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have

been parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider

the Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is

"American"; and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is "American."

I believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not

American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations,

for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has

existed everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.

I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying

to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising

efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out

of all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this

opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after

another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic

coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on

tolerably long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and

reasonably expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he

gave for them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no

matter what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or

China if he had had the same chance.

In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble

worker stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money

risked in a stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no

matter what his or her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.

But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so

there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is

almost an unknown thing--and has been, from the beginning.

Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but

when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between

European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of

the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720--time of Law and the Mississippi

Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any

madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely

comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a

cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly

anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more "American" than

it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid

Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.

But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions.

When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is

peculiarly and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when

he encounters a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person

would merely examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it

go; but that is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know

why that thing exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he

will not let go of it until he has found out. And in every instance he

will find that reason where no one but himself would have thought of

looking for it. He does not seem to care for a reason that is not

picturesquely located; one might almost say picturesquely and impossibly

located.

He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married

women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have

told him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of

the country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a

trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is

not particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the

character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding

out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but

himself.

In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women

are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it

that protects her?

It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties

to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to

M. Bourget: "Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that

a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the

beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room

for the corruptor."

Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went

at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column--three

columns--and with artillery.

"Two reasons of a very different kind explain"--that fact.

And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two

reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not

retreat now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I

am honest and not trying to deceive any one.

1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer

in New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created

by a Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished

adultery with death.

2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are

protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.

If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian

irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of

'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this paralyzing

Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.

1. This universality of "protection" has existed in our country from the

beginning; before the death penalty existed in New England, and during

all the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled.

2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that

any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet

been thought of.

Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty

years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business

thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.

Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were

"protected" by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan scare--what

is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000?

They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy

divorce law to protect them.

Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking--hunting for

it in out-of-the-way places--was new; but that was an error. I remember

that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other

astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion

which M. Bourget employs in his seasonings about American social facts

and their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way

was caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,

which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific

gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure--by the

natural processes of animal decay--of the phosphorus contained in them.

This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much

thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His

own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs;

and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that

the locusts do like that in Egypt.

Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important

contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard

it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced

against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a

detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso

suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join

their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards

burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.

These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received

with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,

who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to

account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that

the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was

because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly

flat.

As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a

scientific one. He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in

anecdotes."

Why? "In history they are all false"--a sufficiently broad statement

--"in literature all libelous"--also a sufficiently sweeping statement,

coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are peculiarly

extravagant in our language--" and when it is a matter of social life,

"almost all biased." It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He

has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes--

mainly "biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in literature,"

furnished by his pen, they must be "all libelous." Or did he mean not in

literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not

able to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have

only the translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had

an intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that

either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the

confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got

side-tracked.

"But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on divorces

appear to me to be most conclusive." And he sets himself the task of

explaining--in a couple of columns--the process by which Easy-Divorce

conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an

empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN 40 YEARS.

No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion for statistics

he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle.

I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns,

but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was.

I was not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to

gradually dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with

interest, for I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery

in America, but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it.

I only know it didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.

Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute

it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and

resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so,

when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke

all up. I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that

grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul then, and I was

Consul-General--for the United States, of course; but we were very

intimate, notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I waived that.

One day something offered the opening, and he said:

"Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an

American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his

time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his

grandfather was!"

I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was

back at him as quick as a flash--"Right, your Excellency! But I reckon

a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too; because when

all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't find out who

his father was!"

Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on!

He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:

"Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George, I never heard it

said so good in my life before! Say it again."

So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and

then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it,

and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same.

In my opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those

dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of

a fresh sort of original way.

But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is

the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was

coming to Paris, I read 'La Terre'.

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

[The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review

in an article entitled "Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max

O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that

article. It is possible that the position assumed here--that

M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself--is untenable.]

You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,

if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may

say it without hurt--and certainly I mean no offence--I believe you would

have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at

home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,

persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect

when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the

above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of

practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it

lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that

it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it

wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any

more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I

have named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack

of practice in dictating.

Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you

had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and

definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the

reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific

invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an

intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into

a private dispute between friends, unasked.

Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in

this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck

strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one,

of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized

representative. I asked some questions--asked them of myself.

I answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all

devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of

guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one

page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and

our ways; two or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain

results which it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show

the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of

slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary

workmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them;

then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat--for certain reasons--that I

closed with an anecdote.

When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to "answer" a "reply" to

that article of mine, I said "yes," and waited in Paris for the

proof-sheets of the "reply" to come. I already knew, by the cablegram,

that the "reply" would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew

it would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at

liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in

view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your

matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help. No,

a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest.

Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No,

he could not venture it. It would look too much like anxiety to get in

at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could

not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; that is

to say, a pretext--a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into

my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from

their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to

get in? No; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a

certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself. I knew you did it to

save yourself manual labor.

And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content--perfectly

content.

Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me,

if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.

Because then it would have replied--and that is really what a Reply is

for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute--as you will easily

concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold of:

he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the

refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead

of dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's

mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using

one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set.

Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A

SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON--as in the present case--when he ought to

employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The

great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a

fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas

the great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation

between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent

desertion of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by

quoting example IV., section from chapter ix. of "Revised Rules for

Conducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person," it will

assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets

of rules:

Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?

Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear

off I--

Shouter. It's his NAME I want--his NAME.

Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.

Shouter. No, no, no!--you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If--

Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again,

and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.

You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is

really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours;

in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand.

I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your

doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of

nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your

disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe

statistics and far facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and

come back at me with eight pages of weather.

I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with

change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own

article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons

on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with

a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is

weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you

discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:

"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that

is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its

interior;"--[And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has passed

six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting

down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part,

I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native

opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country

struck the foreigner.'"]--which is a quite clear way of saying that a

foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to

impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing

way, but it leaves me nothing to combat. You should give me something to

deny and refute; I would do as much for you.

It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of

your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I

wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: "If ever you should insist in

seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your

countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be

exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier

days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.

NOTICE.

Persons attempting to find a motive in

this narrative will be prosecuted;

persons attempting to find a moral in it

will be banished; persons attempting to

find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.

The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must

not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the

life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have

you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But is leaves me

nothing to combat; and that is damage to me.

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget?

If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a

general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us.

--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France can

teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic

feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many

avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not

perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.

She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that

money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that

wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and

confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by

their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.

These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular

and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by

whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards,

and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.

I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his

club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who

had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would

be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown

his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark

Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor

stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following

day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from

business?']--It is a good answer.

It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning which

we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the

verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be

subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly

as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a

detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay

evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly

facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute.

I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself

pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too,

when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes

which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness

than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and

surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to

elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing

the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass

business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful

people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us--but

enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us?

She can teach us all the fine arts--and does. She throws open her

hospitable art academies, and says to us, "Come"--and we come, troops and

troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters

in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that

we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with

prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and

when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home

and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come

with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill--there is nothing

to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America

do? She charges a duty on French works of art!

I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth

talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue,

something to refute--but you persistently won't. You leave good chances

unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing

unimportant things. For instance, you have proven and established these

eight facts here following--a good score as to number, but not worth

while:

Mark Twain is--

1. "Insulting."

2. (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined humor, 1st."

3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.

4. Has uttered "an ill-natured sneer."

5. Is "nasty."

6. Needs a "lesson in politeness and good manners."

7. Has published a "nasty article."

8. Has made remarks "unworthy of a gentleman."--["It is more funny than

his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote, and would have been less insulting."]

A quoted remark of mine "is a gross insult to a nation friendly to

America."

"He has read La Terre, this refined humorist."

"When Mark Twain visits a garden . . . he goes in the far-away corner

where the soil is prepared."

"Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them" (the

Frenchwomen).

"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter,

nasty."

"But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.

"Mark might certainly have derived from it" (M. Bourget's book) "a lesson

in politeness and good manners."

A quoted remark of mine is "unworthy of a gentleman."--

These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much

for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress

them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to

name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that

exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very

young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name

them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and

arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think

that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly

strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your

proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection:

"It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as

personal."

It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not

needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you

any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your

unoffending and dearest ones present.

Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you

would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like

that one of yours to a lady for a small fault--or a large one.--[When M.

Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the

Americans, "who can always get away with a few years' trying to find out

who their grandfathers were,"] he merely makes an allusion to an American

foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is

when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the

Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in

their name!

Snobbery . . . . I could give Mark Twain an example of the American

specimen. It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared

my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of

American character instead of a rare exception.

I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of

a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like

private engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be

given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to

arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a

postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of

after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally

to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: "I

suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture."

I fairly shorted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in

a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:

"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had

the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy

of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained

by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest

you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being

entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to

expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New

York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to

expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to

keep the engagement."

Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort,

adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique

scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the

gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not!

[But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do

it.]--We should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have

associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to

crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for

we have a saying, "Who humiliates my mother includes his own."

Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter,

M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously

inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it

with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your

article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve

you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which

you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the

harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could

have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him

to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a

higher quality.

Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent

information about Balzac and those others.--["Now the style of M.

Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to

Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian,

Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read

Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave

for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre

Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he read Victor Hugo's

'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the

plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of

modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world

for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre--this kind-hearted,

refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the

violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the

far-away corner where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M.

Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only

way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to

Paris I read La Terre.'"]--All this in simple justice to you--and to me;

for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong

your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being

equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.

And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which

the Reply grew--the anecdote which closed my recent article--and consider

how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions.

If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that

anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of

times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back

way. But I accuse you of nothing--nothing but error. When you say that

I "retort by calling France a nation of bastards," it is an error. And

not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything

resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use

so gross a word as that.

You told an anecdote. A funny one--I admit that. It hit a foible of our

American aristocracy, and it stung me--I admit that; it stung me sharply.

It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the

gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:

"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?"

That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.

Now that hits only a few of us, I grant--just the upper crust only--but

it hits exceedingly hard.

I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your

chapters I found this chance:

"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts

and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of

the French soul."

You see? Your "higher Parisian" class--not everybody, not the nation,

but only the top crust of the Ovation--applies to debauchery all the

powers of its soul.

I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an

anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me

--but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed)

in paragraph eleven of your Reply.--[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not

like M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great

French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist

we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking

a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]

For example:

See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:

"I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because

whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can

always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather

was."

Hear the answer:

"I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too;

because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't

find out who his father was."

The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery.

I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a

gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women--a remark

unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman,

a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark

Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it

is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to

you.

If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French "chestnut," I might have

told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and

would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each

other. "Ah, hold your tongue," says one, "you ain't got no father."

"Ain't got no father!" replies the other; "I've got more fathers than

you."

Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because

it had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point. You

wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.

My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It

wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark

about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it

would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had

struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the

entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and

if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment.

But you are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed

the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.

Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can

to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do

anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.

I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.

We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I

will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of

France:

"Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your

grandfathers were?"

They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can

trace their lineage back through centuries.

And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation,

saying:

"And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers

were." They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because

they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.

Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point,

you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.

That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it.

I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing

that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your

amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so.

And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with

another one--on the give-and-take principle, you know--which is American.

I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you

didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything comfortable again,

and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I

know you will forgive me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

TOM SAWYER ABROAD

CHAPTER I. TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES

DO you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean

the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky Jim

free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn't. It only just p'isoned

him for more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we three came

back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and

the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and

everybody hurrah'd and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what Tom

Sawyer had always been hankering to be.

For a while he WAS satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tilted

up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some

called him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to

bust. You see he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went

down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by

the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but

land! they just knuckled to the dirt before TOM.

Well, I don't know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been

for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim,

and kind o' good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his

age, and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. For as much as thirty

years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation--I mean

a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of

it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had

told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time.

And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring

and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give the poor old man the high

strikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say

"My land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes alive!" and all such

things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got

its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest,

the poor old cretur would chip in on HIS same old travels and work them

for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn't go for

much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings,

and then the old man again--and so on, and so on, for an hour and more,

each trying to beat out the other.

You see, Parsons' travels happened like this: When he first got to be

postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for

somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village.

Well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter

stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave

him a conniption. The postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another

thing to worry about. There wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and

he reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him responsible for it and maybe turn

him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. Well, at last he

couldn't stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights, he couldn't eat,

he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he da'sn't ask anybody's advice,

for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the

gov'ment know about the letter. He had the letter buried under the floor,

but that did no good; if he happened to see a person standing over the

place it'd give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions,

and he would sit up that night till the town was still and dark, and then

he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. Of

course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and

whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, they judged he

had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didn't know what,

and if he had been a stranger they would've lynched him.

Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he

made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the President

of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not

keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the

whole gov'ment, and say, "Now, there she is--do with me what you're a

mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man and not

deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family

that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do with it, which is the

whole truth and I can swear to it."

So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some

stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took

him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of

villages and four cities. He was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never

was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels

made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about;

and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and

from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him--and there

they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see anything like it.

Well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler;

some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat

had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom

was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was

about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous

adventures, and try to get ahead THAT way. That bullet-wound in Tom's leg

was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best

he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for Tom didn't set still as he'd

orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked

his limp while Nat was painting up the adventure that HE had in

Washington; for Tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but

practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along.

Nat's adventure was like this; I don't know how true it is; maybe he got

it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he DID

know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn

pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls

got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near

as I can remember:

He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to

the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President

was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia--not a

minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it made him

so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But just

then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his

chance. He rushes out and shouts: "A half a dollar if you git me to the

Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty

minutes!"

"Done!" says the darky.

Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and

a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it

was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on

for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in

the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet was on

the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't

keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work

for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs

fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the

crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under

the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows,

and he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the

nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, "Don't you

fret, I'se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; I's gwine to do it, sho'!"

for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he

couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. And so they went

ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; and when they got

to the Capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and

everybody said so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered

out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and

just in time, and caught the President and give him the letter, and

everything was all right, and the President give him a free pardon on the

spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because

he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't'a' got there in

time, nor anywhere near it.

It WAS a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work his

bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it.

Well, by and by Tom's glory got to paling down gradu'ly, on account of

other things turning up for the people to talk about--first a horse-race,

and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on

top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always

does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about Tom, so to speak,

and you never see a person so sick and disgusted.

Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day

out, and when I asked him what WAS he in such a state about, he said it

'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him

getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a

name for himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always

thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it.

So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and

pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer

was always free and generous that way. There's a-plenty of boys that's

mighty good and friendly when YOU'VE got a good thing, but when a good

thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to

hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's way, I can say that for him.

There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you

when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they've

got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a

core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going

to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with; all you got to

do is to wait.

Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was.

It was a crusade.

"What's a crusade?" I says.

He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a

person, and says:

"Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?"

"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now

and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me,

I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out

things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any

occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk

Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a

crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a

patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he--"

"Patent-right!" says he. "I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a

kind of war."

I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and

went right on, perfectly ca'm.

"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."

"Which Holy Land?"

"Why, the Holy Land--there ain't but one."

"What do we want of it?"

"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our

duty to take it away from them."

"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."

"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I

says:

"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and

another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--"

"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn.

It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They

own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO own; but it was

our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they

haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought

not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away

from them."

"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now, if

I had a farm and another person--"

"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is

business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you

can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally

different."

"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

"Certainly; it's always been considered so."

Jim he shook his head, and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers--dey mos' sholy is.

I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't

run across none dat acts like dat."

It made Tom hot, and he says:

"Well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! If

either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur

de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the most

noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the

paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away

from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time--and yet here's a

couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of Missouri

setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than

they did! Talk about cheek!"

Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim

felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so

chipper. I couldn't say nothing, and Jim he couldn't for a while; then he

says:

"Well, den, I reckon it's all right; beca'se ef dey didn't know, dey

ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en so,

ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. Same

time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom. De hard part gwine to

be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done

him no harm. Dat's it, you see. Ef we wuz to go 'mongst 'em, jist we

three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's

jist like yuther people. Don't you reckon dey is? Why, DEY'D give it, I

know dey would, en den--"

"Then what?"

"Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain't no use, we CAN'T kill dem

po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice--I

knows it perfectly well, Mars Tom--'deed I knows it perfectly well. But

ef we takes a' axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de

river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fam'ly dat's

over on the Sny, en burns dey house down, en--"

"Oh, you make me tired!" says Tom. "I don't want to argue any more with

people like you and Huck Finn, that's always wandering from the subject,

and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's

pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!"

Now that's just where Tom Sawyer warn't fair. Jim didn't mean no harm,

and I didn't mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right and we

was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the HOW of it, and that was

all; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it

was because we was ignorant--yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain't denying

that; but, land! that ain't no crime, I should think.

But he wouldn't hear no more about it--just said if we had tackled the

thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand

knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a

lieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the

whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the

world in a glory like sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take

the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. And he

didn't. When he once got set, you couldn't budge him.