Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus,

tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful

of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike,

and never doing it. It was a lovely region, woodsy, balmy, delicious,

and had once been populous, long years before, but now the

people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude.

They went away when the surface diggings gave out. In one place,

where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies

and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse

of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life

had ever been present there. This was down toward Tuttletown.

In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads,

one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy,

and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors

and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were

deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed

families who could neither sell them nor give them away. Now and then,

half an hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest

mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the

cottage-builders. In some few cases these cabins were still occupied;

and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant

was the very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend

on another thing, too--that he was there because he had once had

his opportunity to go home to the States rich, and had not done it;

had rather lost his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved

to sever all communication with his home relatives and friends,

and be to them thenceforth as one dead. Round about California

in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men

--pride-smitten poor fellows, grizzled and old at forty, whose secret

thoughts were made all of regrets and longings--regrets for their

wasted lives, and longings to be out of the struggle and done with it all.

It was a lonesome land! Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses

of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse

of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad

to be alive. And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon,

when I caught sight of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift.

This person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was

standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages

of the sort already referred to. However, this one hadn't

a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted

and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard,

which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing.

I was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home

--it was the custom of the country.

It was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily

and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this

implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups,

bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war

pictures from the Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls.

That was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a

nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something

in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted

by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be,

that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment.

I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so,

and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul

in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies

and lamp-mats, and Windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with

sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little

unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes

about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would

miss in a moment if they were taken away. The delight that was

in my heart showed in my face, and the man saw it and was pleased;

saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it had been spoken.

"All her work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself

--every bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full

of affectionate worship. One of those soft Japanese fabrics

with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a

picture-frame was out of adjustment. He noticed it, and rearranged

it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge

the effect before he got it to suit him. Then he gave it a light

finishing pat or two with his hand, and said: "She always does that.

You can't tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something

until you've done that--you can see it yourself after it's done,

but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of it.

It's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair

after she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon. I've seen her

fix all these things so much that I can do them all just her way,

though I don't know the law of any of them. But she knows the law.

She knows the why and the how both; but I don't know the why;

I only know the how."

He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom

as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows,

carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror

and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand,

with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish,

and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white

for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation.

So my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words:

"All her work; she did it all herself--every bit. Nothing here

that hasn't felt the touch of her hand. Now you would think

--But I mustn't talk so much."

By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail

of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place,

where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit;

and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways,

you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man

wanted me to discover for myself. I knew it perfectly, and I knew

he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so I

tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him.

I failed several times, as I could see out of the corner of my eye

without being told; but at last I knew I must be looking straight

at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves

from him. He broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together,

and cried out:

"That's it! You've found it. I knew you would. It's her picture."

I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall,

and did find there what I had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case.

It contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful,

as it seemed to me, that I had ever seen. The man drank the admiration

from my face, and was fully satisfied.

"Nineteen her last birthday," he said, as he put the picture back;

"and that was the day we were married. When you see her--ah, just wait

till you see her!"

"Where is she? When will she be in?"

"Oh, she's away now. She's gone to see her people. They live

forty or fifty miles from here. She's been gone two weeks today."

"When do you expect her back?"

"This is Wednesday. She'll be back Saturday, in the evening

--about nine o'clock, likely."

I felt a sharp sense of disappointment.

"I'm sorry, because I'll be gone then," I said, regretfully.

"Gone? No--why should you go? Don't go. She'll be disappointed."

She would be disappointed--that beautiful creature! If she had said

the words herself they could hardly have blessed me more. I was

feeling a deep, strong longing to see her--a longing so supplicating,

so insistent, that it made me afraid. I said to myself: "I will

go straight away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake."

"You see, she likes to have people come and stop with us

--people who know things, and can talk--people like you. She delights

in it; for she knows--oh, she knows nearly everything herself,

and can talk, oh, like a bird--and the books she reads, why, you would

be astonished. Don't go; it's only a little while, you know,

and she'll be so disappointed."

I heard the words, but hardly noticed them, I was so deep in my

thinkings and strugglings. He left me, but I didn't know.

Presently he was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he

held it open before me and said:

"There, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her,

and you wouldn't."

That second glimpse broke down my good resolution. I would stay

and take the risk. That night we smoked the tranquil pipe,

and talked till late about various things, but mainly about her;

and certainly I had had no such pleasant and restful time for many

a day. The Thursday followed and slipped comfortably away.

Toward twilight a big miner from three miles away came--one of

the grizzled, stranded pioneers--and gave us warm salutation,

clothed in grave and sober speech. Then he said:

"I only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when

is she coming home. Any news from her?"

"Oh, yes, a letter. Would you like to hear it, Tom?"

"Well, I should think I would, if you don't mind, Henry!"

Henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip

some of the private phrases, if we were willing; then he went

on and read the bulk of it--a loving, sedate, and altogether

charming and gracious piece of handiwork, with a postscript full

of affectionate regards and messages to Tom, and Joe, and Charley,

and other close friends and neighbors.

As the reader finished, he glanced at Tom, and cried out:

"Oho, you're at it again! Take your hands away, and let me see

your eyes. You always do that when I read a letter from her.

I will write and tell her."

"Oh no, you mustn't, Henry. I'm getting old, you know, and any

little disappointment makes me want to cry. I thought she'd

be here herself, and now you've got only a letter."

"Well, now, what put that in your head? I thought everybody knew

she wasn't coming till Saturday."

"Saturday! Why, come to think, I did know it. I wonder

what's the matter with me lately? Certainly I knew it.

Ain't we all getting ready for her? Well, I must be going now.

But I'll be on hand when she comes, old man!"

Late Friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his

cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little

gaiety and a good time Saturday night, if Henry thought she wouldn't

be too tired after her journey to be kept up.

"Tired? She tired! Oh, hear the man! Joe, YOU know she'd sit up

six weeks to please any one of you!"

When Joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read,

and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up;

but he said he was such an old wreck that THAT would happen to him

if she only just mentioned his name. "Lord, we miss her so!"

he said.

Saturday afternoon I found I was taking out my watch pretty often.

Henry noticed it, and said, with a startled look:

"You don't think she ought to be here soon, do you?"

I felt caught, and a little embarrassed; but I laughed, and said

it was a habit of mine when I was in a state of expenctancy.

But he didn't seem quite satisfied; and from that time on he began

to show uneasiness. Four times he walked me up the road to a point

whence we could see a long distance; and there he would stand,

shading his eyes with his hand, and looking. Several times he said:

"I'm getting worried, I'm getting right down worried. I know

she's not due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems

to be trying to warn me that something's happened. You don't

think anything has happened, do you?"

I began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness;

and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time,

I lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him.

It seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded

and so humble after that, that I detested myself for having done

the cruel and unnecessary thing. And so I was glad when Charley,

another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled

up to Henry to hear the letter read, and talked over the preparations

for the welcome. Charley fetched out one hearty speech after another,

and did his best to drive away his friend's bodings and apprehensions.

"Anything HAPPENED to her? Henry, that's pure nonsense. There isn't

anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that.

What did the letter say? Said she was well, didn't it? And said

she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? Did you ever know her

to fail of her word? Why, you know you never did. Well, then,

don't you fret; she'll BE here, and that's absolutely certain,

and as sure as you are born. Come, now, let's get to decorating

--not much time left."

Pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived, and then all hands set about adoring

the house with flowers. Toward nine the three miners said that

as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up,

for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for

a good, old-fashioned break-down. A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet

--these were the instruments. The trio took their places side by side,

and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat time with

their big boots.

It was getting very close to nine. Henry was standing in the door

with his eyes directed up the road, his body swaying to the torture

of his mental distress. He had been made to drink his wife's

health and safety several times, and now Tom shouted:

"All hands stand by! One more drink, and she's here!"

Joe brought the glasses on a waiter, and served the party.

I reached for one of the two remaining glasses, but Joe growled

under his breath:

"Drop that! Take the other."

Which I did. Henry was served last. He had hardly swallowed his

drink when the clock began to strike. He listened till it finished,

his face growing pale and paler; then he said:

"Boys, I'm sick with fear. Help me--I want to lie down!"

They helped him to the sofa. He began to nestle and drowse,

but presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said:

"Did I hear horses' feet? Have they come?"

One of the veterans answered, close to his ear: "It was Jimmy

Parish come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up

the road a piece, and coming along. Her horse is lame, but she'll

be here in half an hour."

"Oh, I'm SO thankful nothing has happened!"

He was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth.

In a moment those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked

him into his bed in the chamber where I had washed my hands.

They closed the door and came back. Then they seemed preparing to leave;

but I said: "Please don't go, gentlemen. She won't know me; I am

a stranger."

They glanced at each other. Then Joe said:

"She? Poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!"

"Dead?"

"That or worse. She went to see her folks half a year after she

was married, and on her way back, on a Saturday evening, the Indians

captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been

heard of since."

"And he lost his mind in consequence?"

"Never has been sane an hour since. But he only gets bad when

that time of year comes round. Then we begin to drop in here,

three days before she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard

from her, and Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers,

and get everything ready for a dance. We've done it every year

for nineteen years. The first Saturday there was twenty-seven

of us, without counting the girls; there's only three of us now,

and the girls are gone. We drug him to sleep, or he would go wild;

then he's all right for another year--thinks she's with him till the

last three or four days come round; then he begins to look for her,

and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it

to us. Lord, she was a darling!"

A HELPLESS SITUATION

Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern,

a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance,

yet I cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me.

It affects me as the locomotive always affects me: I saw to myself,

"I have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way,

yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive

you is clearly beyond human genius--you can't exist, you don't exist,

yet here you are!"

I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. I yearn to print it,

and where is the harm? The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt,

and if I conceal her name and address--her this-world address

--I am sure her shade will not mind. And with it I wish to print

the answer which I wrote at the time but probably did not send.

If it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy,

for I find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter.

To that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send,

fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; I have done it many

a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort.

THE LETTER

X------, California, JUNE 3, 1879.

Mr. S. L. Clemens, HARTFORD, CONN.:

Dear Sir,--You will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed

to write and ask a favor of you. Let your memory go back to your days

in the Humboldt mines--'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett

and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was

half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp

--strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the

desert to where the last claim was, at the divide. The lean-to

you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down

through one night, as told about by you in ROUGHING IT--my uncle

Simmons remembers it very well. He lived in the principal cabin,

half-way up the divide, along with Dixon and Parker and Smith.

It had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks,

and was the only one that had. You and your party were there on

the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, Uncle Simmons

often speaks of it. It seems curious that dried-apple-pie should

have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far

Humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim

the regular bill of fare was. Sixteen years ago--it is a long time.

I was a little girl then, only fourteen. I never saw you, I lived

in Washoe. But Uncle Simmons ran across you every now and then,

all during those weeks that you and party were there working

your claim which was like the rest. The camp played out long

and long ago, there wasn't silver enough in it to make a button.

You never saw my husband, but he was there after you left, AND LIVED

IN THAT VERY LEAN-TO, a bachelor then but married to me now.

He often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days,

he would have taken the lean-to. He got hurt in the old Hal Clayton

claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast

and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best

he could. It landed him clear down on the train and hit a Piute.

For weeks they thought he would not get over it but he did,

and is all right, now. Has been ever since. This is a long

introduction but it is the only way I can make myself known.

The favor I ask I feel assured your generous heart will grant:

Give me some advice about a book I have written. I do not claim

anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as most

of the books of the times. I am unknown in the literary world

and you know what that means unless one has some one of influence

(like yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you.

I would like to place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you

would suggest.

This is a secret from my husband and family. I intend

it as a surprise in case I get it published.

Feeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write

me a letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see

them for me and then let me hear.

I appeal to you to grant me this favor. With deepest gratitude I

think you for your attention.

One knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing

letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other

direction across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly,

unceasingly, unrestingly. It goes to every well-known merchant,

and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and Mayor,

and Congressman, and Governor, and editor, and publisher, and author,

and broker, and banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed

to have "influence." It always follows the one pattern: "You do

not know me, BUT YOU ONCE KNEW A RELATIVE OF MINE," etc., etc.

We should all like to help the applicants, we should all be glad

to do it, we should all like to return the sort of answer that

is desired, but--Well, there is not a thing we can do that would

be a help, for not in any instance does that latter ever come from

anyone who CAN be helped. The struggler whom you COULD help does

his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger.

He has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and

with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone.

That pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable,

the unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it?

What do you find to say? You do not want to inflict a wound;

you hunt ways to avoid that. What do you find? How do you get out

of your hard place with a contend conscience? Do you try to explain?

The old reply of mine to such a letter shows that I tried that once.

Was I satisfied with the result? Possibly; and possibly not;

probably not; almost certainly not. I have long ago forgotten all

about it. But, anyway, I append my effort:

THE REPLY

I know Mr. H., and I will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection

you find you still desire it. There will be a conversation.

I know the form it will take. It will be like this:

MR. H. How do her books strike you?

MR. CLEMENS. I am not acquainted with them.

H. Who has been her publisher?

C. I don't know.

H. She HAS one, I suppose?

C. I--I think not.

H. Ah. You think this is her first book?

C. Yes--I suppose so. I think so.

H. What is it about? What is the character of it?

C. I believe I do not know.

H. Have you seen it?

C. Well--no, I haven't.

H. Ah-h. How long have you known her?

C. I don't know her.

H. Don't know her?

C. No.

H. Ah-h. How did you come to be interested in her book, then?

C. Well, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her,

and mentioned you.

H. Why should she apply to you instead of me?

C. She wished me to use my influence.

H. Dear me, what has INFLUENCE to do with such a matter?

C. Well, I think she thought you would be more likely to examine

her book if you were influenced.

H. Why, what we are here FOR is to examine books--anybody's book

that comes along. It's our BUSINESS. Why should we turn away

a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? It would be foolish.

No publisher does it. On what ground did she request your influence,

since you do not know her? She must have thought you knew her

literature and could speak for it. Is that it?

C. No; she knew I didn't.

H. Well, what then? She had a reason of SOME sort for believing you

competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations

to do it?

C. Yes, I--I knew her uncle.

H. Knew her UNCLE?

C. Yes.

H. Upon my word! So, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature;

he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed;

you are satisfied, and therefore--

C. NO, that isn't all, there are other ties. I know the cabin

her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I

came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID

know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he

went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit

an Indian in the back with almost fatal consequences.

H. To HIM, or to the Indian?

C. She didn't say which it was.

H. (WITH A SIGH). It certainly beats the band! You don't know HER,

you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when

the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build

an estimate of her book upon, so far as I--

C. I knew her uncle. You are forgetting her uncle.

H. Oh, what use is HE? Did you know him long? How long was it?

C. Well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have

met him, anyway. I think it was that way; you can't tell about

these things, you know, except when they are recent.

H. Recent? When was all this?

C. Sixteen years ago.

H. What a basis to judge a book upon! As first you said you knew him,

and now you don't know whether you did or not.

C. Oh yes, I know him; anyway, I think I thought I did; I'm perfectly

certain of it.

H. What makes you think you thought you knew him?

C. Why, she says I did, herself.

H. SHE says so!

C. Yes, she does, and I DID know him, too, though I don't remember

it now.

H. Come--how can you know it when you don't remember it.

C. _I_ don't know. That is, I don't know the process, but I DO know

lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things

that I don't know. It's so with every educated person.

H. (AFTER A PAUSE). Is your time valuable?

C. No--well, not very.

H. Mine is.

So I came away then, because he was looking tired. Overwork, I reckon;

I never do that; I have seen the evil effects of it. My mother

was always afraid I would overwork myself, but I never did.

Dear madam, you see how it would happen if I went there. He would

ask me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him,

and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed

more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on

account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done.

I wish I could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not

care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them,

it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything

but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence.

But they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them,

no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. If you will send

yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it,

I can assure you of that.

A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION

Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting

by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest

curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article

on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was

going on in the room. I notice that one can always write best when

somebody is talking through a telephone close by. Well, the thing

began in this way. A member of our household came in and asked me

to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown.

I have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from

calling up the central office themselves. I don't know why,

but they do. So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued:

CENTRAL OFFICE. (GRUFFY.) Hello!

I. Is it the Central Office?

C. O. Of course it is. What do you want?

I. Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please?

C. O. All right. Just keep your ear to the telephone.

Then I heard K-LOOK, K-LOOK, K'LOOK--KLOOK-KLOOK-KLOOK-LOOK-LOOK! then

a horrible "gritting" of teeth, and finally a piping female voice:

Y-e-s? (RISING INFLECTION.) Did you wish to speak to me?

Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down.

Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world

--a conversation with only one end of it. You hear questions asked;

you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear

no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence,

followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations

of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail

of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the

other end of the wire says. Well, I heard the following remarkable

series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted

--for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone:

Yes? Why, how did THAT happen?

Pause.

What did you say?

Pause.

Oh no, I don't think it was.

Pause.

NO! Oh no, I didn't mean THAT. I meant, put it in while it

is still boiling--or just before it COMES to a boil.

Pause.

WHAT?

Pause.

I turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge.

Pause.

Yes, I like that way, too; but I think it's better to baste it

on with Valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort.

It gives it such an air--and attracts so much noise.

Pause.

It's forty-ninth Deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive.

I think we ought all to read it often.

Pause.

Perhaps so; I generally use a hair pin.

Pause.

What did you say? (ASIDE.) Children, do be quiet!

Pause

OH! B FLAT! Dear me, I thought you said it was the cat!

Pause.

Since WHEN?

Pause.

Why, _I_ never heard of it.

Pause.

You astound me! It seems utterly impossible!

Pause.

WHO did?

Pause.

Good-ness gracious!

Pause.

Well, what IS this world coming to? Was it right in CHURCH?

Pause.

And was her MOTHER there?

Pause.

Why, Mrs. Bagley, I should have died of humiliation! What did

they DO?

Long pause.

I can't be perfectly sure, because I haven't the notes by me;

but I think it goes something like this: te-rolly-loll-loll, loll

lolly-loll-loll, O tolly-loll-loll-LEE-LY-LI-I-do! And then REPEAT,

you know.

Pause.

Yes, I think it IS very sweet--and very solemn and impressive,

if you get the andantino and the pianissimo right.

Pause.

Oh, gum-drops, gum-drops! But I never allow them to eat striped candy.

And of course they CAN'T, till they get their teeth, anyway.

Pause.

WHAT?

Pause.

Oh, not in the least--go right on. He's here writing--it doesn't

bother HIM.

Pause.

Very well, I'll come if I can. (ASIDE.) Dear me, how it does tire

a person's arm to hold this thing up so long! I wish she'd--

Pause.

Oh no, not at all; I LIKE to talk--but I'm afraid I'm keeping you

from your affairs.

Pause.

Visitors?

Pause.

No, we never use butter on them.

Pause.

Yes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they

are very unhealthy when they are out of season. And HE doesn't

like them, anyway--especially canned.

Pause.

Oh, I think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty

cents a bunch.

Pause.

MUST you go? Well, GOOD-by.

Pause.

Yes, I think so. GOOD-by.

Pause.

Four o'clock, then--I'll be ready. GOOD-by.

Pause.

Thank you ever so much. GOOD-by.

Pause.

Oh, not at all!--just as fresh--WHICH? Oh, I'm glad to hear you

say that. GOOD-by.

(Hangs up the telephone and says, "Oh, it DOES tire a person's

arm so!")

A man delivers a single brutal "Good-by," and that is the end of it.

Not so with the gentle sex--I say it in their praise; they cannot

abide abruptness.

EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE

These two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins,

or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans,

and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly

grew very fond of them. The Brants were always saying: "Be pure,

honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success

in life is assured." The children heard this repeated some thousands

of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves

long before they could say the Lord's Prayer; it was painted over

the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read.

It was destined to be the unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life.

Sometimes the Brants changed the wording a little, and said:

"Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never

lack friends."

Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him. When he wanted

candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented

himself without it. When Baby Benton wanted candy, he cried for it

until he got it. Baby Mills took care of his toys; Baby Benton

always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself

so insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house,

little Edward was persuaded to yield up his play-things to him.

When the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense

in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he

shone frequently in new ones, with was not the case with Eddie.

The boys grew apace. Eddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie an

increasing solicitude. It was always sufficient to say, in answer

to Eddie's petitions, "I would rather you would not do it"

--meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing,

and all sorts of things which boys delight in. But NO answer

was sufficient for Georgie; he had to be humored in his desires,

or he would carry them with a high hand. Naturally, no boy got

more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no body

ever had a better time. The good Brants did not allow the boys

to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed

at that hour; Eddie honorably remained, but Georgie usually slipped

out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight.

It seemed impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the

Brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles,

to stay in. The good Brants gave all their time and attention

to vain endeavors to regulate Georgie; they said, with grateful

tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed no efforts of theirs,

he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect.

By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed

to a trade: Edward went voluntarily; George was coaxed and bribed.

Edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the

good Brants; they praised him, so did his master; but George ran away,

and it cost Mr. Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get

him back. By and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble.

He ran away a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him.

Trouble and expense for Mr. Brant once more; and, besides, it was with

the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master

to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft.

Edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner

in his master's business. George did not improve; he kept the loving

hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full

of inventive activities to protect him from ruin. Edward, as a boy,

had interested himself in Sunday-schools, debating societies,

penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity

associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but

steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies,

and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men. This

excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his "natural bent."

Finally, the old people died. The will testified their loving

pride in Edward, and left their little property to George

--because he "needed it"; whereas, "owing to a bountiful Providence,"

such was not the case with Edward. The property was left to

George conditionally: he must buy out Edward's partner with it;

else it must go to a benevolent organization called the Prisoner's

Friend Society. The old people left a letter, in which they begged

their dear son Edward to take their place and watch over George,

and help and shield him as they had done.

Edward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in

the business. He was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling

with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now,

and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly. Edward had

been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time.

They loved each other dearly, and--But about this period George began

to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying

to Edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her

--she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it:

she must marry "poor George" and "reform him." It would break

her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty.

So she married George, and Edward's heart came very near breaking,

as well as her own. However, Edward recovered, and married another girl

--a very excellent one she was, too.

Children came to both families. Mary did her honest best to reform

her husband, but the contract was too large. George went on drinking,

and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly.

A great many good people strove with George--they were always at it,

in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty,

and did not mend his ways. He added a vice, presently--that of

secret gambling. He got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the

firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far

and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of

the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless.

Times were hard, now, and they grew worse. Edward moved his family

into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work.

He begged for it, but it was really not to be had. He was astonished

to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished

and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had

had in him faded out and disappeared. Still, he MUST get work;

so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it.

At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod,

and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that NOBODY knew

him or cared anything about him. He was not able to keep up

his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged,

and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under

the disgrace of suspension.

But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest,

the faster George rose in them. He was found lying, ragged and drunk,

in the gutter one morning. A member of the Ladies' Temperance Refuge

fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him,

kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him.

An account of it was published.

General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great

many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their

countenance and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months,

and meantime was the pet of the good. Then he fell--in the gutter;

and there was general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble

sisterhood rescued him again. They cleaned him up, they fed him,

they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got

him his situation again. An account of this, also, was published,

and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration

of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl.

A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing

speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: "We are

not about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle

in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view

with dry eyes." There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton,

escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge,

stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air

was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. Everybody wrung

the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary

was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero.

An account of it was published.

George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully

rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were

found for him. Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing,

as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense

amount of good.

He was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals

--that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get

a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought

to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it

was partially successful--he was "sent up" for only two years.

When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent

were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary

with a pardon in his pocket, the Prisoner's Friend Society met him

at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all

the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice,

encouragement and help. Edward Mills had once applied to the Prisoner's

Friend Society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question,

"Have you been a prisoner?" made brief work of his case.

While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been

quietly making head against adversity. He was still poor, but was

in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected

and trusted cashier of a bank. George Benton never came near him,

and was never heard to inquire about him. George got to indulging

in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him,

but nothing definite.

One winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank,

and found Edward Mills there alone. They commanded him to reveal

the "combination," so that they could get into the safe. He refused.

They threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him,

and he could not be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must,

but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up

the "combination." The burglars killed him.

The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved

to be George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and

orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged

that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation

of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming

forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family,

now bereft of support. The result was a mass of solid cash amounting

to upward of five hundred dollars--an average of nearly three-eights

of a cent for each bank in the Union. The cashier's own bank

testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly

failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were not square,

and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon

to escape detection and punishment.

George Benton was arraigned for trial. Then everybody seemed to

forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George.

Everything that money and influence could do was done to save him,

but it all failed; he was sentenced to death. Straightway the

Governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon;

they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids;

by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans.

But no, the Governor--for once--would not yield.

Now George Benton experienced religion. The glad news flew all around.

From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and

fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing,

and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption,

except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments.

This sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and George

Benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing

audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce.

His grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while,

and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft:

"He has fought the good fight."

The brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription: "Be pure,

honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--"

Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was

so given.

The cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said;

but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing

that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded,

have collected forty-two thousand dollars--and built a Memorial

Church with it.

THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE

Chapter I

In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said:

"Here are gifts. Take one, leave the others. And be wary,

chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable."

The gifts were five: Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death.

The youth said, eagerly:

"There is no need to consider"; and he chose Pleasure.

He went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth

delights in. But each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing,

vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him. In the end he said:

"These years I have wasted. If I could but choose again, I would

choose wisely."

Chapter II

The fairy appeared, and said:

"Four of the gifts remain. Choose once more; and oh, remember

--time is flying, and only one of them is precious."

The man considered long, then chose Love; and did not mark the tears

that rose in the fairy's eyes.

After many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home.

And he communed with himself, saying: "One by one they have gone

away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last.

Desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour

of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, as sold me I have paid

a thousand hours of grief. Out of my heart of hearts I curse him."

Chapter III

"Choose again." It was the fairy speaking.

"The years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so.

Three gifts remain. Only one of them has any worth--remember it,

and choose warily."

The man reflected long, then chose Fame; and the fairy, sighing,

went her way.

Years went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he

sat solitary in the fading day, thinking. And she knew his thought:

"My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue,

and it seemed well with me for a little while. How little a while

it was! Then came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate;

then persecution. Then derision, which is the beginning of the end.

And last of all came pity, which is the funeral of fame. Oh,

the bitterness and misery of renown! target for mud in its prime,

for contempt and compassion in its decay."

Chapter IV

"Chose yet again." It was the fairy's voice.

"Two gifts remain. And do not despair. In the beginning there

was but one that was precious, and it is still here."

"Wealth--which is power! How blind I was!" said the man.

"Now, at last, life will be worth the living. I will spend,

squander, dazzle. These mockers and despisers will crawl in the

dirt before me, and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy.

I will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit,

all contentments of the body that man holds dear. I will buy,

buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck

grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.

I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass;

I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so."

Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering

in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed,

and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:

"Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies!

And miscalled, every one. They are not gifts, but merely lendings.

Pleasure, Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for

lasting realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty. The fairy said true;

in all her store there was but one gift which was precious,

only one that was not valueless. How poor and cheap and mean I

know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one,

that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and

enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames

and griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it! I am weary,

I would rest."

Chapter V

The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.

She said:

"I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant,

but trusted me, asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me

to choose."

"Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?"

"What not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of Old Age."

THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES

From My Unpublished Autobiography

Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet,

faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature

of Mark Twain:

"Hartford, March 10, 1875.

"Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge

that fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using

the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter

with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I

would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had

made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters,

and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding

little joker."

A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine

and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that.

Mr. Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter

from his unpublished autobiography:

1904. VILLA QUARTO, FLORENCE, JANUARY.

Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me,

but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language"

--the kind of language that soothes vexation.

I have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography.

Between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap

--more than thirty years! It is sort of lifetime. In that wide interval

much has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us.

At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity.

The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the

other way about: the person who DOESN'T own one is a curiosity.

I saw a type-machine for the first time in--what year? I suppose it

was 1873--because Nasby was with me at the time, and it was in Boston.

We must have been lecturing, or we could not have been in Boston,

I take it. I quitted the platform that season.

But never mind about that, it is no matter. Nasby and I saw

the machine through a window, and went in to look at it.

The salesman explained it to us, showed us samples of its work,

and said it could do fifty-seven words a minute--a statement

which we frankly confessed that we did not believe. So he put

his type-girl to work, and we timed her by the watch. She actually

did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds. We were partly convinced,

but said it probably couldn't happen again. But it did.

We timed the girl over and over again--with the same result always:

she won out. She did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we

pocketed them as fast as she turned them out, to show as curiosities.

The price of the machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars.

I bought one, and we went away very much excited.

At the hotel we got out our slips and were a little disappointed

to find that they contained the same words. The girl had economized

time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart.

However, we argued--safely enough--that the FIRST type-girl must

naturally take rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them

could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a

half of what was in it. If the machine survived--IF it survived

--experts would come to the front, by and by, who would double the girl's

output without a doubt. They would do one hundred words a minute

--my talking speed on the platform. That score has long ago been beaten.

At home I played with the toy, repeated and repeating and repeated "The

Boy stood on the Burning Deck," until I could turn that boy's adventure

out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then I resumed the pen,

for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors.

They carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck.

By and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters,

merely), and my last until now. The machine did not do both capitals

and lower case (as now), but only capitals. Gothic capitals they were,

and sufficiently ugly. I remember the first letter I dictated.

it was to Edward Bok, who was a boy then. I was not acquainted

with him at that time. His present enterprising spirit is not new

--he had it in that early day. He was accumulating autographs, and was

not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph LETTER.

I furnished it--in type-written capitals, SIGNATURE AND ALL.

It was long; it was a sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches.

I said writing was my TRADE, my bread-and-butter; I said it was

not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade; would he

ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for

a corpse?

Now I come to an important matter--as I regard it. In the year

'74 the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine

ON THE MACHINE. In a previous chapter of this Autobiography I

have claimed that I was the first person in the world that ever had

a telephone in the house for practical purposes; I will now claim

--until dispossess--that I was the first person in the world to APPLY

THE TYPE-MACHINE TO LITERATURE. That book must have been THE

ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER. I wrote the first half of it in '72,

the rest of it in '74. My machinist type-copied a book for me

in '74, so I concluded it was that one.

That early machine was full of caprices, full of defects--devilish ones.

It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues.

After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character,

so I thought I would give it to Howells. He was reluctant, for he

was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains

so to this day. But I persuaded him. He had great confidence in me,

and I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not

believe myself. He took it home to Boston, and my morals began

to improve, but his have never recovered.

He kept it six months, and then returned it to me. I gave it away

twice after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back. Then I

gave it to our coachman, Patrick McAleer, who was very grateful,

because he did not know the animal, and thought I was trying to

make him wiser and better. As soon as he got wiser and better he

traded it to a heretic for a side-saddle which he could not use,

and there my knowledge of its history ends.

ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER

It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval

villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence. I cannot speak

the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I

am busy, and too indolent when I am not; wherefore some will

imagine that I am having a dull time of it. But it is not so.

The "help" are all natives; they talk Italian to me, I answer

in English; I do not understand them, they do not understand me,

consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied. In order

to be just and fair, I throw in an Italian word when I have one,

and this has a good influence. I get the word out of the morning paper.

I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that Italian words

do not keep in this climate. They fade toward night, and next

morning they are gone. But it is no matter; I get a new one out

of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it

while it lasts. I have no dictionary, and I do not want one;

I can select words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect.

Many of them have French or German or English look, and these are

the ones I enslave for the day's service. That is, as a rule.

Not always. If I find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look

and warbles musically along I do not care to know the meaning of it;

I pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if I pronounce it

carefully HE will understand it, and that's enough.

Yesterday's word was AVANTI. It sounds Shakespearian, and probably

means Avaunt and quit my sight. Today I have a whole phrase:

SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO. I do not know what it means, but it seems

to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction. Although as a rule

my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, I have

several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason,

and these come very handy when I get into a long conversation and need

things to fire up with in monotonous stretches. One of the best ones

is DOV' `E IL GATTO. It nearly always produces a pleasant surprise,

therefore I save it up for places where I want to express applause

or admiration. The fourth word has a French sound, and I think

the phrase means "that takes the cake."

During my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy

and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was

well content without it. It has been four weeks since I had seen

a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace,

and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight.

Then came a change that was to be expected: the appetite for news

began to rise again, after this invigorating rest. I had to feed it,

but I was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again;

I determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one.

So I examined an Italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that,

and on that exclusively. On that exclusively, and without help of

a dictionary. In this way I should surely be well protected against

overloading and indigestion.

A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement.

There were no scare-heads. That was good--supremely good. But there

were headings--one-liners and two-liners--and that was good too;

for without these, one must do as one does with a German paper--pay our

precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover,

in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you.

The headline is a valuable thing.

Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles,

robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we

knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when

they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them,

as a rule. Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has

no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage,

and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit.

By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to

take no vital interest in it--indeed, you almost get tired of it.

As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only

--people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles,

ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to think

of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give

the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre

of those others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed

up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah

of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time.

Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would

suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local;

they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say

one's friends. In the matter of world news there was not too much,

but just about enough. I subscribed. I have had no occasion

to regret it. Every morning I get all the news I need for the day;

sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text. I have never

had to call for a dictionary yet. I read the paper with ease.

Often I do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me,

but no matter, I get the idea. I will cut out a passage or two,

then you see how limpid the language is:

Il ritorno dei Beati d'Italia

Elargizione del Re all' Ospedale italiano

The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back

--they have been to England. The second line seems to mean that they

enlarged the King at the Italian hospital. With a banquet, I suppose.

An English banquet has that effect. Further:

Il ritorno dei Sovrani

a Roma

ROMA, 24, ore 22,50.--I Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono

a Roma domani alle ore 15,51.

Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see. Date of the telegram,

Rome, November 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o'clock. The

telegram seems to say, "The Sovereigns and the Royal Children expect

themselves at Rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o'clock."

I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight

and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk.

In the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty.

If these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 P.M., by my reckoning.

Spettacolli del di 25

TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA--(Ore 20,30)--Opera. BOH`EME. TEATRO

ALFIERI.--Compagnia drammatica Drago--(Ore 20,30)--LA LEGGE.

ALHAMBRA--(Ore 20,30)--Spettacolo variato. SALA EDISON

--Grandiosoo spettacolo Cinematografico: QUO VADIS?--Inaugurazione della

Chiesa Russa--In coda al Direttissimo--Vedute di Firenze con

gran movimeno--America: Transporto tronchi giganteschi--I ladri

in casa del Diavolo--Scene comiche. CINEMATOGRAFO--Via Brunelleschi

n. 4.--Programma straordinario, DON CHISCIOTTE--Prezzi populari.

The whole of that is intelligible to me--and sane and rational, too

--except the remark about the Inauguration of a Russian Chinese.

That one oversizes my hand. Give me five cards.

This is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded

and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes,

disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world--thanks be!

Today I find only a single importation of the off-color sort:

Una Principessa

che fugge con un cocchiere

PARIGI, 24.--Il MATIN ha da Berlino che la principessa

Schovenbare-Waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre. Sarebbe partita

col suo cocchiere.

La Principassa ha 27 anni.

Twenty-seven years old, and scomparve--scampered--on the 9th November.

You see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman.

I hope Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I am afraid the chances

are that she has. SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO.

There are several fires: also a couple of accidents. This is

one of them:

Grave disgrazia sul Ponte Vecchio

Stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre Giuseppe Sciatti, di anni 55,

di Casellina e Torri, passava dal Ponte Vecchio, stando seduto sopra

un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo,

rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo.

Lo Sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo

della pubblica vettura n. 365, lo transporto a San Giovanni di Dio.

Ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba

destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50

giorni salvo complicazioni.

What it seems to say is this: "Serious Disgrace on the Old

Old Bridge. This morning about 7.30, Mr. Joseph Sciatti, aged 55,

of Casellina and Torri, while standing up in a sitting posture

on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?),

lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left

leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle.

"Said Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens,

who by means of public cab No. 365 transported to St. John of God."

Paragraph No. 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that

the medico set the broken left leg--right enough, since there

was nothing the matter with the other one--and that several

are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around

in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene.

I am sure I hope so myself.

There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a

language which you are not acquainted with--the charm that always goes

with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely

sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances;

you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the

baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt.

A dictionary would spoil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful

purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a

whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped

in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar

and commonplace but for that benefaction. Would you be wise to draw

a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful?

After a couple of days' rest I now come back to my subject and seek

a case in point. I find it without trouble, in the morning paper;

a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris. All the words

save one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian:

Revolverate in teatro

PARIGI, 27.--La PATRIE ha da Chicago:

Il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto

espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety,

questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella.

Il guardiano ripose. Nacque una scarica generale. Grande panico

tra gli spettatori. Nessun ferito.

TRANSLATION.--"Revolveration in Theater. PARIS, 27TH. LA PATRIE

has from Chicago: The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace,

Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke

in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends,

tire (Fr. TIRE, Anglice PULLED) manifold revolver-shots;

great panic among the spectators. Nobody hurt."

It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera

of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so

came near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France.

But it does excite me. It excites me because I cannot make out,

for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer.

I was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident,

until I came to that word "spalleggiato," then the bottom fell out.

You notice what a rich gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery,

that word sheds all over the whole Wallachian tragedy. That is the charm

of the thing, that is the delight of it. This is where you begin,

this is where you revel. You can guess and guess, and have all

the fun you like; you need not be afraid there will be an end to it;

none is possible, for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you

a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one.

All the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound,

or their spelling--this one doesn't, this one throws out no hints,

this one keeps its secret. If there is even the slightest slight

shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive

fact that "spalleggiato" carries our word "egg" in its stomach.

Well, make the most out of it, and then where are you at?

You conjecture that the spectator which was smoking in spite

of the prohibition and become reprohibited by the guardians,

was "egged on" by his friends, and that was owing to that evil

influence that he initiated the revolveration in theater that has

galloped under the sea and come crashing through the European

press without exciting anybody but me. But are you sure,

are you dead sure, that that was the way of it? No. Then the

uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm.

Guess again.

If I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would

study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings,

but there is no such work on the market. The existing phrase-books

are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when

you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.

ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR

I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful

language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently

found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times.

It is because, if he does not know the WERE'S and the WAS'S and the

MAYBE'S and the HAS-BEENS'S apart, confusions and uncertainties

can arise. He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next

week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last.

Even more previously, sometimes. Examination and inquiry showed

me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded

and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed

the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that

had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always

dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble.

Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection,

confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the

fact that the Verb was the storm-center. This discovery made plain

the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty

and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper

was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I must catch a Verb and

tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities,

I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and

forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try

upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main

shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.

I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred

in families, and that the members of each family have certain features

or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it

from the other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not.

I had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair,

so to speak, but the tail--the Termination--and that these tails

are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can

tell a Pluperfect from a Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as

certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process,

the result of observation and culture. I should explain that I

am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang

of the grammar are called Regular. There are other--I am not meaning

to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born out of wedlock,

of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute

of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included.

But of these pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say. I do not

approve of them, I do not encourage them; I am prudishly delicate

and sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence.

But, as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break

it into harness. One is enough. Once familiar with its assortment

of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal

its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past

or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is

engaged in some other line of business--its tail will give it away.

I found out all these things by myself, without a teacher.

I selected the verb AMARE, TO LOVE. Not for any personal reason,

for I am indifferent about verbs; I care no more for one verb than

for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in

foreign languages you always begin with that one. Why, I don't know.

It is merely habit, I suppose; the first teacher chose it,

Adam was satisfied, and there hasn't been a successor since with

originality enough to start a fresh one. For they ARE a pretty

limited lot, you will admit that? Originality is not in their line;

they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old

moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go"

into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness.

I knew I must look after those details myself; therefore I thought

them out and wrote them down, and set for the FACCHINO and explained

them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together

a good stock company among the CONTADINI, and design the costumes,

and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three

days to begin on this Verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner.

I told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman,

and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant

or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform

for each squad, so that I could tell a Pluperfect from a Compound

Future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under

his own special and particular command, with the rank of Brigadier,

and I to pay the freight.

I then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb,

and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being

chambered for fifty-seven rounds--fifty-seven ways of saying I LOVE

without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl

that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks.

It seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go

into action with this mitrailleuse, so I ordered it to the rear

and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive

to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned

flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple

at two hundred yards and kill at forty--an arrangement suitable for a

beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart

and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign.

But in vain. He was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being

of the same build, all Gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery,

fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half.

But he said the auxiliary verb AVERE, TO HAVE, was a tidy thing,

and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in

going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation I

chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom

and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business.

I will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic.

Mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one.

At the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready.

I was also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called

the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated

by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30

the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command;

the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared

at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. Down they filed,

a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own

and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality:

first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the

Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green

and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and stripes,

then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple and silver

--and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned

and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and

dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld. I could not keep back

the tears. Presently:

"Halt!" commanded the Brigadier.

"Front--face!"

"Right dress!"

"Stand at ease!"

"One--two--three. In unison--RECITE!"

It was fine. In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven

Haves in the Italian language burst forth in an exalting

and splendid confusion. Then came commands:

"About--face! Eyes--front! Helm alee--hard aport! Forward--march!"

and the drums let go again.

When the last Termination had disappeared, the commander said

the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions.

I said:

"They say I HAVE, THOU HAST, HE HAS, and so on, but they don't say WHAT.

It will be better, and more definite, if they have something

to have; just an object, you know, a something--anything will do;

anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well

as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see."

He said:

"It is a good point. Would a dog do?"

I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see. So he sent

out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog.

The six privates of the Present Tense now filed in, in charge

of Sergeant AVERE (TO HAVE), and displaying their banner.

They formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus:

"IO HO UN CANE, I have a dog."

"TU HAI UN CANE, thou hast a dog."

"EGLI HA UN CANE, he has a dog."

"NOI ABBIAMO UN CANE, we have a dog."

"VOI AVETE UN CANE, you have a dog."

"EGLINO HANNO UN CANE, they have a dog."

No comment followed. They returned to camp, and I reflected a while.

The commander said:

"I fear you are disappointed."

"Yes," I said; "they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive;

they have no expression, no elocution. It isn't natural; it could

never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog

is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. He is not on the fence.

I never saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is the matter

with these people?"

He thought maybe the trouble was with the dog. He said:

"These are CONTADINI, you know, and they have a prejudice against dogs

--that is, against marimane. Marimana dogs stand guard over people's

vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief

and an inconvenience to persons who want other people's things

at night. In my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana,

and have soured on him."

I saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable:

we must try something else; something, if possible, that could

evoke sentiment, interest, feeling.

"What is cat, in Italian?" I asked.

"Gatto."

"Is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?"

"Gentleman cat."

"How are these people as regards that animal?"

"We-ll, they--they--"

"You hesitate: that is enough. How are they about chickens?"

He tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy. I understood.

"What is chicken, in Italian?" I asked.

"Pollo, PODERE." (Podere is Italian for master. It is a title

of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) "Pollo is one

chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute

a plural, it is POLLI."

"Very well, polli will do. Which squad is detailed for duty next?"

"The Past Definite."

"Send out and order it to the front--with chickens. And let them

understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference."

He gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness

in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect:

"Convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens."

He turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained,

"It will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire."

A few minutes elapsed. Then the squad marched in and formed up,

their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted:

"EBBI POLLI, I had chickens!"

"Good!" I said. "Go on, the next."

"AVEST POLLI, thou hadst chickens!"

"Fine! Next!"

"EBBE POLLI, he had chickens!"

"Moltimoltissimo! Go on, the next!"

"AVEMMO POLLI, we had chickens!"

"Basta-basta aspettatto avanti--last man--CHARGE!"

"EBBERO POLLI, they had chickens!"

Then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left,

and retired in great style on the double-quick. I was enchanted,

and said:

"Now, doctor, that is something LIKE! Chickens are the ticket,

there is no doubt about it. What is the next squad?"

"The Imperfect."

"How does it go?"

"IO AVENA, I had, TU AVEVI, thou hadst, EGLI AVENA, he had,

NOI AV--"

"Wait--we've just HAD the hads. What are you giving me?"

"But this is another breed."

"What do we want of another breed? Isn't one breed enough?

HAD is HAD, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling

isn't going to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know

that yourself."

"But there is a distinction--they are not just the same Hads."

"How do you make it out?"

"Well, you use that first Had when you are referring to something

that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment;

you use the other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time

and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way."

"Why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself. Look here:

If I have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a

position right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance

to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets

one Had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but

restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions,

and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time,

and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise,

and all that sort of thing, why--why, the inhumanity of it is enough,

let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing

consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering

the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me;

it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism

to keep in office a Had that is so delicate it can't come out when

the wind's in the nor'west--I won't have this dude on the payroll.

Cancel his exequator; and look here--"

"But you miss the point. It is like this. You see--"

"Never mind explaining, I don't care anything about it. Six Hads

is enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe;

I don't want any stock in a Had Trust. Knock out the Prolonged

and Indefinitely Continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway."

"But I beg you, podere! It is often quite indispensable in cases where--"

"Pipe the next squad to the assault!"

But it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun

floated up out of far-off Florence, followed by the usual softened

jangle of church-bells, Florentine and suburban, that bursts out in

murmurous response; by labor-union law the COLAZIONE [1] must stop;

stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen

and best of the breed of Hads.

1. Colazione is Italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance,

a sitting.--M.T.

A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY

Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I

would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure,

I yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender

my history.

Ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.

The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of

the family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century,

when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England.

Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal

name (except when one of them now and then took a playful

refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins,

is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir.

It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone.

All the old families do that way.

Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the

highway in William Rufus's time. At about the age of thirty he went

to one of those fine old English places of resort called Newgate,

to see about something, and never returned again. While there he

died suddenly.

Augustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the

year 1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old

saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,

and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump.

He was a born humorist. But he got to going too far with it;

and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties,

the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high

place on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate the people and have

a good time. He never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long.

Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows

a succession of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows,

who always went into battle singing, right behind the army,

and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it.

This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism

that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that

one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.

Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar."

He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's

hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head

off to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and

by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness

of the work spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time

he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals,

was some forty-two years. In fact, he died in harness. During all

those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through

with one contract a week till the government gave him another. He was

a perfect pet. And he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists,

and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society,

called the Chain Gang. He always wore his hair short, had a

preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government.

He was a sore loss to his country. For he was so regular.

Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain.

He came over to this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger.

He appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition.

He complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening

to go ashore unless there was a change. He wanted fresh shad.

Hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about

the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander,

and saying he did not believe Columbus knew where he was going

to or had ever been there before. The memorable cry of "Land ho!"

thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed awhile through a

piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water,

and then said: "Land be hanged--it's a raft!"

When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought

nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief

marked "B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C.," one woolen one

marked "D. F.," and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during

the voyage he worried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more

airs about it, than all the rest of the passengers put together.

If the ship was "down by the head," and would not steer, he would

go and move his "trunk" further aft, and then watch the effect.

If the ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to Columbus to detail

some men to "shift that baggage." In storms he had to be gagged,

because his wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the

men to hear the orders. The man does not appear to have been

openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted

in the ship's log as a "curious circumstance" that albeit he brought

his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in

four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne baskets.

But when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering way,

that some of this things were missing, and was going to search

the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw

him overboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to

come up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide.

But while every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side,

and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was observed with

consternation that the vessel was adrift and the anchor-cable hanging

limp from the bow. Then in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we

find this quaint note:

"In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone

downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam

sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne

of a ghun!"

Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with

pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white

person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating

and civilizing our Indians. He built a commodious jail and put

up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction

that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on

the Indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them.

At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty,

and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see

his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America,

and while there received injuries which terminated in his death.

The great-grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred

and something, and was known in our annals as "the old Admiral,"

though in history he had other titles. He was long in command of

fleets of swift vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service

in hurrying up merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept

his eagle eye on, always made good fair time across the ocean.

But if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do,

his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer

--and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it

there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did.

And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors

of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and

a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils liked it.

At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it.

When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always

burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost.

At last this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years

and honors. And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed

that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have

been resuscitated.

Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth

century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary.

He converted sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them

that a dog-tooth necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough

clothing to come to divine service in. His poor flock loved

him very, very dearly; and when his funeral was over, they got up

in a body (and came out of the restaurant) with tears in their eyes,

and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary,

and they wished they had some more of him.

Pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye-Twain)

adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General

Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington.

It was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington

from behind a tree. So far the beautiful romantic narrative

in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes

on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage

said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the Great Spirit

for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle

against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity

of history. What he did say was:

"It ain't no (hic) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan'

still long enough for a man to hit him. I (hic) I can't 'ford

to fool away any more am'nition on him."

That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good,

plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself

to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.

I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving

that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier

a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century),

and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit

was reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow

feared that the only reason why Washington's case is remembered

and the others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy came true,

and in that of the others it didn't. There are not books enough

on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other

unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat

pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled.

I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are

so thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that I have

not felt it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention

them in the order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned

Richard Brinsley Twain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain,

alias Sixteen-String Jack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard;

Ananias Twain, alias Baron Munchausen; John George Twain,

alias Captain Kydd; and then there are George Francis Twain,

Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam's Ass--they all belong

to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed

from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch,

whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order

to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for,

they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.

It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry

down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely

of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself,

which I now do.

I was born without teeth--and there Richard III. had the advantage

of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I

had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor

conspicuously honest.

But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem

so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom

to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I

have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred,

it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public.

How does it strike you?

HOW TO TELL A STORY

The Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference

from Comic and Witty Stories

I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told.

I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been

almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for

many years.

There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind

--the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story

is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French.

The humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling;

the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER.

The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander

around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular;

but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point.

The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.

The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art

--and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling

the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling

a humorous story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print

--was created in America, and has remained at home.

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best

to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is

anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you

beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard,

then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh

when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success,

he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it

and glance around from face to face, collecting applause,

and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see.

Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story

finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it.

Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will

divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual

and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it

is a nub.

Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience

presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise,

as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell

used it before him, Nye and Riley and others use it today.

But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub;

he shouts it at you--every time. And when he prints it,

in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it,

puts some whopping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes

explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing,

and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.

Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote

which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen

hundred years. The teller tells it in this way:

THE WOUNDED SOLDIER

In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off

appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear,

informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained;

whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate,

proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls

were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter

took the wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer

being aware of it. In no long time he was hailed by an officer,

who said:

"Where are you going with that carcass?"

"To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!"

"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean

his head, you booby."

Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood

looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said:

"It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then after a pause he added,

"BUT HE TOLD ME IT WAS HIS LEG!!!!!"

Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of

thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time

through his gasping and shriekings and suffocatings.

It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form;

and isn't worth the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-story

form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have

ever listened to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.

He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has

just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny,

and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it;

so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round,

putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only

retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others

that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then

and stopping to correct them and explain how he came to make them;

remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper place

and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good

while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt,

and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned,

and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway

--better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all

--and so on, and so on, and so on.

The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself,

and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep

from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes

in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the

ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted,

and the tears are running down their faces.

The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness

of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result

is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious.

This is art--and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it;

but a machine could tell the other story.

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering

and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they

are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position

is correct. Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third

is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it,

as if one where thinking aloud. The fourth and last is the pause.

Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would

begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to

think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently

absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way;

and that was the remark intended to explode the mine--and it did.

For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man

in New Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation

would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he

would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could

beat a drum better than any man I ever saw."

The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story,

and a frequently recurring feature, too. It is a dainty thing,

and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must

be exactly the right length--no more and no less--or it fails

of its purpose and makes trouble. If the pause is too short the

impressive point is passed, and the audience have had time to divine

that a surprise is intended--and then you can't surprise them,

of course.

On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause

in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important

thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length precisely,

I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make

some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out

of her seat--and that was what I was after. This story was called

"The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion. You can practice

with it yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right.

THE GOLDEN ARM

Once 'pon a time dey wuz a momsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de

prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby she died,

en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her.

Well, she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down.

He wuz pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep,

caze he want dat golden arm so bad.

When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up,

he did, en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her

up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de 'win, en

plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow. Den all on a sudden he

stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take

a listening attitude) en say: "My LAN', what's dat?"

En he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together

and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind),

"Bzzz-z-zzz"--en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear

a VOICE!--he hear a voice all mix' up in de win'--can't hardly

tell 'em 'part--"Bzzz--zzz--W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?"

(You must begin to shiver violently now.)

En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "Oh, my! OH, my lan'!" en de win'

blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos'

choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead,

he so sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us

comin AFTER him! "Bzzz--zzz--zzz W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--ARM?"

When he git to de pasture he hear it agin--closter now,

en A-COMIN'!--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat

the wind and the voice). When he git to de house he rush upstairs

en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay da shiverin'

en shakin'--en den way out dah he hear it AGIN!--en a-COMIN'! En

bimeby he hear (pause--awed, listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat HIT'S

A-COMIN' UPSTAIRS! Den he hear de latch, en he KNOW it's in de room!

Den pooty soon he know it's a-STANNIN' BY DE BED! (Pause.) Den

--he know it's a-BENDIN' DOWN OVER HIM--en he cain't skasely git

his breath! Den--den--he seem to feel someth'n' C-O-L-D, right down

'most agin his head! (Pause.)

Den de voice say, RIGHT AT HIS YEAR--"W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?"

(You must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then you stare

steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor

--a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build

itself in the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right length,

jump suddenly at that girl and yell, "YOU'VE got it!")

If you've got the PAUSE right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and

spring right out of her shoes. But you MUST get the pause right;

and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and

uncertain thing you ever undertook.

GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT

A Biographical Sketch

The stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began

with his death--that is to say, the notable features of his biography

began with the first time he died. He had been little heard of up

to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him;

we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals.

His was a most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history

would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature.

Therefore, I have carefully collated the materials for such a work,

from authentic sources, and here present them to the public. I have

rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character,

with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools

for the instruction of the youth of my country.

The name of the famous body-servant of General Washington was George.

After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century,

and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence,

it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master

to rest in his peaceful grave by the Potomac. Ten years afterward

--in 1809--full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all

who knew him. The Boston GAZETTE of that date thus refers to

the event:

George, the favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington,

died in Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years.

His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to

within a few minutes of his decease. He was present at the second

installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral,

and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with

those noted events.

From this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of

General Washington until May, 1825, at which time he died again.

A Philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence:

At Macon, Ga., last week, a colored man named George, who was the

favorite body-servant of General Washington, died at the advanced

age of 95 years. Up to within a few hours of his dissolution he

was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly

recollect the second installation of Washington, his death

and burial, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton,

the griefs and hardships of Valley Forge, etc. Deceased was

followed to the grave by the entire population of Macon.

On the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject

of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum

of the orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again.

The St. Louis REPUBLICAN of the 25th of that month spoke as follows: