--and so on. I do not remember the rest; but, taken together, it seems

to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has

ever brought forth--and I feel that if I were to talk hours I could not

do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than I have now done

in simply quoting that poet's matchless words. The phases of the womanly

nature are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you

shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to

love. And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was

more patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a

grander instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you

remember well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief

swept over us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. Who does not sorrow

for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel? Who among us does

not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening influences, the humble

piety of Lucretia Borgia? Who can join in the heartless libel that says

woman is extravagant in dress when he can look back and call to mind our

simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed in her modification of the Highland

costume? Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women

have been poets. As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will

live. And not because she conquered George III.--but because she wrote

those divine lines:

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,

For God hath made them so."

The story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of

our own sex--some of, them sons of St. Andrew, too--Scott, Bruce, Burns,

the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--the gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new

Scotchman, Ben Disraeli.--[Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime

Minister of England, had just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow

University, and had made a speech which gave rise to a world of

discussion]--Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain

ranges of sublime women: the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey

Gamp; the list is endless--but I will not call the mighty roll, the names

rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion, luminous with the

glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving worship of the

good and the true of all epochs and all climes. Suffice it for our pride

and our honor that we in our day have added to it such names as those of

Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale. Woman is all that she should be

gentle, patient, longsuffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous

impulses. It is her blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for

the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift

the fallen, befriend the friendless--in a word, afford the healing of her

sympathies and a home in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted

children that knock at its hospitable door. And when I say, God bless

her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a

wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother but in his heart will say,

Amen!

WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB

On October 27, 1900, the New York Woman's Press Club gave a tea

in Carnegie Hall. Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor.

If I were asked an opinion I would call this an ungrammatical nation.

There is no such thing as perfect grammar, and I don't always speak good

grammar myself. But I have been foregathering for the past few days with

professors of American universities, and I've heard them all say things

like this: "He don't like to do it." [There was a stir.] Oh, you'll hear

that to-night if you listen, or, "He would have liked to have done it."

You'll catch some educated Americans saying that. When these men take

pen in hand they write with as good grammar as any. But the moment they

throw the pen aside they throw grammatical morals aside with it.

To illustrate the desirability and possibility of concentration, I must

tell you a story of my little six-year-old daughter. The governess had

been teaching her about the reindeer, and, as the custom was, she related

it to the family. She reduced the history of that reindeer to two or

three sentences when the governess could not have put it into a page.

She said: "The reindeer is a very swift animal. A reindeer once drew a

sled four hundred miles in two hours." She appended the comment: "This

was regarded as extraordinary." And concluded: "When that reindeer was

done drawing that sled four hundred miles in two hours it died."

As a final instance of the force of limitations in the development of

concentration, I must mention that beautiful creature, Helen Keller, whom

I have known for these many years. I am filled with the wonder of her

knowledge, acquired because shut out from all distraction. If I could

have been deaf, dumb, and blind I also might have arrived at something.

VOTES FOR WOMEN

AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE HEBREW TECHNICAL SCHOOL FOR GIRLS,

HELD IN THE TEMPLE EMMANUEL, JANUARY 20, 1901

Mr. Clemens was introduced by President Meyer, who said: "In

one of Mr. Clemens's works he expressed his opinion of men,

saying he had no choice between Hebrew and Gentile, black men

or white; to him all men were alike. But I never could find

that he expressed his opinion of women; perhaps that opinion

was so exalted that he could not express it. We shall now be

called to hear what he thinks of women."

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It is a small help that I can afford, but it is

just such help that one can give as coming from the heart through the

mouth. The report of Mr. Meyer was admirable, and I was as interested in

it as you have been. Why, I'm twice as old as he, and I've had so much

experience that I would say to him, when he makes his appeal for help:

"Don't make it for to-day or to-morrow, but collect the money on the

spot."

We are all creatures of sudden impulse. We must be worked up by steam,

as it were. Get them to write their wills now, or it may be too late by

-and-by. Fifteen or twenty years ago I had an experience I shall never

forget. I got into a church which was crowded by a sweltering and

panting multitude. The city missionary of our town--Hartford--made a

telling appeal for help. He told of personal experiences among the poor

in cellars and top lofts requiring instances of devotion and help. The

poor are always good to the poor. When a person with his millions gives

a hundred thousand dollars it makes a great noise in the world, but he

does not miss it; it's the widow's mite that makes no noise but does the

best work.

I remember on that occasion in the Hartford church the collection was

being taken up. The appeal had so stirred me that I could hardly wait

for the hat or plate to come my way. I had four hundred dollars in my

pocket, and I was anxious to drop it in the plate and wanted to borrow

more. But the plate was so long in coming my way that the fever-heat of

beneficence was going down lower and lower--going down at the rate of a

hundred dollars a minute. The plate was passed too late. When it

finally came to me, my enthusiasm had gone down so much that I kept my

four hundred dollars--and stole a dime from the plate. So, you see, time

sometimes leads to crime.

Oh, many a time have I thought of that and regretted it, and I adjure you

all to give while the fever is on you.

Referring to woman's sphere in life, I'll say that woman is always right.

For twenty-five years I've been a woman's rights man. I have always

believed, long before my mother died, that, with her gray hairs and

admirable intellect, perhaps she knew as much as I did. Perhaps she knew

as much about voting as I.

I should like to see the time come when women shall help to make the

laws. I should like to see that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of

women. As for this city's government, I don't want to say much, except

that it is a shame--a shame; but if I should live twenty-five years

longer--and there is no reason why I shouldn't--I think I'll see women

handle the ballot. If women had the ballot to-day, the state of things

in this town would not exist.

If all the women in this town had a vote to-day they would elect a mayor

at the next election, and they would rise in their might and change the

awful state of things now existing here.

WOMAN-AN OPINION

ADDRESS AT AN EARLY BANQUET OF THE WASHINGTON

CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB

The twelfth toast was as follows: "Woman--The pride of any

profession, and the jewel of ours."

MR. PRESIDENT,--I do not know why I should be singled out to receive the

greatest distinction of the evening--for so the office of replying to the

toast of woman has been regarded in every age. I do not know why I have

received his distinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less homely

than the other members of the club. But be this as it may, Mr.

President, I am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen any

one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a heartier

good-will to do the subject justice than I--because, sir, I love the sex.

I love all the women, irrespective of age or color.

Human intellect cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. She sews on

our buttons; she mends our clothes; she ropes us in at the church fairs;

she confides in us; she tells us whatever she can find out about the

little private affairs of the neighbors; she gives us good advice, and

plenty of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our children--ours

as a general thing. In all relations of life, sir, it is but a just and

graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick.

Wheresoever you place woman, sir--in whatever position or estate--she is

an ornament to the place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [Here

Mr. Clemens paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that

the applause should come in at this point. It came in. He resumed his

eulogy.] Look at Cleopatra! look at Desdemona!--look at Florence

Nightingale!--look at Joan of Arc!--look at Lucretia Borgia!

[Disapprobation expressed.] Well [said Mr. Clemens, scratching his head,

doubtfully], suppose we let Lucretia slide. Look at Joyce Heth!--look at

Mother Eve! You need not look at her unless you want to, but [said Mr.

Clemens, reflectively, after a pause] Eve was ornamental, sir

--particularly before the fashions changed. I repeat, sir, look at the

illustrious names of history. Look at the Widow Machree!--look at Lucy

Stone!--look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton!--look at George Francis Train!

And, sir, I say it with bowed head and deepest veneration--look at the

mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie--could

not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been

different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents'

Club.

I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an

ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she

has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a

wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a

wetnurse, she has no equal among men.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be

scarce, sir, almighty scarce. Then let us cherish her; let us protect

her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy,

ourselves--if we get a chance.

But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of

heart, beautiful--worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference.

Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially in this

bumper of wine, for each and every one has personally known, and loved,

and honored the very best one of them all--his own mother.

ADVICE TO GIRLS

In 1907 a young girl whom Mr. Clemens met on the steamer

Minnehaha called him "grandpa," and he called her his

granddaughter. She was attending St. Timothy's School, at

Catonsville, Maryland, and Mr. Clemens promised her to see her

graduate. He accordingly made the journey from New York on

June 10, 1909, and delivered a short address.

I don't know what to tell you girls to do. Mr. Martin has told you

everything you ought to do, and now I must give you some don'ts.

There are three things which come to my mind which I consider excellent

advice:

First, girls, don't smoke--that is, don't smoke to excess. I am

seventy-three and a half years old, and have been smoking seventy-three

of them. But I never smoke to excess--that is, I smoke in moderation,

only one cigar at a time.

Second, don't drink--that is, don't drink to excess.

Third, don't marry--I mean, to excess.

Honesty is the best policy. That is an old proverb; but you don't want

ever to forget it in your journey through life.

TAXES AND MORALS

ADDRESS DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, JANUARY 22, 1906

At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Tuskeegee

Institute by Booker Washington, Mr. Choate presided, and in

introducing Mr. Clemens made fun of him because he made play

his work, and that when he worked hardest he did so lying in

bed.

I came here in the responsible capacity of policeman to watch Mr. Choate.

This is an occasion of grave and serious importance, and it seems

necessary for me to be present, so that if he tried to work off any

statement that required correction, reduction, refutation, or exposure,

there would be a tried friend of the public to protect the house. He has

not made one statement whose veracity fails to tally exactly with my own

standard. I have never seen a person improve so. This makes me thankful

and proud of a country that can produce such men--two such men. And all

in the same country. We can't be with you always; we are passing away,

and then--well, everything will have to stop, I reckon. It is a sad

thought. But in spirit I shall still be with you. Choate, too--if he

can.

Every born American among the eighty millions, let his creed or

destitution of creed be what it may, is indisputably a Christian--to this

degree that his moral constitution is Christian.

There are two kinds of Christian morals, one private and the other

public. These two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more

akin to each other than are archangels and politicians. During three

hundred and sixty-three days in the year the American citizen is true to

his Christian private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character

at its best and highest; then in the other two days of the year he leaves

his Christian private morals at home and carries his Christian public

morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to

damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work. Without a

blush he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is his party's Moses,

without compunction he will vote against the best man in the whole land

if he is on the other ticket. Every year in a number of cities and

States he helps put corrupt men in office, whereas if he would but throw

away his Christian public morals, and carry his Christian private morals

to the polls, he could promptly purify the public service and make the

possession of office a high and honorable distinction.

Once a year he lays aside his Christian private morals and hires a

ferry-boat and piles up his bonds in a warehouse in New Jersey for three

days, and gets out his Christian public morals and goes to the tax office

and holds up his hands and swears he wishes he may never--never if he's

got a cent in the world, so help him. The next day the list appears in

the papers--a column and a quarter of names, in fine print, and every man

in the list a billionaire and member of a couple of churches. I know all

those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the

whole lot of them. They never miss a sermon when they are so's to be

around, and they never miss swearing-off day, whether they are so's to be

around or not.

I used to be an honest man. I am crumbling. No--I have crumbled. When

they assessed me at $75,000 a fortnight ago I went out and tried to

borrow the money, and couldn't; then when I found they were letting a

whole crop of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they

were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said: "This is the last

feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself." In that

moment--in that memorable moment--I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes

the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I had become just a

mere moral sand-pile; and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned

and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property I've

got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and what is left of

my wig.

Those tax officers were moved; they were profoundly moved. They had long

been accustomed to seeing hardened old grafters act like that, and they

could endure the spectacle; but they were expecting better things of me,

a chartered, professional moralist, and they were saddened.

I fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and I should have fallen in

my own, except that I had already struck bottom, and there wasn't any

place to fall to.

At Tuskeegee they will jump to misleading conclusions from insufficient

evidence, along with Doctor Parkhurst, and they will deceive the student

with the superstition that no gentleman ever swears.

Look at those good millionaires; aren't they gentlemen? Well, they

swear. Only once in a year, maybe, but there's enough bulk to it to make

up for the lost time. And do they lose anything by it? No, they don't;

they save enough in three minutes to support the family seven years.

When they swear, do we shudder? No--unless they say "damn!" Then we do.

It shrivels us all up. Yet we ought not to feel so about it, because we

all swear--everybody. Including the ladies. Including Doctor Parkhurst,

that strong and brave and excellent citizen, but superficially educated.

For it is not the word that is the sin, it is the spirit back of the

word. When an irritated lady says "oh!" the spirit back of it is "damn!"

and that is the way it is going to be recorded against her. It always

makes me so sorry when I hear a lady swear like that. But if she says

"damn," and says it in an amiable, nice way, it isn't going to be

recorded at all.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong; he can swear and

still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and, benevolent and

affectionate way. The historian, John Fiske, whom I knew well and loved,

was a spotless and most noble and upright Christian gentleman, and yet he

swore once. Not exactly that, maybe; still, he--but I will tell you

about it.

One day, when he was deeply immersed in his work, his wife came in, much

moved and profoundly distressed, and said: "I am sorry to disturb you,

John, but I must, for this is a serious matter, and needs to be attended

to at once."

Then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation against their little son.

She said: "He has been saying his Aunt Mary is a fool and his Aunt Martha

is a damned fool." Mr. Fiske reflected upon the matter a minute, then

said: "Oh, well, it's about the distinction I should make between them

myself."

Mr. Washington, I beg you to convey these teachings to your great and

prosperous and most beneficent educational institution, and add them to

the prodigal mental and moral riches wherewith you equip your fortunate

proteges for the struggle of life.

TAMMANY AND CROKER

Mr. Clemens made his debut as a campaign orator on October 7,

1901, advocating the election of Seth Low for Mayor, not as a

Republican, but as a member of the "Acorns," which he described

as a "third party having no political affiliation, but was

concerned only in the selection of the best candidates and the

best member."

Great Britain had a Tammany and a Croker a good while ago. This Tammany

was in India, and it began its career with the spread of the English

dominion after the Battle of Plassey. Its first boss was Clive, a

sufficiently crooked person sometimes, but straight as a yard stick

when compared with the corkscrew crookedness of the second boss, Warren

Hastings.

That old-time Tammany was the East India Company's government, and had

its headquarters at Calcutta. Ostensibly it consisted of a Great Council

of four persons, of whom one was the Governor-General, Warren Hastings;

really it consisted of one person--Warren Hastings; for by usurpation he

concentrated all authority in himself and governed the country like an

autocrat.

Ostensibly the Court of Directors, sitting in London and representing the

vast interests of the stockholders, was supreme in authority over the

Calcutta Great Council, whose membership it appointed and removed at

pleasure, whose policies it dictated, and to whom it conveyed its will in

the form of sovereign commands; but whenever it suited Hastings, he

ignored even that august body's authority and conducted the mighty

affairs of the British Empire in India to suit his own notions.

At his mercy was the daily bread of every official, every trader, every

clerk, every civil servant, big and little, in the whole huge India

Company's machine, and the man who hazarded his bread by any failure of

subserviency to the boss lost it.

Now then, let the supreme masters of British India, the giant corporation

of the India Company of London, stand for the voters of the city of New

York; let the Great Council of Calcutta stand for Tammany; let the

corrupt and money-grubbing great hive of serfs which served under the

Indian Tammany's rod stand for New York Tammany's serfs; let Warren

Hastings stand for Richard Croker, and it seems to me that the parallel

is exact and complete. And so let us be properly grateful and thank God

and our good luck that we didn't invent Tammany.

Edmund Burke, regarded by many as the greatest orator of all times,

conducted the case against Warren Hastings in that renowned trial which

lasted years, and which promises to keep its renown for centuries to

come. I wish to quote some of the things he said. I wish to imagine him

arraigning Mr. Croker and Tammany before the voters of New York City and

pleading with them for the overthrow of that combined iniquity of the 5th

of November, and will substitute for "My Lords," read "Fellow-Citizens";

for "Kingdom," read "City"; for "Parliamentary Process," read "Political

Campaign"; for "Two Houses," read "Two Parties," and so it reads:

"Fellow--citizens, I must look upon it as an auspicious circumstance to

this cause, in which the honor of the city is involved, that from the

first commencement of our political campaign to this the hour of solemn

trial not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen, between the two

parties.

"You will see, in the progress of this cause, that there is not only a

long, connected, systematic series of misdemeanors, but an equally

connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them.

Upon both of these you must judge.

"It is not only the interest of the city of New York, now the most

considerable part of the city of the Americans, which is concerned, but

the credit and honor of the nation itself will be decided by this

decision."

At a later meeting of the Acorn Club, Mr. Clemens said:

Tammany is dead, and there's no use in blackguarding a corpse.

The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had

only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him,

"Where is the best place to go to?" He was undecided about it. So the

minister told him that each place had its advantages--heaven for climate,

and hell for society.

MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION

ADDRESS AT THE CITY CLUB DINNER, JANUARY 4,1901

Bishop Potter told how an alleged representative of Tammany

Hall asked him in effect if he would cease his warfare upon the

Police Department if a certain captain and inspector were

dismissed. He replied that he would never be satisfied until

the "man at the top" and the "system" which permitted evils in

the Police Department were crushed.

The Bishop has just spoken of a condition of things which none of us can

deny, and which ought not to exist; that is, the lust of gain--a lust

which does not stop short of the penitentiary or the jail to accomplish

its ends. But we may be sure of one thing, and that is that this sort of

thing is not universal. If it were, this country would not be. You may

put this down as a fact: that out of every fifty men, forty-nine are

clean. Then why is it, you may ask, that the forty-nine don't have

things the way they want them? I'll tell you why it is. A good deal has

been said here to-night about what is to be accomplished by organization.

That's just the thing. It's because the fiftieth fellow and his pals are

organized and the other forty-nine are not that the dirty one rubs it

into the clean fellows every time.

You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much

organization that it will interfere with the work to be done. The Bishop

here had an experience of that sort, and told all about it down-town the

other night. He was painting a barn--it was his own barn--and yet he was

informed that his work must stop; he was a non-union painter, and

couldn't continue at that sort of job.

Now, all these conditions of which you complain should be remedied, and I

am here to tell you just how to do it. I've been a statesman without

salary for many years, and I have accomplished great and widespread good.

I don't know that it has benefited anybody very much, even if it was

good; but I do know that it hasn't harmed me very much, and is hasn't

made me any richer.

We hold the balance of power. Put up your best men for office, and we

shall support the better one. With the election of the best man for

Mayor would follow the selection of the best man for Police Commissioner

and Chief of Police.

My first lesson in the craft of statesmanship was taken at an early age.

Fifty-one years ago I was fourteen years old, and we had a society in the

town I lived in, patterned after the Freemasons, or the Ancient Order of

United Farmers, or some such thing--just what it was patterned after

doesn't matter. It had an inside guard and an outside guard, and a

past-grand warden, and a lot of such things, so as to give dignity to the

organization and offices to the members.

Generally speaking it was a pretty good sort of organization, and some of

the very best boys in the village, including--but I mustn't get personal

on an occasion like this--and the society would have got along pretty

well had it not been for the fact that there were a certain number of the

members who could be bought. They got to be an infernal nuisance. Every

time we had an election the candidates had to go around and see the

purchasable members. The price per vote was paid in doughnuts, and it

depended somewhat on the appetites of the individuals as to the price

of the votes.

This thing ran along until some of us, the really very best boys in the

organization, decided that these corrupt practices must stop, and for the

purpose of stopping them we organized a third party. We had a name, but

we were never known by that name. Those who didn't like us called us the

Anti-Doughnut party, but we didn't mind that.

We said: "Call us what you please; the name doesn't matter. We are

organized for a principle." By-and-by the election came around, and

we made a big mistake. We were triumphantly beaten. That taught us a

lesson. Then and there we decided never again to nominate anybody for

anything. We decided simply to force the other two parties in the

society to nominate their very best men. Although we were organized for

a principle, we didn't care much about that. Principles aren't of much

account anyway, except at election-time. After that you hang them up to

let them season.

The next time we had an election we told both the other parties that we'd

beat any candidates put up by any one of them of whom we didn't approve.

In that election we did business. We got the man we wanted. I suppose

they called us the Anti-Doughnut party because they couldn't buy us with

their doughnuts. They didn't have enough of them. Most reformers arrive

at their price sooner or later, and I suppose we would have had our

price; but our opponents weren't offering anything but doughnuts, and

those we spurned.

Now it seems to me that an Anti-Doughnut party is just what is wanted in

the present emergency. I would have the Anti-Doughnuts felt in every city

and hamlet and school district in this State and in the United States.

I was an Anti-Doughnut in my boyhood, and I'm an Anti-Doughnut still.

The modern designation is Mugwump. There used to be quite a number of us

Mugwumps, but I think I'm the only one left. I had a vote this fall, and

I began to make some inquiries as to what I had better do with it.

I don't know anything about finance, and I never did, but I know some

pretty shrewd financiers, and they told me that Mr. Bryan wasn't safe on

any financial question. I said to myself, then, that it wouldn't do for

me to vote for Bryan, and I rather thought--I know now--that McKinley

wasn't just right on this Philippine question, and so I just didn't vote

for anybody. I've got that vote yet, and I've kept it clean, ready to

deposit at some other election. It wasn't cast for any wildcat financial

theories, and it wasn't cast to support the man who sends our boys as

volunteers out into the Philippines to get shot down under a polluted

flag.

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY, NEW YORK,

DECEMBER 6, 1900

Doctor Mackay, in his response to the toast "St. Nicholas,"

referred to Mr. Clemens, saying:--"Mark Twain is as true a

preacher of true righteousness as any bishop, priest, or

minister of any church to-day, because he moves men to forget

their faults by cheerful well-doing instead of making them sour

and morbid by everlastingly bending their attention to the

seamy and sober side of life."

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY,--These are,

indeed, prosperous days for me. Night before last, in a speech, the

Bishop of the Diocese of New York complimented me for my contribution to

theology, and to-night the Reverend Doctor Mackay has elected me to the

ministry. I thanked Bishop Potter then for his compliment, and I thank

Doctor Mackay now for that promotion. I think that both have discerned

in me what I long ago discerned, but what I was afraid the world would

never learn to recognize.

In this absence of nine years I find a great improvement in the city of

New York. I am glad to speak on that as a toast--"The City of New York."

Some say it has improved because I have been away. Others, and I agree

with them, say it has improved because I have come back. We must judge

of a city, as of a man, by its external appearances and by its inward

character. In externals the foreigner coming to these shores is more

impressed at first by our sky-scrapers. They are new to him. He has not

done anything of the sort since he built the tower of Babel. The

foreigner is shocked by them.

In the daylight they are ugly. They are--well, too chimneyfied and too

snaggy--like a mouth that needs attention from a dentist; like a cemetery

that is all monuments and no gravestones. But at night, seen from the

river where they are columns towering against the sky, all sparkling with

light, they are fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the soul

and more enchanting than anything that man has dreamed of since the

Arabian nights. We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things.

Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others

go. When your foreigner makes disagreeable comments on New York by

daylight, float him down the river at night.

What has made these sky-scrapers possible is the elevator. The cigar-box

which the European calls a "lift" needs but to be compared with our

elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors.

That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American

elevator acts like the man's patent purge--it worked. As the inventor

said, "This purge doesn't waste any time fooling around; it attends

strictly to business."

That New-Yorkers have the cleanest, quickest, and most admirable system

of street railways in the world has been forced upon you by the abnormal

appreciation you have of your hackman. We ought always to be grateful to

him for that service. Nobody else would have brought such a system into

existence for us. We ought to build him a monument. We owe him one as

much as we owe one to anybody. Let it be a tall one. Nothing permanent,

of course; build it of plaster, say. Then gaze at it and realize how

grateful we are--for the time being--and then pull it down and throw it

on the ash-heap. That's the way to honor your public heroes.

As to our streets, I find them cleaner than they used to be. I miss

those dear old landmarks, the symmetrical mountain ranges of dust and

dirt that used to be piled up along the streets for the wind and rain to

tear down at their pleasure. Yes, New York is cleaner than Bombay.

I realize that I have been in Bombay, that I now am in New York; that it

is not my duty to flatter Bombay, but rather to flatter New York.

Compared with the wretched attempts of London to light that city, New

York may fairly be said to be a well-lighted city. Why, London's attempt

at good lighting is almost as bad as London's attempt at rapid transit.

There is just one good system of rapid transit in London--the "Tube," and

that, of course, had been put in by Americans. Perhaps, after a while,

those Americans will come back and give New York also a good underground

system. Perhaps they have already begun. I have been so busy since I

came back that I haven't had time as yet to go down cellar.

But it is by the laws of the city, it is by the manners of the city, it

is by the ideals of the city, it is by the customs of the city and by the

municipal government which all these elements correct, support, and

foster, by which the foreigner judges the city. It is by these that he

realizes that New York may, indeed, hold her head high among the cities

of the world. It is by these standards that he knows whether to class

the city higher or lower than the other municipalities of the world.

Gentlemen, you have the best municipal government in the world--the

purest and the most fragrant. The very angels envy you, and wish

they could establish a government like it in heaven. You got it by a

noble fidelity to civic duty. You got it by stern and ever-watchful

exertion of the great powers with which you are charged by the rights

which were handed down to you by your forefathers, by your manly refusal

to let base men invade the high places of your government, and by instant

retaliation when any public officer has insulted you in the city's name

by swerving in the slightest from the upright and full performance of his

duty. It is you who have made this city the envy of the cities of the

world. God will bless you for it--God will bless you for it. Why, when

you approach the final resting-place the angels of heaven will gather at

the gates and cry out:

"Here they come! Show them to the archangel's box, and turn the

lime-light on them!"

CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES

AT A DINNER GIVEN IN THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, DECEMBER, 1900

Winston Spencer Churchill was introduced by Mr. Clemens.

For years I've been a self-appointed missionary to bring about the union

of America and the motherland. They ought to be united. Behold America,

the refuge of the oppressed from everywhere (who can pay fifty dollars'

admission)--any one except a Chinaman--standing up for human rights

everywhere, even helping China let people in free when she wants to

collect fifty dollars upon them. And how unselfishly England has wrought

for the open door for all! And how piously America has wrought for that

open door in all cases where it was not her own!

Yes, as a missionary I've sung my songs of praise. And yet I think that

England sinned when she got herself into a war in South Africa which she

could have avoided, just as we sinned in getting into a similar war in

the Philippines. Mr. Churchill, by his father, is an Englishman; by his

mother he is an American--no doubt a blend that makes the perfect man.

England and America; yes, we are kin. And now that we are also kin in

sin, there is nothing more to be desired. The harmony is complete, the

blend is perfect.

THEORETICAL MORALS

The New Vagabonds Club of London, made up of the leading

younger literary men of the day, gave a dinner in honor of Mr.

and Mrs. Clemens, July 8, 1899.

It has always been difficult--leave that word difficult--not exceedingly

difficult, but just difficult, nothing more than that, not the slightest

shade to add to that--just difficult--to respond properly, in the right

phraseology, when compliments are paid to me; but it is more than

difficult when the compliments are paid to a better than I--my wife.

And while I am not here to testify against myself--I can't be expected to

do so, a prisoner in your own country is not admitted to do so--as to

which member of the family wrote my books, I could say in general that

really I wrote the books myself. My wife puts the facts in, and they

make it respectable. My modesty won't suffer while compliments are being

paid to literature, and through literature to my family. I can't get

enough of them.

I am curiously situated to-night. It so rarely happens that I am

introduced by a humorist; I am generally introduced by a person of grave

walk and carriage. That makes the proper background of gravity for

brightness. I am going to alter to suit, and haply I may say some

humorous things.

When you start with a blaze of sunshine and upburst of humor, when you

begin with that, the proper office of humor is to reflect, to put you

into that pensive mood of deep thought, to make you think of your sins,

if you wish half an hour to fly. Humor makes me reflect now to-night, it

sets the thinking machinery in motion. Always, when I am thinking, there

come suggestions of what I am, and what we all are, and what we are

coming to. A sermon comes from my lips always when I listen to a

humorous speech.

I seize the opportunity to throw away frivolities, to say something to

plant the seed, and make all better than when I came. In Mr. Grossmith's

remarks there was a subtle something suggesting my favorite theory of the

difference between theoretical morals and practical morals. I try to

instil practical morals in the place of theatrical--I mean theoretical;

but as an addendum--an annex--something added to theoretical morals.

When your chairman said it was the first time he had ever taken the

chair, he did not mean that he had not taken lots of other things; he

attended my first lecture and took notes. This indicated the man's

disposition. There was nothing else flying round, so he took notes; he

would have taken anything he could get.

I can bring a moral to bear here which shows the difference between

theoretical morals and practical morals. Theoretical morals are the sort

you get on your mother's knee, in good books, and from the pulpit. You

gather them in your head, and not in your heart; they are theory without

practice. Without the assistance of practice to perfect them, it is

difficult to teach a child to "be honest, don't steal."

I will teach you how it should be done, lead you into temptation, teach

you how to steal, so that you may recognize when you have stolen and feel

the proper pangs. It is no good going round and bragging you have never

taken the chair.

As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime, you learn real

morals. Commit all the crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take

them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to

it, commit two or three every day, and by-and-by you will be proof

against them. When you are through you will be proof against all sins

and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against every possible

commission of them. This is the only way.

I will read you a written statement upon the subject that I wrote three

years ago to read to the Sabbath-schools. [Here the lecturer turned his

pockets out, but without success.] No! I have left it at home. Still,

it was a mere statement of fact, illustrating the value of practical

morals produced by the commission of crime.

It was in my boyhood just a statement of fact, reading is only more

formal, merely facts, merely pathetic facts, which I can state so as to

be understood. It relates to the first time I ever stole a watermelon;

that is, I think it was the first time; anyway, it was right along there

somewhere.

I stole it out of a farmer's wagon while he was waiting on another

customer. "Stole" is a harsh term. I withdrew--I retired that

watermelon. I carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard. I broke

it open. It was green--the greenest watermelon raised in the valley that

year.

The minute I saw it was green I was sorry, and began to reflect

--reflection is the beginning of reform. If you don't reflect when you

commit a crime then that crime is of no use; it might just as well have

been committed by some one else: You must reflect or the value is lost;

you are not vaccinated against committing it again.

I began to reflect. I said to myself: "What ought a boy to do who has

stolen a green watermelon? What would George Washington do, the father

of his country, the only American who could not tell a lie? What would

he do? There is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy to do who

has stolen a watermelon of that class he must make restitution; he must

restore that stolen property to its rightful owner." I said I would do

it when I made that good resolution. I felt it to be a noble, uplifting

obligation. I rose up spiritually stronger and refreshed. I carried

that watermelon back--what was left of it--and restored it to the farmer,

and made him give me a ripe one in its place.

Now you see that this constant impact of crime upon crime protects you

against further commission of crime. It builds you up. A man can't

become morally perfect by stealing one or a thousand green watermelons,

but every little helps.

I was at a great school yesterday (St. Paul's), where for four hundred

years they have been busy with brains, and building up England by

producing Pepys, Miltons, and Marlboroughs. Six hundred boys left to

nothing in the world but theoretical morality. I wanted to become the

professor of practical morality, but the high master was away, so I

suppose I shall have to go on making my living the same old way--by

adding practical to theoretical morality.

What are the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, compared

to the glory and grandeur and majesty of a perfected morality such as you

see before you?

The New Vagabonds are old vagabonds (undergoing the old sort of reform).

You drank my health; I hope I have not been unuseful. Take this system

of morality to your hearts. Take it home to your neighbors and your

graves, and I hope that it will be a long time before you arrive there.

LAYMAN'S SERMON

The Young Men's Christian Association asked Mr. Clemens to

deliver a lay sermon at the Majestic Theatre, New York, March

4, 1906. More than five thousand young men tried to get into

the theatre, and in a short time traffic was practically

stopped in the adjacent streets. The police reserves had to be

called out to thin the crowd. Doctor Fagnani had said

something before about the police episode, and Mr. Clemens took

it up.

I have been listening to what was said here, and there is in it a lesson

of citizenship. You created the police, and you are responsible for

them. One must pause, therefore, before criticising them too harshly.

They are citizens, just as we are. A little of citizenship ought to be

taught at the mother's knee and in the nursery. Citizenship is what

makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a

republic on its legs is good citizenship.

Organization is necessary in all things. It is even necessary in reform.

I was an organization myself once--for twelve hours. I was in Chicago a

few years ago about to depart for New York. There were with me Mr.

Osgood, a publisher, and a stenographer. I picked out a state-room on a

train, the principal feature of which was that it contained the privilege

of smoking. The train had started but a short time when the conductor

came in and said that there had been a mistake made, and asked that we

vacate the apartment. I refused, but when I went out on the platform

Osgood and the stenographer agreed to accept a section. They were too

modest.

Now, I am not modest. I was born modest, but it didn't last. I asserted

myself; insisted upon my rights, and finally the Pullman Conductor and

the train conductor capitulated, and I was left in possession.

I went into the dining--car the next morning for breakfast. Ordinarily

I only care for coffee and rolls, but this particular morning I espied an

important-looking man on the other side of the car eating broiled

chicken. I asked for broiled chicken, and I was told by the waiter and

later by the dining-car conductor that there was no broiled chicken.

There must have been an argument, for the Pullman conductor came in and

remarked: "If he wants broiled chicken, give it to him. If you haven't

got it on the train, stop somewhere. It will be better for all

concerned!" I got the chicken.

It is from experiences such as these that you get your education of life,

and you string them into jewels or into tinware, as you may choose.

I have received recently several letters asking my counsel or advice.

The principal request is for some incident that may prove helpful to the

young. There were a lot of incidents in my career to help me along

--sometimes they helped me along faster than I wanted to go.

Here is such a request. It is a telegram from Joplin, Missouri, and it

reads: "In what one of your works can we find the definition of a

gentleman?"

I have not answered that telegram, either; I couldn't. It seems to me

that if any man has just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a

gentleman, for he would need nothing else in the world.

I received the other day a letter from my old friend, William Dean

Howells--Howells, the head of American literature. No one is able to

stand with him. He is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes me,

"To-morrow I shall be sixty-nine years old." Why, I am surprised at

Howells writing that! I have known him longer than that. I'm sorry to

see a man trying to appear so young. Let's see. Howells says now,

"I see you have been burying Patrick. I suppose he was old, too."

No, he was never old--Patrick. He came to us thirty-six years ago. He

was my coachman on the morning that I drove my young bride to our new

home. He was a young Irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful,

and he never changed in all his life. He really was with us but

twenty-five years, for he did not go with us to Europe, but he never

regarded that as separation. As the children grew up he was their guide.

He was all honor, honesty, and affection. He was with us in New

Hampshire, with us last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes

were just as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart just as good

as on the day we first met. In all the long years Patrick never made a

mistake. He never needed an order, he never received a command. He

knew. I have been asked for my idea of an ideal gentleman, and I give it

to you Patrick McAleer.

UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY

After the serious addresses were made, Seth Low introduced Mr.

Clemens at the Settlement House, February 2, 1901.

The older we grow the greater becomes our, wonder at how much ignorance

one can contain without bursting one's clothes. Ten days ago I did not

know anything about the University Settlement except what I'd read in the

pamphlets sent me. Now, after being here and hearing Mrs. Hewitt and

Mrs. Thomas, it seems to me I know of nothing like it at all. It's a

charity that carries no humiliation with it. Marvellous it is, to think

of schools where you don't have to drive the children in but drive them

out. It was not so in my day.

Down-stairs just now I saw a dancing lesson going on. You must pay a

cent for a lesson. You can't get it for nothing. That's the reason I

never learned to dance.

But it was the pawnbroker's shop you have here that interested me

mightily. I've known something about pawnbrokers' shops in my time,

but here you have a wonderful plan. The ordinary pawnbroker charges

thirty-six per cent. a year for a loan, and I've paid more myself, but

here a man or woman in distress can obtain a loan for one per cent.

a month! It's wonderful!

I've been interested in all I've heard to-day, especially in the romances

recounted by Mrs. Thomas, which reminds me that I have a romance of my

own in my autobiography, which I am building for the instruction of the

world.

In San Francisco, many years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter

(perhaps I should say I had been and was willing to be), a pawnbroker was

taking care of what property I had. There was a friend of mine, a poet,

out of a job, and he was having a hard time of it, too. There was

passage in it, but I guess I've got to keep that for the autobiography.

Well, my friend the poet thought his life was a failure, and I told him I

thought it was, and then he said he thought he ought to commit suicide,

and I said "all right," which was disinterested advice to a friend in

trouble; but, like all such advice, there was just a little bit of

self-interest back of it, for if I could get a "scoop" on the other

newspapers I could get a job.

The poet could be spared, and so, largely for his own good and partly for

mine, I kept the thing in his mind, which was necessary, as would-be

suicides are very changeable aid hard to hold to their purpose. He had a

preference for a pistol, which was an extravagance, for we hadn't enough

between us to hire a pistol. A fork would have been easier.

And so he concluded to drown himself, and I said it was an excellent

idea--the only trouble being that he was so good a swimmer. So we went

down to the beach. I went along to see that the thing was done right.

Then something most romantic happened. There came in on the sea

something that had been on its way for three years. It rolled in across

the broad Pacific with a message that was full of meaning to that poor

poet and cast itself at his feet. It was a life-preserver! This was a

complication. And then I had an idea--he never had any, especially when

he was going to write poetry; I suggested that we pawn the life-preserver

and get a revolver.

The pawnbroker gave us an old derringer with a bullet as big as a hickory

nut. When he heard that it was only a poet that was going to kill

himself he did not quibble. Well, we succeeded in sending a bullet right

through his head. It was a terrible moment when he placed that pistol

against his forehead and stood for an instant. I said, "Oh, pull the

trigger!" and he did, and cleaned out all the gray matter in his brains.

It carried the poetic faculty away, and now he's a useful member of

society.

Now, therefore, I realize that there's no more beneficent institution

than this penny fund of yours, and I want all the poets to know this.

I did think about writing you a check, but now I think I'll send you a

few copies of what one of your little members called 'Strawberry Finn'.

PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

ADDRESS AT A MEETING OF THE BERKELEY LYCEUM, NEW YORK,

NOVEMBER 23, 1900

I don't suppose that I am called here as an expert on education, for that

would show a lack of foresight on your part and a deliberate intention to

remind me of my shortcomings.

As I sat here looking around for an idea it struck me that I was called

for two reasons. One was to do good to me, a poor unfortunate traveller

on the world's wide ocean, by giving me a knowledge of the nature and

scope of your society and letting me know that others beside myself have

been of some use in the world. The other reason that I can see is that

you have called me to show by way of contrast what education can

accomplish if administered in the right sort of doses.

Your worthy president said that the school pictures, which have received

the admiration of the world at the Paris Exposition, have been sent to

Russia, and this was a compliment from that Government--which is very

surprising to me. Why, it is only an hour since I read a cablegram in

the newspapers beginning "Russia Proposes to Retrench." I was not

expecting such a thunderbolt, and I thought what a happy thing it will be

for Russians when the retrenchment will bring home the thirty thousand

Russian troops now in Manchuria, to live in peaceful pursuits. I thought

this was what Germany should do also without delay, and that France and

all the other nations in China should follow suit.

Why should not China be free from the foreigners, who are only making

trouble on her soil? If they would only all go home, what a pleasant

place China would be for the Chinese! We do not allow Chinamen to come

here, and I say in all seriousness that it would be a graceful thing to

let China decide who shall go there.

China never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted Chinamen,

and on this question I am with the Boxers every time. The Boxer is a

patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other

people. I wish him success. The Boxer believes in driving us out of his

country. I am a Boxer too, for I believe in driving him out of our

country.

When I read the Russian despatch further my dream of world peace

vanished. It said that the vast expense of maintaining the army had made

it necessary to retrench, and so the Government had decided that to

support the army it would be necessary to withdraw the appropriation from

the public schools. This is a monstrous idea to us.

We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation.

It is curious to reflect how history repeats itself the world over. Why,

I remember the same thing was done when I was a boy on the Mississippi

River. There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public

schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said

if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every

time a school was closed a jail had to be built.

It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe

it is better to support schools than jails.

The work of your association is better and shows more wisdom than the

Czar of Russia and all his people. This is not much of a compliment, but

it's the best I've got in stock.

EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP

On the evening of May 14, 1908, the alumni of the College of

the City of New York celebrated the opening of the new college

buildings at a banquet in the Waldorf Astoria. Mr. Clemens

followed Mayor McClellan.

I agreed when the Mayor said that there was not a man within hearing who

did not agree that citizenship should be placed above everything else,

even learning.

Have you ever thought about this? Is there a college in the whole

country where there is a chair of good citizenship? There is a kind of

bad citizenship which is taught in the schools, but no real good

citizenship taught. There are some which teach insane citizenship,

bastard citizenship, but that is all. Patriotism! Yes; but patriotism

is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the

loudest.

You can begin that chair of citizenship in the College of the City of New

York. You can place it above mathematics and literature, and that is

where it belongs.

We used to trust in God. I think it was in 1863 that some genius

suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated

among the rich. They didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because

they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in God.

Good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking and accuracy of

statement. Now, that motto on the coin is an overstatement. Those

Congressmen had no right to commit this whole country to a theological

doctrine. But since they did, Congress ought to state what our creed

should be.

There was never a nation in the world that put its whole trust in God.

It is a statement made on insufficient evidence. Leaving out the

gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in

God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement.

If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the

bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would

put their trust in the Health Board of the City of New York.

I read in the papers within the last day or two of a poor young girl who

they said was a leper. Did the people in that populous section of the

country where she was--did they put their trust in God? The girl was

afflicted with the leprosy, a disease which cannot be communicated from

one person to another.

Yet, instead of putting their trust in God, they harried that poor

creature, shelterless and friendless, from place to place, exactly as

they did in the Middle Ages, when they made lepers wear bells, so that

people could be warned of their approach and avoid them. Perhaps those

people in the Middle Ages thought they were putting their trust in God.

The President ordered the removal of that motto from the coin, and I

thought that it was well. I thought that overstatement should not stay

there. But I think it would better read, "Within certain judicious

limitations we trust in God," and if there isn't enough room on the coin

for this, why, enlarge the coin.

Now I want to tell a story about jumping at conclusions. It was told to

me by Bram Stoker, and it concerns a christening. There was a little

clergyman who was prone to jump at conclusions sometimes. One day he was

invited to officiate at a christening. He went. There sat the

relatives--intelligent-looking relatives they were. The little

clergyman's instinct came to him to make a great speech. He was given to

flights of oratory that way--a very dangerous thing, for often the wings

which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up

there, and down you come.

But the little clergyman couldn't resist. He took the child in his arms,

and, holding it, looked at it a moment. It wasn't much of a child. It

was little, like a sweet-potato. Then the little clergyman waited

impressively, and then: "I see in your countenances," he said,

"disappointment of him. I see you are disappointed with this baby. Why?

Because he is so little. My friends, if you had but the power of looking

into the future you might see that great things may come of little

things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which

comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There

are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars.

Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become

the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has

ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than--er--er" (turning to

the father)--"what's his name?"

The father hesitated, then whispered back: "His name? Well, his name is

Mary Ann."

COURAGE

At a beefsteak dinner, given by artists, caricaturists, and

humorists of New York City, April 18, 1908, Mr. Clemens, Mr. H.

H. Rogers, and Mr. Patrick McCarren were the guests of honor.

Each wore a white apron, and each made a short speech.

In the matter of courage we all have our limits.

There never was a hero who did not have his bounds. I suppose it may be

said of Nelson and all the others whose courage has been advertised that

there came times in their lives when their bravery knew it had come to

its limit.

I have found mine a good many times. Sometimes this was expected--often

it was unexpected. I know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a

rattlesnake, but you could not get him to sleep with a safety-razor.

I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room I should be at

the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across

a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate

periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have

any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are

going to do.

I'll sit down.

THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE

AT A DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR JOSEPH H. CHOATE AT

THE LOTOS CLUB, NOVEMBER 24, 7902

The speakers, among others, were: Senator Depew, William Henry

White, Speaker Thomas Reed, and Mr. Choate. Mr. Clemens spoke,

in part, as follows:

The greatness of this country rests on two anecdotes. The first one is

that of Washington and his hatchet, representing the foundation of true

speaking, which is the characteristic of our people. The second one is

an old one, and I've been waiting to hear it to-night; but as nobody has

told it yet, I will tell it.

You've heard it before, and you'll hear it many, many times more. It is

an anecdote of our guest, of the time when he was engaged as a young man

with a gentle Hebrew, in the process of skinning the client. The main

part in that business is the collection of the bill for services in

skinning the man. "Services" is the term used in that craft for the

operation of that kind-diplomatic in its nature.

Choate's--co-respondent--made out a bill for $500 for his services, so

called. But Choate told him he had better leave the matter to him, and

the next day he collected the bill for the services and handed the Hebrew

$5000, saying, "That's your half of the loot," and inducing that

memorable response: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."

The deep-thinkers didn't merely laugh when that happened. They stopped

to think, and said "There's a rising man. He must be rescued from the

law and consecrated to diplomacy. The commercial advantages of a great

nation lie there in that man's keeping. We no longer require a man to

take care of our moral character before the world. Washington and his

anecdote have done that. We require a man to take care of our commercial

prosperity."

Mr. Choate has carried that trait with him, and, as Mr. Carnegie has

said, he has worked like a mole underground.

We see the result when American railroad iron is sold so cheap in England

that the poorest family can have it. He has so beguiled that Cabinet of

England.

He has been spreading the commerce of this nation, and has depressed

English commerce in the same ratio. This was the principle underlying

that anecdote, and the wise men saw it; the principle of give and take

--give one and take ten--the principle of diplomacy.

ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE

Mr. Clemens was entertained at dinner by the Whitefriars' Club,

London, at the Mitre Tavern, on the evening of August 6, 1872.

In reply to the toast in his honor he said:

GENTLEMEN,--I thank you very heartily indeed for this expression of

kindness toward me. What I have done for England and civilization in the

arduous affairs which I have engaged in (that is good: that is so smooth

that I will say it again and again)--what I have done for England and

civilization in the arduous part I have performed I have done with a

single-hearted devotion and with no hope of reward. I am proud, I am

very proud, that it was reserved for me to find Doctor Livingstone and

for Mr. Stanley to get all the credit. I hunted for that man in Africa

all over seventy-five or one hundred parishes, thousands and thousands of

miles in the wilds and deserts all over the place, sometimes riding

negroes and sometimes travelling by rail. I didn't mind the rail or

anything else, so that I didn't come in for the tar and feathers. I

found that man at Ujiji--a place you may remember if you have ever been

there--and it was a very great satisfaction that I found him just in the

nick of time. I found that poor old man deserted by his niggers and by

his geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the gorillas

--dejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famishing--but he was

eloquent. Just as I found him he had eaten his last elephant, and he

said to me: "God knows where I shall get another." He had nothing to

wear except his venerable and honorable naval suit, and nothing to eat

but his diary.

But I said to him: "It is all right; I have discovered you, and Stanley

will be here by the four-o'clock train and will discover you officially,

and then we will turn to and have a reg'lar good time." I said: "Cheer

up, for Stanley has got corn, ammunition, glass beads, hymn-books,

whiskey, and everything which the human heart can desire; he has got all

kinds of valuables, including telegraph-poles and a few cart-loads of

money. By this time communication has been made with the land of Bibles

and civilization, and property will advance." And then we surveyed all

that country, from Ujiji, through Unanogo and other places, to

Unyanyembe. I mention these names simply for your edification, nothing

more--do not expect it--particularly as intelligence to the Royal

Geographical Society. And then, having filled up the old man, we were

all too full for utterance and departed. We have since then feasted on

honors.

Stanley has received a snuff-box and I have received considerable snuff;

he has got to write a book and gather in the rest of the credit, and I am

going to levy on the copyright and to collect the money. Nothing comes

amiss to me--cash or credit; but, seriously, I do feel that Stanley is

the chief man and an illustrious one, and I do applaud him with all my

heart. Whether he is an American or a Welshman by birth, or one, or

both, matters not to me. So far as I am personally concerned, I am

simply here to stay a few months, and to see English people and to learn

English manners and customs, and to enjoy myself; so the simplest thing I

can do is to thank you for the toast you have honored me with and for the

remarks you have made, and to wish health and prosperity to the

Whitefriars' Club, and to sink down to my accustomed level.

HENRY M. STANLEY

ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1886

Mr. Clemens introduced Mr. Stanley.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, if any should ask, Why is it that you are here as

introducer of the lecturer? I should answer that I happened to be around

and was asked to perform this function. I was quite willing to do so,

and, as there was no sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could be

necessary only that some person come forward for a moment and do an

unnecessary thing, and this is quite in my line. Now, to introduce so

illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what the man has

done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the

unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have

achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his

possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story

edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the

cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements

of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is

in his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.

No, I won't do that; but when you come to regard the achievements of

these two men, Columbus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the

difficulties they encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and against

Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to discover America. Well, he

didn't need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and

hold his grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself.

Here it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the

South American continent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to

discover it. But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was

scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast

slab of Africa as big as the United States.

It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But I

will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar feature

of Mr. Stanley's character, and that is his indestructible Americanism

--an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and time, when it

is the custom to ape and imitate English methods and fashion, it is like

a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of this untainted American

citizen who has been caressed and complimented by half of the crowned

heads of Europe who could clothe his body from his head to his heels with

the orders and decorations lavished upon him. And yet, when the untitled

myriads of his own country put out their hands in welcome to him and

greet him, "Well done," through the Congress of the United States, that

is the crown that is worth all the rest to him. He is a product of

institutions which exist in no other country on earth-institutions that

bring out all that is best and most heroic in a man. I introduce Henry

M. Stanley.

DINNER TO MR. JEROME

A dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good

judgment of District-Attorney Jerome was given at Delmonico's

by over three hundred of his admirers on the evening of May 7,

1909.

Indeed, that is very sudden. I was not informed that the verdict was

going to depend upon my judgment, but that makes not the least difference

in the world when you already know all about it. It is not any matter

when you are called upon to express it; you can get up and do it, and my

verdict has already been recorded in my heart and in my head as regards

Mr. Jerome and his administration of the criminal affairs of this county.

I agree with everything Mr. Choate has said in his letter regarding Mr.

Jerome; I agree with everything Mr. Shepard has said; and I agree with

everything Mr. Jerome has said in his own commendation. And I thought

Mr. Jerome was modest in that. If he had been talking about another

officer of this county, he could have painted the joys and sorrows of

office and his victories in even stronger language than he did.

I voted for Mr. Jerome in those old days, and I should like to vote for

him again if he runs for any office. I moved out of New York, and that

is the reason, I suppose, I cannot vote for him again. There may be some

way, but I have not found it out. But now I am a farmer--a farmer up in

Connecticut, and winning laurels. Those people already speak with such

high favor, admiration, of my farming, and they say that I am the only

man that has ever come to that region who could make two blades of grass

grow where only three grew before.

Well, I cannot vote for him. You see that. As it stands now, I cannot.

I am crippled in that way and to that extent, for I would ever so much

like to do it. I am not a Congress, and I cannot distribute pensions,

and I don't know any other legitimate way to buy a vote. But if I should

think of any legitimate way, I shall make use of it, and then I shall

vote for Mr. Jerome.

HENRY IRVING

The Dramatic and Literary Society of London gave a welcome-home

dinner to Sir Henry Irving at the Savoy Hotel, London, June 9,

1900. In proposing the toast of "The Drama" Mr. Clemens said:

I find my task a very easy one. I have been a dramatist for thirty

years. I have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the

Spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died.

I leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead.

The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It is a most difficult

thing. It requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts.

No, there is another talent that ranks with it--for anybody can write a

drama--I had four hundred of them--but to get one accepted requires real

ability. And I have never had that felicity yet.

But human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we

know that we are born to a thing we do not care what the world thinks

about it. We go on exploiting that talent year after year, as I have

done. I shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may

happen, but I am not looking for it.

In writing plays the chief thing is novelty. The world grows tired of

solid forms in all the arts. I struck a new idea myself years ago.

I was not surprised at it. I was always expecting it would happen.

A person who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence,

and I thought I had better make inquiries before I exploited my new idea

of doing a drama in the form of a dream, so I wrote to a great authority

on knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new.

I could depend upon him. He lived in my dear home in America--that dear

home, dearer to me through taxes. He sent me a list of plays in which

that old device had been used, and he said that there was also a modern

lot. He travelled back to China and to a play dated two thousand six

hundred years before the Christian era. He said he would follow it up

with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence would

have carried them back to the Flood.

That is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my

dramatic career. I have done a world of good in a silent and private

way, and have furnished Sir Henry Irving with plays and plays and plays.

What has he achieved through that influence. See where he stands now

--on the summit of his art in two worlds and it was I who put him there

--that partly put him there.

I need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon

civilization. It has made good morals entertaining. I am to be followed

by Mr. Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of the profession.

He has not written as many plays as I have, but he has lead that

God-given talent, which I lack, of working hem off on the manager.

I couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence

will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great

gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work.

DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE

ADDRESS DELIVERED APRIL 29, 1901

In introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said:

"The longer the speaking goes on to-night the more I wonder how

I got this job, and the only explanation I can give for it is

that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of

articles I have sent to The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton

W. Mabie. There is one man here to-night that has a job cut

out for him that none of you would have had--a man whose humor

has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense of

humor has been an example for all five continents. He is going

to speak to you. Gentlemen, you know him best as Mark Twain."

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--This man knows now how it feels to be the

chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man I have ever

seen in that position that did enjoy it. And I know, by side-remarks

which he made to me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was feeling

as some of the rest of us have felt under the same circumstances. He was

afraid that he would not do himself justice; but he did--to my surprise.

It is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion like this,

and it is admirable, it is fine. It is a great compliment to a man that

he shall come out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie came out of it

tonight--to my surprise. He did it well.

He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and notwithstanding that, I have

every admiration, because when everything is said concerning The Outlook,

after all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies, that it

is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is vigorous in its

mistaken criticisms of men like me. I have lived in this world a long,

long time, and I know you must not judge a man by the editorials that he

puts in his paper. A man is always better than his printed opinions.

A man always reserves to himself on the inside a purity and an honesty

and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things that he prints

are just the reverse.

Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. Even in

an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must

be better than the principles which he puts in print. And that is the

case with Mr. Mabie. Why, to see what he writes about me and the

missionaries you would think he did not have any principles. But that is

Mr. Mabie in his public capacity. Mr. Mabie in his private capacity is

just as clean a man as I am.

In this very room, a month or two ago, some people admired that portrait;

some admired this, but the great majority fastened on that, and said,

"There is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of art." When that

portrait is a hundred years old it will suggest what were the manners and

customs in our time. Just as they talk about Mr. Mabie to-night, in that

enthusiastic way, pointing out the various virtues of the man and the

grace of his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait talked about.

They were enthusiastic, just as we men have been over the character and

the work of Mr. Mabie. And when they were through they said that

portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that piece of

humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not rise to

those perfections that exist in the man himself. Come up, Mr. Alexander.

[The reference was to James W. Alexander, who happened to be sitting

--beneath the portrait of himself on the wall.] Now, I should come up

and show myself. But he cannot do it, he cannot do it. He was born that

way, he was reared in that way. Let his modesty be an example, and I

wish some of you had it, too. But that is just what I have been saying

--that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it represents,

and all the things that have been said about Mr. Mabie, and certainly

they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall short of the

real Mabie.

INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY

James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill Nye) were to

give readings in Tremont Temple, Boston, November, 1888. Mr.

Clemens was induced to introduce Messrs. Riley and Nye. His

appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and

when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration.

I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the

same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than

once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them

personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many

years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam.

The ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best

hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to

cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff.

In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The

sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine,

so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested; when one

slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped the

usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable in

all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary

distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the two

--between, I may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or, in

other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other always

the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within certain

well-defined zones of activity the one was always dynamo and the other

always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these positions

became exactly reversed.

For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr. Eng

Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high--in fact, an

abnormally high and fine moral sense, he had no machinery to work it

with; whereas, Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all, and hasn't

yet, was equipped with all the necessary plant for putting a noble deed

through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable terms

outside.

In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always

dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor; Mr. Eng Nye had a stately

intellect, but couldn't make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn't, but could.

That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn't think things himself,

he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and weaving them

together when his pal furnished the raw material.

Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they

could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has

remained so to this day: they must travel together, hoe, and plant, and

plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there's no result.

I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so to

speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers

understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye's deep and broad and limpid

philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round

about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his

water; it's the other man's, and he is only working the pump. And when

Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches

your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry--as sweet and

as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about

his other friends, the woods and the flowers--you will remember, while

placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the

other man's--he is only turning the crank.

I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a singleminded, one-eyed

umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it--and I

judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will

now go to the bat.

DINNER TO WHITELAW REID

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR REID, GIVEN BY THE

PILGRIMS' CLUB OF NEW YORK ON FEBRUARY 19, 1908

I am very proud to respond to this toast, as it recalls the proudest day

of my life. The delightful hospitality shown me at the time of my visit

to Oxford I shall cherish until I die. In that long and distinguished

career of mine I value that degree above all other honors. When the ship

landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an English

cheer. Nothing could surpass in my life the pleasure of those four

weeks. No one could pass by me without taking my hand, even the

policemen. I've been in all the principal capitals of Christendom in my

life, and have always been an object of interest to policemen. Sometimes

there was suspicion in their eyes, but not always. With their puissant

hand they would hold up the commerce of the world to let me pass.

I noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch from Washington, saying

that Congress would immediately pass a bill restoring to our gold coinage

the motto "In God We Trust." I'm glad of that; I'm glad of that. I was

troubled when that motto was removed. Sure enough, the prosperities of

the whole nation went down in a heap when we ceased to trust in God in

that conspicuously advertised way. I knew there would be trouble. And

if Pierpont Morgan hadn't stepped in--Bishop Lawrence may now add to his

message to the old country that we are now trusting in God again. So we

can discharge Mr. Morgan from his office with honor.

Mr. Reid said an hour or so ago something about my ruining my activities

last summer. They are not ruined, they are renewed. I am stronger now

--much stronger. I suppose that the spiritual uplift I received

increased my physical power more than anything I ever had before. I was

dancing last night at 1.30 o'clock.

Mr. Choate has mentioned Mr. Reid's predecessors. Mr. Choate's head is

full of history, and some of it is true, too. I enjoyed hearing him tell

about the list of the men who had the place before he did. He mentioned

a long list of those predecessors, people I never heard of before, and

elected five of them to the Presidency by his own vote. I'm glad and

proud to find Mr. Reid in that high position, because he didn't look it

when I knew him forty years ago. I was talking to Reid the other day,

and he showed me my autograph on an old paper twenty years old. I didn't

know I had an autograph twenty years ago. Nobody ever asked me for it.

I remember a dinner I had long ago with Whitelaw Reid and John Hay at

Reid's expense. I had another last summer when I was in London at the

embassy that Choate blackguards so. I'd like to live there.

Some people say they couldn't live on the salary, but I could live on the

salary and the nation together. Some of us don't appreciate what this

country can do. There's John Hay, Reid, Choate, and me. This is the

only country in the world where youth, talent, and energy can reach such

heights. It shows what we could do without means, and what people can do

with talent and energy when they find it in people like us.

When I first came to New York they were all struggling young men, and I

am glad to see that they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay when

I had no white hairs in my head and more hair than Reid has now. Those

were days of joy and hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the

Tribune. I went there once in that old building, and I looked all around

and I finally found a door ajar and looked in. It wasn't Reid or Hay

there, but it was Horace Greeley. Those were in the days when Horace

Greeley was a king. That was the first time I ever saw him and the last.

I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was a

fine presence there somewhere. He tried to smile, but he was out of

smiles. He looked at me a moment, and said:

"What in H---do you want?"

He began with that word "H." That's a long word and a profane word.

I don't remember what the word was now, but I recognized the power of it.

I had never used that language myself, but at that moment I was

converted. It has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. If a

man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous

occasions. When you have that word at your command let trouble come.

But later Hay rose, and you know what summit Whitelaw Reid has reached,

and you see me. Those two men have regulated troubles of nations and

conferred peace upon mankind. And in my humble way, of which I am quite

vain, I was the principal moral force in all those great international

movements. These great men illustrated what I say. Look at us great

people--we all come from the dregs of society. That's what can be done

in this country. That's what this country does for you.

Choate here--he hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the same,

and he can do it so felicitously, too. I said long ago he was the

handsomest man America ever produced. May the progress of civilization

always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past!

ROGERS AND RAILROADS

AT A BANQUET GIVEN MR. H. H. ROGERS BY THE BUSINESS MEN OF

NORFOLK, VA., CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF THE VIRGINIAN RAILWAY,

APRIL, 3, 1909

Toastmaster:

"I have often thought that when the time comes, which must come

to all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great Beyond,

and the question is propounded, 'What have you done to gain

admission into this great realm?' if the answer could be

sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh,' it would be the surest

passport to a welcome entrance. We have here to-night one who

has made millions laugh--not the loud laughter that bespeaks

the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps

the human heart and the human mind. I refer, of course, to

Doctor Clemens. I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary

title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of

any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title."

I thank you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me,

and I am sure I would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my

time I have made some of them cry; and before I stop entirely I hope to

make some more of them cry. I like compliments. I deal in them myself.

I have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the

chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of his to-night, and I hope

some of them are deserved.

It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an

intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with Napoleon and Caesar.

Why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life? Napoleon

and Caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves. But

I'm here!

The chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the

hands of man are the roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he

built a lot of them; and they are there yet.

Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and you can find them. But

Rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. I like

to hear my old friend complimented, but I don't like to hear it overdone.

I didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing. I

will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and

when I shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a

railroad in which I own no stock.

They proposed that I go along with the committee and help inspect that

dump down yonder. I didn't go. I saw that dump. I saw that thing when

I was coming in on the steamer, and I didn't go because I was diffident,

sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing again

--that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like Mr. Rogers's foot.

The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is.

It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he, is a very

competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know

lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and I know

how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done

better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made

the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to

ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant. To this day he don't

like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody.

On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a

couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth

from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like

to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be

ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in

bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in

case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: "A king's

crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000."

He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he

went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.

I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented. I am not stingy in compliments

to him myself. Why, I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to

comfort her. That is the kind of person I am. I knew she would be

uneasy about him. I knew she would be solicitous about what he might do

down here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort her. I said he was

doing well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it.

He is like I used to be. There were times when I was careless--careless

in my dress when I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife can

get when you are going away without her superintendence. Once when my

wife could not go with me (she always went with me when she could

--I always did meet that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a

long time ago, in Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not

go; but, in her anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made

preparation. She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors

at the White House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, "If I

should tell you now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before

you get to Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and

you will find it in your dress--vest pocket when you are dressing at the

Arlington--when you are dressing to see the President." I never thought

of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it

out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "Don't wear your arctics in

the White House."

You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness,

complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments,

although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one side of Mr.

Rogers that has not been mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will

touch upon that. There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk

papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side

of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr.

Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a right to feel

that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it, he

rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful

Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from

scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as

well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine

years of age. She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has

existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.

That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his

character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand

daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is

supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright.

But the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright,

and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God.

I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been

allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I

don't look at him I can tell it now.

In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which I

was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will

remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could

not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back; my

books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my

copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books

have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support

you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights,

and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my

creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and

persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end of

four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made;

otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a

borrowed one at that.

You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is always

trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are only

emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without exception,

hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.

THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,

JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor."

The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to

fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity.

All things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am

among strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer

of thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well.

I built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from

the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from under

his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in his case

and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't there to

see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for that was

the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down the paper

Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly; I rolled,

I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers, I carried

them around at dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then an object of

interest to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all the bites I ever

received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year. I enveloped the

papers that were for the mail--we had a hundred town subscribers and

three hundred and fifty country ones; the town subscribers paid in

groceries and the country ones in cabbages and cord-wood--when they paid

at all, which was merely sometimes, and then we always stated the fact in

the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we forgot it they stopped the

paper. Every man on the town list helped edit the thing--that is,

he gave orders as to how it was to be edited; dictated its opinions,

marked out its course for it, and every time the boss failed to connect

he stopped his paper. We were just infested with critics, and we tried

to satisfy them all over. We had one subscriber who paid cash, and he

was more trouble than all the rest. He bought us once a year, body and

soul, for two dollars. He used to modify our politics every which way,

and he made us change our religion four times in five years. If we ever

tried to reason with him, he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of

course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction. That man used to write

articles a column and a half long, leaded long primer, and sign them

"Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some other high-sounding rot;

and then, after it was set up, he would come in and say he had changed

his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech, because he hadn't any--and

order it to be left out. We couldn't afford "bogus" in that office, so

we always took the leads out, altered the signature, credited the article

to the rival paper in the next village, and put it in. Well, we did have

one or two kinds of "bogus." Whenever there was a barbecue, or a circus,

or a baptizing, we knocked off for half a day, and then to make up for

short matter we would "turn over ads"--turn over the whole page and

duplicate it. The other "bogus" was deep philosophical stuff, which we

judged nobody ever read; so we kept a galley of it standing, and kept on

slapping the same old batches of it in, every now and then, till it got

dangerous. Also, in the early days of the telegraph we used to economize

on the news. We picked out the items that were pointless and barren of

information and stood them on a galley, and changed the dates and

localities, and used them over and over again till the public interest in

them was worn to the bone. We marked the ads, but we seldom paid any

attention to the marks afterward; so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad

was equally eternal. I have seen a "td" notice of a sheriff's sale still

booming serenely along two years after the sale was over, the sheriff

dead, and the whole circumstance become ancient history. Most of the

yearly ads were patent-medicine stereotypes, and we used to fence with

them.

I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse

bills on, the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we always

stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was not

considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and symbols

that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi Valley;

and I can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the summer

and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a hatful of

handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do a

temperance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs not complex;

all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he

was satisfied. But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,

and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will

"make even" and stop.

SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr.

Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. So many members

surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: "Is this genuine

popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme?"

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a most difficult thing for

any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. I don't know

what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say

a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.

If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind

chairmen say of me. In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty

as if he was envious of me. I would like to have one man come out

flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it

were true. I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking,

that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by

saying complimentary things.

I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well as

any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented. And

there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know

all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you

things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented.

The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you

live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and

pleasant. To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy.

Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But,

oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair. I have

made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am.

Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is

nothing of the sort. I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy.

Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits of

mine, and then he will make a speech.

I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as

the two put together.

When that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another

story told. At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found

him. He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all

sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but

when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he was

a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence with

which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis.

I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to

the members of my family. They don't believe them, but I like to tell

them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can.

I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am

praised any more than I am entitled to be.

READING-ROOM OPENING

On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address

preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London.

I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the

legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with

intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the

community so desires.

If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand

in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of the

healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it

taxes itself for its mental food.

A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up

through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. What would we

do without newspapers?

Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster was

made known to the entire world. This reminds me of an episode which

occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford, Connecticut.

The clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any.

He did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates

around for collection. I complained to the governor of his lack of

financial trust in me, and he replied: "I would trust you myself--if you

had a bell-punch."

You have paid me many compliments, and I like to listen to compliments.

I indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of England

and America. He also alluded to my name, of which I am rather fond.

A little girl wrote me from New Zealand in a letter I received yesterday,

stating that her father said my proper name was not Mark Twain but Samuel

Clemens, but that she knew better, because Clemens was the name of the

man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not Mark. She was

sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark is in the Bible and Twain is in the

Bible.

I was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and as

I now know my name to be a scriptural one, I am not without hopes of

making it worthy.

LITERATURE

ADDRESS AT THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND BANQUET, LONDON, MAY 4, 1900

Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to the

toast "Literature."

MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately with this toast without

assistance from me. Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced any

theories that needed refutation or correction I would have attended to

them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is

in the habit of making I would have dealt with them.

In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his statements. I could not

have made such statements if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate is

the only way I can approximate to the truth. You cannot have a theory

without principles. Principles is another name for prejudices. I have

no prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else.

I am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because

there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have

entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are

prejudices.

I propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. I am in favor

of everything everybody is in favor of. What you should do is to satisfy

the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a

President.

There could not be a broader platform than mine. I am in favor of

anything and everything--of temperance and intemperance, morality and

qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver.

I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I want to by the great

position of ruler of a country. I have been in turn reporter, editor,

publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. I have worked my way up, and wish to

continue to do so.

I read to-day in a magazine article that Christendom issued last year

fifty-five thousand new books. Consider what that means! Fifty-five

thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. We are going

to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later.

Therefore, double your, subscriptions to the literary fund!

DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLUB, AT

SHERRY'S, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 20, 1900

Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast "The Disappearance of

Literature." Doctor Gould presided, and in introducing

Mr. Clemens said that he (the speaker), when in Germany, had to

do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was

taking what the Germans thought undue liberties with their

language.

It wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in Germany.

It wasn't necessary at all. Instead of that he ought to have impressed

upon those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered them. Their

language had needed untangling for a good many years. Nobody else seemed

to want to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I

made a pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting

up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world

when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But

that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it

down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it

away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they

just shovel in German. I maintain that there is no necessity for

apologizing for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation.

We have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature.

That's no new thing. That's what certain kinds of literature have been

doing for several years. The fact is, my friends, that the fashion in

literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts or

go out of business. Professor Winchester here, if I remember fairly

correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels produced

to-day would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott. That may be his

notion. Maybe he is right; but so far as I am concerned, I don't care if

they don't.

Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern

epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he's right. He talked as if he was

pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would

suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever

read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you

just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester

says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something that everybody

wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of

literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess

that's true. The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two

ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and

you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes

a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years.

But as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance of

literature, they didn't say anything about my books. Maybe they think

they've disappeared. If they do, that just shows their ignorance on the

general subject of literature. I am not as young as I was several years

ago, and maybe I'm not so fashionable, but I'd be willing to take my

chances with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of literature

to the Century Publishing Company. And I haven't got much of a pull

here, either. I often think that the highest compliment ever paid to my

poor efforts was paid by Darwin through President Eliot, of Harvard

College. At least, Eliot said it was a compliment, and I always take the

opinion of great men like college presidents on all such subjects as

that.

I went out to Cambridge one day a few years ago and called on President

Eliot. In the course of the conversation he said that he had just

returned from England, and that he was very much touched by what he

considered the high compliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he went

on to tell me something like this:

"Do you know that there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom, where

the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? One is a plant

he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those

insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for the

particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) "and the other some books that lie

on the night table at the head of his bed. They are your books, Mr.

Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep."

My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it

the highest one that was ever paid to me. To be the means of soothing to

sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like Darwin's was

something that I had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I never

hope to be able to do it again.

THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER

AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900

Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily News, as

president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens as the principal

ornament of American literature.

I must say that I have already begun to regret that I left my gun at

home. I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with

just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will

certainly use a gun on that chairman. It is my privilege to compliment

him in return. You behold before you a very, very old man. A cursory

glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. His features seem to

reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts--they seem to bear the

traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for

the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-school of a life that

may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or will

riz--I mean to say, will rise. His private character is altogether

suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has got. If you

examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features,

because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor--mere

effects of a great spirit upon a weak body--mere accidents of a great

career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues,

and he practises them all--secretly--always secretly. You all know him

so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. Gentlemen,

Colonel Brown.

THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO MR. CARNEGIE AT THE DEDICATION

OF THE NEW YORK ENGINEERS' CLUB, DECEMBER 9, 1907

Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who,

quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day

when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small

change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes.

It seems to me that I was around here in the neighborhood of the Public

Library about fifty or sixty years ago. I don't deny the circumstance,

although I don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was

not to be printed until I am dead, unless I'm dead now. I had that $3 in

change, and I remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. I have

prospered since. Now I have plenty of money and a disposition to

squander it, but I can't. One of those trust companies is taking care of

it.

Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall be out after

nightfall this winter, I must say that I have come here with a mission,

and I would make my errand of value.

Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie to-night. I was

expecting them. They are very gratifying to me.

I have been a guest of honor myself, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is

experiencing now. It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments

and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of

us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of

our condemnation.

Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is fairly scintillating with

fictitious innocence. You would think, looking at him, that he had never

committed a crime in his life. But no--look at his pestiferious

simplified spelling. You can't any of you imagine what a crime that has

been. Torquemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old fellow shed some

blood in the Inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to the

entire race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was, just

the same. He's got us all so we can't spell anything.

The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end.

He meant well, but he, attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the

disease. He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. There's not a

vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can hitch

anything to. Look at the "h's" distributed all around. There's

"gherkin." What are you going to do with the "h" in that? What the

devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, I'd like to know. It's one thing I

admire the English for: they just don't mind anything about them at all.

But look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them.

A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving

us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of

this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken

thief. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about

fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't

spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs.

Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even

the prisoner at the bar. I'd like to hear him try once--but not in

public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic

entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try in private, and when

he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it

was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or

walked with its wings. The chances are that he would give it tusks and

make it lay eggs.

Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for him

--if he'll take the risk. If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a

system of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every

shade of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in

any tongue that we could not spell accurately. That would be competent,

adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair

punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of

simplified spelling. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell me

unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with r-o-w,

b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful

wedlock and don't know their own origin.

Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of

inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. Spelling reform

has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is the whole tribe of

them, "row" and "read" and "lead"--a whole family who don't know who they

are. I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one.

If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of

comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of a

man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to

recall the lady hog and the future ham.

It's a rotten alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie to get after it, and

leave simplified spelling alone.

Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco

earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never have

had if spelling had been left all alone.

Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and made him more comfortable

than he would have been had he received only compliment after compliment,

and I wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all right, but, like

chastity, you can carry it too far.

SPELLING AND PICTURES

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AT THE

WALDORF-ASTORIA, SEPTEMBER 18, 1906

I am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified

spelling. I have come here because they cannot all be reached except

through you. There are only two forces that can carry light to all the

corners of the globe--only two--the sun in the heavens and the Associated

Press down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean

it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around. You speak with

a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and

intellects, as you--except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without

your help. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified

forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole

spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties

are at an end.

Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the

world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and

angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out of

Associated Press despatches. And so I beg you, I beseech you--oh, I

implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this daily,

constantly, persistently, for three months--only three months--it is all

I ask. The infallible result?--victory, victory all down the line. For

by that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted

to the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged

forms will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. And we

shall be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and

diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no man

addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose some

of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not doubt it.

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places with

an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and

happy in it. We do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and tushes

after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while.

Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world? That is the idea. It is

my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit. We all

do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest is

anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests.

In 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to make a

noise, I was indifferent to it; more--I even irreverently scoffed at it.

What I needed was an object-lesson, you see. It is the only way to teach

some people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was scrambling along,

earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a word,

compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present.

I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron

contract. One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to

write ten pages--on this revolting text: "Considerations concerning the

alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous

superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the

unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects."

Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled

railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family

in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so as

to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor can

ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got

graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, "Read that text, Jackson,

and let it go on the record; read it out loud." He read it:

"Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal

extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the

Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its

plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects."

I said, "You want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer

thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?"

He said, "A word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you

going to do about it?"

I said, "Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What's an average

English word?"

He said, "Six letters."

I said, "Nothing of the kind; that's French, and includes the spaces

between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half.

By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary

and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can

put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not

another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is

worth eighty-four dollars to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your

magazine page with long words as it does with short ones-four hours.

Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours.

I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family's

sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents,

because I can get the same money for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,'

because I can get the same price for 'cop.' And so on and so on. I never

write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can

humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;

I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene text, please; count

the words."

He counted and said it was twenty-four. I asked him to count the

letters. He made it two hundred and three.