I said, "Now, I hope you see the whole size of your crime. With my

vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five

letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your

inhuman twenty-four I would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents.

Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three

hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same

labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. I do not wish to

work upon this scandalous job by the piece. I want to be hired by the

year." He coldly refused. I said:

"Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you

ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness."

Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I was

not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an

anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten to

the heart with holoaophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God forgive

me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours.

From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member of

the heaven-born institution, the International Association for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Carnegie's

Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work . . . .

Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally,

sanely--yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the

essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely

to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with

words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome

forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a

letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she

never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There

isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces the fonetics to the last

gasp--it squeezes the surplusage out of every word--there's no spelling

that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And as

for the punctuation, there isn't any. It is all one sentence, eagerly

and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The

letter is absolutely genuine--I have the proofs of that in my possession.

I can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter

presently and comfort your eyes with it. I will read the letter:

"Miss dear freind I took some Close into the armerry and give them to you

to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to treble you but i

got to have one of them Back it was a black oll wolle Shevyott With a

jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and palsy

menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it

belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about it i thoght she was

willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to

Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has

got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For

her i gels you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i

torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful

about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off

seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to

take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And

see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for it

if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True

freind

"i liked your

appearance very Much"

Now you see what simplified spelling can do.

It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions

like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print

all your despatches in it.

Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:

I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of

the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think

I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little while

that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with these

old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about it at

all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as I keep

the Sabbath.

There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography, and

it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present

condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their literature

in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the

forms as they are while we have got one million people coming in here

from foreign countries every year and they have got to struggle with this

orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship

for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn.

This is merely sentimental argument.

People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and

a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has

been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it

because of its ancient and hallowed associations.

Now, I don't see that there is any real argument about that. If that

argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the

flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so

long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness

for them on account of the associations. Why, it is like preserving a

cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it

by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity.

I think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our

family cancer, and I wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut out

and let the family cancer go.

Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young

person like yourselves. I am exhausted by the heat of the day. I must

take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry it

away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of the

righteous. There is nothing much left of me but my age and my

righteousness, but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you

always keep your youth.

BOOKS AND BURGLARS

ADDRESS TO THE REDDING (CONN.) LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,

OCTOBER 28, 1908

Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the

burglars who happened along and broke into my house--taking a lot of

things they didn't need, and for that matter which I didn't need--had

first made entry into this institution.

Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their

dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing moral

truths and getting a moral uplift. The whole course of their lives would

have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their immoral way

and were sent to jail.

For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress.

And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. Now, I

have known so many burglars--not exactly known, but so many of them have

come near me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed to allow

them credit for whatever good qualities they possess.

Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I just now think of, is

their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's sleep.

Noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their

visitation is to murder sleep later on.

Now we are prepared for these visitors. All sorts of alarm devices have

been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has been

electrified. The burglar who steps within this danger zone will set

loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our

elaborate system of defences. As for the fate of the trespasser, do not

seek to know that. He will never be heard of more.

AUTHORS' CLUB

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS, LONDON,

JUNE, 1899

Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.

It does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much. It only

pleases and delights me. I have not gone beyond the age when

embarrassment is possible, but I have reached the age when I know how to

conceal it. It is such a satisfaction to me to hear Sir Walter Besant,

who is much more capable than I to judge of my work, deliver a judgment

which is such a contentment to my spirit.

Well, I have thought well of the books myself, but I think more of them

now. It charms me also to hear Sir Spencer Walpole deliver a similar

judgment, and I shall treasure his remarks also. I shall not discount

the praises in any possible way. When I report them to my family they

shall lose nothing. There are, however, certain heredities which come

down to us which our writings of the present day may be traced to.

I, for instance, read the Walpole Letters when I was a boy. I absorbed

them, gathered in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away to be

used by-and-by. One does that so unconsciously with things one really

likes. I am reminded now of what use those letters have been to me.

They must not claim credit in America for what was really written in

another form so long ago. They must only claim that I trimmed this,

that, and the other, and so changed their appearance as to make them seem

to be original. You now see what modesty I have in stock. But it has

taken long practice to get it there.

But I must not stand here talking. I merely meant to get up and give my

thanks for the pleasant things that preceding speakers have said of me.

I wish also to extend my thanks to the Authors' Club for constituting me

a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit

of your legal adviser.

I believe you keep a lawyer. I have always kept a lawyer, too, though I

have never made anything out of him. It is service to an author to have

a lawyer. There is something so disagreeable in having a personal

contact with a publisher. So it is better to work through a lawyer--and

lose your case. I understand that the publishers have been meeting

together also like us. I don't know what for, but possibly they are

devising new and mysterious ways for remunerating authors. I only wish

now to thank you for electing me a member of this club--I believe I have

paid my dues--and to thank you again for the pleasant things you have

said of me.

Last February, when Rudyard Kipling was ill in America, the sympathy

which was poured out to him was genuine and sincere, and I believe that

which cost Kipling so much will bring England and America closer

together. I have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection

and respect between the two countries. I hope it will continue to grow,

and, please God, it will continue to grow. I trust we authors will leave

to posterity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friendship between

England and America that will count for much. I will now confess that

I have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a publication.

I have brought it here to lay at your feet. I do not ask your indulgence

in presenting it, but for your applause.

Here it is: "Since England and America may be joined together in

Kipling, may they not be severed in 'Twain.'"

BOOKSELLERS

Address at banquet on Wednesday evening, May 20, 1908, of the

American Booksellers' Association, which included most of the

leading booksellers of America, held at the rooms of the Aldine

Association, New York.

This annual gathering of booksellers from all over America comes together

ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss, business; therefore

I am required to, talk shop. I am required to furnish a statement of the

indebtedness under which I lie to you gentlemen for your help in enabling

me to earn my living. For something over forty years I have acquired my

bread by print, beginning with The Innocents Abroad, followed at

intervals of a year or so by Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so

on. For thirty-six years my books were sold by subscription. You are

not interested in those years, but only in the four which have since

followed. The books passed into the hands of my present publishers at

the beginning of 1900, and you then became the providers of my diet.

I think I may say, without flattering you, that you have done exceedingly

well by me. Exceedingly well is not too strong a phrase, since the

official statistics show that in four years you have sold twice as many

volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my publishers bound you

and them to sell in five years. To your sorrow you are aware that

frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be five or ten years

old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies, and after an

added ten or twenty years ceases to sell. But you sell thousands of my

moss-backed old books every year--the youngest of them being books that

range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old, and the oldest reaching

back to thirty-five and forty.

By the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for,

50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they

sold them or not. It is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for it

was your business to unload 250,000 volumes upon the public in five years

if you possibly could. Have you succeeded? Yes, you have--and more.

For in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000

volumes, and 240,000 besides.

Your sales have increased each year. In the first year you sold 90,328;

in the second year, 104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth year

--which was last year--you sold 160,000. The aggregate for the four

years is 500,000 volumes, lacking 11,000.

Of the oldest book, The Innocents Abroad,--now forty years old--you sold

upward of 46,000 copies in the four years; of Roughing It--now

thirty-eight years old; I think--you sold 40,334; of Tom Sawyer, 41,000.

And so on.

And there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying to me: the Personal

Recollections of Joan of Arc is a serious book; I wrote it for love, and

never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me in

that matter. In your hands its sale has increased each year. In 1904

you sold 1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574.

"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE"

On October 5, 1906, Mr. Clemens, following a musical recital by

his daughter in Norfolk, Conn., addressed her audience on the

subject of stage-fright. He thanked the people for making

things as easy as possible for his daughter's American debut as

a contralto, and then told of his first experience before the

public.

My heart goes out in sympathy to any one who is making his first

appearance before an audience of human beings. By a direct process of

memory I go back forty years, less one month--for I'm older than I look.

I recall the occasion of my first appearance. San Francisco knew me then

only as a reporter, and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as a

lecturer. I knew that nothing short of compulsion would get me to the

theatre. So I bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that I could

not escape. I got to the theatre forty-five minutes before the hour set

for the lecture. My knees were shaking so that I didn't know whether I

could stand up. If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it

is stage-fright-and seasickness. They are a pair. I had stage-fright

then for the first and last time. I was only seasick once, too. It was

on a little ship on which there were two hundred other passengers.

I--was--sick. I was so sick that there wasn't any left for those other

two hundred passengers.

It was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that theatre, and I peeked

through the little peekholes they have in theatre curtains and looked

into the big auditorium. That was dark and empty, too. By-and-by it

lighted up, and the audience began to arrive.

I had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart men, to sprinkle

themselves through the audience armed with big clubs. Every time I said

anything they could possibly guess I intended to be funny they were to

pound those clubs on the floor. Then there was a kind lady in a box up

there, also a good friend of mine, the wife of the Governor. She was to

watch me intently, and whenever I glanced toward her she was going to

deliver a gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole audience into

applause.

At last I began. I had the manuscript tucked under a United States flag

in front of me where I could get at it in case of need. But I managed to

get started without it. I walked up and down--I was young in those days

and needed the exercise--and talked and talked.

Right in the middle of the speech I had placed a gem. I had put in a

moving, pathetic part which was to get at the hearts and souls of my

hearers. When I delivered it they did just what I hoped and expected.

They sat silent and awed. I had touched them. Then I happened to glance

up at the box where the Governor's wife was--you know what happened.

Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage-fright left me,

never to return. I know if I was going to be hanged I could get up and

make a good showing, and I intend to. But I shall never forget my

feelings before the agony left me, and I got up here to thank you for her

for helping my daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first

appearance. And I want to thank you for your appreciation of her

singing, which is, by-the-way, hereditary.

MORALS AND MEMORY

Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held at

Barnard College (Columbia University), March 7, 1906, by the

Barnard Union. One of the young ladies presented Mr. Clemens,

and thanked him for his amiability in coming to make them an

address. She closed with the expression of the great joy it

gave her fellow-collegians, "because we all love you."

If any one here loves me, she has my sincere thanks. Nay, if any one

here is so good as to love me--why, I'll be a brother to her. She shall

have my sincere, warm, unsullied affection. When I was coming up in the

car with the very kind young lady who was delegated to show me the way,

she asked me what I was going to talk about. And I said I wasn't sure.

I said I had some illustrations, and I was going to bring them in.

I said I was certain to give those illustrations, but that I hadn't the

faintest notion what they were going to illustrate.

Now, I've been thinking it over in this forest glade [indicating the

woods of Arcady on the scene setting], and I've decided to work them in

with something about morals and the caprices of memory. That seems to me

to be a pretty good subject. You see, everybody has a memory and it's

pretty sure to have caprices. And, of course, everybody has morals.

It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like

to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any

day. "Give them to others"--that's my motto. Then you never have any

use for them when you're left without. Now, speaking of the caprices of

memory in general, and of mine in particular, it's strange to think of

all the tricks this little mental process plays on us. Here we're

endowed with a faculty of mind that ought to be more supremely

serviceable to us than them all. And what happens? This memory of ours

stores up a perfect record of the most useless facts and anecdotes and

experiences. And all the things that we ought to know--that we need to

know--that we'd profit by knowing--it casts aside with the careless

indifference of a girl refusing her true lover. It's terrible to think

of this phenomenon. I tremble in all my members when I consider all the

really valuable things that I've forgotten in seventy years--when I

meditate upon the caprices of my memory.

There's a bird out in California that is one perfect symbol of the human

memory. I've forgotten the bird's name (just because it would be

valuable for me to know it--to recall it to your own minds, perhaps).

But this fool of a creature goes around collecting the most ridiculous

things you can imagine and storing them up. He never selects a thing

that could ever prove of the slightest help to him; but he goes about

gathering iron forks, and spoons, and tin cans, and broken mouse-traps

--all sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to carry and yet be any

use when he gets it. Why, that bird will go by a gold watch to bring

back one of those patent cake-pans.

Now, my mind is just like that, and my mind isn't very different from

yours--and so our minds are just like that bird. We pass by what would

be of inestimable value to us, and pack our memories with the most

trivial odds and ends that never by any chance; under any circumstances

whatsoever, could be of the slightest use to any one.

Now, things that I have remembered are constantly popping into my head.

And I am repeatedly startled by the vividness with which they recur to me

after the lapse of years and their utter uselessness in being remembered

at all.

I was thinking over some on my way up here. They were the illustrations

I spoke about to the young lady on the way up. And I've come to the

conclusion, curious though it is, that I can use every one of these

freaks of memory to teach you all a lesson. I'm convinced that each one

has its moral. And I think it's my duty to hand the moral on to you.

Now, I recall that when I was a boy I was a good boy--I was a very good

boy. Why, I was the best boy in my school. I was the best boy in that

little Mississippi town where I lived. The population was only about

twenty million. You may not believe it, but I was the best boy in that

State--and in the United States, for that matter.

But I don't know why I never heard any one say that but myself. I always

recognized it. But even those nearest and dearest to me couldn't seem to

see it. My mother, especially, seemed to think there was something wrong

with that estimate. And she never got over that prejudice.

Now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years old her memory failed

her. She forgot little threads that hold life's patches of meaning

together. She was living out West then, and I went on to visit her.

I hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. And when I got there she knew

my face; knew I was married; knew I had a family, and that I was living

with them. But she couldn't, for the life of her, tell my name or who I

was. So I told her I was her boy.

"But you don't live with me," she said.

"No," said I, "I'm living in Rochester."

"What are you doing there?"

"Going to school."

"Large school?"

"Very large."

"All boys?"

"All boys."

"And how do you stand?" said my mother.

"I'm the best boy in that school," I answered.

"Well," said my mother, with a return of her old fire, "I'd like to know

what the other boys are like."

Now, one point in this story is the fact that my mother's mind went back

to my school days, and remembered my little youthful self-prejudice when

she'd forgotten everything else about me.

The other point is the moral. There's one there that you will find if

you search for it.

Now, here's something else I remember. It's about the first time I ever

stole a watermelon. "Stole" is a strong word. Stole? Stole? No, I

don't mean that. It was the first time I ever withdrew a watermelon.

It was the first time I ever extracted a watermelon. That is exactly the

word I want--"extracted." It is definite. It is precise. It perfectly

conveys my idea. Its use in dentistry connotes the delicate shade of

meaning I am looking for. You know we never extract our own teeth.

And it was not my watermelon that I extracted. I extracted that

watermelon from a farmer's wagon while he was inside negotiating with an

other customer. I carried that watermelon to one of the secluded

recesses of the lumber-yard, and there I broke it open.

It was a green watermelon.

Well, do you know when I saw that I began to feel sorry--sorry--sorry.

It seemed to me that I had done wrong. I reflected deeply. I reflected

that I was young--I think I was just eleven. But I knew that though

immature I did not lack moral advancement. I knew what a boy ought to do

who had extracted a watermelon--like that.

I considered George Washington, and what action he would have taken under

similar circumstances. Then I knew there was just one thing to make me

feel right inside, and that was--Restitution.

So I said to myself: "I will do that. I will take that green watermelon

back where I got it from." And the minute I had said it I felt that

great moral uplift that comes to you when you've made a noble resolution.

So I gathered up the biggest fragments, and I carried them back to the

farmer's wagon, and I restored the watermelon--what was left of it. And

I made him give me a good one in place of it, too.

And I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around working off

his worthless, old, green watermelons on trusting purchasers who had to

rely on him. How could they tell from the outside whither the melons

were good or not? That was his business. Arid if he didn't reform, I

told him I'd see that he didn't get any more of my trade--nor anybody,

else's I knew, if I could help it.

You know that man was as contrite as a revivalist's last convert.

He said he was all broken up to think I'd gotten a green watermelon.

He promised the he would never carry another green watermelon if he

starved for it. And he drove off--a better man.

Now, do you see what I did for that man? He was on a downward path, and

I rescued him. But all I got out of it was a watermelon.

Yet I'd rather have that memory--just that memory of the good I did for

that depraved farmer--than all the material gain you can think of. Look

at the lesson he got! I never got anything like that from it. But I

ought to be satisfied: I was only eleven years old, but I secured

everlasting benefit to other people.

The moral in this is perfectly clear, and I think there's one in they

next memory I'm going to tell you about.

To go back to my childhood, there's another little incident that comes to

me from which you can draw even another moral. It's about one of the

times I went fishing. You see, in our house there was a sort of family

prejudice against going fishing if you hadn't permission. But it would

frequently be bad judgment to ask. So I went fishing secretly, as it

were--way up the Mississippi. It was an exquisitely happy trip, I

recall, with a very pleasant sensation.

Well, while I was away there was a tragedy in our town. A stranger,

stopping over on his way East from California; was stabbed to death in an

unseemly brawl.

Now; my father was justice of the peace, and because he was justice of

the peace he was coroner; and since he was coroner he was also constable;

and being constable he vas sheriff; and out of consideration for his

holding the office of sheriff he was likewise county clerk and a dozen

other officials I don't think of just this minute.

I thought he had power of life or death, only he didn't use it over other

boys. He was sort of an austere man. Somehow I didn't like being round

him when I'd done anything he, disapproved of. So that's the reason I

wasn't often around.

Well, when this gentleman got knifed they communicated with the proper

authority; the coroner, and they laid, the corpse out in the coroner's

office--our front sitting-room--in preparation for the inquest the next

morning.

About 9 or 10 o'clock I got back from fishing. It was a little too late

for me to be received by my folks, so I took my shoes off and slipped

noiselessly up the back way to the sitting-room. I was very tired, and I

didn't wish to disturb my people. So I groped my way to the sofa and lay

down.

Now, I didn't know anything of what had happened during my absence.

But I was sort of nervous on my own account-afraid of being caught,

and rather dubious about the morning affair. And I had been lying there

a few moments when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness, and I

became aware of something on the other side of the room.

It was something foreign to the apartment. It had an uncanny appearance.

And I sat up looking very hard, and wondering what in heaven this long,

formless, vicious-looking thing might be.

First I thought I'd go and see. Then I thought, "Never mind that."

Mind you, I had no cowardly sensations whatever, but it didn't seem

exactly prudent to investigate. But I somehow couldn't keep my eyes off

the thing. And the more I looked at it the more disagreeably it grew on

me. But I was resolved to play the man. So I decided to turn over and

count a hundred, and let the patch of moonlight creep up and show me what

the dickens it was.

I turned over and tried to count, but I couldn't keep my mind on it.

I kept thinking of that grewsome mass. I was losing count all the time,

and going back and beginning over again. Oh no; I wasn't frightened

--just annoyed. But by the time I'd gotten to the century mark I turned

cautiously over and opened my eyes with great fortitude.

The moonlight revealed to me a marble-white human hand. Well, maybe I

wasn't embarrassed! But then that changed to a creepy feeling again, and

I thought I'd try the counting again. I don't know how many hours or

weeks it was that I lay there counting hard. But the moonlight crept up

that white arm, and it showed me a lead face and a terrible wound over

the heart.

I could scarcely say that I was terror-stricken or anything like that.

But somehow his eyes interested me so that I went right out of the

window. I didn't need the sash. But it seemed easier to take it than

leave it behind.

Now, let that teach you a lesson--I don't know just what it is. But at

seventy years old I find that memory of peculiar value to me. I have

been unconsciously guided by it all these years. Things that seemed

pigeon-holed and remote are a perpetual influence. Yes, you're taught in

so many ways. And you're so felicitously taught when you don't know it.

Here's something else that taught me a good deal.

When I was seventeen I was very bashful, and a sixteen-year-old girl came

to stay a week with us. She was a peach, and I was seized with a

happiness not of this world.

One evening my mother suggested that, to entertain her, I take her to the

theatre. I didn't really like to, because I was seventeen and sensitive

about appearing in the streets with a girl. I couldn't see my way to

enjoying my delight in public. But we went.

I didn't feel very happy. I couldn't seem to keep my mind on the play.

I became conscious, after a while, that that was due less to my lovely

company than my boots. They were sweet to look upon, as smooth as skin,

but fitted ten time as close. I got oblivious to the play and the girl

and the other people and everything but my boots until--I hitched one

partly off. The sensation was sensuously perfect: I couldn't help it. I

had to get the other off, partly. Then I was obliged to get them off

altogether, except that I kept my feet in the legs so they couldn't get

away.

From that time I enjoyed the play. But the first thing I knew the

curtain came down, like that, without my notice, and--I hadn't any boots

on. What's more, they wouldn't go on. I tugged strenuously. And the

people in our row got up and fussed and said things until the peach and I

simply had to move on.

We moved--the girl on one arm and the boots under the other.

We walked home that way, sixteen blocks, with a retinue a mile long:

Every time we passed a lamp-post, death gripped one at the throat. But

we, got home--and I had on white socks.

If I live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years old I don't suppose I

could ever forget that walk. I, remember, it about as keenly as the

chagrin I suffered on another occasion.

At one time in our domestic history we had a colored butler who had a

failing. He could never remember to ask people who came to the door to

state their business. So I used to suffer a good many calls

unnecessarily.

One morning when I was especially busy he brought me a card engraved with

a name I did not know. So I said, "What does he wish to see me for?" and

Sylvester said, "Ah couldn't ask him, sah; he, wuz a genlinun." "Return

instantly," I thundered, "and inquire his mission. Ask him what's his

game." Well, Sylvester returned with the announcement that he had

lightning-rods to sell. "Indeed," said I, "things are coming to a fine

pass when lightning-rod agents send up engraved cards." "He has

pictures," added Sylvester. "Pictures, indeed! He maybe peddling

etchings. Has he a Russia leather case?" But Sylvester was too

frightened to remember. I said; "I am going down to make it hot for that

upstart!"

I went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way. When I got to

the parlor I was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid

courtesy. And when I looked in the door, sure enough he had a Russia

leather case in his hand. But I didn't happen to notice that it was our

Russia leather case.

And if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of

etchings spread out before him. But I didn't happen to notice that they

were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some

unguessed purpose.

Very curtly I asked the gentleman his business. With a surprised, timid

manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at Onteora, and

they had asked him to call. Fine lie, I thought, and I froze him.

He seemed to be kind of non-plussed, and sat there fingering the etchings

in the case until I told him he needn't bother, because we had those.

That pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarrassed way, to

pick up another from the floor. But I stopped him. I said, "We've got

that, too." He seemed pitifully amazed, but I was congratulating myself

on my great success.

Finally the gentleman asked where Mr. Winton lived; he'd met him in the

mountains, too. So I said I'd show him gladly. And I did on the spot.

And when he was gone I felt queer, because there were all his etchings

spread out on the floor.

Well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in. I showed her the

card, and told her all exultantly. To my dismay she nearly fainted. She

told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had

forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way. And she pushed me out

of the door, and commanded me to get over to the Wintons in a hurry and

get him back.

I came into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Winton was sitting up very stiff

in a chair, beating me at my own game. Well, I began, to put another

light on things. Before many seconds Mrs. Winton saw it was time to

change her temperature. In five minutes I had asked the man to luncheon,

and she to dinner, and so on.

We made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the

time of his life. Why, I don't believe we let him get sober the whole

time.

I trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons I

have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher

things, and elevate you to plans far above the old--and--and--

And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had a better time with you

to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago.

QUEEN VICTORIA

ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES CLUB, AT

DELMONICO'S, MONDAY, MAY 25, IN HONOR OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S

BIRTHDAY

Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how

he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a

friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five

yards and attributed the shot to Mark twain. The duel did not

take place. Mr. Clemens continued as follows:

It also happened that I was the means of stopping duelling in Nevada, for

a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and the

Governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me I should go

to prison for the full term. That's why I left Nevada, and I have not

been there since.

You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country

in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was

consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of

lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed

and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will

still be formed in the generations that are to come--a life which finds

its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and

out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre

across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished

at their source.

As a woman the Queen was all that the most exacting standards could

require. As a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had

no peer in her time among either, monarchs or commoners. As a monarch

she was without reproach in her great office. We may not venture,

perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any

monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other.

It is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified.

In those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and

conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will

still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political

glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to a

place in that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call

tradition. Which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live

always. And with it her character--a fame rare in the history of

thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, since it will not rest

upon harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and

freely vouchsafed. She mended broken hearts where she could, but she

broke none.

What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we shall

not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember the

wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and supported

her--Prince Albert's. We need not talk any idle talk here to-night about

either possible or impossible war between the two countries; there will

be no war while we remain sane and the son of Victoria and Albert sits

upon the throne. In conclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter

the voice of my country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and

also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign.

JOAN OF ARC

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS, GIVEN AT

THE ALDINE ASSOCIATION CLUB, DECEMBER 22, 1905

Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young woman attired

as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle,

courtesied reverently and tendered Mr. Clemens a laurel wreath

on a satin pillow. He tried to speak, but his voice failed

from excess of emotion. "I thank you!" he finally exclaimed,

and, pulling him self together, he began his speech.

Now there is an illustration [pointing to the retreating Joan of Arc].

That is exactly what I wanted--precisely what I wanted--when I was

describing to myself Joan of Arc, after studying her history and her

character for twelve years diligently.

That was the product--not the conventional Joan of Arc. Wherever you

find the conventional Joan of Arc in history she is an offence to anybody

who knows the story of that wonderful girl.

Why, she was--she was almost supreme in several details. She had a

marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was

absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words,

her everything--she was only eighteen years old.

Now put that heart into such a breast--eighteen years old--and give it

that masterly intellect which showed in the face, and furnish it with

that almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to have?

The conventional Joan of Arc? Not by any means. That is impossible.

I cannot comprehend any such thing as that.

You must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we

just saw. And her spirit must look out of the eyes. The figure should

be--the figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get

in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture!

I hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the

conventional, you have got it at second-hand. Certainly, if you had

studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but

when you have the common convention you stick to that.

You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a Joan

of Arc--that lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but

whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely, because she

was a girl he can not see the divinity in her, and so he paints a

peasant, a coarse and lubberly figure--the figure of a cotton-bale, and

he clothes that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant region just like a

fish woman, her hair cropped short like a Russian peasant, and that face

of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the

glories which are in the spirit and in her heart that expression in that

face is always just the fixed expression of a ham.

But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has Sir

Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist, the, illustrator, does not often

get the idea of the man whose book he is illustrating. Here is a very

remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr. Beard, who illustrated a

book of mine. You may never have heard of it. I will tell you about it

now--A Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Now, Beard got everything that I put into that book and a little more

besides. Those pictures of Beard's in that book--oh, from the first page

to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the

servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and the

insolence of priest-craft and king-craft--those creatures that make

slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off. Beard

put it all in that book. I meant it to be there. I put a lot of it

there and Beard put the rest.

What publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he

saved them. He did not waste any on the illustrations. He had a very

good artist--Williams--who had never taken a lesson in drawing.

Everything he did was original. The publisher hired the cheapest

wood-engraver he could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of

that. You can see that if Williams had had a chance he would have made

some very good pictures. He had a good heart and good intentions.

I had a character in the first book he illustrated--The Innocents Abroad.

That was a boy seventeen or eighteen years old--Jack Van Nostrand--a New

York boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature. He and I

tried to get Williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of Jack

that would be worthy of Jack.

Jack was a most singular combination. He was born and reared in New York

here. He was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined

in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he

expressed a feeling he did it in Bowery slang, and it was a most curious

combination--that delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness. There

was no coarseness inside of Jack at all, and Jack, in the course of

seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that was

marvellous--ignorance of various things, not of all things. For

instance, he did not know anything about the Bible. He had never been in

Sunday-school. Jack got more out of the Holy Land than anybody else,

because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of

surprises to him.

I said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning

that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that "The

song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't sing.

It sounded absurd, but it was charged on Jack as a fact, and as he went

along through that country he had a proper foil in an old rebel colonel,

who was superintendent and head engineer in a large Sunday-school in

Wheeling, West Virginia. That man was full of enthusiasm wherever he

went, and would stand and deliver himself of speeches, and Jack would

listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder.

Jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the first

overland stage-coach. That man's name who ran that line of stages--well,

I declare that name is gone. Well, names will go.

Halliday--ah, that's the name--Ben Halliday, your uncle [turning to Mr.

Carnegie]. That was the fellow--Ben Halliday--and Jack was full of

admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages made--and it

was good speed--one hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and

night, and it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of the

Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a

speech), so he called us up to him. He called up five sinners and three

saints. It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified me. And he

said: "Here are the Fords of the Jordan--a monumental place. At this

very point, when Moses brought the children of Israel through--he brought

the children of Israel from Egypt through the desert you see them--he

guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty years,

and brought them to this spot safe and sound. There you see--there is

the scene of what Moses did."

And Jack said: "Moses who?"

"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that! Moses, the great

law-giver! Moses, the great patriot! Moses, the great warrior! Moses,

the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these people through these

three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed there safe and

sound."

Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years.

Ben Halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty--six hours."

Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. Jack was

not ignorant on all subjects. That boy was a deep student in the history

of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to the

marrow. There was a subject that interested him all the time. Other

subjects were of no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable

innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into the picture.

Yes, Williams wanted to do it. He said: "I will make him as innocent as

a virgin." He thought a moment, and then said, "I will make him as

innocent as an unborn virgin;" which covered the ground.

I was reminded of Jack because I came across a letter to-day which is

over thirty years old that Jack wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption.

He was very long and slim, poor creature; and in a year or two after he

got back from that excursion, to the Holy Land he went on a ride on

horseback through Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two.

He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine; and he said:

"I have ridden horseback"--this was three years after--"I hate ridden

horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you never see

anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle station--ten

miles apart, twenty miles apart. Now you tell Clemens that in all that

stretch of four hundred miles I have seen only two books--the Bible and

'Innocents Abroad'. Tell Clemens the Bible was in a very good

condition."

I say that he had studied, and he had, the real Saxon liberty, the

acquirement of our liberty, and Jack used to repeat some verses--I don't

know where they came from, but I thought of them to-day when I saw that

letter--that that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted

lines from that unknown poet:

"For he had sat at Sidney's feet

And walked with him in plain apart,

And through the centuries heard the beat

Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart."

And he was that kind of a boy. He should have lived, and yet he should

not have lived, because he died at that early age--he couldn't have been

more than twenty--he had seen all there was to see in the world that was

worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is

valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion,

is the only valuable thing in it. He had arrived at that point where

presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the

realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived at that point.

ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC.

DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD,

OF LONDON

GENTLEMAN,--I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished

guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has

extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of

brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's arms company making the

destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance citizens

paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating

their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades

taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in welcoming our

guest--first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of

hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he

is in sympathy with insurance, and has been the means of making many

other men cast their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance

line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been

a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a

better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a

kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their

horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an

advertisement. I do not seem, to care for poetry any more. I do not

care for politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now

there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an

entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon

of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in

their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience

of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a

freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his

remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen

nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's

face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.

I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity

which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY is an

institution, which is peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to

prosper who gives it his custom. No man pan take out a policy in it and

not get crippled before the year is out. Now there was one indigent man

who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had grown

disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smile--said life was

but a weariness. Three weeks ago I got him to insure with us, and now he

is the brightest, happiest spirit in this land--has a good steady income

and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around on a

shutter.

I will say in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is

none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I

curl say the same far the rest of the speakers.

OSTEOPATHY

On February 27, 1901, Mr. Clemens appeared before the Assembly

Committee in Albany, New York, in favor of the Seymour bill

legalizing the practice of osteopathy.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--Dr. Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave me

the character. I have heard my character discussed a thousand times

before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did

not get more than half of them.

I was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in

here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way.

What remarkable names those diseases have! It makes me envious of the

man that has them all. I have had many diseases, and am thankful for all

I have had.

One of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in

Sweden, a treatment which I took. It is, I suppose, a kindred thing.

There is apparently no great difference between them. I was a year and a

half in London and Sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, Mr.

Kildren.

I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a

certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't.

The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed with power. It stands

between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor I must employ.

When my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by the

State. Now then, it doesn't seem logical that the State shall depart

from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and take

the other position in the matter of smaller consequence--the health of

the body.

The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the State.

Oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the State you create the same

condition as prevailed in the Garden of Eden.

You want the thing that you can't have. I didn't care much about the

osteopaths, but as soon as I found they were going to drive them out I

got in a state of uneasiness, and I can't sleep nights now.

I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden about the prohibited apple.

Adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it,

just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it.

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I

experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I

choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.

I was the subject of my mother's experiment. She was wise. She made

experiments cautiously. She didn't pick out just any child in the flock.

No, she chose judiciously. She chose one she could spare, and she

couldn't spare the others. I was the choice child of the flock; so I had

to take all of the experiments.

In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure.

Mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through.

A bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect. Then I was

rubbed down with flannels, sheet was dipped in the water, and I was put

to bed. I perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with

me.

But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and I didn't care for

that. When they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my

conscience, the exudation of sin. It purified me spiritually, and it

remains until this day.

I have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy. I took a chance at

the latter for old times' sake, for, three tines, when a boy, mother's

new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family

physician to pull me out.

The physicians think they are moved by regard for the best interests of

the public. Isn't there a little touch of self-interest back of it all?

It seems to me there is, and I don't claim to have all the virtues--only

nine or ten of them.

I was born in the "Banner State," and by "Banner State" I mean Missouri.

Osteopathy was born in the same State, and both of us are getting along

reasonably well. At a time during my younger days my attention was

attracted to a picture of a house which bore the inscription, "Christ

Disputing with the Doctors."

I could attach no other meaning to it than that Christ was actually

quarreling with the doctors. So I asked an old slave, who was a sort of

a herb doctor in a small way--unlicensed, of course--what the meaning of

the picture was. "What had has done?" I asked. And the colored man

replied "Humph, he ain't got no license."

WATER-SUPPLY

Mr. Clemens visited Albany on February 21 and 28, 1901. The

privileges of the floor were granted and he was asked to make a

short address to the Senate.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--I do not know how to thank you sufficiently

for this high honor which you are conferring upon me. I have for the

second time now enjoyed this kind of prodigal hospitality--in the other

House yesterday, to-day in this one. I am a modest man, and diffident

about appearing before legislative bodies, and yet utterly an entirely

appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is extended to me, and I

thank you very much for it.

If I had the privilege, which unfortunately I have not got, of suggesting

things to the legislators in my individual capacity, I would so enjoy the

opportunity that I would not charge anything for it at all. I would do

that without a salary. I would give them the benefit of my wisdom and

experience in legislative bodies, and if I could have had the privilege

for a few minutes of giving advice to the other House I should have liked

to, but of course I could not undertake it, as they did not ask me to do

it--but if they had only asked me!

Now that the House is considering a measure which is to furnish a

water-supply to the city of New York, why, permit me to say I live in New

York myself. I know all about its ways, its desires, and its residents,

and--if I had the privilege--I should have urged them not to weary

themselves over a measure like that to furnish water to the city of New

York, for we never drink it.

But I will not venture to advise this body, as I only venture to advise

bodies who are, not present.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL "LADIES' DAY," PAPYRUS CLUB, BOSTON

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am perfectly astonished--a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d

--ladies and gentlemen--astonished at the way history repeats itself.

I find myself situated at this moment exactly and precisely as I was once

before, years ago, to a jot, to a tittle--to a very hair. There isn't a

shade of difference. It is the most astonishing coincidence that ever

--but wait. I will tell you the former instance, and then you will see

it for yourself. Years ago I arrived one day at Salamanca, New York,

eastward bound; must change cars there and take the sleeper train. There

were crowds of people there, and they were swarming into the long sleeper

train and packing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and

confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and low profanity.

I asked the young man in the ticket-office if I could have a

sleeping-section, and he answered "No," with a snarl that shrivelled me

up like burned leather. I went off, smarting under this insult to my

dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if I couldn't

have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car; but he cut me

short with a venomous "No, you can't; every corner is full. Now, don't

bother me any more"; and he turned his back and walked off. My dignity

was in a state now which cannot be described. I was so ruffled that

--"well," I said to my companion, "If these people knew who I am they--"

But my companion cut me short there--"Don't talk such folly," he said;

"if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help your

high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in it?"

This did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then I

observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me.

I saw his dark countenance light up. He whispered to the uniformed

conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway

this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore.

"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked. "Will you have a place in

the sleeper?"

"Yes," I said, "and much oblige me, too. Give me anything--anything will

answer."

"We have nothing left but the big family state-room," he continued, "with

two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at your

disposal. Here, Tom, take these satchels aboard!"

Then he touched his hat and we and the colored Tom moved along. I was

bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in

and waited. Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment,

and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles:

"Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case you kin have jes' anything you

wants. It don't make no difference what it is."

"Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night-blazing hot?"

I asked. "You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch?"

"Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll get it myself."

"Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle

fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably?"

"Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll

burn all night. Yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want,

and dish yer whole railroad'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for

to get it for you. Dat's so." And he disappeared.

Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a

smile on my companion, and said, gently:

"Well, what do you say now?"

My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. The next

moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door,

and this speech followed:

"Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute. I told de conductah so.

Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you."

"Is that so, my boy?" (Handing him a quadruple fee.) "Who am I?"

"Jenuel McClellan," and he disappeared again.

My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well! what do you say now?"

Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while ago

--viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it?

CATS AND CANDY

The following address was delivered at a social meeting of

literary men in New York in 1874:

When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor--and

correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the name of Jim

Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very

diffident. He and I slept together--virtuously; and one bitter winter's

night a cousin Mary--she's married now and gone--gave what they call a

candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of hot

candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that

came from the eaves--it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with

vines--to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting

there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to

attend this party; we were too young.

The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were

in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and

our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of

tom-cats--it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex--were

assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were

growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on,

and we couldn't sleep at all.

Finally Jim said, "For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that

chimney." So I said, "Of course you would." He said, "Well, I would;

I have a mighty good notion to do it." Says I, "Of course you have;

certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it." I hoped he might

try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.

Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed

out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short

shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the

chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and

gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim got

almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels flew up

and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the midst of

the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of candy.

There was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces of

chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up there--now anybody

in the world would have gone into profanity or something calculated to

relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off his legs,

nursed his blisters a little, and said, "I could have ketched them cats

if I had had on a good ready."

[Does any reader know what a "ready" was in 1840? D.W.]

OBITUARY POETRY

ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR, PHILADELPHIA, in 1895

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The--er this--er--welcome occasion gives me an

--er--opportunity to make an--er--explanation that I have long desired to

deliver myself of. I rise to the highest honors before a Philadelphia

audience. In the course of my checkered career I have, on divers

occasions, been charged--er--maliciously with a more or less serious

offence. It is in reply to one of the more--er--important of these that

I wish to speak. More than once I have been accused of writing obituary

poetry in the Philadelphia Ledger.

I wish right here to deny that dreadful assertion. I will admit that

once, when a compositor in the Ledger establishment, I did set up some of

that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no indictment can be found

against me. I did not write that poetry--at least, not all of it.

CIGARS AND TOBACCO

My friends for some years now have remarked that I am an inveterate

consumer of tobacco. That is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco

have changed. I have no doubt that you will say, when I have explained

to you what my present purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated, but I

do not so regard it.

Whenever I held a smoking-party at my house, I found that my guests had

always just taken the pledge.

Let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco.

It began, I think, when I was a lad, and took the form of a quid, which I

became expert in tucking under my tongue. Afterward I learned the

delights of the pipe, and I suppose there was no other youngster of my

age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available for

pipe-smoking.

Well, time ran on, and there came a time when I was able to gratify one

of my youthful ambitions--I could buy the choicest Havana cigars without

seriously interfering with my income. I smoked a good many, changing off

from the Havana cigars to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking.

At last it occurred to me that something was lacking in the Havana

cigar. It did not quite fulfil my youthful anticipations.

I experimented. I bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a

Connecticut wrapper. After a while I became satiated of these, and I

searched for something else, The Pittsburg stogy was recommended to me.

It certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be a merit in tobacco,

and I experimented with the stogy.

Then, once more, I changed off, so that I might acquire the subtler

flavor of the Wheeling toby. Now that palled, and I looked around New

York in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to most people vile,

but which, I am sure, would be ambrosial to me. I couldn't find any.

They put into my hands some of those little things that cost ten cents a

box, but they are a delusion.

I said to a friend, "I want to know if you can direct me to an honest

tobacco merchant who will tell me what is the worst cigar in the New York

market, excepting those made for Chinese consumption--I want real

tobacco. If you will do this and I find the man is as good as his word,

I will guarantee him a regular market for a fair amount of his cigars."

We found a tobacco dealer who would tell the truth--who, if a cigar was

bad, would boldly say so. He produced what he called the very worst

cigars he had ever had in his shop. He let me experiment with one then

and there. The test was satisfactory.

This was, after all, the real thing. I negotiated for a box of them and

took them away with me, so that I might be sure of having them handy when

I want them.

I discovered that the "worst cigars," so called, are the best for me,

after all.

BILLIARDS

Mr. Clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of April

24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story.

The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition.

Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I

wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark. One day a

stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over

casually. When he proposed a game, I answered, "All right."

"Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait," he

said; and when I had done so, he remarked: "I will be perfectly fair with

you. I'll play you left-handed." I felt hurt, for he was cross-eyed,

freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to teach him a lesson. He

won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got was the

opportunity to chalk my cue.

"If you can play like that with your left hand," I said, "I'd like to see

you play with your right."

"I can't," he said. "I'm left-handed."

THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG

REMINISCENCES OF NEVADA

I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that Nevada had lively newspapers

in those days.

My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs, of the Union, an

excellent reporter.

Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated; but, as a

general thing, he was a wary and cautious drinker, although always ready

to damp himself a little with the enemy.

He had the advantage of me in one thing: he could get the monthly

public-school report and I could not, because the principal hated my sheet

--the 'Enterprise'.

One snowy night, when the report was due, I started out, sadly wondering

how I was to get it.

Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street, I stumbled on

Boggs, and asked him where he was going.

"After the school report."

"I'll go along with you."

"No, Sir. I'll excuse you."

"Have it your own way."

A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and

Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully.

He gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him start up the Enterprise

stairs.

I said:

"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't,

I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get a proof of it

after it's set up, though I don't begin to suppose I can. Good night."

"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting around

with the boys a little while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down

to the principal's with me."

"Now you talk like a human being. Come along."

We ploughed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report--a short

document--and soon copied it in our office.

Meantime, Boggs helped himself to the punch.

I gave the manuscript back to him, and we started back to get an inquest.

At four o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having

a relaxing concert as usual (for some of the printers were good singers

and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the

accordion), the proprietor of the Union strode in and asked if anybody

had heard anything of Boggs or the school report.

We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent.

We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in

one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of

"corned" miners on, the iniquity of squandering the public money on

education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were

literally starving for whiskey."

He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours.

We dragged him away, and put him into bed.

Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me

accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass

its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the

misfortune had occurred. But we were perfectly friendly.

The day the next school report was due the proprietor of the Tennessee

Mine furnished us a buggy, and asked us to go down and write something

about the property--a very common request, and one always gladly acceded

to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure

excursions as other people.

The "mine" was a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of

getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a

windlass.

The workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner.

I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk, so I took an unlighted

candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope,

implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of

him, and then swung out over the shaft.

I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe.

I lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some

specimens, and shouted to Boggs to hoist away.

No answer.

Presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a

voice came down:

"Are you all set?"

"All set-hoist away!"

"Are you comfortable?"

"Perfectly."

"Could you wait a little?"

"Oh, certainly-no particular hurry."

"Well-good-bye."

"Why, where are you going?"

"After the school report!"

And he did.

I stayed down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled

up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock.

I walked home, too--five miles-up-hill.

We had no school report next morning--but the Union had.

AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS

EXTRACT FROM "PARIS NOTES," IN "TOM SAWYER ABROAD," ETC.

I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it never names an

historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates,

you get left. A French speech is something like this:

"Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and

perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our

chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of

foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification before

Heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its

own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty

proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed

peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live;

and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the

2d December, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of France,

that but for him there had been no 17th Mardi in history, no 12th

October, nor 9th January, no 22d April, no 16th November, no 30th

September, no 2d July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no

31st May--that but for him, France, the pure, the grand, the peerless,

had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day."

I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent

way:

"My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January.

The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just

proportion to the magnitude of the act itself. But for it there had been

no 30th November--sorrowful spectacle! The grisly deed of the 16th June

had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known

existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal 12th

October. Shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th January, with its

freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? Yes, my friends,

for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it alone

--the blessed 25th December."

It may be well enough to explain. The man of the 13th January is Adam;

the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful

spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly

deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September

was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of

October, the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood. When you go

to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you--annotated.

STATISTICS

EXTRACT FROM "THE HISTORY OF THE SAVAGE CLUB"

During that period of gloom when domestic bereavement had

forced Mr. Clemens and his dear ones to secure the privacy they

craved until their wounds should heal, his address was known to

only a very few of his closest friends. One old friend in New

York, after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a letter

addressed as follows

MARK TWAIN,

God Knows Where,

Try London.

The letter found him, and Mr. Clemens replied to the letter

expressing himself surprised and complimented that the person

who was credited with knowing his whereabouts should take so

much interest in him, adding: "Had the letter been addressed to

the care of the 'other party,' I would naturally have expected

to receive it without delay."

His correspondent tried again, and addressed the second letter:

MARK TWAIN,

The Devil Knows Where,

Try London.

This found him also no less promptly.

On June 9, 1899, he consented to visit the Savage Club, London,

on condition that there was to be no publicity and no speech

was to be expected from him. The toastmaster, in proposing the

health of their guest, said that as a Scotchman, and therefore

as a born expert, he thought Mark Twain had little or no claim

to the title of humorist. Mr. Clemens had tried to be funny

but had failed, and his true role in life was statistics; that

he was a master of statistics, and loved them for their own

sake, and it would be the easiest task he ever undertook if he

would try to count all the real jokes he had ever made. While

the toastmaster was speaking, the members saw Mr. Clemens's

eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush. He jumped up,

and made a characteristic speech.

Perhaps I am not a humorist, but I am a first-class fool--a simpleton;

for up to this moment I have believed Chairman MacAlister to be a decent

person whom I could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives. The

exhibition he has just made of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and

a knave of the deepest dye. I have been cruelly deceived, and it serves

me right for trusting a Scotchman. Yes, I do understand figures, and I

can count. I have counted the words in MacAlister's drivel (I certainly

cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four

hundred and thirty-nine. I also carefully counted the lies--there were

exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. Therefore, I leave

MacAlister to his fate.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors,

because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is

dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well

myself.

GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR

ADDRESS AT A FAIR HELD AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK, IN

OCTOBER, 1900, IN AID OF THE ORPHANS AT GALVESTON

I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy this place first and

would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a text

for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is proverbial

with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not come here,

and has not furnished me with a text, and I am here without a text. I

have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome faces, and

--but I won't continue that, for I could go on forever about attractive

faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. But, after all, compliments

should be in order in a place like this.

I have been in New York two or three days, and have been in a condition

of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being to

regulate the moral and political situation on this planet--put it on a

sound basis--and when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it

requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you

have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position of

corking. When I am situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as

though I were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please

consider I am playing a part for want of something better, and this, is

not unfamiliar to me; I have often done this before.

When I was here about eight years ago I was coming up in a car of the

elevated road. Very few people were in that car, and on one end of it

there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about

fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye--a beautiful

eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had

a vocation. He had with him a very fine little child of about four or

five years. I was watching the affection which existed between those

two. I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It was really a pretty

child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I was admiring her

he began to notice me.

I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody

else would do--admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get

four times as much of his admiration. Things went on very pleasantly.

I was making my way into his heart.

By-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off,

he got up, crossed over, and he said: "Now I am going to say something to

you which I hope you will regard as a compliment." And then he went on

to say: "I have never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of him,

and any friend of mine will tell you that when I have once seen a

portrait of a man I place it in my eye and store it away in my memory,

and I can tell you now that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his

brother. Now," he said, "I hope you take this as a compliment. Yes, you

are a very good imitation; but when I come to look closer, you are

probably not that man."

I said: "I will be frank with you. In my desire to look like that

excellent character I have dressed for the character; I have been playing

a part."

He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you look very well on the

outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the

original"

So when I come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say I always

play a part. But I will say before I sit down that when it comes to

saying anything here I will express myself in this way: I am heartily in

sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers in

this calamity, and in your desire to heap those who were rendered

homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the fact that I am

not playing a part.

SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE

After the address at the Robert Fulton Fund meeting, June 19,

1906, Mr. Clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the

San Francisco earthquake.

I haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of San Francisco has

grown up since my day. When I was there she had one hundred and eighteen

thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were Chinese.

I was a reporter on the Virginia City Enterprise in Nevada in 1862, and

stayed there, I think, about two years, when I went to San Francisco and

got a job as a reporter on The Call. I was there three or four

years.

I remember one day I was walking down Third Street in San Francisco. It

was a sleepy, dull Sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring. Suddenly

as I looked up the street about three hundred yards the whole side of a

house fell out. The street was full of bricks and mortar. At the same

time I was knocked against the side of a house, and stood there stunned

for a moment.

I thought it was an earthquake. Nobody else had heard anything about it

and no one said earthquake to me afterward, but I saw it and I wrote it.

Nobody else wrote it, and the house I saw go into the street was the only

house in the city that felt it. I've always wondered if it wasn't a

little performance gotten up for my especial entertainment by the nether

regions.

CHARITY AND ACTORS

ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR IN THE METROPOLITAN

OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, MAY 6, 1907

Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair

open. Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr. Clemens, said:

"We intend to make this a banner week in the history of the

Fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he

actor, singer, dancer, or workman. We have spent more than

$40,000 during the past year. Charity covers a multitude of

sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. At the

opening of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin Booth

and Joseph Jefferson. In their place we have to-day that

American institution and apostle of wide humanity--Mark Twain."

As Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues. This is

true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over. Mr. Frohman

has told you something of the object and something of the character of

the work. He told me he would do this--and he has kept his word! I had

expected to hear of it through the newspapers. I wouldn't trust anything

between Frohman and the newspapers--except when it's a case of charity!

You should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and

many a year. When you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your

heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse. You are all under

obligation to him. This is your opportunity to be his benefactor--to

help provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities.

At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. If you offer a

twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive $19

in change. There is to be no robbery here. There is to be no creed here

--no religion except charity. We want to raise $250,000--and that is a

great task to attempt.

The President has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in

Washington. Now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash.

By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open. I call

the ball game. Let the transmuting begin!

RUSSIAN REPUBLIC

The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in Russia was

launched on the evening of April 11, 1906, at the Club A house, 3 Fifth

Avenue, with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal spokesmen.

Mr. Clemens made an introductory address, presenting Mr. Gorky.

If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of

the Tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go

ahead and do it. We need not discuss the methods by which that purpose

is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or

averted for a while, but if it must come--

I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot in

Russia, to make that country free. I am certain that it will be

successful, as it deserves to be. Any such movement should have and

deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for

funds as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just and powerful

meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us.

Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free

ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying

to do the same thing in Russia.

The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no

difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm

blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off.

If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free.

RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casino

for the benefit of the Russian sufferers. After the

performance Mr. Clemens spoke.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an

audience like this our rude English tongue, after we have heard that

divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue.

It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always

been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is. How expressive it

seems to be. How full of grace it is.

And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid it

is. And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to

understand it.

Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame

Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her.

I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but I have

always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself--her fiery self. I have

wanted to know that beautiful character.

Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I always

feel young when I come in the presence of young people.

I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years ago--when

Madame Bernhardt came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was going to

play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely women

--a widow and her daughter--neighbors of ours, highly cultivated ladies

they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were very poor,

and they said "Well, we must not spend six dollars on a pleasure of the

mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if it must go at

all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat."

And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great

pleasure of seeing Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors equally

highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those good-hearted

Joneses sent that six dollars--deprived themselves of it--and sent it to

those poor Smiths to buy bread with. And those Smiths took it and bought

tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt.

Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also.

Now, I was going to make a speech--I supposed I was, but I am not. It is

late, late; and so I am going to tell a story; and there is this

advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing

you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted

sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what

that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear

me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of

that story, and you are bound to get it--it flashes, it flames, it is the

jewel in the toad's head--you don't overlook that.

Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost

opportunity--oh, the lost opportunity. Anybody in this house who has

reached the turn of life--sixty, or seventy, or even fifty, or along

there--when he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned

all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that is.

You younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those words

--the lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived and

felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity.

Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that,

whose lament is that.

I was in a village which is a suburb of New Bedford several years ago

--well, New Bedford is a suburb of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the other

way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great centre of

the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth century,

and I was up there at Fair Haven some years ago with a friend of mine.

There was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we

were there in the afternoon. This great building was filled, like this

great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and I started down

the centre aisle. He saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said "Now,

look at that bronzed veteran--at that mahogany-faced man. Now, tell me,

do you see anything about that man's face that is emotional? Do you see

anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there are

fires that can be started? Would you ever imagine that that is a human

volcano?"

"Why, no," I said, "I would not. He looks like a wooden Indian in front

of a cigar store."

"Very well," said my friend, "I will show you that there is emotion even

in that unpromising place. I will just go to that man and I will just

mention in the most casual way an incident in his life. That man is

getting along toward ninety years old. He is past eighty. I will

mention an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. Now, just watch the

effect, and it will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't know

when I do say that thing--but you just watch the effect."

He went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark or

two. I could not catch up. They were so casual I could not recognize

which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old man

was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with profanity

of the most exquisite kind. You never heard such accomplished profanity.

I never heard it also delivered with such eloquence.

I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then--more than if I had been

uttering it myself. There is nothing like listening to an artist--all

his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and

earthquake.

Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell you about that. About

sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just

come home from a three years' whaling voyage. He came into that village

of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief mate, he was

going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and happy about it.

"Then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that

town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the

Father Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region.

Therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for miles

and miles around that had not taken the pledge.

"So you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond of

his grog. And he was just an outcast, because when they found he would

not join Father Mathew's Society they ostracized him, and he went about

that town three weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness--the only human

being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it

privately.

"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your

fellow-man, may you never know it. Then he recognized that there was

something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the

fellowship of your fellow-man. And at last he gave it up, and at nine

o'clock one night he went down to the Father Mathew Temperance Society,

and with a broken heart he said: 'Put my name down for membership in this

society.'

"And then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning they

came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his was

ready to sail on a three years' voyage. In a minute he was on board that

ship and gone.

"And he said--well, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to

repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and

so that whole voyage of three years was a three years' agony to that man

because he saw all the time the mistake he had made.

"He felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the

crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it,

and there was the torturous Smell of it.

"He went through the whole, three years of suffering, and at last coming

into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow two

feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his crew

torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had his

reward. He really did get to shore at fast, and jumped and ran and

bought a jug and rushed to the society's office, and said to the

secretary:

"'Take my name off your membership books, and do it right away! I have

got a three years' thirst on.'

"And the secretary said: 'It is not necessary. You were blackballed!'"

WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS

ADDRESS AT THE CELEBRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S 92D BIRTHDAY

ANNIVERSARY, CARNEGIE HALL, FEBRUARY 11, 1901, TO RAISE FUNDS

FOR THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY AT CUMBERLAND GAP, TENN.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The remainder of my duties as presiding chairman

here this evening are but two--only two. One of them is easy, and the

other difficult. That is to say, I must introduce the orator, and then

keep still and give him a chance. The name of Henry Watterson carries

with it its own explanation. It is like an electric light on top of

Madison Square Garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out

of the darkness. You mention the name of Henry Watterson, and your minds

are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and

achievements. A journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel.

Yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel.

It is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any

collusion or prearrangement, that he and I, both of whom were rebels

related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this

evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence

to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy. I don't know

as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact,

nevertheless. Colonel Watterson and I were both rebels, and we are blood

relations. I was a second lieutenant in a Confederate company for a

while--oh, I could have stayed on if I had wanted to. I made myself

felt, I left tracks all around the country. I could have stayed on, but

it was such weather. I never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in

all my life.

The Colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, I suppose, to destroy

the Union. He did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would have

done so. I had a plan, and I fully intended to drive General Grant into

the Pacific Ocean--if I could get transportation. I told Colonel

Watterson about it. I told him what he had to do. What I wanted him to

do was to surround the Eastern army and wait until I came up. But he was

insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a

second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that. And

what was the consequence? The Union was preserved. This is the first

time I believe that that secret has ever been revealed.

No one outside of the family circle, I think, knew it before; but there

the facts are. Watterson saved the Union; yes, he saved the Union. And

yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made

toward granting him a pension. That is the way things are done. It is a

case where some blushing ought to be done. You ought to blush, and I

ought to blush, and he--well, he's a little out of practice now.

ROBERT FULTON FUND

ADDRESS MADE ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 19, 1906

Mr. Clemens had been asked to address the association by Gen.

Frederick D. Grant, president. He was offered a fee of $1,000,

but refused it, saying:

"I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keep

the $1,000, and add it to the Memorial Fund as my contribution

to erect a monument in New York to the memory of the man who

applied steam to navigation."

At this meeting Mr. Clemens made this formal announcement from

the platform:

"This is my last appearance on the paid platform. I shall not

retire from the gratis platform until I am buried, and courtesy

will compel me to keep still and not disturb the others. Now,

since I must, I shall say good-bye. I see many faces in this

audience well known to me. They are all my friends, and I feel

that those I don't know are my friends, too. I wish to

consider that you represent the nation, and that in saying

good-bye to you I am saying good-bye to the nation. In the

great name of humanity, let me say this final word: I offer an

appeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers,

mothers, and helpless little children. They were sheltered and

happy two days ago. Now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless,

and homeless, the victims of a great disaster. So I beg of

you, I beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses and

remember San Francisco, the smitten city."

I wish to deliver a historical address. I've been studying the history

of---er--a--let me see--a [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over

to Gen. Fred D. Grant, who sat at the head of the platform. He leaned

over an a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and

continued]. Oh yes! I've been studying Robert Fulton. I've been

studying a biographical sketch of Robert Fulton, the inventor of--er--a

--let's see--ah yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the Morse

sewing--machine. Also, I understand he invented the air--diria--pshaw!

I have it at last--the dirigible balloon. Yes, the dirigible--but it is

a difficult word, and I don't see why anybody should marry a couple of

words like that when they don't want to be married at all and are likely

to quarrel with each other all the time. I should put that couple of

words under the ban of the United States Supreme Court, under its

decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and drown 'em.

I used to know Fulton. It used to do me good to see him dashing through

tile town on a wild broncho.

And Fulton was born in---er--a--Well, it doesn't make much difference

where he was born, does it? I remember a man who came to interview me

once, to get a sketch of my life. I consulted with a friend--a practical

man--before he came, to know how I should treat him.

"Whenever you give the interviewer a fact," he said, "give him another

fact that will contradict it. Then he'll go away with a jumble that he

can't use at all. Be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiot--just be

natural." That's what my friend told me to do, and I did it.

"Where were you born?" asked the interviewer.

"Well-er-a," I began, "I was born in Alabama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich

Islands; I don't know where, but right around there somewhere. And you

had better put it down before you forget it."

"But you weren't born in all those places," he said.

"Well, I've offered you three places. Take your choice. They're all at

the same price."

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I shall be nineteen in June," I said.

"Why, there's such a discrepancy between your age and your looks," he

said.

"Oh, that's nothing," I said, "I was born discrepantly."

Then we got to talking about my brother Samuel, and he told me my

explanations were confusing.

"I suppose he is dead," I said. "Some said that he was dead and some

said that he wasn't."

"Did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not?" asked the

reporter.

"There was a mystery," said I. "We were twins, and one day when we were

two weeks old--that is, he was one week old, and I was one week old--we

got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. We never could tell

which. One of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand.

There it is on my hand. This is the one that was drowned. There's no

doubt about it.

"Where's the mystery?" he said.

"Why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin?"

I answered. I didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation

confused him. To me it is perfectly plain.

But, to get back to Fulton. I'm going along like an old man I used to

know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an

awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because he

switched off into something else. He used to tell about how his

grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. The old

man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up.

The ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an

invitation.

Just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would

recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. She used to

loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she received

company. The eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was loose. And

whenever she winked it would turn aver.

Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about

how he believed accidents never happened.

"There was an Irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he

said, "and a Dutchman was standing on the ground below. The Irishman

fell on the Dutchman and killed him. Accident? Never! If the Dutchman

hadn't been there the Irishman would have been killed. Why didn't the

Irishman fall on a dog which was next, to the Dutchman? Because the dog

would have seen him coming."

Then he'd get off from the Dutchman to an uncle named Reginald Wilson.

Reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the

machinery's belt. He went excursioning around the factory until he was

properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best

three-ply carpet. His wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a

monument to his memory. It read:

Sacred to the memory

of

sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet

containing the mortal remainders of

REGINALD WILSON

Go thou and do likewise

And so an he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather

until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether

something else happened.

FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN

ADDRESS DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 23, 1907

Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in introducing Mr.

Clemens, said:

"The people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate

recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the

progress of the world and the happiness of mankind." As Mr.

Clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder

and louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for silence.

It was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the

applause ceased before Mr. Clemens could speak. He attempted

it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered

again loudly.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am but human, and when you, give me a reception

like that I am obliged to wait a little while I get my voice. When you

appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do

feel it.

We are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of American history,

and not only in American history, but in the world's history.

Indeed it was--the application of steam by Robert Fulton.

It was a world event--there are not many of them. It is peculiarly an

American event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in effect.

We should regard this day as a very great American holiday. We have not

many that are exclusively American holidays. We have the Fourth of July,

which we regard as an American holiday, but it is nothing of the kind.

I am waiting for a dissenting voice. All great efforts that led up to

the Fourth of July were made, not by Americans, but by English residents

of America, subjects of the King of England.

They fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the

blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which

are incorporated in the Declaration of Independence; but they were not

Americans. They signed the Declaration of Independence; no American's

name is signed to that document at all. There never was an American such

as you and I are until after the Revolution, when it had all been fought

out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the Constitution, and the

recognition of the Independence of America by all powers.

While we revere the Fourth of July--and let us always revere it, and the

liberties it conferred upon us--yet it was not an American event, a great

American day.

It was an American who applied that steam successfully. There are not a

great many world events, and we have our full share. The telegraph,

telephone, and the application of steam to navigation--these are great

American events.

To-day I have been requested, or I have requested myself, not to confine

myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things,

and to introduce one of the nation's celebrants.

Admiral Harrington here is going to tell you all that I have left untold.

I am going to tell you all that I know, and then he will follow up with

such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he knows.

No doubt you have heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the

influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat

is suffering neglect.

You probably do not know a great deal about that boat. It was the most

important steamboat in the world. I was there and saw it. Admiral

Harrington was there at the time. It need not surprise you, for he is

not as old as he looks. That little boat was interesting in every way.

The size of it. The boat was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet

long. The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two hundred feet.

You see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the

breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again]

--the Admiral says it was a flat boat. Then her tonnage--you know

nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her

tonnage. We know the speed she made. She made four miles---and

sometimes five miles. It was on her initial trip, on, August 11, 1807,

that she made her initial trip, when she went from [consults Admiral]

Jersey City--to Chicago. That's right. She went by way of Albany.

Now comes the tonnage of that boat. Tonnage of a boat means the amount

of displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can

shove in a day. The tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey

he can displace in a day.

Robert Fulton named the 'Clermont' in honor of his bride, that is,

Clermont was the name of the county-seat.

I feel that it surprises you that I know so much. In my remarks of

welcome of Admiral Harrington I am not going to give him compliments.

Compliments always embarrass a man. You do not know anything to say.

It does not inspire you with words. There is nothing you can say in

answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many

times, and they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not

said enough.

The Admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated

together a great deal a friendly way in the time of Pocahontas. That

incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father,

Powhatan's club, was gotten up by the Admiral and myself to advertise

Jamestown.

At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the facilities of

advertising that you have.

I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations--in public

service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and then--but it was

a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. I do not think it is at all a

necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington's public history. You know that

it is in the histories. I am not here to tell you anything about his

public life, but to expose his private life.

I am something of a poet. When the great poet laureate, Tennyson, died,

and I found that the place was open, I tried to get it--but I did not get

it. Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very

difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. When I was

down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood and Par-am. I

made this rhyme:

"The people of Johnswood are pious and good;

The people of Par-am they don't care a----."

I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but as long as such men

as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country

will never cease. I will say that the same high qualities, the same

moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of

conduct, of observation, and expression have caused Admiral Harrington to

be mistaken for me--and I have been mistaken for him.

A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have the honor and

privilege of introducing to you Admiral Harrington.

LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN

ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE,

NOVEMBER 11, 1893

In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said:

"To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings.

The place where last we met about the table has vanished, and

to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all

our own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be

spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for

full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future

that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the

bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters;

for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to

genius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being who

has not heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long years

ago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit

and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad

to educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the

American joke. The world has looked on and applauded while he

has broken many images. He has led us in imagination all over

the globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike the

Mississippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we have

laughed at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process of

reasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are

actually dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the

foot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping

bitter tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in the

flesh. What name is there in literature that can be likened to

his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this

table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only

parallel!"

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,--I

have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously

phrased or so well deserved. I return thanks for them from a full heart

and an appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence: While I

am charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I

have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a

deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to

me. To be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and

if I read your countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad to see this

club in such palatial quarters. I remember it twenty years ago when it

was housed in a stable.

Now when I was studying for the ministry there were two or three things

that struck my attention particularly. At the first banquet mentioned in

history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was

invited to stand up and have his say. They were all there, his brethren,

David and Goliath, and--er, and if he had had such experience as I have

had he would have waited until those other people got through talking.

He got up and testified to all his failings. Now if he had waited before

telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he might

not have given himself away as he did, and I think that I would give

myself away if I should go on. I think I'd better wait until the others

hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make an

explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I'll

deny it happened.

Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech, replying

to a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner, Charles

A. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others, each

welcoming the guest of honor.