I don't see that I have a great deal to explain. I got off very well,

considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. I don't see

that Mr. Low said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana.

However, I will say that I never heard so many lies told in one evening

as were told by Mr. McKelway--and I consider myself very capable; but

even in his case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding how

much he hadn't found out. By accident he missed the very things that I

didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism.

I have been on the continent of Europe for two and a half years. I have

met many Americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others

making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find

that nearly all preserved their Americanism. I have found they all like

to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the Stars

and Stripes. I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth

and glorified monarchical institutions.

I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years I met

only one person who had fallen a victim to the shams--I think we may call

them shams--of nobilities and of heredities. She was entirely lost in

them. After I had listened to her for a long time, I said to her: "At

least you must admit that we have one merit. We are not like the

Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country

to leave it. Thank God, we don't!"

COPYRIGHT

With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and

a number of other authors, Mr. Clemens appeared before the

committee December 6, 1906. The new Copyright Bill

contemplated an author's copyright for the term of his life and

for fifty years thereafter, applying also for the benefit of

artists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the

talking. F. D. Millet made a speech for the artists, and John

Philip Sousa for the musicians.

Mr. Clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chief

feature. He made a speech, the serious parts of which created

a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the Senators

and Representatives in roars of laughter.

I have read this bill. At least I have read such portions as I could

understand. Nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and

thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised legislator.

I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which

concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the

author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any

reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let the

grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my

daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long

been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it.

It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the

United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are all

important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the Copyright

law I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster culture

added, and anything else.

I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by

the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier

Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall

not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to use

the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shaft not

steal," but I am trying to use more polite language.

The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one class,

the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk

handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great,

monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their

enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it.

I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit.

I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the

possession of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to real

estate.

Doctor Bale has suggested that a man might just as well, after

discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the

Government step in and take it away.

What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has had

the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit

which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of

people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely takes the

author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher

double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of his

confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear

families in affluence.

And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation

after generation forever, for they never die. In a few weeks or months

or years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monument. I hope I shall

not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself.

But I shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of

my copyright. My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I can

use, but my children can use it. I can get along; I know a lot of

trades. But that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I

can because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know

anything and can't do anything. I hope Congress will extend to them the

charity which they have failed to get from me.

Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous--strenuous about

race-suicide--should come to me and try to get me to use my large

political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this

Congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I should

try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to him,

"Leave it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself. Only

one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit. If they

have reached that limit let them go right on. Let them have all the

liberty they want. In restricting that family to twenty-two children you

are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year

in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while."

It is the very same with copyright. One author per year produces a book

which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all. This nation

can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is

demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to

take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per

year.

I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of

the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the

Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had

all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000

that can outlive the forty-two year limit. Therefore why put a limit at

all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children.

If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books

that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with Cooper; you can

follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe,

and there you have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson, and you

have to stand still and look further. You find Howells and T. B.

Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you question

if you can name twenty persons in the United States who--in a whole

century have written books that would live forty-two years. Why, you

could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. Add the

wives and children and you could put the result on, two or three more

benches.

One hundred persons--that is the little, insignificant crowd whose

bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit to

anybody? You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of

the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have

gone to the wife and children.

When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman

asked me what limit I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity." I could see

some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for

the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such

thing as property in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before

Queen Anne's time; they had perpetual copyright. He said, "What is a

book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be

no property in it."

I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that

had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.

He said real estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who

travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see

nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party

who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. To

him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on

that harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has

another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey

and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and

buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania.

That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to

Cairo Railway would be built.

Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an

idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is

another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which

represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that

did not exist before.

So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that

is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be

under any limitation at all. We don't ask for that. Fifty years from

now we shall ask for it.

I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. I do seem

to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that I

have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous, liberal

nature; I can't help it. I feel the same sort of charity to everybody

that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in

the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with

life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving,

weaving, weaving around. He watched his chance, and by and by when the

steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on

the portico.

And the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched the

door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He got to

the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so unsteady

that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top and

raised his foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe hitched on

the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step, with his

arm around the newel-post, and he said:

"God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this."

IN AID OF THE BLIND

ADDRESS AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION FOR

PROMOTING THE INTERESTS OF THE BLIND AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA,

MARCH 29, 1906

If you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my

conduct I will offer the explanation that I never presided at a meeting

of any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out of my line.

I supposed I could do anything anybody else could, but I recognize that

experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that experience. I don't

feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to impress an

audience. I shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a meeting like

this, and I shall just take the humble place of the Essex band.

There was a great gathering in a small New England town, about

twenty-five years ago. I remember that circumstance because there was

something that happened at that time. It was a great occasion. They

gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns

around. It was an extraordinary occasion.

The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and

tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. It praised the orators,

the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this in

honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives

toward the end. Having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and

glorification, he found he still had one band left over. He had to say

something about it, and he said: "The Essex band done the best it could."

I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am going to get through as

well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. I have got all

the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and

intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has called

the meeting. But they are too voluminous. I could not pack those

statistics into my head, and I had to give it up. I shall have to just

reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. There are too

many statistics and figures for me. I never could do anything with

figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished

anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only

mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in

that, as soon as I reach nine times seven--

[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. He was trying to

figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to

St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer,

and the speaker resumed:]

I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right

with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage

a statistic.

"This association for the--"

[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again he was obliged to turn to Mr.

McKelway.]

Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. It's a long name. If

I could I would write it out for you and let you take it home and study

it, but I don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Carnegie is down in

Virginia somewhere. Well, anyway, the object of that association which

has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands of

very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will push

it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give them

a little of your assistance out of your pockets.

The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work

for them to do so that they may earn, their own bread. Now it is dismal

enough to be blind--it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be

largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to

do with their hands. The time passes so heavily that it is never day or

night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with

folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ their

minds, it is drearier and drearier.

And then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and

so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could have

something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the same time

earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which is the result

of the labor of one's own hands. They need that cheer and pleasure. It

is the only way you can turn their night into day, to give them happy

hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the blessed sun. That

you can do in the way I speak of.

Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss

the light. Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years old

--their lives are unendingly dreary. But they can be taught to use

their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. That

association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

has taught its blind to make many things. They make them better than

most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes.

The goods they make are readily salable. People like them. And so they

are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. They pass

their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did.

What this association needs and wants is $15,000. The figures are set

down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would

not be here. And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you

will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank

which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or

some time. Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and

that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.

I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything

better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part

with it. It is always for good objects, of course. This is the plan:

When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and

you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like as

not. Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to

split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or

fifty, or whatever the sum maybe. Let him contribute ten or twenty a

year. He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him

to contribute a large amount. When you get used to it you would rather

contribute than borrow money.

I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897

when I was in London and said: "The gentleman who has been so liberal in

taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her in

his will, and now they don't know what to do." They were proposing to

raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400

or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful

teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton and said:

"Go on, get up your fund. It will be slow, but if you want quick work,

I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking people to

contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever

they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people

wouldn't feel the burden of it. And he wrote back saying he had raised

the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in, a single afternoon. We

would like to do something just like that to-night. We will take as many

checks as you care to give. You can leave your donations in the big room

outside.

I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall never forget that

experience. I have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or four

hours, and the sufferings that I endured and the mishaps and the

accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when I feel

for the blind and always shall feel. I once went to Heidelberg on an

excursion. I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph Twichell,

of Hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact. I always

travel with clergymen when I can. It is better for them, it is better

for me. And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather and

without a lightning rod is a good one. The Reverend Twichell is one of

those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients for

a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. In that

old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years. We

went to the inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colossal

bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of. It was as big as this room.

I didn't take much notice of the place. I didn't really get my bearings.

I noticed Twichell got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind in

which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on

your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and I was way up

north at the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between.

We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience

loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep.

It was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you hear

various kinds of noises now and then. A mouse away off in the southwest.

You throw things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse. But I

couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I would

give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling

fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance.

I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle, but I didn't think of

it until it was too late. It was the darkest place that ever was. There

has never been darkness any thicker than that. It just lay in cakes.

I thought that before dressing I would accumulate my clothes. I pawed

around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor

except one sock. I couldn't get on the track of that sock. It might

have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. But I didn't think of

that. I went excursioning on my hands and knees. Presently I thought,

"I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed again." That is what I

tried to do during the next three hours. I had lost the bearings of that

bed. I was going in the wrong direction all the time. By-and-by I came

in collision with a chair and that encouraged me.

It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there was only a chair here

and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this territory,

and I thought maybe after I found that chair I might find the next one.

Well, I did. And I found another and another and another. I kept going

around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions, and finally

when I banged into another chair I almost lost my temper. And I raised

up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a

mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high.

I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. And when I saw

myself in the mirror I was frightened out of my wits. I don't allow any

ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and smashed at it. A million

pieces. Then I reflected. That's the way I always do, and it's

unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has clear

judgment. And I had judgment, and I would have had to pay for that

mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was Twichell who broke it.

Then I got down, on my hands and knees and went on another exploring

expedition.

As far as I could remember there were six chairs in that Oklahoma, and

one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your

head when rushing madly along. In the course of time I collided with

thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out there.

It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condition

when I got through with it. I went on and on, and at last got to a place

where I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. I knew that wasn't

in the middle of the room. Up to that time I was afraid I had gotten out

of the city.

I was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher of

water about a foot high, and it was at the head of Twichell's bed, but I

didn't know it. I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at it, but it

didn't help any and came right down in Twichell's face and nearly drowned

him. But it woke him up. I was grateful to have company on any terms.

He lit a match, and there I was, way down south when I ought to have been

back up yonder. My bed was out of sight it was so far away. You needed

a telescope to find it. Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed him off and

we got sociable.

But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedometer on my leg. Twichell

and I were in a pedometer match. Twichell had longer legs than I. The

only way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. I always walk

in my sleep, and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him. After

all, I never found that sock. I never have seen it from that day to

this. But that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. That was one

of the most serious occasions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of

it without somebody thinking it isn't serious. You try it and see how

serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that night.

[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He then introduced Joseph

H. Choate, saying:]

It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate. I don't have to

really introduce him. I don't have to praise him, or to flatter him.

I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly

acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has

ever produced. And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five

years more. He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly.

He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his

countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher

in his countrymen's esteem and affection, I would say that word whether

it was true or not.

DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE

MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL, JANUARY 21, 1909

The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing Mr.

Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars.

GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,--I am glad to be among my own kind to-night.

I was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally

as deadly a profession. It wasn't so very long ago that I became a

member of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record

is one that can't be scoffed at.

As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have

always had a good deal to do with burglars--not officially, but through

their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a

burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got

anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September--we

got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been

sorry ever since. They did us a great service they scared off all the

servants in the place.

I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the

Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the

country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all

parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back

with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives

which otherwise would have been lost.

I have been practising now for seven months. When I settled on my farm

in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled--and

since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled

still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression

on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you.

I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I

organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School.

I am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.

Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country

district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division

of responsibility. I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a

sexton, and an undertaker. The combination is air-tight, and once a man

is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him.

These four of us--three in the regular profession and the fourth an

undertaker--are all good men. There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding

undertaker. Bill is there in every respect. He is a little lukewarm on

general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. Like my old

Southern, friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere.

Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor. Ruggles is one of the best

men I have got. He also is not much on general medicine, but he is a

fine horse-doctor. Ferguson doesn't make any money off him.

You see, the combination started this way. When I got up to Redding and

had become a doctor, I looked around to see what my chances were for

aiding in, the great work. The first thing I did was to determine what

manner of doctor I was to be. Being a Connecticut farmer, I naturally

consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath.

Then I got circulating about, and got in touch with Ferguson and

Ruggles. Ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying

that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he couldn't

see where it helped horses.

Well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community, and

it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and that

was race-suicide. And driving about the country-side I was told by my

fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable disease.

But it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to stop it

or we'll have to move.

We've had some funny experiences up there in Redding. Not long ago a

fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face. We asked

him what was the matter. We always hold consultations on every case, as

there isn't business enough for four. He said he didn't know, but that

he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis. We

treated him for that, and I never saw a man die more peacefully.

That same afternoon my dog Tige treed an African gentleman. We chained

up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had

appendicitis. We asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes,

that he'd like to know if there was anything in it. So we cut him open

and found nothing in him but darkness. So we diagnosed his case as

infidelity, because he was dark inside. Tige is a very clever dog, and

aids us greatly.

The other day a patient came to me and inquired if I was old Doctor

Clemens--

As a practitioner I have given a great deal of my attention to Bright's

disease. I have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable.

Listen:

Rule 1. When approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise President

--I mean an all-wise Providence--well, anyway, it's the same thing--has

seen fit to afflict with disease--well, the rule is simple, even if it is

old-fashioned.

Rule 2. I've forgotten just what it is, but--

Rule 3. This is always indispensable: Bleed your patient.

MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH

ADDRESS DELIVERED JUNE 4, 1902, AT COLUMBIA, MO.

When the name of Samuel L. Clemens was called the humorist

stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently

hesitated. There was a dead silence for a moment. Suddenly

the entire audience rose and stood in silence. Some one began

to spell out the word Missouri with an interval between the

letters. All joined in. Then the house again became silent.

Mr. Clemens broke the spell:

As you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], I

guess, I suppose I had better stand too.

[Then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech. As the great humorist

spoke of his recent visit to Hannibal, his old home, his voice trembled.]

You cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said]. In fact,

when I found myself shaking hands with persons I had not seen for fifty

years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when

I last saw them, I experienced emotions that I had never expected, and

did not know were in me. I was profoundly moved anal saddened to think

that this was the last time, perhaps, that I would ever behold those kind

old faces and dear old scenes of childhood.

[The humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the audience

was in a continual roar of laughter. He was particularly amused at the

eulogy on himself read by Gardiner Lathrop in conferring the degree.] He

has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said Mr. Clemens] by

telling the truth about me.

I have seen it stated in print that as a boy I had been guilty of

stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons. I read a story to this effect

very closely not long ago, and I was convinced of one thing, which was

that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal,

and that I had not acted right in doing so. I wish now, however, to make

an honest statement, which is that I do not believe, in all my checkered

career, I stole a ton of peaches.

One night I stole--I mean I removed--a watermelon from a wagon while the

owner was attending to another customer. I crawled off to a secluded

spot, where I found that it was green. It was the greenest melon in the

Mississippi Valley. Then I began to reflect. I began to be sorry. I

wondered what George Washington would have done had he been in my place.

I thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which

comes to a man with a good resolution, and I took up that watermelon and

took it back to its owner. I handed him the watermelon and told him to

reform. He took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good

one in place of the green melon, I forgave him.

I told him that I would still be a customer of his, and that I cherished

no ill-feeling because of the incident--that would remain green in my

memory.

BUSINESS

The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual banquet,

March 30, 1901, at the Y. M. C. A. Building. Mr. James G.

Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank, made the first speech of

the evening, after which Mr. Clemens was introduced by Mr.

Bailey as the personal friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the

types of successful business men.

MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker

as myself all the rest of the night. I took exception to the introducing

of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great

financier present. I am a financier. But my methods are not the same as

Mr. Cannon's.

I cannot say that I have turned out the great business man that I thought

I was when I began life. But I am comparatively young yet, and may

learn. I am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was that I

got the big-head early in the game. I want to explain to you a few

points of difference between the principles of business as I see them and

those that Mr. Cannon believes in.

He says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your

employer. That's all right--as a theory. What is the matter with

loyalty to yourself? As nearly as I can understand Mr. Cannon's

methods, there is one great drawback to them. He wants you to work a

great deal. Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much

more-restful. My idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and

the employee the idle one. The employer should be the worried man, and

the employee the happy one. And why not? He gets the salary. My plan

is to get another man to do the work for me. In that there's more

repose. What I want is repose first, last, and all the time.

Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success;

they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness. Well, diligence is all

right. Let it go as a theory. Honesty is the best policy--when there is

money in it. But truthfulness is one of the most dangerous--why, this

man is misleading you.

I had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this. I was

acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening,

which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. It only reached me

this morning. I was mortified at the discourtesy into which I had been

brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by my

hosts. As I had accepted your invitation, of course I had to send

regrets to my other friends.

When I started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking over

my shoulder. Women always want to know what is going on. Said she

"Should not that read in the third person?" I conceded that it should,

put aside what I was writing, and commenced over again. That seemed to

satisfy her, and so she sat down and let me proceed. I then--finished my

first note--and so sent what I intended. I never could have done this if

I had let my wife know the truth about it. Here is what I wrote:

TO THE OHIO SOCIETY,--I have at this moment received a most kind

invitation (eleven days old) from Mr. Southard, president; and a

like one (ten days old) from Mr. Bryant, president of the Press

Club. I thank the society cordially for the compliment of these

invitations, although I am booked elsewhere and cannot come.

But, oh, I should like to know the name of the Lightning Express by

which they were forwarded; for I owe a friend a dozen chickens, and

I believe it will be cheaper to send eggs instead, and let them

develop on the road.

Sincerely yours,

Mark TWAIN.

I want to tell you of some of my experiences in business, and then I will

be in a position to lay down one general rule for the guidance of those

who want to succeed in business. My first effort was about twenty-five

years ago. I took hold of an invention--I don't know now what it was all

about, but some one came to me tend told me it was a good thing, and that

there was lots of money in it. He persuaded me to invest $15,000, and I

lived up to my beliefs by engaging a man to develop it. To make a long

story short, I sunk $40,000 in it.

Then I took up the publication of a book. I called in a publisher and

said to him: "I want you to publish this book along lines which I shall

lay down. I am the employer, and you are the employee. I am going to

show them some new kinks in the publishing business. And I want you to

draw on me for money as you go along," which he did. He drew on me for

$56,000. Then I asked him to take the book and call it off. But he

refused to do that.

My next venture was with a machine for doing something or other. I knew

less about that than I did about the invention. But I sunk $170,000 in

the business, and I can't for the life of me recollect what it was the

machine was to do.

I was still undismayed. You see, one of the strong points about my

business life was that I never gave up. I undertook to publish General

Grant's book, and made $140,000 in six months. My axiom is, to succeed

in business: avoid my example.

CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR

At the dinner given in honor of Andrew Carnegie by the Lotos

Club, March 17, 1909, Mr. Clemens appeared in a white suit from

head to feet. He wore a white double-breasted coat, white

trousers, and white shoes. The only relief was a big black

cigar, which he confidentially informed the company was not

from his usual stack bought at $3 per barrel.

The State of Missouri has for its coat of arms a barrel-head with two

Missourians, one on each side of it, and mark the motto--"United We

Stand, Divided We Fall." Mr. Carnegie, this evening, has suffered from

compliments. It is interesting to hear what people will say about a man.

Why, at the banquet given by this club in my honor, Mr. Carnegie had the

inspiration for which the club is now honoring him. If Dunfermline

contributed so much to the United States in contributing Mr. Carnegie,

what would have happened if all Scotland had turned out? These

Dunfermline folk have acquired advantages in coming to America.

Doctor McKelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation, when he said of

Mr. Carnegie:

"There is a man who wants to pay more taxes than he is charged." Richard

Watson Gilder did very well for a poet. He advertised his magazine. He

spoke of hiring Mr. Carnegie--the next thing he will be trying to hire

me.

If I undertook--to pay compliments I would do it stronger than any others

have done it, for what Mr. Carnegie wants are strong compliments. Now,

the other side of seventy, I have preserved, as my chiefest virtue,

modesty.

ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE

ADDRESS AT A DINNER OF THE MANHATTAN DICKENS FELLOWSHIP,

NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 7, 1906

This dinner was in commemoration of the ninety-fourth

anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. On an other

occasion Mr. Clemens told the same story with variations and a

different conclusion to the University Settlement Society.

I always had taken an interest in young people who wanted to become

poets. I remember I was particularly interested in one budding poet when

I was a reporter. His name was Butter.

One day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that he was going to

commit suicide--he was tired of life, not being able to express his

thoughts in poetic form. Butter asked me what I thought of the idea.

I said I would; that it was a good idea. "You can do me a friendly turn.

You go off in a private place and do it there, and I'll get it all. You

do it, and I'll do as much for you some time."

At first he determined to drown himself. Drowning is so nice and clean,

and writes up so well in a newspaper.

But things ne'er do go smoothly in weddings, suicides, or courtships.

Only there at the edge of the water, where Butter was to end himself,

lay a life-preserver--a big round canvas one, which would float after the

scrap-iron was soaked out of it.

Butter wouldn't kill himself with the life-preserver in sight, and so I

had an idea. I took it to a pawnshop, and [soaked] it for a revolver:

The pawnbroker didn't think much of the exchange, but when I explained

the situation he acquiesced. We went up on top of a high building, and

this is what happened to the poet:

He put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel straight through

his head. The tunnel was about the size of your finger. You could look

right through it. The job was complete; there was nothing in it.

Well, after that that man never could write prose, but he could write

poetry. He could write it after he had blown his brains out. There is

lots of that talent all over the country, but the trouble is they don't

develop it.

I am suffering now from the fact that I, who have told the truth a good

many times in my life, have lately received more letters than anybody

else urging me to lead a righteous life. I have more friends who want to

see me develop on a high level than anybody else.

Young John D. Rockefeller, two weeks ago, taught his Bible class all

about veracity, and why it was better that everybody should always keep a

plentiful supply on hand. Some of the letters I have received suggest

that I ought to attend his class and learn, too. Why, I know Mr.

Rockefeller, and he is a good fellow. He is competent in many ways to

teach a Bible class, but when it comes to veracity he is only thirty-five

years old. I'm seventy years old. I have been familiar with veracity

twice as long as he.

And the story about George Washington and his little hatchet has also

been suggested to me in these letters--in a fugitive way, as if I needed

some of George Washington and his hatchet in my constitution. Why, dear

me, they overlook the real point in that story. The point is not the one

that is usually suggested, and you can readily see that.

The point is not that George said to his father, "Yes, father, I cut down

the cheery-tree; I can't tell a lie," but that the little boy--only seven

years old--should have his sagacity developed under such circumstances.

He was a boy wise beyond his years. His conduct then was a prophecy of

later years. Yes, I think he was the most remarkable man the country

ever produced-up to my time, anyway.

Now then, little George realized that circumstantial evidence was against

him. He knew that his father would know from the size of the chips that

no full-grown hatchet cut that tree down, and that no man would have

haggled it so. He knew that his father would send around the plantation

and inquire for a small boy with a hatchet, and he had the wisdom to come

out and confess it. Now, the idea that his father was overjoyed when he

told little George that he would rather have him cut down, a thousand

cheery-trees than tell a lie is all nonsense. What did he really mean?

Why, that he was absolutely astonished that he had a son who had the

chance to tell a lie and didn't.

I admire old George--if that was his name--for his discernment. He knew

when he said that his son couldn't tell a lie that he was stretching it a

good deal. He wouldn't have to go to John D. Rockefeller's Bible class

to find that out. The way the old George Washington story goes down it

doesn't do anybody any good. It only discourages people who can tell a

lie.

WELCOME HOME

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR AT THE LOTOS CLUB,

NOVEMBER 10, 1900

In August, 1895, just before sailing for Australia, Mr. Clemens issued

the following statement:

"It has been reported that I sacrificed, for the benefit of the

creditors, the property of the publishing firm whose financial backer I

was, and that I am now lecturing for my own benefit.

"This is an error. I intend the lectures, as well as the property, for

the creditors. The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brains, and a

merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of

insolvency and may start free again for himself. But I am not a business

man, and honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for

less than one hundred cents on a dollar, and its debts are never

outlawed.

"I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose capital I

furnished. If the firm had prospered I would have expected to collect

two-thirds of the profits. As it is, I expect to pay all the debts. My

partner has no resources, and I do not look for assistance to my wife,

whose contributions in cash from her own means have nearly equalled the

claims of all the creditors combined. She has taken nothing; on the

contrary, she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the

obligations due to the rest of the creditors.

"It is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that as a legal

discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other fifty per cent. as fast

as I can earn it. From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, I am

confident that if I live I can pay off the last debt within four years.

"After which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make a fresh and

unincumbered start in life. I am going to Australia, India, and South

Africa, and next year I hope to make a tour of the great cities of the

United States."

I thank you all out of my heart for this fraternal welcome, and it seems

almost too fine, almost too magnificent, for a humble Missourian such as

I am, far from his native haunts on the banks of the Mississippi; yet my

modesty is in a degree fortified by observing that I am not the only

Missourian who has been honored here to-night, for I see at this very

table-here is a Missourian [indicating Mr. McKelway], and there is a

Missourian [indicating Mr. Depew], and there is another Missourian--and

Hendrix and Clemens; and last but not least, the greatest Missourian of

them all--here he sits--Tom Reed, who has always concealed his birth till

now. And since I have been away I know what has been happening in his

case: he has deserted politics, and now is leading a creditable life. He

has reformed, and God prosper him; and I judge, by a remark which he made

up-stairs awhile ago, that he had found a new business that is utterly

suited to his make and constitution, and all he is doing now is that he

is around raising the average of personal beauty.

But I am grateful to the president for the kind words which he has said

of me, and it is not for me to say whether these praises were deserved or

not. I prefer to accept them just as they stand, without concerning

myself with the statistics upon which they have been built, but only with

that large matter, that essential matter, the good-fellowship, the

kindliness, the magnanimity, and generosity that prompted their

utterance. Well, many things have happened since I sat here before, and

now that I think of it, the president's reference to the debts which were

left by the bankrupt firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. gives me an

opportunity to say a word which I very much wish to say, not for myself,

but for ninety-five men and women whom I shall always hold in high esteem

and in pleasant remembrance--the creditors of that firm. They treated me

well; they treated me handsomely. There were ninety-six of them, and by

not a finger's weight did ninety-five of them add to the burden of that

time for me. Ninety-five out of the ninety-six--they didn't indicate by

any word or sign that they were anxious about their money. They treated

me well, and I shall not forget it; I could not forget it if I wanted to.

Many of them said, "Don't you worry, don't you hurry"; that's what they

said. Why, if I could have that kind of creditors always, and that

experience, I would recognize it as a personal loss to be out of debt.

I owe those ninety-five creditors a debt of homage, and I pay it now in

such measure as one may pay so fine a debt in mere words. Yes, they said

that very thing. I was not personally acquainted with ten of them, and

yet they said, "Don't you worry, and don't you hurry." I know that

phrase by heart, and if all the other music should perish out of the

world it would still sing to me. I appreciate that; I am glad to say

this word; people say so much about me, and they forget those creditors.

They were handsomer than I was--or Tom Reed.

Oh, you have been doing many things in this time that I have been absent;

you have done lots of things, some that are well worth remembering, too.

Now, we have fought a righteous war since I have gone, and that is rare

in history--a righteous war is so rare that it is almost unknown in

history; but by the grace of that war we set Cuba free, and we joined her

to those three or four nations that exist on this earth; and we started

out to set those poor Filipinos free, too, and why, why, why that most

righteous purpose of ours has apparently miscarried I suppose I never

shall know.

But we have made a most creditable record in China in these days--our

sound and level-headed administration has made a most creditable record

over there, and there are some of the Powers that cannot say that by any

means. The Yellow Terror is threatening this world to-day. It is

looming vast and ominous on that distant horizon. I do not know what is

going to be the result of that Yellow Terror, but our government has had

no hand in evoking it, and let's be happy in that and proud of it.

We have nursed free silver, we watched by its cradle; we have done the

best we could to raise that child, but those pestiferous Republicans have

--well, they keep giving it the measles every chance they get, and we

never shall raise that child. Well, that's no matter--there's plenty of

other things to do, and we must think of something else. Well, we have

tried a President four years, criticised him and found fault with him the

whole time, and turned around a day or two ago with votes enough to spare

to elect another. O consistency! consistency! thy name--I don't know

what thy name is--Thompson will do--any name will do--but you see there

is the fact, there is the consistency. Then we have tried for governor

an illustrious Rough Rider, and we liked him so much in that great office

that now we have made him Vice-President--not in order that that office

shall give him distinction, but that he may confer distinction upon that

office. And it's needed, too--it's needed. And now, for a while anyway,

we shall not be stammering and embarrassed when a stranger asks us, "What

is the name of the Vice-President?" This one is known; this one is

pretty well known, pretty widely known, and in some quarters favorably.

I am not accustomed to dealing in these fulsome compliments, and I am

probably overdoing it a little; but--well, my old affectionate admiration

for Governor Roosevelt has probably betrayed me into the complimentary

excess; but I know him, and you know him; and if you give him rope

enough--I mean if--oh yes, he will justify that compliment; leave it just

as it is. And now we have put in his place Mr. Odell, another Rough

Rider, I suppose; all the fat things go to that profession now. Why, I

could have been a Rough Rider myself if I had known that this political

Klondike was going to open up, and I would have been a Rough Rider if I

could have gone to war on an automobile but not on a horse! No, I know

the horse too well; I have known the horse in war and in peace, and there

is no place where a horse is comfortable. The horse has too many

caprices, and he is too much given to initiative. He invents too many

new ideas. No, I don't want anything to do with a horse.

And then we have taken Chauncey Depew out of a useful and active life and

made him a Senator--embalmed him, corked him up. And I am not grieving.

That man has said many a true thing about me in his time, and I always

said something would happen to him. Look at that [pointing to Mr. Depew]

gilded mummy! He has made my life a sorrow to me at many a banquet on

both sides of the ocean, and now he has got it. Perish the hand that

pulls that cork!

All these things have happened, all these things have come to pass, while

I have been away, and it just shows how little a Mugwump can be missed in

a cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the last one that is left

--a GRAND OLD PARTY all by himself. And there is another thing that has

happened, perhaps the most imposing event of them all: the institution

called the Daughters of the--Crown--the Daughters of the Royal Crown--has

established itself and gone into business. Now, there's an American idea

for you; there's an idea born of God knows what kind of specialized

insanity, but not softening of the brain--you cannot soften a thing that

doesn't exist--the Daughters of the Royal Crown! Nobody eligible but

American descendants of Charles II. Dear me, how the fancy product of

that old harem still holds out!

Well, I am truly glad to foregather with you again, and partake of the

bread and salt of this hospitable house once more. Seven years ago, when

I was your guest here, when I was old and despondent, you gave me the

grip and the word that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive; and

now I come back from my exile young again, fresh and alive, and ready to

begin life once more, and your welcome puts the finishing touch upon my

restored youth and makes it real to me, and not a gracious dream that

must vanish with the morning. I thank you.

AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH

The steamship St. Paul was to have been launched from Cramp's

shipyard in Philadelphia on March 25, 1895. After the

launching a luncheon was to nave been given, at which Mr.

Clemens was to make a speech. Just before the final word was

given a reporter asked Mr. Clemens for a copy of his speech to

be delivered at the luncheon. To facilitate the work of the

reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the speech. It

happened, however, that when the blocks were knocked away the

big ship refused to budge, and no amount of labor could move

her an inch. She had stuck fast upon the ways. As a result,

the launching was postponed for a week or two; but in the mean

time Mr. Clemens had gone to Europe. Years after a reporter

called on Mr. Clemens and submitted the manuscript of the

speech, which was as follows:

Day after to-morrow I sail for England in a ship of this line, the Paris.

It will be my fourteenth crossing in three years and a half. Therefore,

my presence here, as you see, is quite natural, quite commercial. I am

interested in ships. They interest me more now than hotels do. When a

new ship is launched I feel a desire to go and see if she will be good

quarters for me to live in, particularly if she belongs to this line, for

it is by this line that I have done most of my ferrying.

People wonder why I go so much. Well, I go partly for my health, partly

to familiarize myself with the road. I have gone over the same road so

many times now that I know all the whales that belong along the route,

and latterly it is an embarrassment to me to meet them, for they do not

look glad to see me, but annoyed, and they seem to say: "Here is this old

derelict again."

Earlier in life this would have pained me and made me ashamed, but I am

older now, and when I am behaving myself, and doing right, I do not care

for a whale's opinion about me. When we are young we generally estimate

an opinion by the size of the person that holds it, but later we find

that that is an uncertain rule, for we realize that there are times when

a hornet's opinion disturbs us more than an emperor's.

I do not mean that I care nothing at all for a whale's opinion, for that

would be going to too great a length. Of course, it is better to have

the good opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my position is that

if you cannot have a whale's good opinion, except at some sacrifice of

principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without it.

That is my idea about whales.

Yes, I have gone over that same route so often that I know my way without

a compass, just by the waves. I know all the large waves and a good many

of the small ones. Also the sunsets. I know every sunset and where it

belongs just by its color. Necessarily, then, I do not make the passage

now for scenery. That is all gone by.

What I prize most is safety, and in, the second place swift transit and

handiness. These are best furnished, by the American line, whose

watertight compartments have no passage through them; no doors to be left

open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to

another in time of collision. If you nullify the peril which collisions

threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends

voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than

staying at home.

When the Paris was half-torn to pieces some years ago, enough of the

Atlantic ebbed and flowed through one end of her, during her long agony,

to sink the fleets of the world if distributed among them; but she

floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost. In time of collision

the rock of Gibraltar is not safer than the Paris and other great ships

of this line. This seems to be the only great line in the world that

takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention

of tugs and barges or bridges--takes him through without breaking bulk,

so to speak.

On the English side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is

waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in, London. Nothing could

be handier. If your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a

lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but

that is not the case. The journey is from the city of New York to the

city of London, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one,

nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily. And when the passenger

lands on our side he lands on the American side of the river, not in the

provinces. As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head

quartermaster of the New York land garboard streak of the middle watch)

"When we land a passenger on the American side there's nothing betwix him

and his hotel but hell and the hackman."

I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship. She is

another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty

fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten, what it is to

fly its flag to sea. I am not sure as to which St. Paul she is named

for. Some think it is the one that is on the upper Mississippi, but the

head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed Goliath. But it is

not important. No matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and

godspeed.

SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

AT THE METROPOLITAN CLUB, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 28, 1902

Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens by Colonel

Harvey, President of Harper & Brothers.

I think I ought to be allowed to talk as long as I want to, for the

reason that I have cancelled all my winter's engagements of every kind,

for good and sufficient reasons, and am making no new engagements for

this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance I shall have to

disembowel my skull for a year--close the mouth in that portrait for a

year. I want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this

innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as I

consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like

this. That was bad that was a bad, bad, bad arrangement. Under that old

custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner

at the bar, and covered him all over with compliments, nothing but

compliments, not a thing but compliments, never a slur, and sat down and

left that man to get up and talk without a text. You cannot talk on

compliments; that is not a text. No modest person, and I was born one,

can talk on compliments. A man gets up and is filled to the eyes with

happy emotions, but his tongue is tied; he has nothing to say; he is in

the condition of Doctor Rice's friend who came home drunk and explained

it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "John, when you have drunk all

the whiskey you want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla." He said, "Yes,

but when I have drunk all the whiskey I want I can't say sarsaparilla."

And so I think it is much better to leave a man unmolested until the

testimony and pleadings are all in. Otherwise he is dumb--he is at the

sarsaparilla stage.

Before I get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as Mr. Howells suggested I

do, I want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are

doing me, and I am quite competent to estimate it at its value. I see

around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished

men; there are more than fifty here, and I believe I know thirty-nine of

them well. I could probably borrow money from--from the others, anyway.

It is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a distinguished company

gather here on such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign prince

to be feted--when you have come here not to do honor to hereditary

privilege and ancient lineage, but to do reverence to mere moral

excellence and elemental veracity-and, dear me, how old it seems to make

me! I look around me and I see three or four persons I have known so

many, many years. I have known Mr. Secretary Hay--John Hay, as the

nation and the rest of his friends love to call him--I have known John

Hay and Tom Reed and the Reverend Twichell close upon thirty-six years.

Close upon thirty-six years I have known those venerable men. I have

known Mr. Howells nearly thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew

before he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth.

Twenty-seven years ago, I heard him make the most noble and eloquent and

beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips. Tom

Reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement. Well,

suppose that that is true. What's the use of telling the truth all the

time? I never tell the truth about Tom Reed--but that is his defect,

truth; he speaks the truth always. Tom Reed has a good heart, and he has

a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. Why, when Tom Reed was

invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for the Procreation or

Procrastination, or something, of morals, I don't know what it was

--advancement, I suppose, of pure morals--he had the immortal indiscretion

to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously

utilizing the opportunities that Providence puts in our way we can all be

bigamists. You perceive his limitations. Anything he has in his mind he

states, if he thinks it is true. Well, that was true, but that was no

place to say it--so they fired him out.

A lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; I have held

grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out by

the very handsome compliments that have been paid me. Even Wayne

MacVeagh--I have had a grudge against him many years. The first time I

saw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private dinner-party at Charles A. Dana's,

and when I got there he was clattering along, and I tried to get a word

in here and there; but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is

started, and I could not get in five words to his one--or one word to his

five. I struggled along and struggled along, and--well, I wanted to tell

and I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before, and it was a

remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream

recounting Sam Jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. I was on a

train, and was approaching the celestial way-station--I had a through

ticket--and I noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he had

his ticket in his hat. He was the remains of the Archbishop of

Canterbury; I recognized him by his photograph. I had nothing against

him, so I took his ticket and let him have mine. He didn't object--he

wasn't in a condition to object--and presently when the train stopped at

the heavenly station--well, I got off, and he went on by request--but

there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one

with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were

expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise a

shout, but it didn't materialize. I don't know whether they were

disappointed. I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the

Archbishop and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and

I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was doing it in the German

tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit. Well, I found it was

no use, I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was occupying the whole

place, and I said to Mr. Dana, "What is the matter with that man? Who is

that man with the long tongue? What's the trouble with him, that long,

lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a job--who is that?" "Well, now,"

Mr. Dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep

quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man. Talk! He was born to

talk. Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you." I said, "I have

been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left."

He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and

inspiration of that proverb which says, 'No matter how close you skin an

onion, a clever man can always peel it again.'" Well, I reflected and

I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom Reed. He's got no

discretion. Well, MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit

in all those years; he has been peeling Mr. Mitchell lately. That's the

kind of man he is.

Mr. Howells--that poem of his is admirable; that's the way to treat a

person. Howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people,

and he has always exhibited them in my favor. Howells has never written

anything about me that I couldn't read six or seven times a day; he is

always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of me

than any one in this world, and published it in the North American

Review. He did me the justice to say that my intentions--he italicized

that--that my intentions were always good, that I wounded people's

conventions rather than their convictions. Now, I wouldn't want anything

handsomer than that said of me. I would rather wait, with anything harsh

I might have to say, till the convictions become conventions. Bangs has

traced me all the way down. He can't find that honest man, but I will

look for him in the looking-glass when I get home. It was intimated by

the Colonel that it is New England that makes New York and builds up this

country and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's a lot of

people here who came from elsewhere, like John Hay from away out West,

and Howells from Ohio, and St. Clair McKelway and me from Missouri, and

we are doing what we can to build up New York a little-elevate it. Why,

when I was living in that village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of

the Mississippi, and Hay up in the town of Warsaw, also on the banks of

the Mississippi River it is an emotional bit of the Mississippi, and when

it is low water you have to climb up to it on a ladder, and when it

floods you have to hunt for it; with a deep-sea lead--but it is a great

and beautiful country. In that old time it was a paradise for

simplicity--it was a simple, simple life, cheap but comfortable, and full

of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage of modern civilization

there at all. It was a delectable land. I went out there last June,

and I met in that town of Hannibal a schoolmate of mine, John Briggs,

whom I had not seen for more than fifty years. I tell you, that was a

meeting! That pal whom I had known as a little boy long ago, and knew

now as a stately man three or four inches over six feet and browned by

exposure to many climes, he was back there to see that old place again.

We spent a whole afternoon going about here and there and yonder, and

hunting up the scenes and talking of the crimes which we had committed so

long ago. It was a heartbreaking delight, full of pathos, laughter, and

tears, all mixed together; and we called the roll of the boys and girls

that we picnicked and sweethearted with so many years ago, and there were

hardly half a dozen of them left; the rest were in their graves; and we

went up there on the summit of that hill, a treasured place in my memory,

the summit of Holiday's Hill, and looked out again over that magnificent

panorama of the Mississippi River, sweeping along league after league, a

level green paradise on one side, and retreating capes and promontories

as far as you could see on the other, fading away in the soft, rich

lights of the remote distance. I recognized then that I was seeing now

the most enchanting river view the planet could furnish. I never knew it

when I was a boy; it took an educated eye that had travelled over the

globe to know and appreciate it; and John said, "Can you point out the

place where Bear Creek used to be before the railroad came?" I said,

"Yes, it ran along yonder." "And can you point out the swimming-hole?"

"Yes, out there." And he said, "Can you point out the place where we

stole the skiff?" Well, I didn't know which one he meant. Such a

wilderness of events had intervened since that day, more than fifty years

ago, it took me more than five minutes to call back that little incident,

and then I did call it back; it was a white skiff, and we painted it red

to allay suspicion. And the saddest, saddest man came along--a stranger

he was--and he looked that red skiff over so pathetically, and he said:

"Well, if it weren't for the complexion I'd know whose skiff that was."

He said it in that pleading way, you know, that appeals for sympathy and

suggestion; we were full of sympathy for him, but we weren't in any

condition to offer suggestions. I can see him yet as he turned away with

that same sad look on his face and vanished out of history forever.

I wonder what became of that man. I know what became of the skiff.

Well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely life. There was no crime.

Merely little things like pillaging orchards and watermelon-patches and

breaking the Sabbath--we didn't break the Sabbath often enough to

signify--once a week perhaps. But we were good boys, good Presbyterian

boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good

Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did

wander a little from the fold.

Look at John Hay and me. There we were in obscurity, and look where we

are now. Consider the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious

vocations he has served--and vocations is the right word; he has in all

those vocations acquitted himself with high credit and honor to his

country and to the mother that bore him. Scholar, soldier, diplomat,

poet, historian--now, see where we are. He is Secretary of State and I

am a gentleman. It could not happen in any other country. Our

institutions give men the positions that of right belong to them through

merit; all you men have won your places, not by heredities, and not by

family influence or extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts God

gave you at your birth, made effective by your own energies; this is the

country to live in.

Now, there is one invisible guest here. A part of me is present; the

larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife,

and she has a good many personal friends here, and I think it won't

distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to be

confined to that bed for many months to come from that nervous

prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very well

--and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak of her. I knew

her for the first time just in the same year that I first knew John Hay

and Tom Reed and Mr. Twichell--thirty-six years ago--and she has been the

best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a good deal; she has

reared me--she and Twichell together--and what I am I owe to them.

Twichell why, it is such a pleasure to look upon Twichell's face! For

five-and-twenty years I was under the Rev. Mr. Twichell's tuition, I was

in his pastorate, occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due

reverence. That man is full of all the graces that go to make a person

companionable and beloved; and wherever Twichell goes to start a church

the people flock there to buy the land; they find real estate goes up all

around the spot, and the envious and the thoughtful always try to get

Twichell to move to their neighborhood and start a church; and wherever

you see him go you can go and buy land there with confidence, feeling

sure that there will be a double price for you before very long. I am not

saying this to flatter Mr. Twichell; it is the fact. Many and many a

time I have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought up all the

pews on a margin--and it would have been better for me spiritually and

financially if I had stayed under his wing.

I have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvellous in how many

different ways I have done good, and it is comfortable to reflect--now,

there's Mr. Rogers--just out of the affection I bear that man many a time

I have given him points in finance that he had never thought of--and if

he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those

ideas in his business, it would make a difference in his bank account.

Well, I like the poetry. I like all the speeches and the poetry, too.

I liked Doctor Van Dyke's poem. I wish I could return thanks in proper

measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings to

pay me compliments; some were merited and some you overlooked, it is

true; and Colonel Harvey did slander every one of you, and put things

into my mouth that I never said, never thought of at all.

And now, my wife and I, out of our single heart, return you our deepest

and most grateful thanks, and--yesterday was her birthday.

TO THE WHITEFRIARS

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE WHITEFRIARS CLUB IN HONOR OF

MR. CLEMENS, LONDON, JUNE 20, 1899

The Whitefriars Club was founded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Mr.

Clemens was made an honorary member in 1874. The members are

representative of literary and journalistic London. The toast

of "Our Guest" was proposed by Louis F. Austin, of the

Illustrated London News, and in the course of some humorous

remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the

"Friars," as the members of the club style themselves.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF THE VOW--in whatever the vow is; for

although I have been a member of this club for five-and twenty years,

I don't know any more about what that vow is than Mr. Austin seems to.

But what ever the vow is, I don't care what it is. I have made a

thousand vows.

There is no pleasure comparable to making a vow in the presence of one

who appreciates that vow, in the presence of men who honor and appreciate

you for making the vow, and men who admire you for making the vow.

There is only one pleasure higher than that, and that is to get outside

and break the vow. A vow is always a pledge of some kind or other for

the protection of your own morals and principles or somebody else's,

and generally, by the irony of fate, it is for the protection of your own

morals.

Hence we have pledges that make us eschew tobacco or wine, and while you

are taking the pledge there is a holy influence about that makes you feel

you are reformed, and that you can never be so happy again in this world

until--you get outside and take a drink.

I had forgotten that I was a member of this club--it is so long ago.

But now I remember that I was here five-and-twenty years ago, and that I

was then at a dinner of the Whitefriars Club, and it was in those old

days when you had just made two great finds. All London was talking

about nothing else than that they had found Livingstone, and that the

lost Sir Roger Tichborne had been found--and they were trying him for it.

And at the dinner, Chairman (I do not know who he was)--failed to come to

time. The gentleman who had been appointed to pay me the customary

compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know

what they were.

And George Augustus Sala came in at the last moment, just when I was

about to go without compliments altogether. And that man was a gifted

man. They just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit

down, to introduce the stranger, and Sala, made one of those marvellous

speeches which he was capable of making. I think no man talked so fast

as Sala did. One did not need wine while he was making a speech. The

rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. An incomparable

speech was that, an impromptu speech, and--an impromptu speech is a

seldom thing, and he did it so well.

He went into the whole history of the United States, and made it entirely

new to me. He filled it with episodes and incidents that Washington

never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although I knew none

of it had happened, from that day to this I do not know any history but

Sala's.

I do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up

and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. You sit and

wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going to

introduce you. You know that if he says something severe, that if he

will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will

furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against

that.

Anybody can get up and straighten out his character. But when a

gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do?

Mr. Austin has done well. He has supplied so many texts that I will have

to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you do

not have any text at all. Now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech

without any difficulty at all, and I could have done that if I had gone

on with the schooling with which I began. I see here a gentleman on my

left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years

ago.

When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr. Depew, it carries me a long

way back. An old and valued friend of mine is he, and I saw his career

as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by

another miscarriage of justice, is a United States Senator. But those

were delightful days when I was taking lessons in oratory.

My other master the Ambassador-is not here yet. Under those two

gentlemen I learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming.

You know the New England dinner is the great occasion on the other side

of the water. It is held every year to celebrate the landing of the

Pilgrims. Those Pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in

England, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to

go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called Mayflower and set sail,

and I have heard it said that they pumped the Atlantic Ocean through that

ship sixteen times.

They fell in over there with the Dutch from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and a

lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that Mr.

Depew is descended.

On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended from those Puritans who landed

on a bitter night in December. Every year those people used to meet at a

great banquet in New York, and those masters of mind in oratory had to

make speeches. It was Doctor Depew's business to get up there and

apologise for the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had to get up later and explain

the crimes of the Puritans, and grand, beautiful times we used to have.

It is curious that after that long lapse of time I meet the Whitefriars

again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others showing

a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after all this time, I find

one of the masters of oratory and the others named in the list.

And here we three meet again as exiles on one pretext or another, and you

will notice that while we are absent there is a pleasing tranquillity in

America--a building up of public confidence. We are doing the best we

can for our country. I think we have spent our lives in serving our

country, and we never serve it to greater advantage than when we get out

of it.

But impromptu speaking--that is what I was trying to learn. That is a

difficult thing. I used to do it in this way. I used to begin about a

week ahead, and write out my impromptu, speech and get it by heart. Then

I brought it to the New England dinner printed on a piece of paper in my

pocket, so that I could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried, and

in order to do an impromptu speech as it should be done you have to

indicate the places for pauses and hesitations. I put them all in it.

And then you want the applause in the right places.

When I got to the place where it should come in, if it did not come in

I did not care, but I had it marked in the paper. And these masters of

mind used to wonder why it was my speech came out in the morning in the

first person, while theirs went through the butchery of synopsis.

I do that kind of speech (I mean an offhand speech), and do it well, and

make no mistake in such a way to deceive the audience completely and make

that audience believe it is an impromptu speech--that is art.

I was frightened out of it at last by an experience of Doctor Hayes. He

was a sort of Nansen of that day. He had been to the North Pole, and it

made him celebrated. He had even seen the polar bear climb the pole.

He had made one of those magnificent voyages such as Nansen made, and in

those days when a man did anything which greatly distinguished him for

the moment he had to come on to the lecture platform and tell all about

it.

Doctor Hayes was a great, magnificent creature like Nansen, superbly

built. He was to appear in Boston. He wrote his lecture out, and it was

his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil hour he concluded

that it would be a good thing to preface it with something rather

handsome, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off by heart and

deliver as if it were the thought of the moment.

He had not had my experience, and could not do that. He came on the

platform, held his manuscript down, and began with a beautiful piece of

oratory. He spoke something like this:

"When a lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture of

nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the

horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up

their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the departing sun--"

Here a man came across the platform and touched him on the shoulder, and

said: "One minute." And then to the audience:

"Is Mrs. John Smith in the house? Her husband has slipped on the ice and

broken his leg."

And you could see the Mrs. John Smiths get up everywhere and drift out of

the house, and it made great gaps everywhere. Then Doctor Hayes began

again: "When a lonely man, a pigmy in the architecture--" The janitor

came in again and shouted: "It is not Mrs. John Smith! It is Mrs. John

Jones!"

Then all the Mrs. Jones got up and left. Once more the speaker started,

and was in the midst of the sentence when he was interrupted again, and

the result was that the lecture was not delivered. But the lecturer

interviewed the janitor afterward in a private room, and of the fragments

of the janitor they took "twelve basketsful."

Now, I don't want to sit down just in this way. I have been talking with

so much levity that I have said no serious thing, and you are really no

better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested that I am a

person who deals in wisdom. I have said nothing which would make you

better than when you came here.

I should be sorry to sit down without having said one serious word which

you can carry home and relate to your children and the old people who are

not able to get away.

And this is just a little maxim which has saved me from many a difficulty

and many a disaster, and in times of tribulation and uncertainty has come

to my rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe it as I do day and

night.

I always use it in an emergency, and you can take it home as a legacy

from me, and it is "When in doubt, tell the truth."

THE ASCOT GOLD CUP

The news of Mr. Clemens's arrival in England in June, 1907, was

announced in the papers with big headlines. Immediately

following the announcement was the news--also with big

headlines--that the Ascot Gold Cup had been stolen the same

day. The combination, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES-ASCOT CUP STOLEN,

amused the public. The Lord Mayor of London gave a banquet at

the Mansion House in honor of Mr. Clemens.

I do assure you that I am not so dishonest as I look. I have been so

busy trying to rehabilitate my honor about that Ascot Cup that I have had

no time to prepare a speech.

I was not so honest in former days as I am now, but I have always been

reasonably honest. Well, you know how a man is influenced by his

surroundings. Once upon a time I went to a public meeting where the

oratory of a charitable worker so worked on my feelings that, in common

with others, I would have dropped something substantial in the hat--if it

had come round at that moment.

The speaker had the power of putting those vivid pictures before one.

We were all affected. That was the moment for the hat. I would have put

two hundred dollars in. Before he had finished I could have put in four

hundred dollars. I felt I could have filled up a blank check--with

somebody else's name--and dropped it in.

Well, now, another speaker got up, and in fifteen minutes damped my

spirit; and during the speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm went

away. When at last the hat came round I dropped in ten cents--and took

out twenty-five.

I came over here to get the honorary degree from Oxford, and I would have

encompassed the seven seas for an honor like that--the greatest honor

that has ever fallen to my share. I am grateful to Oxford for conferring

that honor upon me, and I am sure my country appreciates it, because

first and foremost it is an honor to my country.

And now I am going home again across the sea. I am in spirit young but

in the flesh old, so that it is unlikely that when I go away I shall ever

see England again. But I shall go with the recollection of the generous

and kindly welcome I have had.

I suppose I must say "Good-bye." I say it not with my lips only, but

from the heart.

THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER

A portrait of Mr. Clemens, signed by all the members of the

club attending the dinner, was presented to him, July 6, 1907,

and in submitting the toast "The Health of Mark Twain" Mr. J.

Scott Stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of Doctor

Clemens's works to Harold Frederic during Frederic's last

illness.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SAVAGES,--I am very glad indeed to have that

portrait. I think it is the best one that I have ever had, and there

have been opportunities before to get a good photograph. I have sat to

photographers twenty-two times to-day. Those sittings added to those

that have preceded them since I have been in Europe--if we average at

that rate--must have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings. Out

of all those there ought to be some good photographs. This is the best I

have had, and I am glad to have your honored names on it. I did not know

Harold Frederic personally, but I have heard a great deal about him, and

nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead a

man to honor another man and to love him. I consider that it is a

misfortune of mine that I have never had the luck to meet him, and if any

book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier for

him and more comfortable, I am very glad and proud of that. I call to

mind such a case many years ago of an English authoress, well known in

her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in

every possible way. In a little biographical sketch of her I found that

her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she was

no longer able to read. That has always remained in my mind, and I have

always cherished it as one of the good things of my life. I had read

what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done.

Stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloniously away to Africa,

and I have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there

in the wilds of Africa--because on his previous journeys he never carried

anything to read except Shakespeare and the Bible. I did not know of

that circumstance. I did not know that he had carried a book of mine.

I only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man. I knew

Stanley very well in those old days. Stanley was the first man who ever

reported a lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis. When I was down

there the next time to give the same lecture I was told to give them

something fresh, as they had read that in the papers. I met Stanley here

when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with the

finding of Livingstone. You remember how he would break out at the

meetings of the British Association, and find fault with what people

said, because Stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain them.

They had to come out or break him up--and so he would go round and

address geographical societies. He was always on the warpath in those

days, and people always had to have Stanley contradicting their geography

for them and improving it. But he always came back and sat drinking beer

with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was then one of the

most civilized human beings that ever was.

I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which

appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer

said that I characterized Mr. Birrell's speech the other day at the

Pilgrims' Club as "bully." Now, if you will excuse me, I never use slang

to an interviewer or anybody else. That distresses me. Whatever I said

about Mr. Birrell's speech was said in English, as good English as

anybody uses. If I could not describe Mr. Birrell's delightful speech

without using slang I would not describe it at all. I would close my

mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me.

Now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an

altogether wrong way to interview him. It is entirely wrong because none

of you, I, or anybody else, could interview a man--could listen to a man

talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in the

first person. It can't be done. What results is merely that the

interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own

language and puts it in your mouth. It will always be either better

language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse.

I have a great respect for the English language. I am one of its

supporters, its promoters, its elevators. I don't degrade it. A slip of

the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. I have always

tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.

I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I

feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think.

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to

facts. I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as

too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too

many of them without damaging your literature. I love all literature,

and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for

twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature,

and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor

everybody else's.

Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes. At home I venture

things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts.

I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white

clothes in England. I meant to keep that command fair and clean, and I

would have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions,

but I can't invent a new process in life right away. I have not had

white clothes on since I crossed the ocean until now.

In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired of gray and black that

you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as I have. I wear

white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I don't go out in

the streets in them. I don't go out to attract too much attention.

I like to attract some, and always I would like to be dressed so that I

may be more conspicuous than anybody else.

If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have contented myself with

blue paint, but I would have bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy gay

clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when I

go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the men

are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. These are

two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes: When I find

myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know I

possess something that is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are

never clean. You don't know whether they are clean or not, because you

can't see.

Here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or it

is full of grit. Your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your

hair. If you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill

gets so heavy that you have to take care. I am proud to say that I can

wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. If you

need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to

give it to you. I hope I have convinced some of you that it is just as

well to wear white clothes as any other kind. I do not want to boast.

I only want to make you understand that you are not clean.

As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two years old does not

clearly indicate how old I am, because part of every day--it is with me

as with you, you try to describe your age, and you cannot do it.

Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. It is

very seldom in a day that I am seventy-two years old. I am older now

sometimes than I was when I used to rob orchards; a thing which I would

not do to-day--if the orchards were watched. I am so glad to be here

to-night. I am so glad to renew with the Savages that now ancient time

when I first sat with a company of this club in London in 1872. That is

a long time ago. But I did stay with the Savages a night in London long

ago, and as I had come into a very strange land, and was with friends, as

I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed

evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own kind and my

own feelings.

I am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very likely

that I shall not see you again. It is easier than I thought to come

across the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know, in the most

delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It keeps me

choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem to

give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can appreciate it

higher than I do. It did not wait till I got to London, but when I came

ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcome

--a good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the

world, and save you and me having to do it. They are the men who with

their hands build empires and make them prosper. It is because of them

that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. They received me

with a "Hurrah!" that went to my heart. They are the men that build

civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. So I came

first to the authors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end

this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it.

GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG

Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the

Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort, December 22, 1907. The

toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high

tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was

dear to the hearts of all Americans.

It is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments

from the powers in authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach to.

When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says

pleasant things about me, I always feel like answering simply that what

he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as I am concerned,

the things he said can stand as they are. But you always have to say

something, and that is what frightens me.

I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary

toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other worm

--and run, for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date when

I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by

putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction

of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I

finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by

mistake.

One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and

if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been

following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember one

detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could

never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.

Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that

we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had

not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point

I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are

these:

I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a

cent to live on while I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little

journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who

had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love

Scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate,

selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter.

That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to

support the jug.

But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3 at

once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what we

wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did

occasionally want it. The Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a

great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine. He said: "The

Lord will provide."

I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel

lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw me,

too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in,

admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He

offered me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful

animal, but I refused to take more than Providence knew I needed. The

General carried the dog to his room.

Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking

around the lobby.

"Did you lose a dog?" I asked. He said he had.

"I think I could find it," I volunteered, "for a small sum."

"'How much?'" he asked. And I told him $3.

He urged me to accept more, but I did not wish to outdo Providence. Then

I went to the General's room and asked for the dog back. He was very

angry, and wanted to know why I had sold him a dog that did not belong to

me.

"That's a singular question to ask me, sir," I replied. "Didn't you ask

me to sell him? You started it." And he let me have him. I gave him

back his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to its owner. That second $3

I earned home to the Scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money

I got from the General, I would have had to lend.

The General seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and I never

had the heart to tell him about it.

WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH

Mark Twain's speech at the dinner of the "Freundschaft

Society," March 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of

introduction used by Toastmaster Frank, who, referring to

Pudd'nhead Wilson, used the phrase, "When in doubt, tell the

truth."

MR. CHAIRMAN, Mr. PUTZEL, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FREUNDSCHAFT,--That maxim

I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. I did say,

"When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more

sagacity.

Mr. Grout suggested that if I have anything to say against Mr. Putzel, or

any criticism of his career or his character, I am the last person to

come out on account of that maxim and tell the truth. That is altogether

a mistake.

I do think it is right for other people to be virtuous so that they can

be happy hereafter, but if I knew every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel

has committed in his life, I would not mention one of them. My judgment

has been maturing for seventy years, and I have got to that point where I

know better than that.

Mr. Putzel stands related to me in a very tender way (through the tax

office), and it does not behoove me to say anything which could by any

possibility militate against that condition of things.

Now, that word--taxes, taxes, taxes! I have heard it to-night. I have

heard it all night. I wish somebody would change that subject; that is a

very sore subject to me.

I was so relieved when judge Leventritt did find something that was not

taxable--when he said that the commissioner could not tax your patience.

And that comforted me. We've got so much taxation. I don't know of a

single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer

to prayer.

On an occasion like this the proprieties require that you merely pay

compliments to the guest of the occasion, and I am merely here to pay

compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any

way, and I can say only complimentary things to him.

When I went down to the tax office some time ago, for the first time in

New York, I saw Mr. Putzel sitting in the "Seat of Perjury." I recognized

him right away. I warmed to him on the spot. I didn't know that I had

ever seen him before, but just as soon as I saw him I recognized him.

I had met him twenty-five years before, and at that time had achieved a

knowledge of his abilities and something more than that.

I thought: "Now, this is the man whom I saw twenty-five years ago."

On that occasion I not only went free at his hands, but carried off

something more than that. I hoped it would happen again.

It was twenty-five years ago when I saw a young clerk in Putnam's

bookstore. I went in there and asked for George Haven Putnam, and handed

him my card, and then the young man said Mr. Putnam was busy and I

couldn't see him. Well, I had merely called in a social way, and so it

didn't matter.

I was going out when I saw a great big, fat, interesting-looking book

lying there, and I took it up. It was an account of the invasion of

England in the fourteenth century by the Preaching Friar, and it

interested me.

I asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars.

"Well," I said, "what discount do you allow to publishers?"

He said: "Forty percent. off."

I said: "All right, I am a publisher."

He put down the figure, forty per cent. off, on a card.

Then I said: "What discount do you allow to authors?"

He said: "Forty per cent. off."

"Well," I said, "set me down as an author."

"Now," said I, "what discount do you allow to the clergy?"

He said: "Forty per cent. off."

I said to him that I was only on the road, and that I was studying for

the ministry. I asked him wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent. for

that. He set down the figure, and he never smiled once.

I was working off these humorous brilliancies on him and getting no

return--not a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of

what I was doing there. I was almost in despair.

I thought I might try him once more, so I said "Now, I am also a member

of the human race. Will you let me have the ten per cent. off for that?"

He set it down, and never smiled.

Well, I gave it up. I said: "There is my card with my address on it,

but I have not any money with me. Will you please send the bill to

Hartford?" I took up the book and was going away.

He said: "Wait a minute. There is forty cents coming to you."

When I met him in the tax office I thought maybe I could make something

again, but I could not. But I had not any idea I could when I came, and

as it turned out I did get off entirely free.

I put up my hand and made a statement. It gave me a good deal of pain to

do that. I was not used to it. I was born and reared in the higher

circles of Missouri, and there we don't do such things--didn't in my

time, but we have got that little matter settled--got a sort of tax

levied on me.

Then he touched me. Yes, he touched me this time, because he cried

--cried! He was moved to tears to see that I, a virtuous person only a

year before, after immersion for one year--during one year in the New

York morals--had no more conscience than a millionaire.

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE,

ADDRESS AT THE FOURTH-OF-JULY DINNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY,

LONDON, 1899.

I noticed in Ambassador Choate's speech that he said: "You may be

Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time."

You responded by applause.

Consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the Ambassador

rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a Senator, and I come third.

What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when

you place rank above respectability!

I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it

upon me. I understand it quite well. I am here to see that between them

they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must

do it myself. But I notice they have considered this day merely from one

side--its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another side.

It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. It has a

historical side.

I do not say "an" historical side, because I am speaking the American

language. I do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an"

hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. It seems to me the Congress

of Women, now in session, should look to it. I think "an" is having a

little too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for

many things.

Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party. At the end of the

party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half

an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now, that was an

innocent act on his part. He went out first, and of course had the

choice of hats. As a rule I try to get out first myself. But I hold

that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity.

He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that

condition of mind he will take anybody's hat. The result was that the

whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could

not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it.

It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted me exactly; my hat

fitted him exactly. So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the

Church some how or other, but I do not know what he was born for. That

is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here

when they say "an" hospital, "an" European, "an" historical.

The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands.

See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of

thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is

not only sacred to patriotism sand universal freedom, but to the surgeon,

the undertaker, the insurance offices--and they are working, it for all

it is worth.

I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. This

coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the

Southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the

great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all

through me and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement

three horses shot under me. The next ones went over my head, the next

hit me in the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement.

I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war

profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

The American Society in London gave a banquet, July 4, 1907, at

the Hotel Cecil. Ambassador Choate called on Mr. Clemens to

respond to the toast "The Day We Celebrate."

MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN,--Once more it happens, as it has

happened so often since I arrived in England a week or two ago, that

instead of celebrating the Fourth of July properly as has been indicated,

I have to first take care of my personal character. Sir Mortimer Durand

still remains unconvinced. Well, I tried to convince these people from

the beginning that I did not take the Ascot Cup; and as I have failed to

convince anybody that I did not take the cup, I might as well confess I

did take it and be done with it. I don't see why this uncharitable

feeling should follow me everywhere, and why I should have that crime

thrown up to me on all occasions. The tears that I have wept over it

ought to have created a different feeling than this--and, besides,

I don't think it is very right or fair that, considering England has been

trying to take a cup of ours for forty years--I don't see why they should

take so much trouble when I tried to go into the business myself.

Sir Mortimer Durand, too, has had trouble from going to a dinner here,

and he has told you what he suffered in consequence. But what did he

suffer? He only missed his train, and one night of discomfort, and he

remembers it to this day. Oh! if you could only think what I have

suffered from a similar circumstance. Two or three years ago, in New

York, with that Society there which is made up of people from all British

Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, who were educated in British

colleges and. British schools, I was there to respond to a toast of some

kind or other, and I did then what I have been in the habit of doing,

from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, I got myself placed

No, 3 in the list of speakers--then you get home early.

I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a, particular train or

not get there. But see the magnanimity which is born in me, which I have

cultivated all my life. A very famous and very great British clergyman

came to me presently, and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have

got to catch a certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch that

train I shall be carried beyond midnight and break the Sabbath. Won't

you change places with me?" I said: "Certainly I will." I did it at

once. Now, see what happened.

Talk about Sir Mortimer Durand's sufferings for a single night! I have

suffered ever since because I saved that gentleman from breaking the

Sabbath-yes, saved him. I took his place, but I lost my train, and it

was I who broke the Sabbath. Up to that time I never had broken the

Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I never have kept it.

Oh! I am learning much here to-night. I find I didn't know anything

about the American Society--that is, I didn't know its chief virtue.

I didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador

revealed it--I may say, exposed it. I was intending to go home on the

13th of this month, but I look upon that in a different light now. I am

going to stay here until the American Society pays my passage.

Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes.

We have got a double Fourth of July--a daylight Fourth and a midnight

Fourth. During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we

keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit. We devote it to

teaching our children patriotic things--reverence for the Declaration of

Independence. We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and when

night comes we dishonor it. Presently--before long--they are getting

nearly ready to begin now--on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down,

that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and

noise--all night long--and there will be more than noise there will be

people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who

will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give to

irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all sorts

of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over to rowdies

to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we cripple and

kill more people than you would imagine.

We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-July night in that way one

hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night

since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five

thousand towns of America, somebody gets killed or crippled on every

Fourth-of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never

hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. They cripple

and kill more people on the Fourth of July in, America than they kill and

cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk.

And, too, we burn houses. Really we destroy more property on every

Fourth-of-July night than the whole of the United States was worth one

hundred and twenty-five years ago. Really our Fourth of July is our day

of mourning, our day of sorrow. Fifty thousand people who have lost

friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July,

when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained in

their families.

I have suffered in that way myself. I have had relatives killed in that

way. One was in Chicago years ago--an uncle of mine, just as good an

uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them--yes, uncles to burn,

uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth

to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask

for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him

all, over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know

about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons,

recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a

disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had

another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up

that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a

limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition

of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely

passing matters. Don't let me make you sad.

Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your

colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance.

Now I wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he

had his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution

as a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.

Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much, and

which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an

American one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first Fourth of July

in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years.

That is the day of the Great Charter--the Magna Charta--which was born at

Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the

liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King

John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of

July, of our American liberties. And the second of those Fourths of July

was not born, until four centuries later, in, Charles the First's time,

in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties.

The next one was still English, in New England, where they established

that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to

remain with us--no taxation without representation. That is always going

to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us.

The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in

Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776--that is English, too. It is not

American. Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III.,

Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the Home

Government. Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove

them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a

revolution. The revolution was brought about by circumstances which they

could not control. The Declaration of Independence was written by a

British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British

subject. There was not the name of a single American attached to the

Declaration of Independence--in fact, there was not an American in the

country in that day except the Indians out on the plains. They were

Englishmen, all Englishmen--Americans did not begin until seven, years

later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then, the

American Republic was established. Since then, there have been

Americans. So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties.

We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and

that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great

American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful

tribute--Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the

black slaves free, but set the white man free also. The owner was set

free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he

was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not

want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this

matter England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty

years before, and we followed her example. We always followed her

example, whether it was good or bad.

And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation,

and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong

to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon

English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man

before the world. We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our

slaves as I have said.

It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of them,

England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the

Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that

we owe these things to England. Let us be able to say to Old England,

this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our

Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us

the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights, you,

the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon Freedom

--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for them.

AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH

ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872

MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment

which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will

not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this

peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment

which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to

a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It has taken nearly

a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and

mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished

at last. It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were

settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It is another great step when

England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention--as

usual. It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the

other day. And it warmed my heart more than, I can tell, yesterday, when

I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman, ordering an American sherry

cobbler of his own free will and accord--and not only that but with a

great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the

strawberries. With a common origin, a common language, a common

literature, a common religion, and--common drinks, what is longer needful

to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of

brotherhood?

This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and

glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,

a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.

Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some

respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in

eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized

slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior

to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty

of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.

And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved

Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some

legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.

I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us

live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only

destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and

twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and

unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the

killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for

some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not

claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against

a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are

generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without--compulsion.

I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After an

accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative

of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure you hold

him at--and return the basket." Now there couldn't be anything

friendlier than that.

But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a

body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a

fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more word

of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government

which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual

is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in

contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.

And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the

condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of a

far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all

political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for us

yet.*

*At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,

but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the

blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull

harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making

did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory

would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just

sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,

sociable time. It is known that in consequence of that remark

forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. The

depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the

banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many

that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General

Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.

More than one said that night: "And this is the sort of person

that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!"

ABOUT LONDON

ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB,

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.

Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.

It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club

which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many

of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and

fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre;

that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.

Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the

customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun

on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the

first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our human

nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our

depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our

sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of

innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with a glow

of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about

"Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush

that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you by the

hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks."

We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King "Your

Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard that

name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter this.

It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us not

repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to

refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a

very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.

I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit

to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be

limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where

many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and

marvellous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and

gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a

horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre, the

king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better

condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and

Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind

which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde

Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble

Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are not permitted in

Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] It is a

great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid

can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between

the railings, and breathe the pure, health--giving air of the country and

of heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend

upon parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his

vehicle. I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the

edges of it the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.

And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that

is! I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild

animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie." I never believed before

there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you can

find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British

Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have

nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems

to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her

greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has

built other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has

uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked

across the world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and

whose prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their

monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and

Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert

memorial is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the

existence of as commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of

obscurity.]

The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding.

I have read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it.

I revere that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean

a book is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in

Great Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much

complained of by publishers.] And then every day that author goes there

to gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work.

And what a touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor,

careworn clergymen gathered together in that vast reading--room cabbaging

sermons for Sunday. You will pardon my referring to these things.