furnishing him with ever so many inspiring subjects, and he found time to
touch more or less on most of them. He wreaked his indignation upon the
things which exasperated him often--even usually--without the expectation
of print; and he delivered himself even more inclusively at such times as
he walked the floor between the luncheon or dinner courses, amplifying on
the poverty of an invention that had produced mankind as a supreme
handiwork. In a letter to Howells he wrote:
Your comments on that idiot's "Ideals" letter reminds me that I preached
a good sermon to my family yesterday on his particular layer of the human
race, that grotesquest of all the inventions of the Creator. It was a
good sermon, but coldly received, & it seemed best not to try to take up
a collection.
He once told Howells, with the wild joy of his boyish heart, how Mrs.
Clemens found some compensation, when kept to her room by illness, in the
reflection that now she would not hear so much about the "damned human
race."
Yet he was always the first man to champion that race, and the more
unpromising the specimen the surer it was of his protection, and he never
invited, never expected gratitude.
One wonders how he found time to do all the things that he did. Besides
his legitimate literary labors and his preachments, he was always writing
letters to this one and that, long letters on a variety of subjects,
carefully and picturesquely phrased, and to people of every sort. He
even formed a curious society, whose members were young girls--one in
each country of the earth. They were supposed to write to him at
intervals on some subject likely to be of mutual interest, to which
letters he agreed to reply. He furnished each member with a typewritten
copy of the constitution and by-laws of the juggernaut Club, as he called
it, and he apprised each of her election, usually after this fashion:
I have a club--a private club, which is all my own. I appoint the
members myself, & they can't help themselves, because I don't allow
them to vote on their own appointment & I don't allow them to
resign! They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but
who have written friendly letters to me. By the laws of my club
there can be only one member in each country, & there can be no male
member but myself. Some day I may admit males, but I don't know
--they are capricious & inharmonious, & their ways provoke me a good
deal. It is a matter, which the club shall decide. I have made
four appointments in the past three or four months: You as a member
for Scotland--oh, this good while! a young citizeness of Joan of
Arc's home region as a member for France; a Mohammedan girl as
member for Bengal; & a dear & bright young niece of mine as member
for the United States--for I do not represent a country myself, but
am merely member-at-large for the human race. You must not try to
resign, for the laws of the club do not allow that. You must
console yourself by remembering that you are in the best company;
that nobody knows of your membership except yourself; that no member
knows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are levied
and no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend one!).
One of my members is a princess of a royal house, another is the
daughter of a village bookseller on the continent of Europe, for the
only qualification for membership is intellect & the spirit of good-
will; other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count. May
I send you the constitution & laws of the club? I shall be so glad
if I may.
It was just one of his many fancies, and most of the active memberships
would not long be maintained; though some continued faithful in their
reports, as he did in his replies, to the end.
One of the more fantastic of his conceptions was a plan to advertise for
ante-mortem obituaries of himself--in order, as he said, that he might
look them over and enjoy them and make certain corrections in the matter
of detail. Some of them he thought might be appropriate to read from the
platform.
I will correct them--not the facts, but the verdicts--striking out
such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the other
side, and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character.
He was much taken with the new idea, and his request for such obituaries,
with an offer of a prize for the best--a portrait of himself drawn by his
own hand--really appeared in Harper's Weekly later in the year. Naturally
he got a shower of responses--serious, playful, burlesque. Some of them
were quite worth while.
The obvious "Death loves a shining Mark" was of course numerously
duplicated, and some varied it "Death loves an Easy Mark," and there was
"Mark, the perfect man."
The two that follow gave him especial pleasure.
OBITUARY FOR "MARK TWAIN"
Worthy of his portrait, a place on his monument, as well as a place
among his "perennial-consolation heirlooms":
"Got up; washed; went to bed."
The subject's own words (see Innocents Abroad). Can't go back on
your own words, Mark Twain. There's nothing "to strike out";
nothing "to replace." What more could be said of any one?
"Got up!"--Think of the fullness of meaning! The possibilities of
life, its achievements--physical, intellectual, spiritual. Got up
to the top!--the climax of human aspiration on earth!
"Washed"--Every whit clean; purified--body, soul, thoughts,
purposes.
"Went to bed"--Work all done--to rest, to sleep. The culmination of
the day well spent!
God looks after the awakening.
Mrs. S. A. OREN-HAYNES.
Mark Twain was the only man who ever lived, so far as we know, whose
lies were so innocent, and withal so helpful, as to make them worth
more than a whole lot of fossilized priests' eternal truths.
D. H. KENNER.
CCXIX
YACHTING AND THEOLOGY
Clemens made fewer speeches during the Riverdale period. He was as
frequently demanded, but he had a better excuse for refusing, especially
the evening functions. He attended a good many luncheons with friendly
spirits like Howells, Matthews, James L. Ford, and Hamlin Garland. At
the end of February he came down to the Mayor's dinner given to Prince
Henry of Prussia, but he did not speak. Clemens used to say afterward
that he had not been asked to speak, and that it was probably because of
his supposed breach of etiquette at the Kaiser's dinner in Berlin; but
the fact that Prince Henry sought him out, and was most cordially and
humanly attentive during a considerable portion of the evening, is
against the supposition.
Clemens attended a Yale alumni dinner that winter and incidentally
visited Twichell in Hartford. The old question of moral responsibility
came up and Twichell lent his visitor a copy of Jonathan Edwards's
'Freedom of the Will' for train perusal. Clemens found it absorbing.
Later he wrote Twichell his views.
DEAR JOE,--(After compliments.)--[Meaning "What a good time you gave
me; what a happiness it was to be under your roof again," etc. See
opening sentence of all translations of letters passing between Lord
Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]--From Bridgeport to New
York, thence to home, & continuously until near midnight I wallowed
& reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immensely
refreshed & fine at ten this morning, but with a strange & haunting
sense of having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic.
It is years since I have known these sensations. All through the
book is the glare of a resplendent intellect gone mad--a marvelous
spectacle. No, not all through the book--the drunk does not come
on till the last third, where what I take to be Calvinism & its God
begins to show up & shine red & hideous in the glow from the fires
of hell, their only right and proper adornment.
Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Armenian position) that the
man (or his soul or his will) never creates an impulse itself, but
is moved to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound!
Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses
the one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly
correct! An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane.
Up to that point he could have written Chapters III & IV of my
suppressed Gospel. But there we seem to separate. He seems to
concede the indisputable & unshaken dominion of Motive & Necessity
(call them what he may, these are exterior forces & not under the
man's authority, guidance, or even suggestion); then he suddenly
flies the logical track & (to all seeming) makes the man & not those
exterior forces responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words, &
acts. It is frank insanity.
I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and
Necessity he grants a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a
mere machine--an automatic machine--which is handled entirely from
the outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing; not
an ounce of its fuel, & not so much as a bare suggestion to that
exterior engineer as to what the machine shall do nor how it shall
do it nor when.
After that concession it was time for him to get alarmed & shirk
--for he was pointed straight for the only rational & possible next
station on that piece of road--the irresponsibility of man to God.
And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result:
Man is commanded to do so & so.
It has been ordained from the beginning of time that some men
sha'n't & others can't.
These are to blame: let them be damned.
I enjoy the Colonel very much, & shall enjoy the rest of him with an
obscene delight.
Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you & yours!
MARK.
Clemens was moved to set down some theology of his own, and did so in a
manuscript which he entitled, "If I Could Be There." It is in the
dialogue form he often adopted for polemic writing. It is a colloquy
between the Master of the Universe and a Stranger. It begins:
I
If I could be there, hidden under the steps of the throne, I should hear
conversations like this:
A STRANGER. Lord, there is one who needs to be punished, and has been
overlooked. It is in the record. I have found it.
LORD. By searching?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Who is it? What is it?
S. A man.
L. Proceed.
S. He died in sin. Sin committed by his great-grandfather.
L. When was this?
S. Eleven million years ago.
L. Do you know what a microbe is?
S. Yes, Lord. It is a creature too small to be detected by my eye.
L. He commits depredations upon your blood?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. I give you leave to subject him to a billion years of misery for this
offense. Go! Work your will upon him.
S. But, Lord, I have nothing against him; I am indifferent to him.
L. Why?
S. He is so infinitely small and contemptible. I am to him as is a
mountain-range to a grain of sand.
L. What am I to man?
S. (Silent.)
L. Am I not, to a man, as is a billion solar systems to a grain of sand?
S. It is true, Lord.
L. Some microbes are larger than others. Does man regard the
difference?
S. No, Lord. To him there is no difference of consequence. To him they
are all microbes, all infinitely little and equally inconsequential.
L. To me there is no difference of consequence between a man & a
microbe. Man looks down upon the speck at his feet called a microbe from
an altitude of a thousand miles, so to speak, and regards him with
indifference; I look down upon the specks called a man and a microbe from
an altitude of a billion leagues, so to speak, and to me they are of a
size. To me both are inconsequential. Man kills the microbes when he
can?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Then what? Does he keep him in mind years and years and go on
contriving miseries for him?
S. No, Lord.
L. Does he forget him?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Why?
S. He cares nothing more about him.
L. Employs himself with more important matters?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Apparently man is quite a rational and dignified person, and can
divorce his mind from uninteresting trivialities. Why does he affront me
with the fancy that I interest Myself in trivialities--like men and
microbes?
II
L. Is it true the human race thinks the universe was created for its
convenience?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. The human race is modest. Speaking as a member of it, what do you
think the other animals are for?
S. To furnish food and labor for man.
L. What is the sea for?
S. To furnish food for man. Fishes.
L. And the air?
S. To furnish sustenance for man. Birds and breath.
L. How many men are there?
S. Fifteen hundred millions.
L. (Referring to notes.) Take your pencil and set down some statistics.
In a healthy man's lower intestine 28,000,000 microbes are born daily and
die daily. In the rest of a man's body 122,000,000 microbes are born
daily and die daily. The two sums aggregate-what?
S. About 150,000,000.
L. In ten days the aggregate reaches what?
S. Fifteen hundred millions.
L. It is for one person. What would it be for the whole human
population?
S. Alas, Lord, it is beyond the power of figures to set down that
multitude. It is billions of billions multiplied by billions of
billions, and these multiplied again and again by billions of billions.
The figures would stretch across the universe and hang over into space on
both sides.
L. To what intent are these uncountable microbes introduced into the
human race?
S. That they may eat.
L. Now then, according to man's own reasoning, what is man for?
S. Alas-alas!
L. What is he for?
S. To-to-furnish food for microbes.
L. Manifestly. A child could see it. Now then, with this common-sense
light to aid your perceptions, what are the air, the land, and the ocean
for?
S. To furnish food for man so that he may nourish, support, and multiply
and replenish the microbes.
L. Manifestly. Does one build a boarding-house for the sake of the
boarding-house itself or for the sake of the boarders?
S. Certainly for the sake of the boarders.
L. Man's a boarding-house.
S. I perceive it, Lord.
L. He is a boarding-house. He was never intended for anything else. If
he had had less vanity and a clearer insight into the great truths that
lie embedded in statistics he would have found it out early. As concerns
the man who has gone unpunished eleven million years, is it your belief
that in life he did his duty by his microbes?
S. Undoubtedly, Lord. He could not help it.
L. Then why punish him? He had no other duty to perform.
Whatever else may be said of this kind of doctrine, it is at least
original and has a conclusive sound. Mark Twain had very little use for
orthodoxy and conservatism. When it was announced that Dr. Jacques Loeb,
of the University of California, had demonstrated the creation of life by
chemical agencies he was deeply interested. When a newspaper writer
commented that a "consensus of opinion among biologists" would probably
rate Dr. Loeb as a man of lively imagination rather than an inerrant
investigator of natural phenomena, he felt called to chaff the consensus
idea.
I wish I could be as young as that again. Although I seem so old
now I was once as young as that. I remember, as if it were but
thirty or forty years ago, how a paralyzing consensus of opinion
accumulated from experts a-setting around about brother experts who
had patiently and laboriously cold-chiseled their way into one or
another of nature's safe-deposit vaults and were reporting that they
had found something valuable was plenty for me. It settled it.
But it isn't so now-no. Because in the drift of the years I by and
by found out that a Consensus examines a new thing with its feelings
rather oftener than with its mind.
There was that primitive steam-engine-ages back, in Greek times: a
Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester's
steam-engine 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was
Fulton's steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including
the great Napoleon, made fun of it. There was Priestley, with his
oxygen: a Consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out,
banished him. While a Consensus was proving, by statistics and
things, that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamship
did it.
And so on through a dozen pages or more of lively satire, ending with an
extract from Adam's Diary.
Then there was a Consensus about it. It was the very first one. It
sat six days and nights. It was then delivered of the verdict that
a world could not be made out of nothing; that such small things as
sun and moon and stars might, maybe, but it would take years and
years if there was considerable many of them. Then the Consensus
got up and looked out of the window, and there was the whole outfit,
spinning and sparkling in space! You never saw such a disappointed
lot.
ADAM.
He was writing much at this time, mainly for his own amusement, though
now and then he offered one of his reflections for print. That beautiful
fairy tale, "The Five Boons of Life," of which the most precious is
"Death," was written at this period. Maeterlinck's lovely story of the
bee interested him; he wrote about that. Somebody proposed a Martyrs'
Day; he wrote a paper ridiculing the suggestion. In his note-book, too,
there is a memorandum for a love-story of the Quarternary Epoch which
would begin, "On a soft October afternoon 2,000,000 years ago." John
Fiske's Discovery of America, Volume I, he said, was to furnish the
animals and scenery, civilization and conversation to be the same as
to-day; but apparently this idea was carried no further. He ranged
through every subject from protoplasm to infinity, exalting, condemning,
ridiculing, explaining; his brain was always busy--a dynamo that rested
neither night nor day.
In April Clemens received notice of another yachting trip on the Kanawha,
which this time would sail for the Bahama and West India islands. The
guests were to be about the same.--[The invited ones of the party were
Hon. T. B. Reed, A. G. Paine, Laurence Hutton, Dr. C. C. Rice, W. T.
Foote, and S. L. Clemens. "Owners of the yacht," Mr. Rogers called them,
signing himself as "Their Guest."]
He sent this telegram:
H. H. ROGERS, Fairhaven, Mass.
Can't get away this week. I have company here from tonight till middle
of next week. Will Kanawha be sailing after that & can I go as
Sunday-school superintendent at half rate? Answer and prepay.
DR. CLEMENS.
The sailing date was conveniently arranged and there followed a happy
cruise among those balmy islands. Mark Twain was particularly fond of
"Tom" Reed, who had been known as "Czar" Reed in Congress, but was
delightfully human in his personal life. They argued politics a good
deal, and Reed, with all his training and intimate practical knowledge of
the subject, confessed that he "couldn't argue with a man like that."
"Do you believe the things you say?" he asked once, in his thin, falsetto
voice.
"Yes," said Clemens. "Some of them."
"Well, you want to look out. If you go on this way, by and by you'll get
to believing nearly everything you say."
Draw poker appears to have been their favorite diversion. Clemens in his
notes reports that off the coast of Florida Reed won twenty-three pots in
succession. It was said afterward that they made no stops at any harbor;
that when the chief officer approached the poker-table and told them they
were about to enter some important port he received peremptory orders to
"sail on and not interrupt the game." This, however, may be regarded as
more or less founded on fiction.
CCXX
MARK TWAIN AND THE PHILIPPINES
Among the completed manuscripts of the early part of 1902 was a North
American Review article (published in April)--"Does the Race of Man Love
a Lord?"--a most interesting treatise on snobbery as a universal
weakness. There were also some papers on the Philippine situation. In
one of these Clemens wrote:
We have bought some islands from a party who did not own them; with
real smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendliness
we coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it upon
them; we went back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes when
we had no further use for him and chased him to the mountains; we
are as indisputably in possession of a wide-spreading archipelago as
if it were our property; we have pacified some thousands of the
islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their
villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors;
furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable
patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent
Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have
acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves
of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our
protecting flag over that swag.
And so, by these Providences of God--the phrase is the government's,
not mine--we are a World Power; and are glad and proud, and have a
back seat in the family. With tacks in it. At least we are letting
on to be glad and proud; it is the best way. Indeed, it is the only
way. We must maintain our dignity, for people are looking. We are
a World Power; we cannot get out of it now, and we must make the
best of it.
And again he wrote:
I am not finding fault with this use of our flag, for in order not
to seem eccentric I have swung around now and joined the nation in
the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly
reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be
sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts lest it
suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines to
float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was
polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand
corrected. I concede and acknowledge that it was only the
government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let us
compromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag
could not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but it
is different with the administration.
But a much more conspicuous comment on the Philippine policy was the
so-called "Defense of General Funston" for what Funston himself referred
to as a "dirty Irish trick"; that is to say, deception in the capture of
Aguinaldo. Clemens, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself to-any
form of warfare, was especially bitter concerning this particular
campaign. The article appeared in the North American Review for May,
1902, and stirred up a good deal of a storm. He wrote much more on the
subject--very much more--but it is still unpublished.
CCXXI
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
One day in April, 1902, Samuel Clemens received the following letter from
the president of the University of Missouri:
MY DEAR MR. CLEMENS, Although you received the degree of doctor of
literature last fall from Yale, and have had other honors conferred upon
you by other great universities, we want to adopt you here as a son of
the University of Missouri. In asking your permission to confer upon you
the degree of LL.D. the University of Missouri does not aim to confer an
honor upon you so much as to show her appreciation of you. The rules of
the University forbid us to confer the degree upon any one in absentia. I
hope very much that you can so arrange your plans as to be with us on the
fourth day of next June, when we shall hold our Annual Commencement.
Very truly yours,
R. H. JESSE.
Clemens had not expected to make another trip to the West, but a
proffered honor such as this from one's native State was not a thing to
be declined.
It was at the end of May when he arrived in St. Louis, and he was met at
the train there by his old river instructor and friend, Horace Bixby--as
fresh, wiry, and capable as he had been forty-five years before.
"I have become an old man. You are still thirty-five," Clemens said.
They went to the Planters Hotel, and the news presently got around that
Mark Twain was there. There followed a sort of reception in the hotel
lobby, after which Bixby took him across to the rooms of the Pilots
Association, where the rivermen gathered in force to celebrate his
return. A few of his old comrades were still alive, among them Beck
Jolly. The same afternoon he took the train for Hannibal.