DEAR SIR,--Several times since your election persons wanting office have
asked me “to use my influence” with you in their behalf.
To word it in that way was such a pleasant compliment to me that I
never complied. I could not without exposing the fact that I hadn't any
influence with you and that was a thing I had no mind to do.
It seems to me that it is better to have a good man's flattering
estimate of my influence--and to keep it--than to fool it away with
trying to get him an office. But when my brother--on my wife's side--Mr.
Charles J. Langdon--late of the Chicago Convention--desires me to speak
a word for Mr. Fred Douglass, I am not asked “to use my influence”
consequently I am not risking anything. So I am writing this as a simple
citizen. I am not drawing on my fund of influence at all. A simple
citizen may express a desire with all propriety, in the matter of a
recommendation to office, and so I beg permission to hope that you will
retain Mr. Douglass in his present office of Marshall of the District of
Columbia, if such a course will not clash with your own preferences or
with the expediencies and interest of your administration. I offer this
petition with peculiar pleasure and strong desire, because I so honor
this man's high and blemishless character and so admire his brave, long
crusade for the liberties and elevation of his race.
He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to the point, his
history would move me to say these things without that, and I feel them
too.
With great respect
I am, General,
Yours truly,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Clemens would go out of his way any time to grant favor to the
colored race. His childhood associations were partly accountable
for this, but he also felt that the white man owed the negro a debt
for generations of enforced bondage. He would lecture any time in a
colored church, when he would as likely as not refuse point-blank to
speak for a white congregation. Once, in Elmira, he received a
request, poorly and none too politely phrased, to speak for one of
the churches. He was annoyed and about to send a brief refusal,
when Mrs. Clemens, who was present, said:
“I think I know that church, and if so this preacher is a colored
man; he does not know how to write a polished letter--how should
he?” Her husband's manner changed so suddenly that she added:
“I will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you will
adopt it: Consider every man colored until he is proved white.”
*****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Feb. 27, 1881.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I go to West Point with Twichell tomorrow, but shall
be back Tuesday or Wednesday; and then just as soon thereafter as you
and Mrs. Howells and Winny can come you will find us ready and most glad
to see you--and the longer you can stay the gladder we shall be. I am
not going to have a thing to do, but you shall work if you want to. On
the evening of March 10th, I am going to read to the colored folk in the
African Church here (no whites admitted except such as I bring with me),
and a choir of colored folk will sing jubilee songs. I count on a
good time, and shall hope to have you folks there, and Livy. I read in
Twichell's chapel Friday night and had a most rattling high time--but
the thing that went best of all was Uncle Remus's Tar Baby. I mean
to try that on my dusky audience. They've all heard that tale from
childhood--at least the older members have.
I arrived home in time to make a most noble blunder--invited Charley
Warner here (in Livy's name) to dinner with the Gerhardts, and told him
Livy had invited his wife by letter and by word of mouth also. I don't
know where I got these impressions, but I came home feeling as one does
who realizes that he has done a neat thing for once and left no flaws or
loop-holes. Well, Livy said she had never told me to invite Charley
and she hadn't dreamed of inviting Susy, and moreover there wasn't
any dinner, but just one lean duck. But Susy Warner's intuitions were
correct--so she choked off Charley, and staid home herself--we waited
dinner an hour and you ought to have seen that duck when he was done
drying in the oven.