[Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and
Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not
include in these volumes:
“Gentleman:--Someday you are going to move me almost to the point
of irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion of
turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice to your
God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--”
D.W.]
Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
written. Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and
wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all. A few such
letters here follow.
Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays,
tobacco, and what not. They were generally persistent people,
unable to accept a polite or kindly denial. Once he set down some
remarks on this particular phase of correspondence. He wrote:
I
No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many
an electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal.
And no doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of
activity whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this
sort of solicitation. Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt
from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get
the loan of somebody else's.
As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case. He sees
that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle
better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing
to put your hall-mark on it? You will be giving the purchaser his full
money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm? Besides, are you
not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do
that?
That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the
other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon
a thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be.
How simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred
who can, be made to see it.
When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is
an indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp
answer. He blames nobody but that other person. That person is a very
base being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it
would not occur to him that you would do such a thing. But all the
same, that application has done its work, and taken you down in your own
estimation. You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an opinion
of you as you have of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues an
interval during which you are not, in your own estimation as fine a bird
as you were before.
However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter,
but leave it lying a day. That saves you. For by that time you have
begun to reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations--and
exaggerations are lies. You meant yours to be playful, and thought you
made them unmistakably so. But you couldn't make them playfulnesses to a
man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the serious
side of things. You rattle on quite playfully, and with measureless
extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam; and all in good
time you find to your astonishment that no end of people took you at
your word and believed you. And presently they find out that you were
not in earnest. They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue--and
there is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver. If you will
deceive in one way, why shouldn't you in another? So they apply for the
use of your trade-mark. You are amazed and affronted. You retort that
you are not that kind of person. Then they are amazed and affronted; and
wonder “since when?”
By this time you have got your bearings. You realize that perhaps there
is a little blame on both sides. You are in the right frame, now. So
you write a letter void of offense, declining. You mail this one; you
pigeon-hole the other.
That is, being old and experienced, you do, but early in your career,
you don't: you mail the first one.