Yours always
MARK.
At York Harbor, Maine, where they had taken a cottage for the
summer--a pretty place, with Howells not far distant, at Kittery
Point--Mrs. Clemens's health gave way. This was at a period when
telegraphic communication was far from reliable. The old-time
Western Union had fallen from grace; its “system” no longer
justified the best significance of that word. The new day of
reorganization was coming, and it was time for it. Mark Twain's
letter concerning the service at York Harbor would hardly be
warranted today, but those who remember conditions of that earlier
time will agree that it was justified then, and will appreciate its
satire.
*****
To the President of The Western Union, in New York:
“THE PINES”
YORK HARBOR, MAINE.
DEAR SIR,--I desire to make a complaint, and I bring it to you, the head
of the company, because by experience I know better than to carry it to
a subordinate.
I have been here a month and a half, and by testimony of friends,
reinforced by personal experience I now feel qualified to claim as an
established fact that the telegraphic service here is the worst in the
world except that Boston.
These services are actually slower than was the New York and Hartford
service in the days when I last complained to you--which was fifteen
or eighteen years ago, when telegraphic time and train time between the
mentioned points was exactly the same, to-wit, three hours and a half.
Six days ago--it was that raw day which provoked so much comment--my
daughter was on her way up from New York, and at noon she telegraphed
me from New Haven asking that I meet her with a cloak at Portsmouth. Her
telegram reached me four hours and a quarter later--just 15 minutes too
late for me to catch my train and meet her.
I judge that the telegram traveled about 200 miles. It is the best
telegraphic work I have seen since I have been here, and I am mentioning
it in this place not as a complaint but as a compliment. I think a
compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible,
because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous
and gentle reception.
Still, there is a detail or two connected with this matter which ought
perhaps to be mentioned. And now, having smoothed the way with the
compliment, I will venture them. The head corpse in the York Harbor
office sent me that telegram altho (1) he knew it would reach me too
late to be of any value; (2) also, that he was going to send it to me
by his boy; (3) that the boy would not take the trolley and come the 2
miles in 12 minutes, but would walk; (4) that he would be two hours
and a quarter on the road; (5) and that he would collect 25 cents for
transportation, for a telegram which the he knew to be worthless before
he started it. From these data I infer that the Western Union owes me
75 cents; that is to say, the amount paid for combined wire and land
transportation--a recoup provided for in the printed paragraph which
heads the telegraph-blank.
By these humane and Christian stages we now arrive at the complaint
proper. We have had a grave case of illness in the family, and a
relative was coming some six hundred miles to help in the sick-room
during the convalescing period. It was an anxious time, of course, and I
wrote and asked to be notified as to the hour of the expected arrival
of this relative in Boston or in York Harbor. Being afraid of the
telegraph--which I think ought not to be used in times of hurry and
emergency--I asked that the desired message be brought to me by some
swift method of transportation. By the milkman, if he was coming this
way. But there are always people who think they know more than you do,
especially young people; so of course the young fellow in charge of
this lady used the telegraph. And at Boston, of all places! Except York
Harbor.
The result was as usual; let me employ a statelier and exacter term, and
say, historical.
The dispatch was handed to the h. c. of the Boston office at 9 this
morning. It said, “Shall bring A. S. to you eleven forty-five this
morning.” The distance traveled by the dispatch is forty or fifty miles,
I suppose, as the train-time is five minutes short of two hours, and the
trains are so slow that they can't give a W. U. telegram two hours and
twenty minutes start and overtake it.
As I have said, the dispatch was handed in at Boston at 9. The expected
visitors left Boston at 9.40, and reached my house at 12 noon, beating
the telegram 2 solid hours, and 5 minutes over.
The boy brought the telegram. It was bald-headed with age, but still
legible. The boy was prostrate with travel and exposure, but still
alive, and I went out to condole with him and get his last wishes and
send for the ambulance. He was waiting to collect transportation
before turning his passing spirit to less serious affairs. I found him
strangely intelligent, considering his condition and where he is getting
his training. I asked him at what hour the telegram was handed to the h.
c. in Boston. He answered brightly, that he didn't know.
I examined the blank, and sure enough the wary Boston h. c. had
thoughtfully concealed that statistic. I asked him at what hour it had
started from Boston. He answered up as brightly as ever, and said he
didn't know.
I examined the blank, and sure enough the Boston h. c. had left that
statistic out in the cold, too. In fact it turned out to be an official
concealment--no blank was provided for its exposure. And none required
by the law, I suppose. “It is a good one-sided idea,” I remarked;
“They can take your money and ship your telegram next year if they want
to--you've no redress. The law ought to extend the privilege to all of
us.”
The boy looked upon me coldly.
I asked him when the telegram reached York Harbor. He pointed to some
figures following the signature at the bottom of the blank--“12.14.” I
said it was now 1.45 and asked--
“Do you mean that it reached your morgue an hour and a half ago?”
He nodded assent.
“It was at that time half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I
wanted to go and meet my people--which was the case--for by the wording
of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at
11.45. Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message? Can't he read?
Is he dead?”
“It's the rules.”
“No, that does not account for it. Would he have sent it if it had been
three years old, I in the meantime deceased, and he aware of it?”
The boy didn't know.
“Because, you know, a rule which required him to forward to the cemetery
to-day a dispatch due three years ago, would be as good a rule as one
which should require him to forward a telegram to me to-day which he
knew had lost all its value an hour or two before he started it.
The construction of such a rule would discredit an idiot; in fact an
idiot--I mean a common ordinary Christian idiot, you understand--would
be ashamed of it, and for the sake of his reputation wouldn't make it.
What do you think?”
He replied with much natural brilliancy that he wasn't paid for
thinking.
This gave me a better opinion of the commercial intelligence pervading
his morgue than I had had before; it also softened my feelings toward
him, and also my tone, which had hitherto been tinged with bitterness.
“Let bygones be bygones,” I said, gently, “we are all erring creatures,
and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.”
Sincerely
S. L. CLEMENS.
One day there arrived from Europe a caller with a letter of
introduction from Elizabeth, Queen of Rumania, better known as
Carmen Sylva. The visitor was Madam Hartwig, formerly an American
girl, returning now, because of reduced fortunes, to find profitable
employment in her own land. Her husband, a man of high principle,
had declined to take part in an “affair of honor,” as recognized by
the Continental code; hence his ruin. Elizabeth of Rumania was one
of the most loved and respected of European queens and an author of
distinction. Mark Twain had known her in Vienna. Her letter to him
and his own letter to the public (perhaps a second one, for its date
is two years later) follow herewith.
From Carmen Sylva to Mark Twain:
BUCAREST, May 9, 1902.
HONORED MASTER,--If I venture to address you on behalf of a poor lady,
who is stranded in Bucarest I hope not to be too disagreeable.
Mrs. Hartwig left America at the age of fourteen in order to learn to
sing which she has done thoroughly. Her husband had quite a brilliant
situation here till he refused to partake 'dans une afaire onereuse',
so it seems. They haven't a penny and each of them must try to find a
living. She is very nice and pleasant and her school is so good that she
most certainly can give excellent singing lessons.
I beg your pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and admire,
to whom I owe days and days of forgetfulness of self and troubles and
the intensest of all joys: Hero-worship! People don't always realize
what a happiness that is! God bless you for every beautiful thought you
poured into my tired heart and for every smile on a weary way!