Mrs. Clemens's improvement was scarcely perceptible. It was not
until October that they were able to remove her to Riverdale, and
then only in a specially arranged invalid-car. At the end of the
long journey she was carried to her room and did not leave it again
for many months.
*****
To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
RIVERDALE, N. Y., Oct. 31, '02.
DEAR JOE,--It is ten days since Susy [Twichell] wrote that you were laid
up with a sprained shoulder, since which time we have had no news about
it. I hope that no news is good news, according to the proverb; still,
authoritative confirmation of it will be gladly received in this family,
if some of you will furnish it. Moreover, I should like to know how and
where it happened. In the pulpit, as like as not, otherwise you would
not be taking so much pains to conceal it. This is not a malicious
suggestion, and not a personally-invented one: you told me yourself,
once, that you threw artificial power and impressiveness into places in
your sermons where needed, by “banging the bible”--(your own words.) You
have reached a time of life when it is not wise to take these risks.
You would better jump around. We all have to change our methods as the
infirmities of age creep upon us. Jumping around will be impressive now,
whereas before you were gray it would have excited remark.
Poor Livy drags along drearily. It must be hard times for that turbulent
spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her feet again. It is
a most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself. Between
ripping and raging and smoking and reading, I could get a good deal of a
holiday out of it.
Clara runs the house smoothly and capably. She is discharging a
trial-cook today and hiring another.
A power of love to you all!
MARK.
Such was the state of Mrs. Clemens's health that visitors
were excluded from the sick room, and even Clemens himself
was allowed to see her no more than a few moments at a time.
These brief, precious visits were the chief interests of his
long days. Occasionally he was allowed to send her a few
lines, reporting his occupations, and these she was
sometimes permitted to answer. Only one of his notes has
been preserved, written after a day, now rare, of literary
effort. Its signature, the letter Y, stands for “Youth,”
always her name for him.
*****
To Mrs. Clemens:
DEAR HEART,--I've done another full day's work, and finished before 4. I
have been reading and dozing since and would have had a real sleep a
few minutes ago but for an incursion to bring me a couple of unimportant
letters. I've stuck to the bed all day and am getting back my lost
ground. Next time I will be strictly careful and make my visit very
short--just a kiss and a rush. Thank you for your dear, dear note; you
who are my own and only sweetheart.
Sleep well!
Y.
XLII. LETTERS OF 1903. TO VARIOUS PERSONS. HARD DAYS AT RIVERDALE. LAST
SUMMER AT ELMIRA. THE RETURN TO ITALY.
The reader may perhaps recall that H. H. Rogers, some five
or six years earlier, had taken charge of the fortunes of
Helen Keller, making it possible for her to complete her
education. Helen had now written her first book--a
wonderful book--'The Story of My Life', and it had been
successfully published. For a later generation it may be
proper to explain that the Miss Sullivan, later Mrs. Macy,
mentioned in the letter which follows, was the noble woman
who had devoted her life to the enlightenment of this blind,
dumb girl--had made it possible for her to speak and
understand, and, indeed, to see with the eyes of luminous
imagination.
The case of plagiarism mentioned in this letter is not now
remembered, and does not matter, but it furnished a text for
Mark Twain, whose remarks on the subject in general are
eminently worth while.
*****
To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.:
RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON,
ST. PATRICK'S DAY, '03.
DEAR HELEN,--I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I
am to have your book, and how highly I value it, both for its own sake
and as a remembrances of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted
between us for nine years without a break, and without a single act of
violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in
heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often
think of it with longing, and how they'll say, “There they come--sit
down in front!” I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was
at Henry Rogers's last night, and of course we talked of you. He is not
at all well; you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is
just as lovely as ever.
I am charmed with your book-enchanted. You are a wonderful creature,
the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together--Miss
Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make a complete and
perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy,
penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary
competencies of her pen--they are all there.
Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque
was that “plagiarism” farce! As if there was much of anything in any
human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the
soul--let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual
and valuable material of all human utterances--is plagiarism. For
substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously
drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer
with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he
originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them
anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental
and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in
characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech
you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men--but we call it
his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his.
But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's
battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that
contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam
engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other
important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the
others. He added his little mite--that is all he did. These object
lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that
proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the
lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well
as the story itself? It can hardly happen--to the extent of fifty words
except in the case of a child: its memory-tablet is not lumbered with
impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and
preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory-tablet
is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a
phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply
printed upon a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long
enough to turn up some time or other and be mistaken by him for his own.
No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected
sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined
to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr.
Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole
his dictation, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my “Innocents
Abroad” with. Then years afterwards I was talking with Dr. Holmes about
it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he: he was not a collection of
decayed human turnips, like your “Plagiarism Court;” and so when I said,
“I know now where I stole it, but whom did you steal it from,” he said,
“I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have
never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anybody who had.”
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart
with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for
blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole
histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions
were one solid ruck of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and
never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting
themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they
think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam--
But you finish it, dear, I am running short of vocabulary today. Ever
lovingly your friend,