DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--The billiard table is better than the doctors. It is
driving out the heartburn in a most promising way. I have a billiardist
on the premises, and I walk not less than ten miles every day with the
cue in my hand. And the walking is not the whole of the exercise, nor
the most health-giving part of it, I think. Through the multitude of the
positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in the body and
exercises them all.
The games begin right after luncheon, daily, and continue until
midnight, with 2 hours' intermission for dinner and music. And so it is
9 hours' exercise per day, and 10 or 12 on Sunday. Yesterday and last
night it was 12--and I slept until 8 this morning without waking.
The billiard table, as a Sabbath breaker can beat any coal-breaker in
Pennsylvania, and give it 30 in, the game. If Mr. Rogers will take to
daily billiards he can do without doctors and the massageur, I think.
We are really going to build a house on my farm, an hour and a half from
New York. It is decided. It is to be built by contract, and is to come
within $25,000.
With love and many thanks.
S. L. C.
P.S. Clara is in the sanitarium--till January 28 when her western
concert tour will begin. She is getting to be a mighty competent singer.
You must know Clara better; she is one of the very finest and completest
and most satisfactory characters I have ever met. Others knew it before,
but I have always been busy with other matters.
The “billiardist on the premises” was the writer of these notes,
who, earlier in the year, had become his biographer, and, in the
course of time, his daily companion and friend. The farm mentioned
was one which he had bought at Redding, Connecticut, where, later,
he built the house known as “Stormfield.”
Henry Mills Alden, for nearly forty years editor of Harper's
Magazine, arrived at his seventieth birthday on November 11th that
year, and Harper & Brothers had arranged to give him a great dinner
in the offices of Franklin Square, where, for half a century, he had
been an active force. Mark Twain, threatened with a cold, and
knowing the dinner would be strenuous, did not feel able to attend,
so wrote a letter which, if found suitable, could be read at the
gathering.
*****
To Mr. Henry Alden:
ALDEN,--dear and ancient friend--it is a solemn moment. You have now
reached the age of discretion. You have been a long time arriving. Many
years ago you docked me on an article because the subject was too old;
later, you docked me on an article because the subject was too new;
later still, you docked me on an article because the subject was betwixt
and between. Once, when I wrote a Letter to Queen Victoria, you did not
put it in the respectable part of the Magazine, but interred it in that
potter's field, the Editor's Drawer. As a result, she never answered it.
How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine
editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember, with
charity, that his intentions were good.
You will reform, now, Alden. You will cease from these economies, and
you will be discharged. But in your retirement you will carry with you
the admiration and earnest good wishes of the oppressed and toiling
scribes. This will be better than bread. Let this console you when the
bread fails.
You will carry with you another thing, too--the affection of the
scribes; for they all love you in spite of your crimes. For you bear a
kind heart in your breast, and the sweet and winning spirit that charms
away all hostilities and animosities, and makes of your enemy your
friend and keeps him so. You have reigned over us thirty-six years, and,
please God, you shall reign another thirty-six--“and peace to Mahmoud on
his golden throne!”
Always yours
MARK
A copyright bill was coming up in Washington and a delegation of
authors went down to work for it. Clemens was not the head of the
delegation, but he was the most prominent member of it, as well as
the most useful. He invited the writer to accompany him, and
elsewhere I have told in detail the story of that excursion,--[See
Mark Twain; A Biography, chap. ccli,]--which need be but briefly
touched upon here.
His work was mainly done aside from that of the delegation. They
had him scheduled for a speech, however, which he made without notes
and with scarcely any preparation. Meantime he had applied to
Speaker Cannon for permission to allow him on the floor of the
House, where he could buttonhole the Congressmen. He was not
eligible to the floor without having received the thanks of
Congress, hence the following letter:
*****
To Hon. Joseph Cannon, House of Representatives:
Dec. 7, 1906.
DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,--Please get me the thanks of the Congress--not next
week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish this for
your affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can, by
violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on
the floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man,
in behalf of the support, encouragement and protection of one of the
nation's most valuable assets and industries--its literature. I have
arguments with me, also a barrel, with liquid in it.
Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait for
others; there isn't time. I have stayed away and let Congress alone
for seventy-one years and I am entitled to thanks. Congress knows it
perfectly well and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and
earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and
never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the Sergeant-at-Arms quick.
When shall I come? With love and a benediction.