This was mainly a joke. Mark Twain did not expect any “thanks,” but
he did hope for access to the floor, which once, in an earlier day,
had been accorded him. We drove to the Capitol and he delivered his
letter to “Uncle Joe” by hand. “Uncle Joe” could not give him the
privilege of the floor; the rules had become more stringent. He
declared they would hang him if he did such a thing. He added that
he had a private room down-stairs, where Mark Twain might establish
headquarters, and that he would assign his colored servant, Neal, of
long acquaintanceship with many of the members, to pass the word
that Mark Twain was receiving.
The result was a great success. All that afternoon members of
Congress poured into the Speaker's room and, in an atmosphere blue
with tobacco smoke, Mark Twain talked the gospel of copyright to his
heart's content.
The bill did not come up for passage that session, but Mark Twain
lived to see his afternoon's lobbying bring a return. In 1909,
Champ Clark, and those others who had gathered around him that
afternoon, passed a measure that added fourteen years to the
copyright term.
The next letter refers to a proposed lobby of quite a different
sort.
*****
To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.:
21 FIFTH AVENUE,
Dec. 23, '06.
DEAR HELEN KELLER,--... You say, “As a reformer, you know that ideas
must be driven home again and again.”
Yes, I know it; and by old experience I know that speeches and documents
and public meetings are a pretty poor and lame way of accomplishing it.
Last year I proposed a sane way--one which I had practiced with success
for a quarter of a century--but I wasn't expecting it to get any
attention, and it didn't.
Give me a battalion of 200 winsome young girls and matrons, and let me
tell them what to do and how to do it, and I will be responsible for
shining results. If I could mass them on the stage in front of the
audience and instruct them there, I could make a public meeting take
hold of itself and do something really valuable for once. Not that
the real instruction would be done there, for it wouldn't; it would be
previously done privately, and merely repeated there.
But it isn't going to happen--the good old way will be stuck to:
there'll be a public meeting: with music, and prayer, and a wearying
report, and a verbal description of the marvels the blind can do, and
17 speeches--then the call upon all present who are still alive, to
contribute. This hoary program was invented in the idiot asylum, and
will never be changed. Its function is to breed hostility to good
causes.
Some day somebody will recruit my 200--my dear beguilesome Knights of
the Golden Fleece--and you will see them make good their ominous name.
Mind, we must meet! not in the grim and ghastly air of the platform,
mayhap, but by the friendly fire--here at 21.
Affectionately your friend,
S. L. CLEMENS.
They did meet somewhat later that winter in the friendly parlors of
No. 21, and friends gathered in to meet the marvelous blind girl and
to pay tribute to Miss Sullivan (Mrs. Macy) for her almost
incredible achievement.