II

To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I

have been professionally literary something more than forty years.

There have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was

the last link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary

guild is the most _conspicuous _link in that chain. _because _it was

the last one. It was not any more important than its predecessors. All

the other links have an inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the

Rubicon; but as factors in making me literary they are all of the one

size, the crossing of the Rubicon included.

I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead

up to it and brought it about.

The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a

recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar’s day to find

the first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of

generations and start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve

and a half years old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer

came, and brought with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child

died almost every day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress,

despair. Children that were not smitten with the disease were

imprisoned in their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes

there were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing

but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no

noise, no laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a

ghostly hush. I was a prisoner. My soul was steeped in this awful

dreariness—and in fear. At some time or other every day and every night

a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow, and I said to myself, “There,

I’ve got it! and I shall die.” Life on these miserable terms was not

worth living, and at last I made up my mind to get the disease and have

it over, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went to the

house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the

malady. When the chance offered I crept into his room and got into bed

with him. I was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity.

But I had the disease; they could not take that from me. I came near to

dying. The whole village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news

of me every day; and not only once a day, but several times. Everybody

believed I would die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the

worse and they were disappointed.

This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got

well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.

She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure

of the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than

hers.

I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the

chain which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road,

but I could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or

even that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.

A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work;

and seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a

CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man’s master—and when Circumstance

commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter—that is his privilege,

just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with

the attraction of gravitation—but it won’t do any good, he must OBEY. I

wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of

Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked

several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was

one about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long

voyage up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira,

through the heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in

tropical wonders, a romantic land where all the birds and flowers and

animals were of the museum varieties, and where the alligator and the

crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the

Zoo. Also, he told an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product

of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and so

strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the Madeira region

would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and

require no other sustenance.

I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to

open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed

that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that

splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A

person may PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is

likely to come of it until the magician _circumstance _steps in and

takes the matter off his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help.

It was in this way. Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him

lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me

find it. I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day.

This was another turning-point, another link.

Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to

the Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis

and been obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools

there—shoals and shoals of them—but they were not of my kind. I was the

only one of my kind.

Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a

partner. Its partner is man’s _temperament_—his natural disposition.

His temperament is not his invention, it is _born _in him, and he has

no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot

change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it—except

temporarily. But it won’t stay modified. It is permanent, like the

color of the man’s eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray

in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when

that stress is removed.

A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man

of a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in

Caesar’s way, his temperament would not have made him start for the

Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with

the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note—and

WAIT. We can’t tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and

buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to

learn when it came his turn.

Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told

me what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is

the case the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.

Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him,

improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they

will be mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at

bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one.

By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them,

and reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting

and without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago.

In all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I

have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things

and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to

me; I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and

reflect afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on those

occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.

I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My

idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I

inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that

there never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman

came and asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on,

and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would

run me in.

After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with

another turning-point of my life—a new link. On my way down, I had made

the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he

consented. I became a pilot.

By and by Circumstance came again—introducing the Civil War, this time,

in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary

profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.

Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh

link. My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of

Nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I

accepted.

In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into

the mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea.

The idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For

amusement I scribbled things for the Virginia City _Enterprise_. One

isn’t a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad

literature, and learning—unconsciously at first, consciously later—to

discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and

meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a “style.” One of

my efforts attracted attention, and the _Enterprise _sent for me and

put me on its staff.

And so I became a journalist—another link. By and by Circumstance and

the Sacramento _union _sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six

months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of

extraneous matter that hadn’t anything to do with sugar. But it was

this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.

It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I

did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the

world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me

upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the “Quaker

City Excursion.”

When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier—with

the _last _link—the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link:

I was asked to _write a book_, and I did it, and called it _The

Innocents Abroad_. Thus I became at last a member of the literary

guild. That was forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever

since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can

say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is

because I had the measles when I was twelve years old.