The evidence of the past day or two should induce Mark Twain to make
for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology for his scathing
attack on the Rev. Dr. Ament, the veteran Chinese missionary. The
assault was based on a Peking dispatch to the New York _Sun_, which
said that Dr. Ament had collected from the Chinese in various places
damages thirteen times in excess of actual losses. So Mark Twain
charged Mr. Ament with bullyragging, extortion, and things. A Peking
dispatch to the _Sun_ yesterday, however, explains that the amount
collected was not thirteen times the damage sustained, but _one-third
in excess of the indemnities_, and that the blunder was due to a cable
error in transmission. The 1-3d got converted into 13. Yesterday the
Rev. Judson Smith, Secretary of the American Board, received a
dispatch from Dr. Ament, calling attention to the cable blunder, and
declaring that all the collections which he made were _approved by the
Chinese officials_. The fractional amount that was collected in excess
of actual losses, he explains, is being _used for the support of
widows and orphans_.
So collapses completely--and convulsively--Mark Twain’s sensational
and ugly bombardment of a missionary whose character and services
should have exempted him from such an assault.
From the charge the underpinning has been knocked out. To Dr. Ament
Mr. Clemens has done an injustice which is gross but unintentional. If
Mark Twain is the man we take him to be he won’t be long in filing a
retraction, plus an apology.
I have no prejudice against apologies. I trust I shall never withhold
one when it is due; I trust I shall never even have a disposition to do
so. These letters and newspaper paragraphs are entitled to my best
attention; respect for their writers and for the humane feeling which
has prompted their utterances requires this of me. It may be barely
possible that, if these requests for an apology had reached me before
the 20th of February, I might have had a sort of qualified chance to
apologize; but on that day appeared the two little cablegrams referred
to in the newspaper cutting copied above--one from the Rev. Dr. Smith to
the Rev. Dr. Ament, the other from Dr. Ament to Dr. Smith--and my small
chance died then. In my opinion, these cablegrams ought to have been
suppressed, for it seems clear that they give Dr. Ament’s case entirely
away. Still, that is only an opinion, and may be a mistake. It will be
best to examine the case from the beginning, by the light of the
documents connected with it.