lovely disposition, and a most valuable one, that can brush away
indignities and discourtesies and seek and find the pleasanter features
of an experience. Susy had that disposition, and it was one of the
jewels of her character that had come to her straight from her mother.
It is a feature that was left out of me at birth. And, at seventy, I
have not yet acquired it. I did not go to Vassar College professionally,
but as a guest--as a guest, and gratis. Aunt Clara (now Mrs. John B.
Stanchfield) was a graduate of Vassar and it was to please her that I
inflicted that journey upon Susy and myself. The invitation had come to
me from both the lady mentioned by Susy and the President of the
College--a sour old saint who has probably been gathered to his fathers
long ago; and I hope they enjoy him; I hope they value his society. I
think I can get along without it, in either end of the next world.
We arrived at the College in that soaking rain, and Susy has described,
with just a suggestion of dissatisfaction, the sort of reception we got.
Susy had to sit in her damp clothes half an hour while we waited in the
parlor; then she was taken to a fireless room and left to wait there
again, as she has stated. I do not remember that President's name, and I
am sorry. He did not put in an appearance until it was time for me to
step upon the platform in front of that great garden of young and lovely
blossoms. He caught up with me and advanced upon the platform with me
and was going to introduce me. I said in substance:
"You have allowed me to get along without your help thus far, and if you
will retire from the platform I will try to do the rest without it."
I did not see him any more, but I detest his memory. Of course my
resentment did not extend to the students, and so I had an unforgettable
good time talking to them. And I think they had a good time too, for
they responded "as one man," to use Susy's unimprovable phrase.
Girls are charming creatures. I shall have to be twice seventy years old
before I change my mind as to that. I am to talk to a crowd of them this
afternoon, students of Barnard College (the sex's annex to Columbia
University), and I think I shall have as pleasant a time with those
lasses as I had with the Vassar girls twenty-one years ago.
_From Susy's Biography._
I stopped in the middle of mamma's early history to tell about our
tripp to Vassar because I was afraid I would forget about it, now I
will go on where I left off. Some time after Miss Emma Nigh died
papa took mamma and little Langdon to Elmira for the summer. When
in Elmira Langdon began to fail but I think mamma did not know just
what was the matter with him.
I was the cause of the child's illness. His mother trusted him to my
care and I took him a long drive in an open barouche for an airing. It
was a raw, cold morning, but he was well wrapped about with furs and, in
the hands of a careful person, no harm would have come to him. But I
soon dropped into a reverie and forgot all about my charge. The furs
fell away and exposed his bare legs. By and by the coachman noticed
this, and I arranged the wraps again, but it was too late. The child was
almost frozen. I hurried home with him. I was aghast at what I had done,
and I feared the consequences. I have always felt shame for that
treacherous morning's work and have not allowed myself to think of it
when I could help it. I doubt if I had the courage to make confession at
that time. I think it most likely that I have never confessed until now.
_From Susy's Biography._
At last it was time for papa to return to Hartford, and Langdon was
real sick at that time, but still mamma decided to go with him,
thinking the journey might do him good. But after they reached
Hartford he became very sick, and his trouble prooved to be
diptheeria. He died about a week after mamma and papa reached
Hartford. He was burried by the side of grandpa at Elmira, New
York. [Susy rests there with them.--S. L. C.] After that, mamma
became very very ill, so ill that there seemed great danger of
death, but with a great deal of good care she recovered. Some
months afterward mamma and papa [and Susy, who was perhaps fourteen
or fifteen months old at the time.--S. L. C.] went to Europe and
stayed for a time in Scotland and England. In Scotland mamma and
papa became very well equanted with Dr. John Brown, the author of
"Rab and His Friends," and he mett, but was not so well equanted
with, Mr. Charles Kingsley, Mr. Henry M. Stanley, Sir Thomas Hardy
grandson of the Captain Hardy to whom Nellson said "Kiss me Hardy,"
when dying on shipboard, Mr. Henry Irving, Robert Browning, Sir
Charles Dilke, Mr. Charles Reade, Mr. William Black, Lord Houghton,
Frank Buckland, Mr. Tom Hughes, Anthony Trollope, Tom Hood, son of
the poet--and mamma and papa were quite well equanted with Dr.
Macdonald and family, and papa met Harrison Ainsworth.
I remember all these men very well indeed, except the last one. I do not
recall Ainsworth. By my count, Susy mentions fourteen men. They are all
dead except Sir Charles Dilke.
We met a great many other interesting people, among them Lewis Carroll,
author of the immortal "Alice"--but he was only interesting to look at,
for he was the stillest and shyest full-grown man I have ever met except
"Uncle Remus." Dr. Macdonald and several other lively talkers were
present, and the talk went briskly on for a couple of hours, but Carroll
sat still all the while except that now and then he answered a question.
His answers were brief. I do not remember that he elaborated any of
them.
At a dinner at Smalley's we met Herbert Spencer. At a large luncheon
party at Lord Houghton's we met Sir Arthur Helps, who was a celebrity of
world-wide fame at the time, but is quite forgotten now. Lord Elcho, a
large vigorous man, sat at some distance down the table. He was talking
earnestly about Godalming. It was a deep and flowing and unarticulated
rumble, but I got the Godalming pretty clearly every time it broke free
of the rumble, and as all the strength was on the first end of the word
it startled me every time, because it sounded so like swearing. In the
middle of the luncheon Lady Houghton rose, remarked to the guests on her
right and on her left in a matter-of-fact way, "Excuse me, I have an
engagement," and without further ceremony she went off to meet it. This
would have been doubtful etiquette in America. Lord Houghton told a
number of delightful stories. He told them in French, and I lost nothing
of them but the nubs.
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTE:
[5] I was his publisher. I was putting his "Personal Memoirs" to press
at the time.--S. L. C.
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCIV.
DECEMBER 7, 1906.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--VII.
BY MARK TWAIN.
I was always heedless. I was born heedless; and therefore I was
constantly, and quite unconsciously, committing breaches of the minor
proprieties, which brought upon me humiliations which ought to have
humiliated me but didn't, because I didn't know anything had happened.
But Livy knew; and so the humiliations fell to her share, poor child,
who had not earned them and did not deserve them. She always said I was
the most difficult child she had. She was very sensitive about me. It
distressed her to see me do heedless things which could bring me under
criticism, and so she was always watchful and alert to protect me from
the kind of transgressions which I have been speaking of.
When I was leaving Hartford for Washington, upon the occasion referred
to, she said: "I have written a small warning and put it in a pocket of
your dress-vest. When you are dressing to go to the Authors' Reception
at the White House you will naturally put your fingers in your vest
pockets, according to your custom, and you will find that little note
there. Read it carefully, and do as it tells you. I cannot be with you,
and so I delegate my sentry duties to this little note. If I should give
you the warning by word of mouth, now, it would pass from your head and
be forgotten in a few minutes."
It was President Cleveland's first term. I had never seen his wife--the
young, the beautiful, the good-hearted, the sympathetic, the
fascinating. Sure enough, just as I had finished dressing to go to the
White House I found that little note, which I had long ago forgotten. It
was a grave little note, a serious little note, like its writer, but it
made me laugh. Livy's gentle gravities often produced that effect upon
me, where the expert humorist's best joke would have failed, for I do
not laugh easily.
When we reached the White House and I was shaking hands with the
President, he started to say something, but I interrupted him and said:
"If your Excellency will excuse me, I will come back in a moment; but
now I have a very important matter to attend to, and it must be attended
to at once."
I turned to Mrs. Cleveland, the young, the beautiful, the fascinating,
and gave her my card, on the back of which I had written "_He
didn't_"--and I asked her to sign her name below those words.
She said: "He didn't? He didn't what?"
"Oh," I said, "never mind. We cannot stop to discuss that now. This is
urgent. Won't you please sign your name?" (I handed her a fountain-pen.)
"Why," she said, "I cannot commit myself in that way. Who is it that
didn't?--and what is it that he didn't?"
"Oh," I said, "time is flying, flying, flying. Won't you take me out of
my distress and sign your name to it? It's all right. I give you my word
it's all right."
She looked nonplussed; but hesitatingly and mechanically she took the
pen and said:
"I will sign it. I will take the risk. But you must tell me all about
it, right afterward, so that you can be arrested before you get out of
the house in case there should be anything criminal about this."
Then she signed; and I handed her Mrs. Clements's note, which was very
brief, very simple, and to the point. It said: "_Don't wear your arctics
in the White House._" It made her shout; and at my request she summoned
a messenger and we sent that card at once to the mail on its way to Mrs.
Clemens in Hartford.
When the little Ruth was about a year or a year and a half old, Mason,
an old and valued friend of mine, was consul-general at
Frankfort-on-the-Main. I had known him well in 1867, '68 and '69, in
America, and I and mine had spent a good deal of time with him and his
family in Frankfort in '78. He was a thoroughly competent, diligent, and
conscientious official. Indeed he possessed these qualities in so large
a degree that among American consuls he might fairly be said to be
monumental, for at that time our consular service was largely--and I
think I may say mainly--in the hands of ignorant, vulgar, and incapable
men who had been political heelers in America, and had been taken care
of by transference to consulates where they could be supported at the
Government's expense instead of being transferred to the poor house,
which would have been cheaper and more patriotic. Mason, in '78, had
been consul-general in Frankfort several years--four, I think. He had
come from Marseilles with a great record. He had been consul there
during thirteen years, and one part of his record was heroic. There had
been a desolating cholera epidemic, and Mason was the only
representative of any foreign country who stayed at his post and saw it
through. And during that time he not only represented his own country,
but he represented all the other countries in Christendom and did their
work, and did it well and was praised for it by them in words of no
uncertain sound. This great record of Mason's had saved him from
official decapitation straight along while Republican Presidents
occupied the chair, but now it was occupied by a Democrat. Mr. Cleveland
was not seated in it--he was not yet inaugurated--before he was deluged
with applications from Democratic politicians desiring the appointment
of a thousand or so politically useful Democrats to Mason's place. A
year or two later Mason wrote me and asked me if I couldn't do something
to save him from destruction.
I was very anxious to keep him in his place, but at first I could not
think of any way to help him, for I was a mugwump. We, the mugwumps, a
little company made up of the unenslaved of both parties, the very best
men to be found in the two great parties--that was our idea of it--voted
sixty thousand strong for Mr. Cleveland in New York and elected him. Our
principles were high, and very definite. We were not a party; we had no
candidates; we had no axes to grind. Our vote laid upon the man we cast
it for no obligation of any kind. By our rule we could not ask for
office; we could not accept office. When voting, it was our duty to vote
for the best man, regardless of his party name. We had no other creed.
Vote for the best man--that was creed enough.
Such being my situation, I was puzzled to know how to try to help Mason,
and, at the same time, save my mugwump purity undefiled. It was a
delicate place. But presently, out of the ruck of confusions in my mind,
rose a sane thought, clear and bright--to wit: since it was a mugwump's
duty to do his best to put the beet man in office, necessarily it must
be a mugwump's duty to try to _keep_ the best man in when he was already
there. My course was easy now. It might not be quite delicate for a
mugwump to approach the President directly, but I could approach him
indirectly, with all delicacy, since in that case not even courtesy
would require him to take notice of an application which no one could
prove had ever reached him.
Yes, it was easy and simple sailing now. I could lay the matter before
Ruth, in her cradle, and wait for results. I wrote the little child, and
said to her all that I have just been saying about mugwump principles
and the limitations which they put upon me. I explained that it would
not be proper for me to apply to her father in Mr. Mason's behalf, but I
detailed to her Mr. Mason's high and honorable record and suggested that
she take the matter in her own hands and do a patriotic work which I
felt some delicacy about venturing upon myself. I asked her to forget
that her father was only President of the United States, and her subject
and servant; I asked her not to put her application in the form of a
command, but to modify it, and give it the fictitious and pleasanter
form of a mere request--that it would be no harm to let him gratify
himself with the superstition that he was independent and could do as he
pleased in the matter. I begged her to put stress, and plenty of it,
upon the proposition that to keep Mason in his place would be a
benefaction to the nation; to enlarge upon that, and keep still about
all other considerations.
In due time I received a letter from the President, written with his own
hand, signed by his own hand, acknowledging Ruth's intervention and
thanking me for enabling him to save to the country the services of so
good and well-tried a servant as Mason, and thanking me, also, for the
detailed fulness of Mason's record, which could leave no doubt in any
one's mind that Mason was in his right place and ought to be kept there.
Mason has remained in the service ever since, and is now consul-general
at Paris.
During the time that we were living in Buffalo in '70-'71, Mr. Cleveland
was sheriff, but I never happened to make his acquaintance, or even see
him. In fact, I suppose I was not even aware of his existence. Fourteen
years later, he was become the greatest man in the State. I was not
living in the State at the time. He was Governor, and was about to step
into the post of President of the United States. At that time I was on
the public highway in company with another bandit, George W. Cable. We
were robbing the public with readings from our works during four
months--and in the course of time we went to Albany to levy tribute, and
I said, "We ought to go and pay our respects to the Governor."
So Cable and I went to that majestic Capitol building and stated our
errand. We were shown into the Governor's private office, and I saw Mr.
Cleveland for the first time. We three stood chatting together. I was
born lazy, and I comforted myself by turning the corner of a table into
a sort of seat. Presently the Governor said:
"Mr. Clemens, I was a fellow citizen of yours in Buffalo a good many
months, a good while ago, and during those months you burst suddenly
into a mighty fame, out of a previous long-continued and no doubt proper
obscurity--but I was a nobody, and you wouldn't notice me nor have
anything to do with me. But now that I have become somebody, you have
changed your style, and you come here to shake hands with me and be
sociable. How do you explain this kind of conduct?"
"Oh," I said, "it is very simple, your Excellency. In Buffalo you were
nothing but a sheriff. I was in society. I couldn't afford to associate
with sheriffs. But you are a Governor now, and you are on your way to
the Presidency. It is a great difference, and it makes you worth while."
There appeared to be about sixteen doors to that spacious room. From
each door a young man now emerged, and the sixteen lined up and moved
forward and stood in front of the Governor with an aspect of respectful
expectancy in their attitude. No one spoke for a moment. Then the
Governor said:
"You are dismissed, gentlemen. Your services are not required. Mr.
Clemens is sitting on the bells."
There was a cluster of sixteen bell buttons on the corner of the table;
my proportions at that end of me were just right to enable me to cover
the whole of that nest, and that is how I came to hatch out those
sixteen clerks.
In accordance with the suggestion made in Gilder's letter recently
received I have written the following note to ex-President Cleveland
upon his sixty-ninth birthday:
HONORED SIR:--
Your patriotic virtues have won for you the homage of half the
nation and the enmity of the other half. This places your character
as a citizen upon a summit as high as Washington's. The verdict is
unanimous and unassailable. The votes of both sides are necessary
in cases like these, and the votes of the one side are quite as
valuable as are the votes of the other. Where the votes are all in
a man's favor the verdict is against him. It is sand, and history
will wash it away. But the verdict for you is rock, and will stand.
S. L. CLEMENS.
As of date March 18, 1906....
In a diary which Mrs. Clemens kept for a little while, a great many
years ago, I find various mentions of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who
was a near neighbor of ours in Hartford, with no fences between. And in
those days she made as much use of our grounds as of her own, in
pleasant weather. Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure.
She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular
Irishwoman. Among the colonists of our neighborhood the doors always
stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free
will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of
animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do
it. She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and
musings and fetch a war-whoop that would jump that person out of his
clothes. And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music
in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing
ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect.
Her husband, old Professor Stowe, was a picturesque figure. He wore a
broad slouch hat. He was a large man, and solemn. His beard was white
and thick and hung far down on his breast. The first time our little
Susy ever saw him she encountered him on the street near our house and
came flying wide-eyed to her mother and said, "Santa Claus has got
loose!"
Which reminds me of Rev. Charley Stowe's little boy--a little boy of
seven years. I met Rev. Charley crossing his mother's grounds one
morning and he told me this little tale. He had been out to Chicago to
attend a Convention of Congregational clergymen, and had taken his
little boy with him. During the trip he reminded the little chap, every
now and then, that he must be on his very best behavior there in
Chicago. He said: "We shall be the guests of a clergyman, there will be
other guests--clergymen and their wives--and you must be careful to let
those people see by your walk and conversation that you are of a godly
household. Be very careful about this." The admonition bore fruit. At
the first breakfast which they ate in the Chicago clergyman's house he
heard his little son say in the meekest and most reverent way to the
lady opposite him,
"Please, won't you, for Christ's sake, pass the butter?"
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCV.
DECEMBER 21, 1906.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--VIII.
BY MARK TWAIN.
[Sidenote: (1864.)]
[_Dictated in 1906._] In those early days duelling suddenly became a
fashion in the new Territory of Nevada, and by 1864 everybody was
anxious to have a chance in the new sport, mainly for the reason that he
was not able to thoroughly respect himself so long as he had not killed
or crippled somebody in a duel or been killed or crippled in one
himself.
At that time I had been serving as city editor on Mr. Goodman's Virginia
City "Enterprise" for a matter of two years. I was twenty-nine years
old. I was ambitious in several ways, but I had entirely escaped the
seductions of that particular craze. I had had no desire to fight a
duel; I had no intention of provoking one. I did not feel respectable,
but I got a certain amount of satisfaction out of feeling safe. I was
ashamed of myself; the rest of the staff were ashamed of me--but I got
along well enough. I had always been accustomed to feeling ashamed of
myself, for one thing or another, so there was no novelty for me in the
situation. I bore it very well. Plunkett was on the staff; R. M. Daggett
was on the staff. These had tried to get into duels, but for the present
had failed, and were waiting. Goodman was the only one of us who had
done anything to shed credit upon the paper. The rival paper was the
Virginia "Union." Its editor for a little while was Tom Fitch, called
the "silver-tongued orator of Wisconsin"--that was where he came from.
He tuned up his oratory in the editorial columns of the "Union," and Mr.
Goodman invited him out and modified him with a bullet. I remember the
joy of the staff when Goodman's challenge was accepted by Fitch. We ran
late that night, and made much of Joe Goodman. He was only twenty-four
years old; he lacked the wisdom which a person has at twenty-nine, and
he was as glad of being _it_ as I was that I wasn't. He chose Major
Graves for his second (that name is not right, but it's close enough; I
don't remember the Major's name). Graves came over to instruct Joe in
the duelling art. He had been a Major under Walker, the "gray-eyed man
of destiny," and had fought all through that remarkable man's
filibustering campaign in Central America. That fact gauges the Major.
To say that a man was a Major under Walker, and came out of that
struggle ennobled by Walker's praise, is to say that the Major was not
merely a brave man but that he was brave to the very utmost limit of
that word. All of Walker's men were like that. I knew the Gillis family
intimately. The father made the campaign under Walker, and with him one
son. They were in the memorable Plaza fight, and stood it out to the
last against overwhelming odds, as did also all of the Walker men. The
son was killed at the father's side. The father received a bullet
through the eye. The old man--for he was an old man at the time--wore
spectacles, and the bullet and one of the glasses went into his skull
and remained there. There were some other sons: Steve, George, and Jim,
very young chaps--the merest lads--who wanted to be in the Walker
expedition, for they had their father's dauntless spirit. But Walker
wouldn't have them; he said it was a serious expedition, and no place
for children.
The Major was a majestic creature, with a most stately and dignified and
impressive military bearing, and he was by nature and training
courteous, polite, graceful, winning; and he had that quality which I
think I have encountered in only one other man--Bob Howland--a
mysterious quality which resides in the eye; and when that eye is turned
upon an individual or a squad, in warning, that is enough. The man that
has that eye doesn't need to go armed; he can move upon an armed
desperado and quell him and take him prisoner without saying a single
word. I saw Bob Howland do that, once--a slender, good-natured, amiable,
gentle, kindly little skeleton of a man, with a sweet blue eye that
would win your heart when it smiled upon you, or turn cold and freeze
it, according to the nature of the occasion.