infinitely contenting to me. He scored a failure--and began to undress.
I knew it would come to that, for he was in the condition now that Mr.
Dooley will be in at about that stage of the contest on Friday
afternoon. A clothes-rack will be provided for Mr. Dooley to hang his
things on as fast as he shall from time to time shed them. George raised
his voice four degrees and flung out the challenge--
"Double or quits!"
"Done," I responded, in the gentle and compassionate voice of one who is
apparently getting sorrier and sorrier.
There was an hour and a half of straight disaster after that, and if it
was a sin to enjoy it, it is no matter--I did enjoy it. It is half a
lifetime ago, but I enjoy it yet, every time I think of it George made
failure after failure. His fury increased with each failure as he
scored it. With each defeat he flung off one or another rag of his
raiment, and every time he started on a fresh inning he made it "double
or quits" once more. Twice he reached thirty and broke down; once he
reached thirty-one and broke down. These "nears" made him frantic, and I
believe I was never so happy in my life, except the time, a few years
later, when the Rev. J. H. Twichell and I walked to Boston and he had
the celebrated conversation with the hostler at the Inn at Ashford,
Connecticut.
At last, when we were notified that Patrick was at the door to drive him
to his train, George owed me five thousand cigars at twenty-five cents
apiece, and I was so sorry I could have hugged him. But he shouted,
"Give me ten minutes more!" and added stormily, "it's double or quits
again, and I'll win out free of debt or owe you ten thousand cigars, and
you'll pay the funeral expenses."
He began on his final effort, and I believe that in all my experience
among both amateurs and experts, I have never seen a cue so carefully
handled in my lifetime as George handled his upon this intensely
interesting occasion. He got safely up to twenty-five, and then ceased
to breathe. So did I. He labored along, and added a point, another
point, still another point, and finally reached thirty-one. He stopped
there, and we took a breath. By this time the balls were scattered all
down the cushions, about a foot or two apart, and there wasn't a shot in
sight anywhere that any man might hope to make. In a burst of anger and
confessed defeat, he sent his ball flying around the table at random,
and it crotched a ball that was packed against the cushion and sprang
across to a ball against the bank on the opposite side, and counted!
His luck had set him free, and he didn't owe me anything. He had used up
all his spare time, but we carried his clothes to the carriage, and he
dressed on his way to the station, greatly wondered at and admired by
the ladies, as he drove along--but he got his train.
I am very fond of Mr. Dooley, and shall await his coming with
affectionate and pecuniary interest.
_P.S. Saturday._ He has been here. Let us not talk about it.
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTE:
[7] Robert Richardson, deceased, of Australia.
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXIII.
APRIL 19, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XVI.
BY MARK TWAIN.
[_Dictated January 12th, 1905._] ... But I am used to having my
statements discounted. My mother began it before I was seven years old.
Yet all through my life my facts have had a substratum of truth, and
therefore they were not without preciousness. Any person who is familiar
with me knows how to strike my average, and therefore knows how to get
at the jewel of any fact of mine and dig it out of its blue-clay matrix.
My mother knew that art. When I was seven or eight, or ten, or twelve
years old--along there--a neighbor said to her,
"Do you ever believe anything that that boy says?"
My mother said,
"He is the well-spring of truth, but you can't bring up the whole well
with one bucket"--and she added, "I know his average, therefore he never
deceives me. I discount him thirty per cent. for embroidery, and what is
left is perfect and priceless truth, without a flaw in it anywhere."
Now to make a jump of forty years, without breaking the connection: that
word "embroidery" was used again in my presence and concerning me, when
I was fifty years old, one night at Rev. Frank Goodwin's house in
Hartford, at a meeting of the Monday Evening Club. The Monday Evening
Club still exists. It was founded about forty-five years ago by that
theological giant, Rev. Dr. Bushnell, and some comrades of his, men of
large intellectual calibre and more or less distinction, local or
national. I was admitted to membership in it in the fall of 1871 and was
an active member thenceforth until I left Hartford in the summer of
1891. The membership was restricted, in those days, to eighteen--
possibly twenty. The meetings began about the 1st of October and were
held in the private houses of the members every fortnight thereafter
throughout the cold months until the 1st of May. Usually there were a
dozen members present--sometimes as many as fifteen. There was an essay
and a discussion. The essayists followed each other in alphabetical
order through the season. The essayist could choose his own subject and
talk twenty minutes on it, from MS. or orally, according to his
preference. Then the discussion followed, and each member present was
allowed ten minutes in which to express his views. The wives of these
people were always present. It was their privilege. It was also their
privilege to keep still; they were not allowed to throw any light upon
the discussion. After the discussion there was a supper, and talk, and
cigars. This supper began at ten o'clock promptly, and the company broke
up and went away at midnight. At least they did except upon one
occasion. In my recent Birthday speech I remarked upon the fact that I
have always bought cheap cigars, and that is true. I have never bought
costly ones.
Well, that night at the Club meeting--as I was saying--George, our
colored butler, came to me when the supper was nearly over, and I
noticed that he was pale. Normally his complexion was a clear black, and
very handsome, but now it had modified to old amber. He said:
"Mr. Clemens, what are we going to do? There is not a cigar in the house
but those old Wheeling long nines. Can't nobody smoke them but you. They
kill at thirty yards. It is too late to telephone--we couldn't get any
cigars out from town--what can we do? Ain't it best to say nothing, and
let on that we didn't think?"
"No," I said, "that would not be honest. Fetch out the long
nines"--which he did.
I had just come across those "long nines" a few days or a week before. I
hadn't seen a long nine for years. When I was a cub pilot on the
Mississippi in the late '50's, I had had a great affection for them,
because they were not only--to my mind--perfect, but you could get a
basketful of them for a cent--or a dime, they didn't use cents out there
in those days. So when I saw them advertised in Hartford I sent for a
thousand at once. They came out to me in badly battered and
disreputable-looking old square pasteboard boxes, two hundred in a box.
George brought a box, which was caved in on all sides, looking the worst
it could, and began to pass them around. The conversation had been
brilliantly animated up to that moment--but now a frost fell upon the
company. That is to say, not all of a sudden, but the frost fell upon
each man as he took up a cigar and held it poised in the air--and there,
in the middle, his sentence broke off. That kind of thing went on all
around the table, until when George had completed his crime the whole
place was full of a thick solemnity and silence.
Those men began to light the cigars. Rev. Dr. Parker was the first man
to light. He took three or four heroic whiffs--then gave it up. He got
up with the remark that he had to go to the bedside of a sick
parishioner. He started out. Rev. Dr. Burton was the next man. He took
only one whiff, and followed Parker. He furnished a pretext, and you
could see by the sound of his voice that he didn't think much of the
pretext, and was vexed with Parker for getting in ahead with a
fictitious ailing client. Rev. Mr. Twichell followed, and said he had to
go now because he must take the midnight train for Boston. Boston was
the first place that occurred to him, I suppose.
It was only a quarter to eleven when they began to distribute pretexts.
At ten minutes to eleven all those people were out of the house. When
nobody was left but George and me I was cheerful--I had no compunctions
of conscience, no griefs of any kind. But George was beyond speech,
because he held the honor and credit of the family above his own, and he
was ashamed that this smirch had been put upon it. I told him to go to
bed and try to sleep it off. I went to bed myself. At breakfast in the
morning when George was passing a cup of coffee, I saw it tremble in his
hand. I knew by that sign that there was something on his mind. He
brought the cup to me and asked impressively,
"Mr. Clemens, how far is it from the front door to the upper gate?"
I said, "It is a hundred and twenty-five steps."
He said, "Mr. Clemens, you can start at the front door and you can go
plumb to the upper gate and tread on one of them cigars every time."
It wasn't true in detail, but in essentials it was.
The subject under discussion on the night in question was Dreams. The
talk passed from mouth to mouth in the usual serene way.
I do not now remember what form my views concerning dreams took at the
time. I don't remember now what my notion about dreams was then, but I
do remember telling a dream by way of illustrating some detail of my
speech, and I also remember that when I had finished it Rev. Dr. Burton
made that doubting remark which contained that word I have already
spoken of as having been uttered by my mother, in some such connection,
forty or fifty years before. I was probably engaged in trying to make
those people believe that now and then, by some accident, or otherwise,
a dream which was prophetic turned up in the dreamer's mind. The date of
my memorable dream was about the beginning of May, 1858. It was a
remarkable dream, and I had been telling it several times every year for
more than fifteen years--and now I was telling it again, here in the
club.
In 1858 I was a steersman on board the swift and popular New Orleans and
St. Louis packet, "Pennsylvania," Captain Kleinfelter. I had been lent
to Mr. Brown, one of the pilots of the "Pennsylvania," by my owner, Mr.
Horace E. Bixby, and I had been steering for Brown about eighteen
months, I think. Then in the early days of May, 1858, came a tragic
trip--the last trip of that fleet and famous steamboat. I have told all
about it in one of my books called "Old Times on the Mississippi." But
it is not likely that I told the dream in that book. It is impossible
that I can ever have published it, I think, because I never wanted my
mother to know about the dream, and she lived several years after I
published that volume.
I had found a place on the "Pennsylvania" for my brother Henry, who was
two years my junior. It was not a place of profit, it was only a place
of promise. He was "mud" clerk. Mud clerks received no salary, but they
were in the line of promotion. They could become, presently, third clerk
and second clerk, then chief clerk--that is to say, purser. The dream
begins when Henry had been mud clerk about three months. We were lying
in port at St. Louis. Pilots and steersmen had nothing to do during the
three days that the boat lay in port in St. Louis and New Orleans, but
the mud clerk had to begin his labors at dawn and continue them into the
night, by the light of pine-knot torches. Henry and I, moneyless and
unsalaried, had billeted ourselves upon our brother-in-law, Mr. Moffet,
as night lodgers while in port. We took our meals on board the boat. No,
I mean _I_ lodged at the house, not Henry. He spent the _evenings_ at
the house, from nine until eleven, then went to the boat to be ready for
his early duties. On the night of the dream he started away at eleven,
shaking hands with the family, and said good-by according to custom. I
may mention that hand-shaking as a good-by was not merely the custom of
that family, but the custom of the region--the custom of Missouri, I may
say. In all my life, up to that time, I had never seen one member of the
Clemens family kiss another one--except once. When my father lay dying
in our home in Hannibal--the 24th of March, 1847--he put his arm around
my sister's neck and drew her down and kissed her, saying "Let me die."
I remember that, and I remember the death rattle which swiftly followed
those words, which were his last. These good-bys of Henry's were always
executed in the family sitting-room on the second floor, and Henry went
from that room and down-stairs without further ceremony. But this time
my mother went with him to the head of the stairs and said good-by
_again_. As I remember it she was moved to this by something in Henry's
manner, and she remained at the head of the stairs while he descended.
When he reached the door he hesitated, and climbed the stairs and shook
hands good-by once more.
In the morning, when I awoke I had been dreaming, and the dream was so
vivid, so like reality, that it deceived me, and I thought it was real.
In the dream I had seen Henry a corpse. He lay in a metallic
burial-case. He was dressed in a suit of my clothing, and on his breast
lay a great bouquet of flowers, mainly white roses, with a red rose in
the centre. The casket stood upon a couple of chairs. I dressed, and
moved toward that door, thinking I would go in there and look at it, but
I changed my mind. I thought I could not yet bear to meet my mother. I
thought I would wait awhile and make some preparation for that ordeal.
The house was in Locust Street, a little above 13th, and I walked to
14th, and to the middle of the block beyond, before it suddenly flashed
upon me that there was nothing real about this--it was only a dream. I
can still feel something of the grateful upheaval of joy of that moment,
and I can also still feel the remnant of doubt, the suspicion that maybe
it _was_ real, after all. I returned to the house almost on a run, flew
up the stairs two or three steps at a jump, and rushed into that
sitting-room--and was made glad again, for there was no casket there.
We made the usual eventless trip to New Orleans--no, it was not
eventless, for it was on the way down that I had the fight with Mr.
Brown[8] which resulted in his requiring that I be left ashore at New
Orleans. In New Orleans I always had a job. It was my privilege to watch
the freight-piles from seven in the evening until seven in the morning,
and get three dollars for it. It was a three-night job and occurred
every thirty-five days. Henry always joined my watch about nine in the
evening, when his own duties were ended, and we often walked my rounds
and chatted together until midnight. This time we were to part, and so
the night before the boat sailed I gave Henry some advice. I said, "In
case of disaster to the boat, don't lose your head--leave that unwisdom
to the passengers--they are competent--they'll attend to it. But you
rush for the hurricane-deck, and astern to one of the life-boats lashed
aft the wheel-house, and obey the mate's orders--thus you will be
useful. When the boat is launched, give such help as you can in getting
the women and children into it, and be sure you don't try to get into it
yourself. It is summer weather, the river is only a mile wide, as a
rule, and you can swim that without any trouble." Two or three days
afterward the boat's boilers exploded at Ship Island, below Memphis,
early one morning--and what happened afterward I have already told in
"Old Times on the Mississippi." As related there, I followed the
"Pennsylvania" about a day later, on another boat, and we began to get
news of the disaster at every port we touched at, and so by the time we
reached Memphis we knew all about it.
I found Henry stretched upon a mattress on the floor of a great
building, along with thirty or forty other scalded and wounded persons,
and was promptly informed, by some indiscreet person, that he had
inhaled steam; that his body was badly scalded, and that he would live
but a little while; also, I was told that the physicians and nurses were
giving their whole attention to persons who had a chance of being saved.
They were short-handed in the matter of physicians and nurses; and Henry
and such others as were considered to be fatally hurt were receiving
only such attention as could be spared, from time to time, from the more
urgent cases. But Dr. Peyton, a fine and large-hearted old physician of
great reputation in the community, gave me his sympathy and took
vigorous hold of the case, and in about a week he had brought Henry
around. Dr. Peyton never committed himself with prognostications which
might not materialize, but at eleven o'clock one night he told me that
Henry was out of danger, and would get well. Then he said, "At midnight
these poor fellows lying here and there all over this place will begin
to mourn and mutter and lament and make outcries, and if this commotion
should disturb Henry it will be bad for him; therefore ask the physician
on watch to give him an eighth of a grain of morphine, but this is not
to be done unless Henry shall show signs that he is being disturbed."
Oh well, never mind the rest of it. The physicians on watch were young
fellows hardly out of the medical college, and they made a mistake--they
had no way of measuring the eighth of a grain of morphine, so they
guessed at it and gave him a vast quantity heaped on the end of a
knife-blade, and the fatal effects were soon apparent. I think he died
about dawn, I don't remember as to that. He was carried to the dead-room
and I went away for a while to a citizen's house and slept off some of
my accumulated fatigue--and meantime something was happening. The
coffins provided for the dead were of unpainted white pine, but in this
instance some of the ladies of Memphis had made up a fund of sixty
dollars and bought a metallic case, and when I came back and entered the
dead-room Henry lay in that open case, and he was dressed in a suit of
my clothing. He had borrowed it without my knowledge during our last
sojourn in St. Louis; and I recognized instantly that my dream of
several weeks before was here exactly reproduced, so far as these
details went--and I think I missed one detail; but that one was
immediately supplied, for just then an elderly lady entered the place
with a large bouquet consisting mainly of white roses, and in the centre
of it was a red rose, and she laid it on his breast.
I told the dream there in the Club that night just as I have told it
here.
Rev. Dr. Burton swung his leonine head around, focussed me with his eye,
and said:
"When was it that this happened?"
"In June, '58."
"It is a good many years ago. Have you told it several times since?"
"Yes, I have, a good many times."
"How many?"
"Why, I don't know how many."
"Well, strike an average. How many times a year do you think you have
told it?"
"Well, I have told it as many as six times a year, possibly oftener."
"Very well, then you've told it, we'll say, seventy or eighty times
since it happened?"
"Yes," I said, "that's a conservative estimate."
"Now then, Mark, a very extraordinary thing happened to me a great many
years ago, and I used to tell it a number of times--a good many
times--every year, for it was so wonderful that it always astonished the
hearer, and that astonishment gave me a distinct pleasure every time. I
never suspected that that tale was acquiring any auxiliary advantages
through repetition until one day after I had been telling it ten or
fifteen years it struck me that either I was getting old, and slow in
delivery, or that the tale was longer than it was when it was born.
Mark, I diligently and prayerfully examined that tale with this result:
that I found that its proportions were now, as nearly as I could make
oat, one part fact, straight fact, fact pure and undiluted, golden fact,
and twenty-four parts embroidery. I never told that tale afterwards--I
was never able to tell it again, for I had lost confidence in it, and so
the pleasure of telling it was gone, and gone permanently. How much of
this tale of yours is embroidery?"
"Well," I said, "I don't know. I don't think any of it is embroidery. I
think it is all just as I have stated it, detail by detail."
"Very well," he said, "then it is all right, but I wouldn't tell it any
more; because if you keep on, it will begin to collect embroidery sure.
The safest thing is to stop now."
That was a great many years ago. And to-day is the first time that I
have told that dream since Dr. Burton scared me into fatal doubts about
it. No, I don't believe I can say that. I don't believe that I ever
really had any doubts whatever concerning the salient points of the
dream, for those points are of such a nature that they are _pictures_,
and pictures can be remembered, when they are vivid, much better than
one can remember remarks and unconcreted facts. Although it has been so
many years since I have told that dream, I can see those pictures now
just as clearly defined as if they were before me in this room. I have
not told the entire dream. There was a good deal more of it. I mean I
have not told all that happened in the dream's fulfilment. After the
incident in the death-room I may mention one detail, and that is this.
When I arrived in St. Louis with the casket it was about eight o'clock
in the morning, and I ran to my brother-in-law's place of business,
hoping to find him there, but I missed him, for while I was on the way
to his office he was on his way from the house to the boat. When I got
back to the boat the casket was gone. He had conveyed it out to his
house. I hastened thither, and when I arrived the men were just removing
the casket from the vehicle to carry it up-stairs. I stopped that
procedure, for I did not want my mother to see the dead face, because
one side of it was drawn and distorted by the effects of the opium. When
I went up-stairs, there stood the two chairs--placed to receive the
coffin--just as I had seen them in my dream; and if I had arrived two or
three minutes later, the casket would have been resting upon them,
precisely as in my dream of several weeks before.
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTE:
[8] See "Old Times on the Mississippi."
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXIV.
MAY 3, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XVII.
BY MARK TWAIN.
_From Susy's Biography of Me._
_Sept. 9, '85._--Mamma is teaching Jean a little natural history
and is making a little collection of insects for her. But mamma
does not allow Jean to kill any insects she only collects those
insects that are found dead. Mamma has told us all, perticularly
Jean, to bring her all the little dead insects that she finds. The
other day as we were all sitting at supper Jean broke into the room
and ran triumfantly up to Mamma and presented her with a plate full
of dead flies. Mamma thanked Jean vary enthusiastically although
she with difficulty concealed her amusement. Just then Soar Mash
entered the room and Jean believing her hungry asked Mamma for
permission to give her the flies. Mamma laughingly consented and
the flies almost immediately dissapeared.
[_Monday, October 15, 1906._] Sour Hash's presence indicates that this
adventure occurred at Quarry Farm. Susy's Biography interests itself
pretty exclusively with historical facts; where they happen is not a
matter of much concern to her. When other historians refer to the Bunker
Hill Monument they know it is not necessary to mention that that
monument is in Boston. Susy recognizes that when she mentions Sour Mash
it is not necessary to localize her. To Susy, Sour Mash is the Bunker
Hill Monument of Quarry Farm.
Ordinary cats have some partiality for living flies, but none for dead
ones; but Susy does not trouble herself to apologize for Sour Mash's
eccentricities of taste. This Biography was for _us_, and Susy knew that
nothing that Sour Mash might do could startle us or need explanation, we
being aware that she was not an ordinary cat, but moving upon a plane
far above the prejudices and superstitions which are law to common
catdom.