troublesome, that Mrs. Clemens conceived the idea of paying George[9] a
bounty on all the flies he might kill. The children saw an opportunity
here for the acquisition of sudden wealth. They supposed that their
mother merely wanted to accumulate dead flies, for some æsthetic or
scientific reason or other, and they judged that the more flies she
could get the happier she would be; so they went into business with
George on a commission. Straightway the dead flies began to arrive in
such quantities that Mrs. Clemens was pleased beyond words with the
success of her idea. Next, she was astonished that one house could
furnish so many. She was paying an extravagantly high bounty, and it
presently began to look as if by this addition to our expenses we were
now probably living beyond our income. After a few days there was peace
and comfort; not a fly was discoverable in the house: there wasn't a
straggler left. Still, to Mrs. Clement's surprise, the dead flies
continued to arrive by the plateful, and the bounty expense was as
crushing as ever. Then she made inquiry, and found that our innocent
little rascals had established a Fly Trust, and had hired all the
children in the neighborhood to collect flies on a cheap and
unburdensome commission.
Mrs. Clemens's experience in this matter was a new one for her, but the
governments of the world had tried it, and wept over it, and discarded
it, every half-century since man was created. Any Government could have
told her that the best way to increase wolves in America, rabbits in
Australia, and snakes in India, is to pay a bounty on their scalps. Then
every patriot goes to raising them.
_From Susy's Biography of Me._
_Sept. 10, '85._--The other evening Clara and I brought down our
new soap bubble water and we all blew soap bubles. Papa blew his
soap bubles and filled them with tobacco smoke and as the light
shone on then they took very beautiful opaline colors. Papa would
hold them and then let us catch them in our hand and they felt
delightful to the touch the mixture of the smoke and water had a
singularly pleasant effect.
It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon
the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of
form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little
puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory--and sometimes not even that.
I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the
night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess
that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making.
I remember those days of twenty-one years ago, and a certain pathos
clings about them. Susy, with her manifold young charms and her
iridescent mind, was as lovely a bubble as any we made that day--and as
transitory. She passed, as they passed, in her youth and beauty, and
nothing of her is left but a heartbreak and a memory. That long-vanished
day came vividly back to me a few weeks ago when, for the first time in
twenty-one years, I found myself again amusing a child with
smoke-charged soap-bubbles.
[Sidenote: (1885.)]
Susy's next date is November 29th, 1885, the eve of my fiftieth
birthday. It seems a good while ago. I must have been rather young for
my age then, for I was trying to tame an old-fashioned bicycle nine feet
high. It is to me almost unbelievable, at my present stage of life, that
there have really been people willing to trust themselves upon a dizzy
and unstable altitude like that, and that I was one of them. Twichell
and I took lessons every day. He succeeded, and became a master of the
art of riding that wild vehicle, but I had no gift in that direction and
was never able to stay on mine long enough to get any satisfactory view
of the planet. Every time I tried to steal a look at a pretty girl, or
any other kind of scenery, that single moment of inattention gave the
bicycle the chance it had been waiting for, and I went over the front of
it and struck the ground on my head or my back before I had time to
realise that something was happening. I didn't always go over the front
way; I had other ways, and practised them all; but no matter which way
was chosen for me there was always one monotonous result--the bicycle
skinned my leg and leaped up into the air and came down on top of me.
Sometimes its wires were so sprung by this violent performance that it
had the collapsed look of an umbrella that had had a misunderstanding
with a cyclone. After each day's practice I arrived at home with my skin
hanging in ribbons, from my knees down. I plastered the ribbons on where
they belonged, and bound them there with handkerchiefs steeped in Pond's
Extract, and was ready for more adventures next day. It was always a
surprise to me that I had so much skin, and that it held out so well.
There was always plenty, and I soon came to understand that the supply
was going to remain sufficient for all my needs. It turned out that I
had nine skins, in layers, one on top of the other like the leaves of a
book, and some of the doctors said it was quite remarkable.
I was full of enthusiasm over this insane amusement. My teacher was a
young German from the bicycle factory, a gentle, kindly, patient
creature, with a pathetically grave face. He never smiled; he never made
a remark; he always gathered me tenderly up when I plunged off, and
helped me on again without a word. When he had been teaching me twice a
day for three weeks I introduced a new gymnastic--one that he had never
seen before--and so at last a compliment was wrung from him, a thing
which I had been risking my life for days to achieve. He gathered me up
and said mournfully: "Mr. Clemens, you can fall off a bicycle in more
different ways than any person I ever saw before."
[Sidenote: (1849.)]
A boy's life is not all comedy; much of the tragic enters into it. The
drunken tramp--mentioned in "Tom Sawyer" or "Huck Finn"--who was burned
up in the village jail, lay upon my conscience a hundred nights
afterward and filled them with hideous dreams--dreams in which I saw his
appealing face as I had seen it in the pathetic reality, pressed against
the window-bars, with the red hell glowing behind him--a face which
seemed to say to me, "If you had not give me the matches, this would not
have happened; you are responsible for my death." I was _not_
responsible for it, for I had meant him no harm, but only good, when I
let him have the matches; but no matter, mine was a trained Presbyterian
conscience, and knew but the one duty--to hunt and harry its slave upon
all pretexts and on all occasions; particularly when there was no sense
or reason in it. The tramp--who was to blame--suffered ten minutes; I,
who was not to blame, suffered three months.
The shooting down of poor old Smarr in the main street[10] at noonday
supplied me with some more dreams; and in them I always saw again the
grotesque closing picture--the great family Bible spread open on the
profane old man's breast by some thoughtful idiot, and rising and
sinking to the labored breathings, and adding the torture of its leaden
weight to the dying struggles. We are curiously made. In all the throng
of gaping and sympathetic onlookers there was not one with common sense
enough to perceive that an anvil would have been in better taste there
than the Bible, less open to sarcastic criticism, and swifter in its
atrocious work. In my nightmares I gasped and struggled for breath under
the crush of that vast book for many a night.
All within the space of a couple of years we had two or three other
tragedies, and I had the ill-luck to be too near by on each occasion.
There was the slave man who was struck down with a chunk of slag for
some small offence; I saw him die. And the young California emigrant who
was stabbed with a bowie knife by a drunken comrade: I saw the red life
gush from his breast. And the case of the rowdy young Hyde brothers and
their harmless old uncle: one of them held the old man down with his
knees on his breast while the other one tried repeatedly to kill him
with an Allen revolver which wouldn't go off. I happened along just
then, of course.
Then there was the case of the young California emigrant who got drunk
and proposed to raid the "Welshman's house" all alone one dark and
threatening night.[11] This house stood half-way up Holliday's Hill
("Cardiff" Hill), and its sole occupants were a poor but quite
respectable widow and her young and blameless daughter. The invading
ruffian woke the whole village with his ribald yells and coarse
challenges and obscenities. I went up there with a comrade--John Briggs,
I think--to look and listen. The figure of the man was dimly risible;
the women were on their porch, but not visible in the deep shadow of its
roof, but we heard the elder woman's voice. She had loaded an old musket
with slugs, and she warned the man that if he stayed where he was while
she counted ten it would cost him his life. She began to count, slowly:
he began to laugh. He stopped laughing at "six"; then through the deep
stillness, in a steady voice, followed the rest of the tale: "seven ...
eight ... nine"--a long pause, we holding our breath--"ten!" A red spout
of flame gushed out into the night, and the man dropped, with his breast
riddled to rags. Then the rain and the thunder burst loose and the
waiting town swarmed up the hill in the glare of the lightning like an
invasion of ants. Those people saw the rest; I had had my share and was
satisfied. I went home to dream, and was not disappointed.
My teaching and training enabled me to see deeper into these tragedies
than an ignorant person could have done. I knew what they were for. I
tried to disguise it from myself, but down in the secret deeps of my
heart I knew--and I _knew_ that I knew. They were inventions of
Providence to beguile me to a better life. It sounds curiously innocent
and conceited, now, but to me there was nothing strange about it; it was
quite in accordance with the thoughtful and judicious ways of Providence
as I understood them. It would not have surprised me, nor even
over-flattered me, if Providence had killed off that whole community in
trying to save an asset like me. Educated as I had been, it would have
seemed just the thing, and well worth the expense. _Why_ Providence
should take such an anxious interest in such a property--that idea never
entered my head, and there was no one in that simple hamlet who would
have dreamed of putting it there. For one thing, no one was equipped
with it.
It is quite true I took all the tragedies to myself; and tallied them
off, in turn as they happened, saying to myself in each case, with a
sigh, "Another one gone--and on my account; this ought to bring me to
repentance; His patience will not always endure." And yet privately I
believed it would. That is, I believed it in the daytime; but not in the
night. With the going down of the sun my faith failed, and the clammy
fears gathered about my heart. It was then that I repented. Those were
awful nights, nights of despair, nights charged with the bitterness of
death. After each tragedy I recognized the warning and repented;
repented and begged; begged like a coward, begged like a dog; and not in
the interest of those poor people who had been extinguished for my sake,
but only in my own interest. It seems selfish, when I look back on it
now.
My repentances were very real, very earnest; and after each tragedy they
happened every night for a long time. But as a rule they could not stand
the daylight. They faded out and shredded away and disappeared in the
glad splendor of the sun. They were the creatures of fear and darkness,
and they could not live out of their own place. The day gave me cheer
and peace, and at night I repented again. In all my boyhood life I am
not sure that I ever tried to lead a better life in the daytime--or
wanted to. In my age I should never think of wishing to do such a thing.
But in my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I
realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the
race--never quite sane in the night. When "Injun Joe" died.[12] ... But
never mind: in another chapter I have already described what a raging
hell of repentance I passed through then. I believe that for months I
was as pure as the driven snow. After dark.
It was back in those far-distant days--1848 or '9--that Jim Wolf came to
us. He was from Shelbyville, a hamlet thirty or forty miles back in the
country, and he brought all his native sweetnesses and gentlenesses and
simplicities with him. He was approaching seventeen, a grave and slender
lad, trustful, honest, a creature to love and cling to. And he was
incredibly bashful.
It is to this kind that untoward things happen. My sister gave a
"candy-pull" on a winter's night. I was too young to be of the company,
and Jim was too diffident. I was sent up to bed early, and Jim followed
of his own motion. His room was in the new part of the house, and his
window looked out on the roof of the L annex. That roof was six inches
deep in snow, and the snow had an ice-crust upon it which was as slick
as glass. Out of the comb of the roof projected a short chimney, a
common resort for sentimental cats on moonlight nights--and this was a
moonlight night. Down at the eaves, below the chimney, a canopy of dead
vines spread away to some posts, making a cozy shelter, and after an
hour or two the rollicking crowd of young ladies and gentlemen grouped
themselves in its shade, with their saucers of liquid and piping-hot
candy disposed about them on the frozen ground to cool. There was joyous
chaffing and joking and laughter--peal upon peal of it.
About this time a couple of old disreputable tom-cats got up on the
chimney and started a heated argument about something; also about this
time I gave up trying to get to sleep, and went visiting to Jim's room.
He was awake and fuming about the cats and their intolerable yowling. I
asked him, mockingly, why he didn't climb out and drive them away. He
was nettled, and said over-boldly that for two cents he _would_.
It was a rash remark, and was probably repented of before it was fairly
out of his mouth. But it was too late--he was committed. I knew him; and
I knew he would rather break his neck than back down, if I egged him on
judiciously.
"Oh, of course you would! Who's doubting it?"
It galled him, and he burst out, with sharp irritation--
"Maybe _you_ doubt it!"
"I? Oh no, I shouldn't think of such a thing. You are always doing
wonderful things. With your mouth."
He was in a passion, now. He snatched on his yarn socks and began to
raise the window, saying in a voice unsteady with anger--
"_You_ think I dasn't--_you_ do! Think what you blame please--_I_ don't
care what you think. I'll show you!"
The window made him rage; it wouldn't stay up. I said--
"Never mind, I'll hold it."
Indeed, I would have done anything to help. I was only a boy, and was
already in a radiant heaven of anticipation. He climbed carefully out,
clung to the window-sill until his feet were safely placed, then began
to pick his perilous way on all fours along the glassy comb, a foot and
a hand on each side of it. I believe I enjoy it now as much as I did
then: yet it is a good deal over fifty years ago. The frosty breeze
flapped his short shirt about his lean legs; the crystal roof shone like
polished marble in the intense glory of the moon; the unconscious cats
sat erect upon the chimney, alertly watching each other, lashing their
tails and pouring out their hollow grievances; and slowly and
cautiously Jim crept on, flapping as he went, the gay and frolicsome
young creatures under the vine-canopy unaware, and outraging these
solemnities with their misplaced laughter. Every time Jim slipped I had
a hope; but always on he crept and disappointed it. At last he was
within reaching distance. He paused, raised himself carefully up,
measured his distance deliberately, then made a frantic grab at the
nearest cat--and missed. Of course he lost his balance. His heels flew
up, he struck on his back, and like a rocket he darted down the roof
feet first, crashed through the dead vines and landed in a sitting
posture in fourteen saucers of red-hot candy, in the midst of all that
party--and dressed as _he_ was: this lad who could not look a girl in
the face with his clothes on. There was a wild scramble and a storm of
shrieks, and Jim fled up the stairs, dripping broken crockery all the
way.
[Sidenote: (1867.)]
The incident was ended. But I was not done with it yet, though I
supposed I was. Eighteen or twenty years later I arrived in New York
from California, and by that time I had failed in all my other
undertakings and had stumbled into literature without intending it. This
was early in 1867. I was offered a large sum to write something for the
"Sunday Mercury," and I answered with the tale of "Jim Wolf and the
Cats." I also collected the money for it--twenty-five dollars. It seemed
over-pay, but I did not say anything about that, for I was not so
scrupulous then as I am now.
A year or two later "Jim Wolf and the Cats" appeared in a Tennessee
paper in a new dress--as to spelling; spelling borrowed from Artemus
Ward. The appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West,
and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of
the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work
with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out of my
memory.
A couple of years went by; then the original story--my own
version--cropped up again and went floating around in the spelling, and
with my name to it. Soon first one paper and then another fell upon me
rigorously for "stealing" Jim Wolf and the Cats from the Tennessee man.
I got a merciless beating, but I did not mind it. It's all in the game.
Besides, I had learned, a good while before that, that it is not wise to
keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large
advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of
silence.
[Sidenote: (1873.)]
[Sidenote: (1900.)]
But I was not done with Jim and the Cats yet. In 1873 I was lecturing in
London, in the Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, and was living at
the Langham Hotel, Portland place. I had no domestic household, and no
official household except George Dolby, lecture-agent, and Charles
Warren Stoddard, the California poet, now (1900) Professor of English
Literature in the Roman Catholic University, Washington. Ostensibly
Stoddard was my private secretary; in reality he was merely my
comrade--I hired him in order to have his company. As secretary there
was nothing for him to do except to scrap-book the daily reports of the
great trial of the Tichborne Claimant for perjury. But he made a
sufficient job out of that, for the reports filled six columns a day and
he usually postponed the scrap-booking until Sunday; then he had 36
columns to cut out and paste in--a proper labor for Hercules. He did his
work well, but if he had been older and feebler it would have killed him
once a week. Without doubt he does his literary lectures well, but also
without doubt he prepares them fifteen minutes before he is due on his
platform and thus gets into them a freshness and sparkle which they
might lack if they underwent the staling process of overstudy.
He was good company when he was awake. He was refined, sensitive,
charming, gentle, generous, honest himself and unsuspicious of other
people's honesty, and I think he was the purest male I have known, in
mind and speech. George Dolby was something of a contrast to him, but
the two were very friendly and sociable together, nevertheless. Dolby
was large and ruddy, full of life and strength and spirits, a tireless
and energetic talker, and always overflowing with good-nature and
bursting with jollity. It was a choice and satisfactory menagerie, this
pensive poet and this gladsome gorilla. An indelicate story was a sharp
distress to Stoddard; Dolby told him twenty-five a day. Dolby always
came home with us after the lecture, and entertained Stoddard till
midnight. Me too. After he left, I walked the floor and talked, and
Stoddard went to sleep on the sofa. I hired him for company.
Dolby had been agent for concerts, and theatres, and Charles Dickens and
all sorts of shows and "attractions" for many years; he had known the
human being in many aspects, and he didn't much believe in him. But the
poet did. The waifs and estrays found a friend in Stoddard: Dolby tried
to persuade him that he was dispensing his charities unworthily, but he
was never able to succeed.
One night a young American got access to Stoddard at the Concert Rooms
and told him a moving tale. He said he was living on the Surrey side,
and for some strange reason his remittances had failed to arrive from
home; he had no money, he was out of employment, and friendless; his
girl-wife and his new baby were actually suffering for food; for the
love of heaven could he lend him a sovereign until his remittances
should resume? Stoddard was deeply touched, and gave him a sovereign on
my account. Dolby scoffed, but Stoddard stood his ground. Each told me
his story later in the evening, and I backed Stoddard's judgment. Dolby
said we were women in disguise, and not a sane kind of women, either.
The next week the young man came again. His wife was ill with the
pleurisy, the baby had the bots, or something, I am not sure of the name
of the disease; the doctor and the drugs had eaten up the money, the
poor little family was starving. If Stoddard "in the kindness of his
heart could only spare him another sovereign," etc., etc. Stoddard was
much moved, and spared him a sovereign for me. Dolby was outraged. He
spoke up and said to the customer--
"Now, young man, you are going to the hotel with us and state your case
to the other member of the family. If you don't make him believe in you
I sha'n't honor this poet's drafts in your interest any longer, for I
don't believe in you myself."
The young man was quite willing. I found no fault in him. On the
contrary, I believed in him at once, and was solicitous to heal the
wounds inflicted by Dolby's too frank incredulity; therefore I did
everything I could think of to cheer him up and entertain him and make
him feel at home and comfortable. I spun many yarns; among others the
tale of Jim Wolf and the Cats. Learning that he had done something in a
small way in literature, I offered to try to find a market for him in
that line. His face lighted joyfully at that, and he said that if I
could only sell a small manuscript to Tom Hood's Annual for him it would
be the happiest event of his sad life and he would hold me in grateful
remembrance always. That was a most pleasant night for three of us, but
Dolby was disgusted and sarcastic.
Next week the baby died. Meantime I had spoken to Tom Hood and gained
his sympathy. The young man had sent his manuscript to him, and the very
day the child died the money for the MS. came--three guineas. The young
man came with a poor little strip of crape around his arm and thanked
me, and said that nothing could have been more timely than that money,
and that his poor little wife was grateful beyond words for the service
I had rendered. He wept, and in fact Stoddard and I wept with him, which
was but natural. Also Dolby wept. At least he wiped his eyes and wrung
out his handkerchief, and sobbed stertorously and made other exaggerated
shows of grief. Stoddard and I were ashamed of Dolby, and tried to make
the young man understand that he meant no harm, it was only his way. The
young man said sadly that he was not minding it, his grief was too deep
for other hurts; that he was only thinking of the funeral, and the heavy
expenses which--
We cut that short and told him not to trouble about it, leave it all to
us; send the bills to Mr. Dolby and--
"Yes," said Dolby, with a mock tremor in his voice, "send them to me,
and I will pay them. What, are you going? You must not go alone in your
worn and broken condition; Mr. Stoddard and I will go with you. Come,
Stoddard. We will comfort the bereaved mamma and get a lock of the
baby's hair."
It was shocking. We were ashamed of him again, and said so. But he was
not disturbed. He said--
"Oh, I know this kind, the woods are full of them. I'll make this offer:
if he will show me his family I will give him twenty pounds. Come!" The
young man said he would not remain to be insulted; and he said
good-night and took his hat. But Dolby said he would go with him, and
stay by him until he found the family. Stoddard went along to soothe the
young man and modify Dolby. They drove across the river and all over
Southwark, but did not find the family. At last the young man confessed
there wasn't any.