did not put my name to it.
So that small tale was sold three times. I am selling it again, now. It
is one of the best properties I have come across.
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTES:
[9] The colored butler.
[10] See "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
[11] Used in "Huck Finn," I think.
[12] Used in "Tom Sawyer."
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXV.
MAY 17, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XVIII.
BY MARK TWAIN.
[_Dictated December 21, 1906._] I wish to insert here some pages of
Susy's Biography of me in which the biographer does not scatter,
according to her custom, but sticks pretty steadily to a single subject
until she has fought it to a finish:
_Feb. 27, '86._--Last summer while we were in Elmira an article
came out in the "Christian Union" by name "What ought he to have
done" treating of the government of children, or rather giving an
account of a fathers battle with his little baby boy, by the mother
of the child and put in the form of a question as to whether the
father disciplined the child corectly or not, different people
wrote their opinions of the fathers behavior, and told what they
thought he should have done. Mamma had long known how to disciplin
children, for in fact the bringing up of children had been one of
her specialties for many years. She had a great many theories, but
one of them was, that if a child was big enough to be nauty, it was
big enough to be whipped and here we all agreed with her. I
remember one morning when Dr. ---- came up to the farm he had a
long discussion with mamma, upon the following topic. Mamma gave
_this_ as illustrative of one important rule for punishing a child.
She said we will suppose the boy has thrown a handkerchief onto the
floor, I tell him to pick it up, he refuses. I tell him again, he
refuses. Then I say you must either pick up the handkerchief or
have a whipping. My theory is never to make a child have a whipping
and pick up the handkerchief too. I say "If you do not pick it up,
I must punish you," if he doesn't he gets the whipping, but _I_
pick up the handkerchief, if he does he gets no punishment. I tell
him to do a thing if he disobeys me he is punished for so doing,
but not forced to obey me afterwards.
When Clara and I had been very nauty or were being very nauty, the
nurse would go and call Mamma and she would appear suddenly and
look at us (she had a way of looking at us when she was displeased
as if she could see right through us) till we were ready to sink
through the floor from embarasment, and total absence of knowing
what to say. This look was usually followed with "Clara" or "Susy
what do you mean by this? do you want to come to the bath-room with
me?" Then followed the climax for Clara and I both new only too
well what going to the bath-room meant.
But mamma's first and foremost object was to make the child
understand that he is being punished for _his_ sake, and because
the mother so loves him that she cannot allow him to do wrong; also
that it is as hard for her to punish him as for him to be punished
and even harder. Mamma never allowed herself to punish us when she
was angry with us she never struck us because she was enoyed at us
and felt like striking us if we had been nauty and had enoyed her,
so that she thought she felt or would show the least bit of temper
toward us while punnishing us, she always postponed the punishment
until _she_ was no more chafed by our behavior. She never humored
herself by striking or punishing us because or while she was the
least bit enoyed with us.
Our very worst nautinesses were punished by being taken to the
bath-room and being whipped by the paper cutter. But after the
whipping was over, mamma did not allow us to leave her until we
were perfectly happy, and perfectly understood why we had been
whipped. I never remember having felt the least bit bitterly toward
mamma for punishing me. I always felt I had deserved my punishment,
and was much happier for having received it. For after mamma had
punished us and shown her displeasure, she showed no signs of
further displeasure, but acted as if we had not displeased her in
any way.
Ordinary punishments answered very well for Susy. She was a thinker, and
would reason out the purpose of them, apply the lesson, and achieve the
reform required. But it was much less easy to devise punishments that
would reform Clara. This was because she was a philosopher who was
always turning her attention to finding something good and satisfactory
and entertaining in everything that came her way; consequently it was
sometimes pretty discouraging to the troubled mother to find that after
all her pains and thought in inventing what she meant to be a severe and
reform-compelling punishment, the child had entirely missed the
severities through her native disposition to get interest and pleasure
out of them as novelties. The mother, in her anxiety to find a penalty
that would take sharp hold and do its work effectively, at last
resorted, with a sore heart, and with a reproachful conscience, to that
punishment which the incorrigible criminal in the penitentiary dreads
above all the other punitive miseries which the warden inflicts upon him
for his good--solitary confinement in the dark chamber. The grieved and
worried mother shut Clara up in a very small clothes-closet and went
away and left her there--for fifteen minutes--it was all that the
mother-heart could endure. Then she came softly back and
listened--listened for the sobs, but there weren't any; there were
muffled and inarticulate sounds, but they could not be construed into
sobs. The mother waited half an hour longer; by that time she was
suffering so intensely with sorrow and compassion for the little
prisoner that she was not able to wait any longer for the distressed
sounds which she had counted upon to inform her when there had been
punishment enough and the reform accomplished. She opened the closet to
set the prisoner free and take her back into her loving favor and
forgiveness, but the result was not the one expected. The captive had
manufactured a fairy cavern out of the closet, and friendly fairies out
of the clothes hanging from the hooks, and was having a most sinful and
unrepentant good time, and requested permission to spend the rest of the
day there!
_From Susy's Biography of Me._
But Mamma's oppinions and ideas upon the subject of bringing up
children has always been more or less of a joke in our family,
perticularly since Papa's article in the "Christian Union," and I
am sure Clara and I have related the history of our old family
paper-cutter, our punishments and privations with rather more pride
and triumph than any other sentiment, because of Mamma's way of
rearing us.
When the article "What ought he to have done?" came out Mamma read
it, and was very much interested in it. And when papa heard that
she had read it he went to work and secretly wrote his opinion of
what the father ought to have done. He told Aunt Susy, Clara and I,
about it but mamma was not to see it or hear any thing about it
till it came out. He gave it to Aunt Susy to read, and after Clara
and I had gone up to get ready for bed he brought it up for us to
read. He told what he thought the father ought to have done by
telling what mamma would have done. The article was a beautiful
tribute to mamma and every word in it true. But still in writing
about mamma he partly forgot that the article was going to be
published, I think, and expressed himself more fully than he would
do the second time he wrote it; I think the article has done and
will do a great deal of good, and I think it would have been
perfect for the family and friend's enjoyment, but a little bit too
private to have been published as it was. And Papa felt so too,
because the very next day or a few days after, he went down to New
York to see if he couldn't get it back before it was published but
it was too late, and he had to return without it. When the
Christian Union reached the farm and papa's article in it all ready
and waiting to be read to mamma papa hadn't the courage to show it
to her (for he knew she wouldn't like it at all) at first, and he
didn't but he might have let it go and never let her see it, but
finally he gave his consent to her seeing it, and told Clara and I
we could take it to her, which we did, with tardiness, and we all
stood around mamma while she read it, all wondering what she would
say and think about it.
She was too much surprised, (and pleased privately, too) to say
much at first, but as we all expected publicly, (or rather when she
remembered that this article was to be read by every one that took
the Christian Union) she was rather shocked and a little
displeased.
Clara and I had great fun the night papa gave it to us to read and
then hide, so mamma couldn't see it, for just as we were in the
midst of reading it mamma appeared, papa following anxiously and
asked why we were not in bed? then a scuffle ensued for we told her
it was a secret and tried to hide it; but she chased us wherever we
went, till she thought it was time for us to go to bed, then she
surendered and left us to tuck it under Clara's matress.
A little while after the article was published letters began to
come in to papa crittisizing it, there were some very pleasant ones
but a few very disagreable. One of these, the very worst, mamma got
hold of and read, to papa's great regret, it was full of the most
disagreble things, and so very enoying to papa that he for a time
felt he must do something to show the author of it his great
displeasure at being so insulted. But he finally decided not to,
because he felt the man had some cause for feeling enoyed at, for
papa had spoken of him, (he was the baby's father) rather
slightingly in his Christian Union Article.
After all this, papa and mamma both wished I think they might never
hear or be spoken to on the subject of the Christian Union article,
and whenever any has spoken to me and told me "How much they did
enjoy my father's article in the Christian Union" I almost laughed
in their faces when I remembered what a great variety of oppinions
had been expressed upon the subject of the Christian Union article
of papa's.
The article was written in July or August and just the other day
papa received quite a bright letter from a gentleman who has read
the C. U. article and gave his opinion of it in these words.
It is missing. She probably put the letter between the leaves of the
Biography and it got lost out. She threw away the hostile letters, but
tried to keep the pleasantest one for her book; surely there has been no
kindlier biographer than this one. Yet to a quite creditable degree she
is loyal to the responsibilities of her position as historian--not
eulogist--and honorably gives me a quiet prod now and then. But how
many, many, many she has withheld that I deserved! I could prize them
now; there would be no acid in her words, and it is loss to me that she
did not set them all down. Oh, Susy, you sweet little biographer, you
break my old heart with your gentle charities!
I think a great deal of her work. Her canvases are on their easels, and
her brush flies about in a care-free and random way, delivering a dash
here, a dash there and another yonder, and one might suppose that there
would be no definite result; on the contrary I think that an intelligent
reader of her little book must find that by the time he has finished it
he has somehow accumulated a pretty clear and nicely shaded idea of the
several members of this family--including Susy herself--and that the
random dashes on the canvases have developed into portraits. I feel that
my own portrait, with some of the defects fined down and others left
out, is here; and I am sure that any who knew the mother will recognize
her without difficulty, and will say that the lines are drawn with a
just judgment and a sure hand. Little creature though Susy was, the
penetration which was born in her finds its way to the surface more than
once in these pages.
Before Susy began the Biography she let fall a remark now and then
concerning my character which showed that she had it under observation.
In the Record which we kept of the children's sayings there is an
instance of this. She was twelve years old at the time. We had
established a rule that each member of the family must bring a fact to
breakfast--a fact drawn from a book or from any other source; any fact
would answer. Susy's first contribution was in substance as follows. Two
great exiles and former opponents in war met in Ephesus--Scipio and
Hannibal. Scipio asked Hannibal to name the greatest general the world
had produced.
"Alexander"--and he explained why.
"And the next greatest?"
"Pyrrhus"--and he explained why.
"But where do you place yourself, then?"
"If I had conquered you I would place myself before the others."
Susy's grave comment was--
"That _attracted_ me, it was just like papa--he is so frank about his
books."
So frank in admiring them, she meant.
[_Thursday, March 28, 1907._] Some months ago I commented upon a chapter
of Susy's Biography wherein she very elaborately discussed an article
about the training and disciplining of children, which I had published
in the "Christian Union" (this was twenty-one years ago), an article
which was full of worshipful praises of Mrs. Clemens as a mother, and
which little Clara, and Susy, and I had been hiding from this lovely and
admirable mother because we knew she would disapprove of public and
printed praises of herself. At the time that I was dictating these
comments, several months ago, I was trying to call back to my memory
some of the details of that article, but I was not able to do it, and I
wished I had a copy of the article so that I could see what there was
about it which gave it such large interest for Susy.
Yesterday afternoon I elected to walk home from the luncheon at the St.
Regis, which is in 56th Street and Fifth Avenue, for it was a fine
spring day and I hadn't had a walk for a year or two, and felt the need
of exercise. As I walked along down Fifth Avenue the desire to see that
"Christian Union" article came into my head again. I had just reached
the corner of 42nd Street then, and there was the usual jam of wagons,
carriages, and automobiles there. I stopped to let it thin out before
trying to cross the street, but a stranger, who didn't require as much
room as I do, came racing by and darted into a crack among the vehicles
and made the crossing. But on his way past me he thrust a couple of
ancient newspaper clippings into my hand, and said,
"There, you don't know me, but I have saved them in my scrap-book for
twenty years, and it occurred to me this morning that perhaps you would
like to see them, so I was carrying them down-town to mail them, I not
expecting to run across you in this accidental way, of course; but I
will give them into your own hands now. Good-by!"--and he disappeared
among the wagons.
Those scraps which he had put into my hand were ancient newspaper copies
of that "Christian Union" article! It is a handsome instance of mental
telegraphy--or if it isn't that, it is a handsome case of coincidence.
_From the Biography._
_March 14th, '86._--Mr. Laurence Barrette and Mr. and Mrs. Hutton
were here a little while ago, and we had a very interesting visit
from them. Papa said Mr. Barette never had acted so well before
when he had seen him, as he did the first night he was staying with
us. And Mrs. ---- said she never had seen an actor on the stage,
whom she more wanted to speak with.
Papa has been very much interested of late, in the "Mind Cure"
theory. And in fact so have we all. A young lady in town has worked
wonders by using the "Mind Cure" upon people; she is constantly
busy now curing peoples deseases in this way--and curing her own
even, which to me seems the most remarkable of all.
A little while past, papa was delighted with the knowledge of what
he thought the best way of curing a cold, which was by starving it.
This starving did work beautifully, and freed him from a great many
severe colds. Now he says it wasn't the starving that helped his
colds, but the trust in the starving, the mind cure connected with
the starving.
I shouldn't wonder if we finally became firm believers in Mind
Cure. The next time papa has a cold, I haven't a doubt, he will
send for Miss H---- the young lady who is doctoring in the "Mind
Cure" theory, to cure him of it.
Mamma was over at Mrs. George Warners to lunch the other day, and
Miss H---- was there too. Mamma asked if anything as natural as
near sightedness could be cured she said oh yes just as well as
other deseases.
When mamma came home, she took me into her room, and told me that
perhaps my near-sightedness could be cured by the "Mind Cure" and
that she was going to have me try the treatment any way, there
could be no harm in it, and there might be great good. If her plan
succeeds there certainly will be a great deal in "Mind Cure" to my
oppinion, for I am very near sighted and so is mamma, and I never
expected there could be any more cure for it than for blindness,
but now I dont know but what theres a cure for _that_.
It was a disappointment; her near-sightedness remained with her to the
end. She was born with it, no doubt; yet, strangely enough, she must
have been four years old, and possibly five, before we knew of its
existence. It is not easy to understand how that could have happened. I
discovered the defect by accident. I was half-way up the hall stairs one
day at home, and was leading her by the hand, when I glanced back
through the open door of the dining-room and saw what I thought she
would recognise as a pretty picture. It was "Stray Kit," the slender,
the graceful, the sociable, the beautiful, the incomparable, the cat of
cats, the tortoise-shell, curled up as round as a wheel and sound asleep
on the fire-red cover of the dining-table, with a brilliant stream of
sunlight falling across her. I exclaimed about it, but Susy said she
could see nothing there, neither cat nor table-cloth. The distance was
so slight--not more than twenty feet, perhaps--that if it had been any
other child I should not have credited the statement.
_From the Biography._
_March 14th, '86._--Clara sprained her ankle, a little while ago,
by running into a tree, when coasting, and while she was unable to
walk with it she played solotaire with cards a great deal. While
Clara was sick and papa saw her play solotaire so much, he got very
much interested in the game, and finally began to play it himself a
little, then Jean took it up, and at last _mamma_, even played it
ocasionally; Jean's and papa's love for it rapidly increased, and
now Jean brings the cards every night to the table and papa and
mamma help her play, and before dinner is at an end, papa has
gotten a separate pack of cards, and is playing alone, with great
interest. Mamma and Clara next are made subject to the contagious
solatair, and there are four solotaireans at the table; while you
hear nothing but "Fill up the place" etc. It is dreadful! after
supper Clara goes into the library, and gets a little red mahogany
table, and placing it under the gas fixture seats herself and
begins to play again, then papa follows with another table of the
same discription, and they play solatair till bedtime.
We have just had our Prince and Pauper pictures taken; two groups
and some little single ones. The groups (the Interview and Lady
Jane Grey scene) were pretty good, the lady Jane scene was perfect,
just as pretty as it could be, the Interview was not so good; and
two of the little single pictures were very good indeed, but one
was very bad. Yet on the whole we think they were a success.
Papa has done a great deal in his life I think, that is good, and
very remarkable, but I think if he had had the advantages with
which he could have developed the gifts which he has made no use of
in writing his books, or in any other way for other peoples
pleasure and benefit outside of his own family and intimate
friends, he could have done _more_ than he has and a great deal
more even. He is known to the public as a humorist, but he has much
more in him that is earnest than that is humorous. He has a keen
sense of the ludicrous, notices funny stories and incidents knows
how to tell them, to improve upon them, and does not forget them.
He has been through a great many of the funny adventures related in
"Tom Sawyer" and in "Huckleberry Finn," _himself_ and he lived among
just such boys, and in just such villages all the days of his early
life. His "Prince and Pauper" is his most orriginal, and best
production; it shows the most of any of his books what kind of
pictures are in his mind, usually. Not that the pictures of England
in the 16th Century and the adventures of a little prince and
pauper are the kind of things he mainly thinks about; but that
_that_ book, and those pictures represent the train of thought and
imagination he would be likely to be thinking of to-day, to-morrow,
or next day, more nearly than those given in "Tom Sawyer" or
"Huckleberry Finn."[13]
Papa can make exceedingly bright jokes, and he enjoys funny things,
and when he is with people he jokes and laughs a great deal, but
still he is more interested in earnest books and earnest subjects
to talk upon, than in humorous ones.[14]
When we are all alone at home, nine times out of ten, he talks
about some very earnest subjects, (with an ocasional joke thrown
in) and he a good deal more often talks upon such subjects than
upon the other kind.
He is as much of a Pholosopher as anything I think. I think he
could have done a great deal in this direction if he had studied
while young, for he seems to enjoy reasoning out things, no matter
what; in a great many such directions he has greater ability than
in the gifts which have made him famous.
Thus at fourteen she had made up her mind about me, and in no timorous
or uncertain terms had set down her reasons for her opinion. Fifteen
years were to pass before any other critic--except Mr. Howells, I
think--was to reutter that daring opinion and print it. Right or wrong,
it was a brave position for that little analyser to take. She never
withdrew it afterward, nor modified it. She has spoken of herself as
lacking physical courage, and has evinced her admiration of Clara's; but
she had moral courage, which is the rarest of human qualities, and she
kept it functionable by exercising it. I think that in questions of
morals and politics she was usually on my side; but when she was not
she had her reasons and maintained her ground. Two years after she
passed out of my life I wrote a Philosophy. Of the three persons who
have seen the manuscript only one understood it, and all three condemned
it. If she could have read it, she also would have condemned it,
possibly,--probably, in fact--but she would have understood it. It would
have had no difficulties for her on that score; also she would have
found a tireless pleasure in analyzing and discussing its problems.
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTES:
[13] It is so yet--M. T.
[14] She has said it well and correctly. Humor is a subject which has
never had much interest for me. This is why I have never examined it,
nor written about it nor used it as a topic for a speech. A hundred
times it has been offered me as a topic in these past forty years, but
in no case has it attracted me.--M. T.
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXVI.
JUNE 7, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XIX.
BY MARK TWAIN.
_From Susy's Biography of Me._
_March 23, '86._--The other day was my birthday, and I had a little
birthday party in the evening and papa acted some very funny
charades with Mr. Gherhardt, Mr. Jesse Grant (who had come up from
New York and was spending the evening with us) and Mr. Frank
Warner. One of them was "on his knees" honys-sneeze. There were a
good many other funny ones, all of which I dont remember. Mr. Grant
was very pleasant, and began playing the charades in the most
delightful way.