"honys-sneeze" stands for. Impromptu charades were almost a nightly
pastime of ours, from the children's earliest days--they played in them
with me when they were only five or six years old. As they increased in
years and practice their love for the sport almost amounted to a
passion, and they acted their parts with a steadily increasing ability.
At first they required much drilling; but later they were generally
ready as soon as the parts were assigned, and they acted them according
to their own devices. Their stage facility and absence of constraint and
self-consciousness in the "Prince and Pauper" was a result of their
charading practice.
At ten and twelve Susy wrote plays, and she and Daisy Warner and Clara
played them in the library or up-stairs in the school-room, with only
themselves and the servants for audience. They were of a tragic and
tremendous sort, and were performed with great energy and earnestness.
They were dramatized (freely) from English history, and in them Mary
Queen of Scots and Elizabeth had few holidays. The clothes were borrowed
from the mother's wardrobe and the gowns were longer than necessary, but
that was not regarded as a defect. In one of these plays Jean (three
years old, perhaps) was Sir Francis Bacon. She was not dressed for the
part, and did not have to say anything, but sat silent and decorous at a
tiny table and was kept busy signing death-warrants. It was a really
important office, for few entered those plays and got out of them alive.
_March 26._--Mamma and Papa have been in New York for two or three
days, and Miss Corey has been staying with us. They are coming home
to-day at two o'clock.
Papa has just begun to play chess, and he is very fond of it, so he
has engaged to play with Mrs. Charles Warner every morning from 10
to 12, he came down to supper last night, full of this pleasant
prospect, but evidently with something on his mind. Finally he said
to mamma in an appologetical tone, Susy Warner and I have a plan.
"Well" mamma said "what now, I wonder?"
Papa said that Susy Warner and he were going to name the chess
after some of the old bible heroes, and then play chess on Sunday.
_April 18, '86._--Mamma and papa Clara and Daisy have gone to New
York to see the "Mikado." They are coming home to-night at half
past seven.
Last winter when Mr. Cable was lecturing with papa, he wrote this
letter to him just before he came to visit us.
DEAR UNCLE,--That's one nice thing about me, I never bother any
one, to offer me a good thing twice. You dont ask me to stay over
Sunday, but then you dont ask me to leave Saturday night, and
knowing the nobility of your nature as I do--thank you, I'll stay
till Monday morning.[15]
Your's and the dear familie's
GEORGE W. CABLE.
[_December 22, 1906._] It seems a prodigious while ago! Two or three
nights ago I dined at a friend's house with a score of other men, and at
my side was Cable--actually almost an old man, really almost an old man,
that once so young chap! 62 years old, frost on his head, seven
grandchildren in stock, and a brand-new wife to re-begin life with!
[_Dictated Nov. 19, 1906._]
Ever since papa and mamma were married, papa has written his books
and then taken them to mamma in manuscript and she has expergated
them. Papa read "Huckleberry Finn" to us in manuscript just before
it came out, and then he would leave parts of it with mamma to
expergate, while he went off up to the study to work, and sometimes
Clara and I would be sitting with mamma while she was looking the
manuscript over, and I remember so well, with what pangs of regret
we used to see her turn down the leaves of the pages, which meant
that some delightfully dreadful part must be scratched out. And I
remember one part pertickularly which was perfectly fascinating it
was dreadful, that Clara and I used to delight in, and oh with what
dispair we saw mamma turn down the leaf on which it was written, we
thought the book would be almost ruined without it. But we
gradually came to feel as mamma did.
It would be a pity to replace the vivacity and quaintness and felicity
of Susy's innocent free spelling with the dull and petrified
uniformities of the spelling-book. Nearly all the grimness it taken out
of the "expergating" of my books by the subtle mollification
accidentally infused into the word by Susy's modification of the
spelling of it.
I remember the special case mentioned by Susy, and can see the group
yet--two-thirds of it pleading for the life of the culprit sentence that
was so fascinatingly dreadful and the other third of it patiently
explaining why the court could not grant the prayer of the pleaders; but
I do not remember what the condemned phrase was. It had much company,
and they all went to the gallows; but it is possible that that specially
dreadful one which gave those little people so much delight was
cunningly devised and put into the book for just that function, and not
with any hope or expectation that it would get by the "exper-gator"
alive. It is possible, for I had that custom.
Susy's quaint and effective spelling falls quite opportunely into
to-day's atmosphere, which is heavy with the rumblings and grumblings
and mutterings of the Simplified Spelling Reform. Andrew Carnegie
started this storm, a couple of years ago, by moving a simplifying of
English orthography, and establishing a fund for the prosecution and
maintenance of the crusade. He began gently. He addressed a circular to
some hundreds of his friends, asking them to simplify the spelling of a
dozen of our badly spelt words--I think they were only words which end
with the superfluous _ugh_. He asked that these friends use the
suggested spellings in their private correspondence.
By this, one perceives that the beginning was sufficiently quiet and
unaggressive.
Next stage: a small committee was appointed, with Brander Matthews for
managing director and spokesman. It issued a list of three hundred
words, of average silliness as to spelling, and proposed new and sane
spellings for these words. The President of the United States,
unsolicited, adopted these simplified three hundred officially, and
ordered that they be used in the official documents of the Government.
It was now remarked, by all the educated and the thoughtful except the
clergy that Sheol was to pay. This was most justly and comprehensively
descriptive. The indignant British lion rose, with a roar that was heard
across the Atlantic, and stood there on his little isle, gazing,
red-eyed, out over the glooming seas, snow-flecked with driving
spindrift, and lathing his tail--a most scary spectacle to see.
The lion was outraged because we, a nation of children, without any
grown-up people among us, with no property in the language, but using it
merely by courtesy of its owner the English nation, were trying to
defile the sacredness of it by removing from it peculiarities which had
been its ornament and which had made it holy and beautiful for ages.
In truth there is a certain sardonic propriety in preserving our
orthography, since ours is a mongrel language which started with a
child's vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two
hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of
the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smouched
from every unwatched language under the sun, the spelling of each
individual word of the lot locating the source of the theft and
preserving the memory of the revered crime.
Why is it that I have intruded into this turmoil and manifested a desire
to get our orthography purged of its asininities? Indeed I do not know
why I should manifest any interest in the matter, for at bottom I
disrespect our orthography most heartily, and as heartily disrespect
everything that has been said by anybody in defence of it. Nothing
professing to be a defence of our ludicrous spellings has had any basis,
so far as my observation goes, except sentimentality. In these
"arguments" the term venerable is used instead of mouldy, and hallowed
instead of devilish; whereas there is nothing properly venerable or
antique about a language which is not yet four hundred years old, and
about a jumble of imbecile spellings which were grotesque in the
beginning, and which grow more and more grotesque with the flight of the
years.
[_Dictated Monday, November 30, 1906._]
Jean and Papa were walking out past the barn the other day when
Jean saw some little newly born baby ducks, she exclaimed as she
perceived them "I dont see why God gives us so much ducks when
Patrick kills them so."
Susy is mistaken as to the origin of the ducks. They were not a gift, I
bought them. I am not finding fault with her, for that would be most
unfair. She is remarkably accurate in her statements as a historian, as
a rule, and it would not be just to make much of this small slip of
hers; besides I think it was a quite natural slip, for by heredity and
habit ours was a religious household, and it was a common thing with us
whenever anybody did a handsome thing, to give the credit of it to
Providence, without examining into the matter. This may be called
automatic religion--in fact that is what it is; it is so used to its
work that it can do it without your help or even your privity; out of
all the facts and statistics that may be placed before it, it will
always get the one result, since it has never been taught to seek any
other. It is thus the unreflecting cause of much injustice. As we have
seen, it betrayed Susy into an injustice toward me. It had to be
automatic, for she would have been far from doing me an injustice when
in her right mind. It was a dear little biographer, and she meant me no
harm, and I am not censuring her now, but am only desirous of correcting
in advance an erroneous impression which her words would be sure to
convey to a reader's mind. No elaboration of this matter is necessary;
it is sufficient to say _I_ provided the ducks.
It was in Hartford. The greensward sloped down-hill from the house to
the sluggish little river that flowed through the grounds, and Patrick,
who was fertile in good ideas, had early conceived the idea of having
home-made ducks for our table. Every morning he drove them from the
stable down to the river, and the children were always there to see and
admire the waddling white procession; they were there again at sunset to
see Patrick conduct the procession back to its lodgings in the stable.
But this was not always a gay and happy holiday show, with joy in it for
the witnesses; no, too frequently there was a tragedy connected with it,
and then there were tears and pain for the children. There was a
stranded log or two in the river, and on these certain families of
snapping-turtles used to congregate and drowse in the sun and give
thanks, in their dumb way, to Providence for benevolence extended to
them. It was but another instance of misplaced credit; it was the young
ducks that those pious reptiles were so thankful for--whereas they were
_my_ ducks. I bought the ducks.
When a crop of young ducks, not yet quite old enough for the table but
approaching that age, began to join the procession, and paddle around in
the sluggish water, and give thanks--not to me--for that privilege, the
snapping-turtles would suspend their songs of praise and slide off the
logs and paddle along under the water and chew the feet of the young
ducks. Presently Patrick would notice that two or three of those little
creatures were not moving about, but were apparently at anchor, and were
not looking as thankful as they had been looking a short time before. He
early found out what that sign meant--a submerged snapping-turtle was
taking his breakfast, and silently singing his gratitude. Every day or
two Patrick would rescue and fetch up a little duck with incomplete legs
to stand upon--nothing left of their extremities but gnawed and bleeding
stumps. Then the children said pitying things and wept--and at dinner we
finished the tragedy which the turtles had begun. Thus, as will be
seen--out of season, at least--it was really the turtles that gave us
so much ducks. At my expense.
Papa has written a new version of "There is a happy land" it is--
"There is a boarding-house
Far, far away,
Where they have ham and eggs,
Three times a day.
Oh dont those boarders yell
When they hear the dinner-bell,
They give that land-lord rats
Three times a day."
Again Susy has made a small error. It was not I that wrote the song. I
heard Billy Rice sing it in the negro minstrel show, and I brought it
home and sang it--with great spirit--for the elevation of the household.
The children admired it to the limit, and made me sing it with
burdensome frequency. To their minds it was superior to the Battle Hymn
of the Republic.
How many years ago that was! Where now is Billy Rice? He was a joy to
me, and so were the other stars of the nigger-show--Billy Birch, David
Wambold, Backus, and a delightful dozen of their brethren, who made life
a pleasure to me forty years ago, and later. Birch, Wambold, and Backus
are gone years ago; and with them departed to return no more forever, I
suppose, the real nigger-show--the genuine nigger-show, the extravagant
nigger-show,--the show which to me had no peer and whose peer has not
yet arrived, in my experience. We have the grand opera; and I have
witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner
created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act
was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone
away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera
the result has been the next thing to suicide. But if I could have the
nigger-show back again, in its pristine purity and perfection, I should
have but little further use for opera. It seems to me that to the
elevated mind and the sensitive spirit the hand-organ and the
nigger-show are a standard and a summit to whose rarefied altitude the
other forms of musical art may not hope to reach.
[_Dictated September 5, 1906._] It is years since I have examined "The
Children's Record." I have turned over a few of its pages this morning.
This book is a record in which Mrs. Clemens and I registered some of
the sayings and doings of the children, in the long ago, when they were
little chaps. Of course, we wrote these things down at the time because
they were of momentary interest--things of the passing hour, and of no
permanent value--but at this distant day I find that they still possess
an interest for me and also a value, because it turns out that they were
_registrations of character_. The qualities then revealed by fitful
glimpses, in childish acts and speeches, remained as a permanency in the
children's characters in the drift of the years, and were always
afterwards clearly and definitely recognizable.
There is a masterful streak in Jean that now and then moves her to set
my authority aside for a moment and end a losing argument in that prompt
and effective fashion. And here in this old book I find evidence that
she was just like that before she was quite four years old.
_From The Children's Record. Quarry Farm, July 7, 1884._--Yesterday
evening our cows (after being inspected and worshipped by Jean from
the shed for an hour,) wandered off down into the pasture, and left
her bereft. I thought I was going to get back home, now, but that
was an error. Jean knew of some more cows, in a field somewhere,
and took my hand and led me thitherward. When we turned the corner
and took the right-hand road, I saw that we should presently be out
of range of call and sight; so I began to argue against continuing
the expedition, and Jean began to argue in favor of it--she using
English for light skirmishing, and German for "business." I kept up
my end with vigor, and demolished her arguments in detail, one
after the other, till I judged I had her about cornered. She
hesitated a moment, then answered up sharply:
"_Wir werden nichts mehr darüber sprechen!_" (We won't talk any
more about it!)
It nearly took my breath away; though I thought I might possibly
have misunderstood. I said:
"Why, you little rascal! _Was hast du gesagt?_"
But she said the same words over again, and in the same decided
way. I suppose I ought to have been outraged; but I wasn't, I was
charmed. And I suppose I ought to have spanked her; but I didn't, I
fraternized with the enemy, and we went on and spent half an hour
with the cows.
That incident is followed in the "Record" by the following paragraph,
which is another instance of a juvenile characteristic maintaining
itself into mature age. Susy was persistently and conscientiously
truthful throughout her life with the exception of one interruption
covering several months, and perhaps a year. This was while she was
still a little child. Suddenly--not gradually--she began to lie; not
furtively, but frankly, openly, and on a scale quite disproportioned to
her size. Her mother was so stunned, so nearly paralyzed for a day or
two, that she did not know what to do with the emergency. Reasonings,
persuasions, beseechings, all went for nothing; they produced no effect;
the lying went tranquilly on. Other remedies were tried, but they
failed. There is a tradition that success was finally accomplished by
whipping. I think the Record says so, but if it does it is because the
Record is incomplete. Whipping was indeed tried, and was faithfully kept
up during two or three weeks, but the results were merely temporary; the
reforms achieved were discouragingly brief.
Fortunately for Susy, an incident presently occurred which put a
complete stop to all the mother's efforts in the direction of reform.
This incident was the chance discovery in Darwin of a passage which said
that when a child exhibits a sudden and unaccountable disposition to
forsake the truth and restrict itself to lying, the explanation must be
sought away back in the past; that an ancestor of the child had had the
same disease, at the same tender age; that it was irremovable by
persuasion or punishment, and that it had ceased as suddenly and as
mysteriously as it had come, when it had run its appointed course. I
think Mr. Darwin said that nothing was necessary but to leave the matter
alone and let the malady have its way and perish by the statute of
limitations.
We had confidence in Darwin, and after that day Susy was relieved of our
reformatory persecutions. She went on lying without let or hindrance
during several months, or a year; then the lying suddenly ceased, and
she became as conscientiously and exactingly truthful as she had been
before the attack, and she remained so to the end of her life.
The paragraph in the Record to which I have been leading up is in my
handwriting, and is of a date so long posterior to the time of the lying
malady that she had evidently forgotten that truth-speaking had ever had
any difficulties for her.
Mama was speaking of a servant who had been pretty unveracious, but
was now "trying to tell the truth." Susy was a good deal surprised,
and said she shouldn't think anybody would have to _try_ to tell
the truth.
In the Record the children's acts and speeches quite definitely define
their characters. Susy's indicated the presence of mentality--
thought--and they were generally marked by gravity. She was timid, on
her physical side, but had an abundance of moral courage. Clara was
sturdy, independent, orderly, practical, persistent, plucky--just a
little animal, and very satisfactory. Charles Dudley Warner said Susy
was made of mind, and Clara of matter.
When Motley, the kitten, died, some one said that the thoughts of the
two children need not be inquired into, they could be divined: that Susy
was wondering if this was the _end_ of Motley, and had his life been
worth while; whereas Clara was merely interested in seeing to it that
there should be a creditable funeral.
In those days Susy was a dreamer, a thinker, a poet and philosopher, and
Clara--well, Clara wasn't. In after-years a passion for music developed
the latent spirituality and intellectuality in Clara, and her
practicality took second and, in fact, even third place. Jean was from
the beginning orderly, steady, diligent, persistent; and remains so. She
picked up languages easily, and kept them.
_Susy aged eleven, Jean three._--Susy said the other day when she
saw Jean bringing a cat to me of her own motion, "Jean has found
out already that mamma loves morals and papa loves cats."
It is another of Susy's remorselessly sound verdicts.
As a child, Jean neglected my books. When she was nine years old Will
Gillette invited her and the rest of us to a dinner at the Murray Hill
Hotel in New York, in order that we might get acquainted with Mrs.
Leslie and her daughters. Elsie Leslie was nine years old, and was a
great celebrity on the stage. Jean was astonished and awed to see that
little slip of a thing sit up at table and take part in the conversation
of the grown people, capably and with ease and tranquillity. Poor Jean
was obliged to keep still, for the subjects discussed never happened to
hit her level, but at last the talk fell within her limit and she had
her chance to contribute to it. "Tom Sawyer" was mentioned. Jean spoke
gratefully up and said,
"I know who wrote that book--Harriet Beecher Stowe!"
One evening Susy had prayed, Clara was curled up for sleep; she was
reminded that it was her turn to pray now. She laid "Oh! one's
enough," and dropped off to slumber.
_Clara five years old._--We were in Germany. The nurse, Rosa, was
not allowed to speak to the children otherwise than in German.
Clara grew very tired of it; by and by the little creature's
patience was exhausted, and she said "Aunt Clara, I wish God had
made Rosa in English."
_Clara four years old, Susy six._--This morning when Clara
discovered that this is my birthday, she was greatly troubled
because she had provided no gift for me, and repeated her sorrow
several times. Finally she went musing to the nursery and presently
returned with her newest and dearest treasure, a large toy horse,
and said, "You shall have this horse for your birthday, papa."
I accepted it with many thanks. After an hour she was racing up and
down the room with the horse, when Susy said,
"Why Clara, you gave that horse to papa, and now you've tooken it
again."
_Clara._--"I never give it to him for always; I give it to him for
his birthday."
In Geneva, in September, I lay abed late one morning, and as Clara
was passing through the room I took her on my bed a moment. Then
the child went to Clara Spaulding and said,
"Aunt Clara, papa is a good deal of trouble to me."
"Is he? Why?"
"Well, he wants me to get in bed with him, and I can't do that with
jelmuls [gentlemen]--I don't like jelmuls anyway."
"What, you don't like gentlemen! Don't you like Uncle Theodore
Crane?"
"Oh yes, but he's not a jelmul, he's a friend."
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTE:
[15] Cable never travelled Sundays.
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXVIII.
JULY 5, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XX.
BY MARK TWAIN.
[Sidenote: (1868.)]
[_Notes on "Innocents Abroad." Dictated in Florence, Italy, April,
1904._]--I will begin with a note upon the dedication. I wrote the book
in the months of March and April, 1868, in San Francisco. It was
published in August, 1869. Three years afterward Mr. Goodman, of
Virginia City, Nevada, on whose newspaper I had served ten years before,
came East, and we were walking down Broadway one day when he said: "How
did you come to steal Oliver Wendell Holmes's dedication and put it in
your book?"
I made a careless and inconsequential answer, for I supposed he was
joking. But he assured me that he was in earnest. He said: "I'm not
discussing the question of whether you stole it or didn't--for that is a
question that can be settled in the first bookstore we come to--I am
only asking you _how_ you came to steal it, for that is where my
curiosity is focalized."
I couldn't accommodate him with this information, as I hadn't it in
stock. I could have made oath that I had not stolen anything, therefore
my vanity was not hurt nor my spirit troubled. At bottom I supposed that
he had mistaken another book for mine, and was now getting himself into
an untenable place and preparing sorrow for himself and triumph for me.
We entered a bookstore and he asked for "The Innocents Abroad" and for
the dainty little blue and gold edition of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's
poems. He opened the books, exposed their dedications and said: "Read
them. It is plain that the author of the second one stole the first one,
isn't it?"