walk, but I was not able to throw any gleam of light upon that original
question of his. I could not remember ever having seen Dr. Holmes's
dedication. I knew the poems, but the dedication was new to me.
I did not get hold of the key to that secret until months afterward,
then it came in a curious way, and yet it was a natural way; for the
natural way provided by nature and the construction of the human mind
for the discovery of a forgotten event is to employ another forgotten
event for its resurrection.
[Sidenote: (1866.)]
I received a letter from the Rev. Dr. Rising, who had been rector of the
Episcopal church in Virginia City in my time, in which letter Dr. Rising
made reference to certain things which had happened to us in the
Sandwich Islands six years before; among things he made casual mention
of the Honolulu Hotel's poverty in the matter of literature. At first I
did not see the bearing of the remark, it called nothing to my mind. But
presently it did--with a flash! There was but one book in Mr. Kirchhof's
hotel, and that was the first volume of Dr. Holmes's blue and gold
series. I had had a fortnight's chance to get well acquainted with its
contents, for I had ridden around the big island (Hawaii) on horseback
and had brought back so many saddle boils that if there had been a duty
on them it would have bankrupted me to pay it. They kept me in my room,
unclothed, and in persistent pain for two weeks, with no company but
cigars and the little volume of poems. Of course I read them almost
constantly; I read them from beginning to end, then read them backwards,
then began in the middle and read them both ways, then read them wrong
end first and upside down. In a word, I read the book to rags, and was
infinitely grateful to the hand that wrote it.
Here we have an exhibition of what repetition can do, when persisted in
daily and hourly over a considerable stretch of time, where one is
merely reading for entertainment, without thought or intention of
preserving in the memory that which is read. It is a process which in
the course of years dries all the juice out of a familiar verse of
Scripture, leaving nothing but a sapless husk behind. In that case you
at least know the origin of the husk, but in the case in point I
apparently preserved the husk but presently forgot whence it came. It
lay lost in some dim corner of my memory a year or two, then came
forward when I needed a dedication, and was promptly mistaken by me as a
child of my own happy fancy.
I was new, I was ignorant, the mysteries of the human mind were a sealed
book to me as yet, and I stupidly looked upon myself as a tough and
unforgivable criminal. I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him the whole
disgraceful affair, implored him in impassioned language to believe that
I had never intended to commit this crime, and was unaware that I had
committed it until I was confronted with the awful evidence. I have lost
his answer, I could better have afforded to lose an uncle. Of these I
had a surplus, many of them of no real value to me, but that letter was
beyond price, beyond uncledom, and unsparable. In it Dr. Holmes laughed
the kindest and healingest laugh over the whole matter, and at
considerable length and in happy phrase assured me that there was no
crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it every day, that he
committed it every day, that every man alive on the earth who writes or
speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time
he opens his mouth; that all our phrasings are spiritualized shadows
cast multitudinously from our readings; that no happy phrase of ours is
ever quite original with us, there is nothing of our own in it except
some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment,
teachings and associations; that this slight change differentiates it
from another man's manner of saying it, stamps it with our special
style, and makes it our own for the time being; all the rest of it being
old, moldy, antique, and smelling of the breath of a thousand
generations of them that have passed it over their teeth before!
In the thirty-odd years which have come and gone since then, I have
satisfied myself that what Dr. Holmes said was true.
I wish to make a note upon the preface of the "Innocents." In the last
paragraph of that brief preface, I speak of the proprietors of the
"Daily Alta California" having "waived their rights" in certain letters
which I wrote for that journal while absent on the "Quaker City" trip. I
was young then, I am white-headed now, but the insult of that word
rankles yet, now that I am reading that paragraph for the first time in
many years, reading it for the first time since it was written, perhaps.
There were rights, it is true--such rights as the strong are able to
acquire over the weak and the absent. Early in '66 George Barnes invited
me to resign my reportership on his paper, the San Francisco "Morning
Call," and for some months thereafter I was without money or work; then
I had a pleasant turn of fortune. The proprietors of the "Sacramento
Union," a great and influential daily journal, sent me to the Sandwich
Islands to write four letters a month at twenty dollars apiece. I was
there four or five months, and returned to find myself about the best
known honest man on the Pacific Coast. Thomas McGuire, proprietor of
several theatres, said that now was the time to make my fortune--strike
while the iron was hot!--break into the lecture field! I did it. I
announced a lecture on the Sandwich Islands, closing the advertisement
with the remark, "Admission one dollar; doors open at half-past 7, the
trouble begins at 8." A true prophecy. The trouble certainly did begin
at 8, when I found myself in front of the only audience I had ever
faced, for the fright which pervaded me from head to foot was
paralyzing. It lasted two minutes and was as bitter as death, the memory
of it is indestructible, but it had its compensations, for it made me
immune from timidity before audiences for all time to come. I lectured
in all the principal Californian towns and in Nevada, then lectured once
or twice more in San Francisco, then retired from the field rich--for
me--and laid out a plan to sail Westward from San Francisco, and go
around the world. The proprietors of the "Alta" engaged me to write an
account of the trip for that paper--fifty letters of a column and a half
each, which would be about two thousand words per letter, and the pay to
be twenty dollars per letter.
I went East to St. Louis to say good-bye to my mother, and then I was
bitten by the prospectus of Captain Duncan of the "Quaker City"
excursion, and I ended by joining it. During the trip I wrote and sent
the fifty letters; six of them miscarried, and I wrote six new ones to
complete my contract. Then I put together a lecture on the trip and
delivered it in San Francisco at great and satisfactory pecuniary
profit, then I branched out into the country and was aghast at the
result: I had been entirely forgotten, I never had people enough in my
houses to sit as a jury of inquest on my lost reputation! I inquired
into this curious condition of things and found that the thrifty owners
of that prodigiously rich "Alta" newspaper had _copyrighted_ all those
poor little twenty-dollar letters, and had threatened with prosecution
any journal which should venture to copy a paragraph from them!
And there I was! I had contracted to furnish a large book, concerning
the excursion, to the American Publishing Co. of Hartford, and I
supposed I should need all those letters to fill it out with. I was in
an uncomfortable situation--that is, if the proprietors of this
stealthily acquired copyright should refuse to let me use the letters.
That is just what they did; Mr. Mac--something--I have forgotten the
rest of his name--said his firm were going to make a book out of the
letters in order to get back the thousand dollars which they had paid
for them. I said that if they had acted fairly and honorably, and had
allowed the country press to use the letters or portions of them, my
lecture-skirmish on the coast would have paid me ten thousand dollars,
whereas the "Alta" had lost me that amount. Then he offered a
compromise: he would publish the book and allow me ten per cent. royalty
on it. The compromise did not appeal to me, and I said so. I was now
quite unknown outside of San Francisco, the book's sale would be
confined to that city, and my royalty would not pay me enough to board
me three months; whereas my Eastern contract, if carried out, could be
profitable to me, for I had a sort of reputation on the Atlantic
seaboard acquired through the publication of six excursion-letters in
the New York "Tribune" and one or two in the "Herald."
In the end Mr. Mac agreed to suppress his book, on certain conditions:
in my preface I must thank the "Alta" for waiving "rights" and granting
me permission. I objected to the thanks. I could not with any large
degree of sincerity thank the "Alta" for bankrupting my lecture-raid.
After considerable debate my point was conceded and the thanks left out.
[Sidenote: (1902.)]
[Sidenote: (1904.)]
[Sidenote: (1897.)]
Noah Brooks was the editor of the "Alta" at the time, a man of sterling
character and equipped with a right heart, also a good historian where
facts were not essential. In biographical sketches of me written many
years afterward (1902), he was quite eloquent in praises of the
generosity of the "Alta" people in giving to me without compensation a
book which, as history had afterward shown, was worth a fortune. After
all the fuss, I did not levy heavily upon the "Alta" letters. I found
that they were newspaper matter, not book matter. They had been written
here and there and yonder, as opportunity had given me a chance
working-moment or two during our feverish flight around about Europe or
in the furnace-heat of my stateroom on board the "Quaker City,"
therefore they were loosely constructed, and needed to have some of the
wind and water squeezed out of them. I used several of them--ten or
twelve, perhaps. I wrote the rest of "The Innocents Abroad" in sixty
days, and I could have added a fortnight's labor with the pen and gotten
along without the letters altogether. I was very young in those days,
exceedingly young, marvellously young, younger than I am now, younger
than I shall ever be again, by hundreds of years. I worked every night
from eleven or twelve until broad day in the morning, and as I did two
hundred thousand words in the sixty days, the average was more than
three thousand words a day--nothing for Sir Walter Scott, nothing for
Louis Stevenson, nothing for plenty of other people, but quite handsome
for me. In 1897, when we were living in Tedworth Square, London, and I
was writing the book called "Following the Equator" my average was
eighteen hundred words a day; here in Florence (1904), my average seems
to be fourteen hundred words per sitting of four or five hours.[16]
I was deducing from the above that I have been slowing down steadily in
these thirty-six years, but I perceive that my statistics have a
defect: three thousand words in the spring of 1868 when I was working
seven or eight or nine hours at a sitting has little or no advantage
over the sitting of to-day, covering half the time and producing half
the output. Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the
arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to
Disraeli would often apply with justice and force:
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
[_Dictated, January 23, 1907._]--The proverb says that Providence
protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know it because I
have tested it. It did not protect George through the most of his
campaign, but it saved him in his last inning, and the veracity of the
proverb stood confirmed.
[Sidenote: (1865.)]
I have several times been saved by this mysterious interposition, when I
was manifestly in extreme peril. It has been common, all my life, for
smart people to perceive in me an easy prey for selfish designs, and I
have walked without suspicion into the trap set for me, yet have often
come out unscathed, against all the likelihoods. More than forty years
ago, in San Francisco, the office staff adjourned, upon conclusion of
its work at two o'clock in the morning, to a great bowling establishment
where there were twelve alleys. I was invited, rather perfunctorily, and
as a matter of etiquette--by which I mean that I was invited politely,
but not urgently. But when I diffidently declined, with thanks, and
explained that I knew nothing about the game, those lively young fellows
became at once eager and anxious and urgent to have my society. This
flattered me, for I perceived no trap, and I innocently and gratefully
accepted their invitation. I was given an alley all to myself. The boys
explained the game to me, and they also explained to me that there would
be an hour's play, and that the player who scored the fewest ten-strikes
in the hour would have to provide oysters and beer for the combination.
This disturbed me very seriously, since it promised me bankruptcy, and I
was sorry that this detail had been overlooked in the beginning. But my
pride would not allow me to back out now, so I stayed in, and did what I
could to look satisfied and glad I had come. It is not likely that I
looked as contented as I wanted to, but the others looked glad enough to
make up for it, for they were quite unable to hide their evil joy. They
showed me how to stand, and how to stoop, and how to aim the ball, and
how to let fly; and then the game began. The results were astonishing.
In my ignorance I delivered the balls in apparently every way except the
right one; but no matter--during half an hour I never started a ball
down the alley that didn't score a ten-strike, every time, at the other
end. The others lost their grip early, and their joy along with it. Now
and then one of them got a ten-strike, but the occurrence was so rare
that it made no show alongside of my giant score. The boys surrendered
at the end of the half-hour, and put on their coats and gathered around
me and in courteous, but sufficiently definite, language expressed their
opinion of an experience-worn and seasoned expert who would stoop to
lying and deception in order to rob kind and well-meaning friends who
had put their trust in him under the delusion that he was an honest and
honorable person. I was not able to convince them that I had not lied,
for now my character was gone, and they refused to attach any value to
anything I said. The proprietor of the place stood by for a while saying
nothing, then he came to my defence. He said: "It looks like a mystery,
gentlemen, but it isn't a mystery after it's explained. That is a
_grooved_ alley; you've only to start a ball down it any way you please
and the groove will do the rest; it will slam the ball against the
northeast curve of the head pin every time, and nothing can save the ten
from going down."
It was true. The boys made the experiment and they found that there was
no art that could send a ball down that alley and fail to score a
ten-strike with it. When I had told those boys that I knew nothing about
that game I was speaking only the truth; but it was ever thus, all
through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and
uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of
mind enough to believe it.
[Sidenote: (1873.)]
A quarter of a century ago I arrived in London to lecture a few weeks
under the management of George Dolby, who had conducted the Dickens
readings in America five or six years before. He took me to the
Albemarle and fed me, and in the course of the dinner he enlarged a good
deal, and with great satisfaction, upon his reputation as a player of
fifteen-ball pool, and when he learned by my testimony that I had never
seen the game played, and knew nothing of the art of pocketing balls,
he enlarged more and more, and still more, and kept on enlarging, until
I recognized that I was either in the presence of the very father of
fifteen-ball pool or in the presence of his most immediate descendant.
At the end of the dinner Dolby was eager to introduce me to the game and
show me what he could do. We adjourned to the billiard-room and he
framed the balls in a flat pyramid and told me to fire at the apex ball
and then go on and do what I could toward pocketing the fifteen, after
which he would take the cue and show me what a past-master of the game
could do with those balls. I did as required. I began with the
diffidence proper to my ignorant estate, and when I had finished my
inning all the balls were in the pockets and Dolby was burying me under
a volcanic irruption of acid sarcasms.
So I was a liar in Dolby's belief. He thought he had been sold, and at a
cheap rate; but he divided his sarcasms quite fairly and quite equally
between the two of us. He was full of ironical admiration of his
childishness and innocence in letting a wandering and characterless and
scandalous American load him up with deceptions of so transparent a
character that they ought not to have deceived the house cat. On the
other hand, he was remorselessly severe upon me for beguiling him, by
studied and discreditable artifice, into bragging and boasting about his
poor game in the presence of a professional expert disguised in lies and
frauds, who could empty more balls in billiard pockets in an hour than
he could empty into a basket in a day.
In the matter of fifteen-ball pool I never got Dolby's confidence wholly
back, though I got it in other ways, and kept it until his death. I have
played that game a number of times since, but that first time was the
only time in my life that I have ever pocketed all the fifteen in a
single inning.
[Sidenote: (1876.)]
My unsuspicious nature has made it necessary for Providence to save me
from traps a number of times. Thirty years ago, a couple of Elmira
bankers invited me to play the game of "Quaker" with them. I had never
heard of the game before, and said that if it required intellect, I
should not be able to entertain them. But they said it was merely a game
of chance, and required no mentality--so I agreed to make a trial of it.
They appointed four in the afternoon for the sacrifice. As the place,
they chose a ground-floor room with a large window in it. Then they
went treacherously around and advertised the "sell" which they were
going to play upon me.
I arrived on time, and we began the game--with a large and eager
free-list to superintend it. These superintendents were outside, with
their noses pressed against the window-pane. The bankers described the
game to me. So far as I recollect, the pattern of it was this: they had
a pile of Mexican dollars on the table; twelve of them were of even
date, fifty of them were of odd dates. The bankers were to separate a
coin from the pile and hide it under a hand, and I must guess "odd" or
"even." If I guessed correctly, the coin would be mine; if incorrectly,
I lost a dollar. The first guess I made was "even," and was right. I
guessed again, "even," and took the money. They fed me another one and I
guessed "even" again, and took the money. I guessed "even" the fourth
time, and took the money. It seemed to me that "even" was a good guess,
and I might as well stay by it, which I did. I guessed "even" twelve
times, and took the twelve dollars. I was doing as they secretly
desired. Their experience of human nature had convinced them that any
human being as innocent as my face proclaimed me to be, would repeat his
first guess if it won, and would go on repeating it if it should
continue to win. It was their belief that an innocent would be almost
sure at the beginning to guess "even," and not "odd," and that if an
innocent should guess "even" twelve times in succession and win every
time, he would go on guessing "even" to the end--so it was their purpose
to let me win those twelve even dates and then advance the odd dates,
one by one, until I should lose fifty dollars, and furnish those
superintendents something to laugh about for a week to come.
But it did not come out in that way; for by the time I had won the
twelfth dollar and last even date, I withdrew from the game because it
was so one-sided that it was monotonous, and did not entertain me. There
was a burst of laughter from the superintendents at the window when I
came out of the place, but I did not know what they were laughing at nor
whom they were laughing at, and it was a matter of no interest to me
anyway. Through that incident I acquired an enviable reputation for
smartness and penetration, but it was not my due, for I had not
penetrated anything that the cow could not have penetrated.
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTE:
[16] With the pen, I mean. This Autobiography is dictated, not written.
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXX.
AUGUST 2, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XXI.
BY MARK TWAIN.
_From Susy's Biography of Me._
_Feb. 12, '86._
Mamma and I have both been very much troubled of late because papa
since he has been publishing Gen. Grant's book has seemed to forget
his own books and work entirely, and the other evening as papa and
I were promonading up and down the library he told me that he
didn't expect to write but one more book, and then he was ready to
give up work altogether, die, or do anything, he said that he had
written more than he had ever expected to, and the only book that
he had been pertickularly anxious to write was one locked up in the
safe down stairs, not yet published.[17]
But this intended future of course will never do, and although papa
usually holds to his own opinions and intents with outsiders, when
mamma realy desires anything and says that it must be, papa allways
gives up his plans (at least so far) and does as she says is right
(and she is usually right, if she dissagrees with him at all). It
was because he knew his great tendency to being convinced by her,
that he published without her knowledge that article in the
"Christian Union" concerning the government of children. So judging
by the proofs of past years, I think that we will be able to
persuade papa to go back to work as before, and not leave off
writing with the end of his next story. Mamma says that she
sometimes feels, and I do too, that she would rather have papa
depend on his writing for a living than to have him think of giving
it up.
[_Dictated, November 8, 1906._] I have a defect of a sort which I think
is not common; certainly I hope it isn't: it is rare that I can call
before my mind's eye the form and face of either friend or enemy. If I
should make a list, now, of persons whom I know in America and
abroad--say to the number of even an entire thousand--it is quite
unlikely that I could reproduce five of them in my mind's eye. Of my
dearest and most intimate friends, I could name eight whom I have seen
and talked with four days ago, but when I try to call them before me
they are formless shadows. Jean has been absent, this past eight or ten
days, in the country, and I wish I could reproduce her in the mirror of
my mind, but I can't do it.
It may be that this defect is not constitutional, but a result of
lifelong absence of mind and indolent and inadequate observation. Once
or twice in my life it has been an embarrassment to me. Twenty years
ago, in the days of Susy's Biography of Me, there was a dispute one
morning at the breakfast-table about the color of a neighbor's eyes. I
was asked for a verdict, but had to confess that if that valued neighbor
and old friend had eyes I was not sure that I had ever seen them. It was
then mockingly suggested that perhaps I didn't even know the color of
the eyes of my own family, and I was required to shut my own at once and
testify. I was able to name the color of Mrs. Clemens's eyes, but was
not able to even suggest a color for Jean's, or Clara's, or Susy's.
All this talk is suggested by Susy's remark: "The other evening as papa
and I were promenading up and down the library." Down to the bottom of
my heart I am thankful that I can see _that_ picture! And it is not dim,
but stands out clear in the unfaded light of twenty-one years ago. In
those days Susy and I used to "promonade" daily up and down the
library, with our arms about each other's waists, and deal in intimate
communion concerning affairs of State, or the deep questions of human
life, or our small personal affairs.