expense, and he and Harte sat there and listened while the man told
stirring adventures of his life and fed himself up to the eyebrows. Then
Osborn wanted to be benefactor in his turn, and pay back some of his
debt. The man said it could all be paid with ten dollars--that it had
been so long since he had owned that amount of money that it would seem
a fortune to him, and he should be grateful beyond words if the Captain
could spare him that amount. The Captain spared him ten broad
twenty-dollar gold pieces, and made him take them in spite of his modest
protestations, and gave him his address and said he must never fail to
give him notice when he needed grateful service.
Several months later Harte stumbled upon the man in the street. He was
most comfortably drunk, and pleasant and chatty. Harte remarked upon the
splendidly and movingly dramatic incident of the restaurant, and said,
"How curious and fortunate and happy and interesting it was that you two
should come together, after that long separation, and at exactly the
right moment to save you from disaster and turn your defeat by the
waiters into a victory. A preacher could make a great sermon out of
that, for it does look as if the hand of Providence was in it."
The hero's face assumed a sweetly genial expression, and he said,
"Well now, it wasn't Providence this time. I was running the
arrangements myself."
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, I hadn't ever seen the gentleman before. I was at the next table,
with my back to you the whole time he was telling about it. I saw my
chance, and slipped out and fetched the two waiters with me and offered
to give them a commission out of what I could get out of the Captain if
they would do a quarrel act with me and give me an opening. So, then,
after a minute or two I straggled back, and you know the rest of it as
well as I do."
MARK TWAIN.
(_To be Continued._)
FOOTNOTES:
[18] This was tried. I well remember it.--M. T., _October, '06_.
[19] Can this be correct? I think there must be some mistake.--M. T.
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No. DCXXIII.
OCTOBER, 1907.
CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XXIII.
BY MARK TWAIN.
[Sidenote: (1845.)]
[_Dictated March 9, 1906._] ... I am talking of a time sixty years ago,
and upwards. I remember the names of some of those schoolmates, and, by
fitful glimpses, even their faces rise dimly before me for a
moment--only just long enough to be recognized; then they vanish. I
catch glimpses of George Robards, the Latin pupil--slender, pale,
studious, bending over his book and absorbed in it, his long straight
black hair hanging down below his jaws like a pair of curtains on the
sides of his face. I can see him give his head a toss and flirt one of
the curtains back around his head--to get it out of his way, apparently;
really to show off. In that day it was a great thing among the boys to
have hair of so flexible a sort that it could be flung back in that way,
with a flirt of the head. George Robards was the envy of us all. For
there was no hair among us that was so competent for this exhibition as
his--except, perhaps, the yellow locks of Will Bowen and John Robards.
My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry's.
We tried all kinds of devices to get these crooks straightened out so
that they would flirt, but we never succeeded. Sometimes, by soaking our
heads and then combing and brushing our hair down tight and flat to our
skulls, we could get it straight, temporarily, and this gave us a
comforting moment of joy; but the first time we gave it a flirt it all
shrivelled into curls again and our happiness was gone.
John Robards was the little brother of George; he was a wee chap with
silky golden curtains to his face which dangled to his shoulders and
below, and could be flung back ravishingly. When he was twelve years old
he crossed the plains with his father amidst the rush of the
gold-seekers of '49; and I remember the departure of the cavalcade when
it spurred westward. We were all there to see and to envy. And I can
still see that proud little chap sailing by on a great horse, with his
long locks streaming out behind. We were all on hand to gaze and envy
when he returned, two years later, in unimaginable glory--_for he had
travelled_! None of us had ever been forty miles from home. But he had
crossed the Continent. He had been in the gold-mines, that fairyland of
our imagination. And he had done a still more wonderful thing. He had
been in ships--in ships on the actual ocean; in ships on three actual
oceans. For he had sailed down the Pacific and around the Horn among
icebergs and through snow-storms and wild wintry gales, and had sailed
on and turned the corner and flown northward in the trades and up
through the blistering equatorial waters--and there in his brown face
were the proofs of what he had been through. We would have sold our
souls to Satan for the privilege of trading places with him.
I saw him when I was out on that Missouri trip four years ago. He was
old then--though not quite so old as I--and the burden of life was upon
him. He said his granddaughter, twelve years old, had read my books and
would like to see me. It was a pathetic time, for she was a prisoner in
her room and marked for death. And John knew that she was passing
swiftly away. Twelve years old--just her grandfather's age when he rode
away on that great journey with his yellow hair flapping behind him. In
her I seemed to see that boy again. It was as if he had come back out of
that remote past and was present before me in his golden youth. Her
malady was heart disease, and her brief life came to a close a few days
later.
Another of those schoolboys was John Garth. He became a prosperous
banker and a prominent and valued citizen; and a few years ago he died,
rich and honored. _He died._ It is what I have to say about so many of
those boys and girls. The widow still lives, and there are
grandchildren. In her pantalette days and my barefoot days she was a
schoolmate of mine. I saw John's tomb when I made that Missouri visit.
Her father, Mr. Kercheval, had an apprentice in the early days when I
was nine years old, and he had also a slave woman who had many merits.
But I can't feel very kindly or forgivingly toward either that good
apprentice boy or that good slave woman, for they saved my life. One day
when I was playing on a loose log which I supposed was attached to a
raft--but it wasn't--it tilted me into Bear Creek. And when I had been
under water twice and was coming up to make the third and fatal descent
my fingers appeared above the water and that slave woman seized them and
pulled me out. Within a week I was in again, and that apprentice had to
come along just at the wrong time, and he plunged in and dived, pawed
around on the bottom and found me, and dragged me out and emptied the
water out of me, and I was saved again. I was drowned seven times after
that before I learned to swim--once in Bear Creek and six times in the
Mississippi. I do not now know who the people were who interfered with
the intentions of a Providence wiser than themselves, but I hold a
grudge against them yet. When I told the tale of these remarkable
happenings to Rev. Dr. Burton of Hartford, he said he did not believe
it. _He slipped on the ice the very next year and sprained his ankle._
Will Bowen was another schoolmate, and so was his brother, Sam, who was
his junior by a couple of years. Before the Civil War broke out, both
became St. Louis and New Orleans pilots. Both are dead, long ago.
[Sidenote: (1845.)]
[_Dictated March 16, 1906._] We will return to those schoolchildren of
sixty years ago. I recall Mary Miller. She was not my first sweetheart,
but I think she was the first one that furnished me a broken heart. I
fell in love with her when she was eighteen and I was nine, but she
scorned me, and I recognized that this was a cold world. I had not
noticed that temperature before. I believe I was as miserable as even a
grown man could be. But I think that this sorrow did not remain with me
long. As I remember it, I soon transferred my worship to Artimisia
Briggs, who was a year older than Mary Miller. When I revealed my
passion to her she did not scoff at it. She did not make fun of it. She
was very kind and gentle about it. But she was also firm, and said she
did not want to be pestered by children.
And there was Mary Lacy. She was a schoolmate. But she also was out of
my class because of her advanced age. She was pretty wild and determined
and independent. But she married, and at once settled down and became in
all ways a model matron and was as highly respected as any matron in the
town. Four years ago she was still living, and had been married fifty
years.
Jimmie McDaniel was another schoolmate. His age and mine about tallied.
His father kept the candy-shop and he was the most envied little chap in
the town--after Tom Blankenship ("Huck Finn")--for although we never saw
him eating candy, we supposed that it was, nevertheless, his ordinary
diet. He pretended that he never ate it, and didn't care for it because
there was nothing forbidden about it--there was plenty of it and he
could have as much of it as he wanted. He was the first human being to
whom I ever told a humorous story, so far as I can remember. This was
about Jim Wolfe and the cats; and I gave him that tale the morning after
that memorable episode. I thought he would laugh his teeth out. I had
never been so proud and happy before, and have seldom been so proud and
happy since. I saw him four years ago when I was out there. He wore a
beard, gray and venerable, that came half-way down to his knees, and yet
it was not difficult for me to recognize him. He had been married
fifty-four years. He had many children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, and also even posterity, they all said--
thousands--yet the boy to whom I had told the cat story when we were
callow juveniles was still present in that cheerful little old man.
Artimisia Briggs got married not long after refusing me. She married
Richmond, the stone mason, who was my Methodist Sunday-school teacher in
the earliest days, and he had one distinction which I envied him: at
some time or other he had hit his thumb with his hammer and the result
was a thumb nail which remained permanently twisted and distorted and
curved and pointed, like a parrot's beak. I should not consider it an
ornament now, I suppose, but it had a fascination for me then, and a
vast value, because it was the only one in the town. He was a very
kindly and considerate Sunday-school teacher, and patient and
compassionate, so he was the favorite teacher with us little chaps. In
that school they had slender oblong pasteboard blue tickets, each with a
verse from the Testament printed on it, and you could get a blue ticket
by reciting two verses. By reciting five verses you could get three blue
tickets, and you could trade these at the bookcase and borrow a book for
a week. I was under Mr. Richmond's spiritual care every now and then for
two or three years, and he was never hard upon me. I always recited the
same five verses every Sunday. He was always satisfied with the
performance. He never seemed to notice that these were the same five
foolish virgins that he had been hearing about every Sunday for months.
I always got my tickets and exchanged them for a book. They were pretty
dreary books, for there was not a bad boy in the entire bookcase. They
were _all_ good boys and good girls and drearily uninteresting, but they
were better society than none, and I was glad to have their company and
disapprove of it.
[Sidenote: (1849.)]
Twenty years ago Mr. Richmond had become possessed of Tom Sawyer's cave
in the hills three miles from town, and had made a tourist-resort of it.
In 1849 when the gold-seekers were streaming through our little town of
Hannibal, many of our grown men got the gold fever, and I think that all
the boys had it. On the Saturday holidays in summer-time we used to
borrow skiffs whose owners were not present and go down the river three
miles to the cave hollow (Missourian for "valley"), and there we staked
out claims and pretended to dig gold, panning out half a dollar a day at
first; two or three times as much, later, and by and by whole fortunes,
as our imaginations became inured to the work. Stupid and unprophetic
lads! We were doing this in play and never suspecting. Why, that cave
hollow and all the adjacent hills were made of gold! But we did not know
it. We took it for dirt. We left its rich secret in its own peaceful
possession and grew up in poverty and went wandering about the world
struggling for bread--and this because we had not the gift of prophecy.
That region was all dirt and rocks to us, yet all it needed was to be
ground up and scientifically handled and it was gold. That is to say,
the whole region was a cement-mine--and they make the finest kind of
Portland cement there now, five thousand barrels a day, with a plant
that cost $2,000,000.
For a little while Reuel Gridley attended that school of ours. He was an
elderly pupil; he was perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Then
came the Mexican War and he volunteered. A company of infantry was
raised in our town and Mr. Hickman, a tall, straight, handsome athlete
of twenty-five, was made captain of it and had a sword by his side and a
broad yellow stripe down the leg of his gray pants. And when that
company marched back and forth through the streets in its smart
uniform--which it did several times a day for drill--its evolutions were
attended by all the boys whenever the school hours permitted. I can see
that marching company yet, and I can almost feel again the consuming
desire that I had to join it. But they had no use for boys of twelve and
thirteen, and before I had a chance in another war the desire to kill
people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away.
I saw the splendid Hickman in his old age. He seemed about the oldest
man I had ever seen--an amazing and melancholy contrast with the showy
young captain I had seen preparing his warriors for carnage so many,
many years before. Hickman is dead--it is the old story. As Susy said,
"What is it all for?"
Reuel Gridley went away to the wars and we heard of him no more for
fifteen or sixteen years. Then one day in Carson City while I was having
a difficulty with an editor on the sidewalk--an editor better built for
war than I was--I heard a voice say, "Give him the best you've got, Sam,
I'm at your back." It was Reuel Gridley. He said he had not recognized
me by my face but by my drawling style of speech.
He went down to the Reese River mines about that time and presently he
lost an election bet in his mining camp, and by the terms of it he was
obliged to buy a fifty-pound sack of self-raising flour and carry it
through the town, preceded by music, and deliver it to the winner of the
bet. Of course the whole camp was present and full of fluid and
enthusiasm. The winner of the bet put up the sack at auction for the
benefit of the United States Sanitary Fund, and sold it. The excitement
grew and grew. The sack was sold over and over again for the benefit of
the Fund. The news of it came to Virginia City by telegraph. It produced
great enthusiasm, and Reuel Gridley was begged by telegraph to bring the
sack and have an auction in Virginia City. He brought it. An open
barouche was provided, also a brass band. The sack was sold over and
over again at Gold Hill, then was brought up to Virginia City toward
night and sold--and sold again, and again, and still again, netting
twenty or thirty thousand dollars for the Sanitary Fund. Gridley carried
it across California and sold it at various towns. He sold it for large
sums in Sacramento and in San Francisco. He brought it East, sold it in
New York and in various other cities, then carried it out to a great
Fair at St. Louis, and went on selling it; and finally made it up into
small cakes and sold those at a dollar apiece. First and last, the sack
of flour which had originally cost ten dollars, perhaps, netted more
than two hundred thousand dollars for the Sanitary Fund. Reuel Gridley
has been dead these many, many years--it is the old story.
In that school were the first Jews I had ever seen. It took me a good
while to get over the awe of it. To my fancy they were clothed invisibly
in the damp and cobwebby mould of antiquity. They carried me back to
Egypt, and in imagination I moved among the Pharaohs and all the shadowy
celebrities of that remote age. The name of the boys was Levin. We had a
collective name for them which was the only really large and handsome
witticism that was ever born in that Congressional district. We called
them "Twenty-two"--and even when the joke was old and had been worn
threadbare we always followed it with the explanation, to make sure that
it would be understood, "Twice Levin--twenty-two."
There were other boys whose names remain with me. Irving Ayres--but no
matter, he is dead. Then there was George Butler, whom I remember as a
child of seven wearing a blue leather belt with a brass buckle, and
hated and envied by all the boys on account of it. He was a nephew of
General Ben Butler and fought gallantly at Ball's Bluff and in several
other actions of the Civil War. He is dead, long and long ago.
Will Bowen (dead long ago), Ed Stevens (dead long ago) and John Briggs
were special mates of mine. John is still living.
[Sidenote: (1845.)]
In 1845, when I was ten years old, there was an epidemic of measles in
the town and it made a most alarming slaughter among the little people.
There was a funeral almost daily, and the mothers of the town were
nearly demented with fright. My mother was greatly troubled. She worried
over Pamela and Henry and me, and took constant and extraordinary pains
to keep us from coming into contact with the contagion. But upon
reflection I believed that her judgment was at fault. It seemed to me
that I could improve upon it if left to my own devices. I cannot
remember now whether I was frightened about the measles or not, but I
clearly remember that I grew very tired of the suspense I suffered on
account of being continually under the threat of death. I remember that
I got so weary of it and so anxious to have the matter settled one way
or the other, and promptly, that this anxiety spoiled my days and my
nights. I had no pleasure in them. I made up my mind to end this
suspense and be done with it. Will Bowen was dangerously ill with the
measles and I thought I would go down there and catch them. I entered
the house by the front way and slipped along through rooms and halls,
keeping sharp watch against discovery, and at last I reached Will's
bed-chamber in the rear of the house on the second floor and got into it
uncaptured. But that was as far as my victory reached. His mother caught
me there a moment later and snatched me out of the house and gave me a
most competent scolding and drove me away. She was so scared that she
could hardly get her words out, and her face was white. I saw that I
must manage better next time, and I did. I hung about the lane at the
rear of the house and watched through cracks in the fence until I was
convinced that the conditions were favorable; then I slipped through the
back yard and up the back way and got into the room and into the bed
with Will Bowen without being observed. I don't know how long I was in
the bed. I only remember that Will Bowen, as society, had no value for
me, for he was too sick to even notice that I was there. When I heard
his mother coming I covered up my head, but that device was a failure.
It was dead summer-time--the cover was nothing more than a limp blanket
or sheet, and anybody could see that there were two of us under it. It
didn't remain two very long. Mrs. Bowen snatched me out of the bed and
conducted me home herself, with a grip on my collar which she never
loosened until she delivered me into my mother's hands along with her
opinion of that kind of a boy.
It was a good case of measles that resulted. It brought me within a
shade of death's door. It brought me to where I no longer took any
interest in anything, but, on the contrary, felt a total absence of
interest--which was most placid and enchanting. I have never enjoyed
anything in my life any more than I enjoyed dying that time. I _was_, in
effect, dying. The word had been passed and the family notified to
assemble around the bed and see me off. I knew them all. There was no
doubtfulness in my vision. They were all crying, but that did not affect
me. I took but the vaguest interest in it, and that merely because I was
the centre of all this emotional attention and was gratified by it and
vain of it.
When Dr. Cunningham had made up his mind that nothing more could be done
for me he put bags of hot ashes all over me. He put them on my breast,
on my wrists, on my ankles; and so, very much to his astonishment--and
doubtless to my regret--he dragged me back into this world and set me
going again.
[_Dictated July 26, 1907._] In an article entitled "England's Ovation to
Mark Twain," Sydney Brooks--but never mind that, now.
I was in Oxford by seven o'clock that evening (June 25, 1907), and
trying on the scarlet gown which the tailor had been constructing, and
found it right--right and surpassingly becoming. At half past ten the
next morning we assembled at All Souls College and marched thence,
gowned, mortar-boarded and in double file, down a long street to the
Sheldonian Theatre, between solid walls of the populace, very much
hurrah'd and limitlessly kodak'd. We made a procession of considerable
length and distinction and picturesqueness, with the Chancellor, Lord
Curzon, late Viceroy of India, in his rich robe of black and gold, in
the lead, followed by a pair of trim little boy train-bearers, and the
train-bearers followed by the young Prince Arthur of Connaught, who was
to be made a D.C.L. The detachment of D.C.L.'s were followed by the
Doctors of Science, and these by the Doctors of Literature, and these
in turn by the Doctors of Music. Sidney Colvin marched in front of me; I
was coupled with Sidney Lee, and Kipling followed us; General Booth, of
the Salvation Army, was in the squadron of D.C.L.'s.
Our journey ended, we were halted in a fine old hall whence we could
see, through a corridor of some length, the massed audience in the
theatre. Here for a little time we moved about and chatted and made
acquaintanceships; then the D.C.L.'s were summoned, and they marched
through that corridor and the shouting began in the theatre. It would be
some time before the Doctors of Literature and of Science would be
called for, because each of those D.C.L.'s had to have a couple of Latin
speeches made over him before his promotion would be complete--one by
the Regius Professor of Civil Law, the other by the Chancellor. After a
while I asked Sir William Ramsay if a person might smoke here and not
get shot. He said, "Yes," but that whoever did it and got caught would
be fined a guinea, and perhaps hanged later. He said he knew of a place
where we could accomplish at least as much as half of a smoke before any
informers would be likely to chance upon us, and he was ready to show
the way to any who might be willing to risk the guinea and the hanging.
By request he led the way, and Kipling, Sir Norman Lockyer and I
followed. We crossed an unpopulated quadrangle and stood under one of
its exits--an archway of massive masonry--and there we lit up and began
to take comfort. The photographers soon arrived, but they were courteous
and friendly and gave us no trouble, and we gave them none. They grouped
us in all sorts of ways and photographed us at their diligent leisure,
while we smoked and talked. We were there more than an hour; then we
returned to headquarters, happy, content, and greatly refreshed.
Presently we filed into the theatre, under a very satisfactory hurrah,
and waited in a crimson column, dividing the crowded pit through the
middle, until each of us in his turn should be called to stand before
the Chancellor and hear our merits set forth in sonorous Latin.
Meantime, Kipling and I wrote autographs until some good kind soul
interfered in our behalf and procured for us a rest.
I will now save what is left of my modesty by quoting a paragraph from
Sydney Brooks's "Ovation."
* * * * *
Let those stars take the place of it for the present. Sydney Brooks has
done it well. It makes me proud to read it; as proud as I was in that
old day, sixty-two years ago, when I lay dying, the centre of
attraction, with one eye piously closed upon the fleeting vanities of
this life--an excellent effect--and the other open a crack to observe
the tears, the sorrow, the admiration--all for me--all for me!
Ah, that was the proudest moment of my long life--until Oxford!
* * * * *