A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of New
York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an
independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage
over these gentlemen, and that was--good character. It was easy to see
by the newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good
name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter years
they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at the
very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret,
there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort "riling" the deeps of my
happiness, and that was--the having to hear my name bandied about in
familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more
disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came
quick and sharp. She said:
You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed
of--not one. Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend
what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see
if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a
public canvass with them.
It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night.
But, after all, I could not recede.
I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight. As I was looking
listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph,
and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.
PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a
candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to
be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin
China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor
native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch,
their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation.
Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose
suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?
I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge!
I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn't
know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I was
crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at
all. The next morning the same paper had this--nothing more:
SIGNIFICANT.--Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively
silent about the Cochin China perjury.
[Mem.--During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in
any other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."]
Next came the Gazette, with this:
WANTED TO KNOW.--Will the new candidate for Governor deign to
explain to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote
for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana
losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these
things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his
"trunk" (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to
give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and
feathered him, and rode him on a rail; and then advised him to leave
a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp.
Will he do this?
Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was
in Montana in my life.
[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as, "Twain, the Montana
Thief."]
I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift a
desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it.
One day this met my eye:
THE LIE NAILED.--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan,
Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty
Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's
vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble
standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is
a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in fact.
It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means
resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the
dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander.
When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the
innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven
to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful
vengeance upon the traducer. But no! let us leave him to the agony
of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better
of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer
bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and
no court punish the perpetrators of the deed).
The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed
with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the
"outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking
furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came,
and taking off such property as they could carry when they went.
And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered
Mr. Blank's grandfather. More: I had never even heard of him or
mentioned him up to that day and date.
[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always
referred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."]
The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:
A SWEET CANDIDATE.--Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a
blighting speech at the mass-meeting of the Independents last night,
didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated that he
had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two
places--sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth,
and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried
hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did
not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned
creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A certain man
was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of
beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents
to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We
have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The
voice of the people demands in thunder tones, "WHO WAS THAT MAN?"
It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was
really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three
long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine or
liquor or any kind.
[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw
myself, confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue
of that journal without a pang--notwithstanding I knew that with
monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]
By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my
mail matter. This form was common:
How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which
was beging. POL. PRY.
And this:
There is things which you Have done which is unbeknowens to anybody
but me. You better trot out a few dots, to yours truly, or you'll
hear through the papers from
HANDY ANDY.
This is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was
surfeited, if desirable.
Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesale
bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of
blackmailing to me.
[In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain the Filthy
Corruptionist" and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."]
By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to all
the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of
my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any
longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following
appeared in one of the papers the very next day:
BEHOLD THE MAN!--The independent candidate still maintains silence.
Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been
amply proved, and they have been indorsed and reindorsed by his own
eloquent silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted.
Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous
Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your
incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your
Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him--ponder him well--and then say if
you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this
dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his
mouth in denial of any one of them!
There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep
humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless charges
and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the
very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity,
and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its
inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me
into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get
his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened.
This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused
of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food
for the foundling' hospital when I warden. I was wavering--wavering.
And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution
that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children,
of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush
onto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and
call me PA!
I gave it up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equal
to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the state of New York,
and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of
spirit signed it, "Truly yours, once a decent man, but now
"MARK TWAIN, LP., M.T., B.S., D.T., F.C., and L.E."