Chapter XXXVI: of the Mississippi book (27)

He went on to score Ament, to compare the missionary policy in China to that of the Pawnee Indians, and to propose for him a monument--subscriptions to be sent to the American Board. He denounced the national policies in Africa, China, and the Philippines, and showed by the reports and by the private letters of soldiers home, how cruel and barbarous and fiendish had been the warfare made by those whose avowed purpose was to carry the blessed light of civilization and Gospel “to the benighted native”--how in very truth these priceless blessings had been handed on the point of a bayonet to the “Person Sitting in Darkness.”

Mark Twain never wrote anything more scorching, more penetrating in its sarcasm, more fearful in its revelation of injustice and hypocrisy, than his article “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” He put aquafortis on all the raw places, and when it was finished he himself doubted the wisdom of printing it. Howells, however, agreed that it should be published, and “it ought to be illustrated by Dan Beard,” he added, “with such pictures as he made for the Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but you'd better hang yourself afterward.”

Meeting Beard a few days later, Clemens mentioned the matter and said:

“So if you make the pictures, you hang with me.”

But pictures were not required. It was published in the North American Review for February, 1901, as the opening article; after which the cyclone. Two storms moving in opposite directions produce a cyclone, and the storms immediately developed; one all for Mark Twain and his principles, the other all against him. Every paper in England and America commented on it editorially, with bitter denunciations or with eager praise, according to their lights and convictions.

At 14 West Tenth Street letters, newspaper clippings, documents poured in by the bushel--laudations, vituperations, denunciations, vindications; no such tumult ever occurred in a peaceful literary home. It was really as if he had thrown a great missile into the human hive, one-half of which regarded it as a ball of honey and the remainder as a cobblestone. Whatever other effect it may have had, it left no thinking person unawakened.

Clemens reveled in it. W. A. Rogers, in Harper's Weekly, caricatured him as Tom Sawyer in a snow fort, assailed by the shower of snowballs, “having the time of his life.” Another artist, Fred Lewis, pictured him as Huck Finn with a gun.

The American Board was naturally disturbed. The Ament clipping which Clemens had used had been public property for more than a month--its authenticity never denied; but it was immediately denied now, and the cable kept hot with inquiries.

The Rev. Judson Smith, one of the board, took up the defense of Dr. Ament, declaring him to be one who had suffered for the cause, and asked Mark Twain, whose “brilliant article,” he said, “would produce an effect quite beyond the reach of plain argument,” not to do an innocent man an injustice. Clemens in the same paper replied that such was not his intent, that Mr. Ament in his report had simply arraigned himself.

Then it suddenly developed that the cable report had “grossly exaggerated” the amount of Mr. Ament's collections. Instead of thirteen times the indemnity it should have read “one and a third times” the indemnity; whereupon, in another open letter, the board demanded retraction and apology. Clemens would not fail to make the apology--at least he would explain. It was precisely the kind of thing that would appeal to him--the delicate moral difference between a demand thirteen times as great as it should be and a demand that was only one and a third times the correct amount. “To My Missionary Critics,” in the North American Review for April (1901), was his formal and somewhat lengthy reply.

“I have no prejudice against apologies,” he wrote. “I trust I shall never withhold one when it is due.”

He then proceeded to make out his case categorically. Touching the exaggerated indemnity, he said:

To Dr. Smith the “thirteen-fold-extra” clearly stood for “theft and extortion,” and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right. He manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere “one-third” a little thing like that was some other than “theft and extortion.” Why, only the board knows!

I will try to explain this difficult problem so that the board can get an idea of it. If a pauper owes me a dollar and I catch him unprotected and make him pay me fourteen dollars thirteen of it is “theft and extortion.” If I make him pay only one dollar thirty-three and a third cents the thirty-three and a third cents are “theft and extortion,” just the same.

I will put it in another way still simpler. If a man owes me one dog--any kind of a dog, the breed is of no consequence--and I--but let it go; the board would never understand it. It can't understand these involved and difficult things.

He offered some further illustrations, including the “Tale of a King and His Treasure” and another tale entitled “The Watermelons.”

I have it now. Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows,
I had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a
scrupulously good fellow though devious. He was preparing to
qualify for a place on the board, for there was going to be a
vacancy by superannuation in about five years. This was down South,
in the slavery days. It was the nature of the negro then, as now,
to steal watermelons. They stole three of the melons of an adoptive
brother of mine, the only good ones he had. I suspected three of a
neighbor's negroes, but there was no proof, and, besides, the
watermelons in those negroes' private patches were all green and
small and not up to indemnity standard. But in the private patches
of three other negroes there was a number of competent melons. I
consulted with my comrade, the understudy of the board. He said
that if I would approve his arrangements he would arrange. I said,
“Consider me the board; I approve; arrange.” So he took a gun and
went and collected three large melons for my brother-on-the-
halfshell, and one over. I was greatly pleased and asked:

“Who gets the extra one?”
“Widows and orphans.”

“A good idea, too. Why didn't you take thirteen?”

“It would have been wrong; a crime, in fact-theft and extortion.”

“What is the one-third extra--the odd melon--the same?”

It caused him to reflect. But there was no result.

The justice of the peace was a stern man. On the trial he found
fault with the scheme and required us to explain upon what we based
our strange conduct--as he called it. The understudy said:

“On the custom of the niggers. They all do it.”--[The point had
been made by the board that it was the Chinese custom to make the
inhabitants of a village responsible for individual crimes; and
custom, likewise, to collect a third in excess of the damage, such
surplus having been applied to the support of widows and orphans of
the slain converts.]

The justice forgot his dignity and descended to sarcasm.

“Custom of the niggers! Are our morals so inadequate that we have
to borrow of niggers?”

Then he said to the jury: “Three melons were owing; they were
collected from persons not proven to owe them: this is theft; they
were collected by compulsion: this is extortion. A melon was added
for the widows and orphans. It was owed by no one. It is another
theft, another extortion. Return it whence it came, with the
others. It is not permissible here to apply to any purpose goods
dishonestly obtained; not even to the feeding of widows and orphans,
for this would be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it.”

He said it in open court, before everybody, and to me it did not
seem very kind.

It was in the midst of the tumult that Clemens, perhaps feeling the need of sacred melody, wrote to Andrew Carnegie:

DEAR SIR & FRIEND,--You seem to be in prosperity. Could you lend an admirer $1.50 to buy a hymn-book with? God will bless you. I feel it; I know it.

N. B.--If there should be other applications, this one not to count.

Yours, MARK.

P. S.-Don't send the hymn-book; send the money; I want to make the selection myself.

Carnegie answered:

Nothing less than a two-dollar & a half hymn-book gilt will do for
you. Your place in the choir (celestial) demands that & you shall
have it.

There's a new Gospel of Saint Mark in the North American which I
like better than anything I've read for many a day.

I am willing to borrow a thousand dollars to distribute that sacred
message in proper form, & if the author don't object may I send that
sum, when I can raise it, to the Anti-Imperialist League, Boston, to
which I am a contributor, the only missionary work I am responsible
for.

Just tell me you are willing & many thousands of the holy little
missals will go forth. This inimitable satire is to become a
classic. I count among my privileges in life that I know you, the
author.

Perhaps a few more of the letters invited by Mark Twain's criticism of missionary work in China may still be of interest to the reader: Frederick T. Cook, of the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association, wrote: “I hail you as the Voltaire of America. It is a noble distinction. God bless you and see that you weary not in well-doing in this noblest, sublimest of crusades.”

Ministers were by no means all against him. The associate pastor of the Every-day Church, in Boston, sent this line: “I want to thank you for your matchless article in the current North American. It must make converts of well-nigh all who read it.”

But a Boston school-teacher was angry. “I have been reading the North American,” she wrote, “and I am filled with shame and remorse that I have dreamed of asking you to come to Boston to talk to the teachers.”

On the outside of the envelope Clemens made this pencil note:

“Now, I suppose I offended that young lady by having an opinion of my own, instead of waiting and copying hers. I never thought. I suppose she must be as much as twenty-five, and probably the only patriot in the country.”

A critic with a sense of humor asked: “Please excuse seeming impertinence, but were you ever adjudged insane? Be honest. How much money does the devil give you for arraigning Christianity and missionary causes?”

But there were more of the better sort. Edward S. Martin, in a grateful letter, said: “How gratifying it is to feel that we have a man among us who understands the rarity of the plain truth, and who delights to utter it, and has the gift of doing so without cant and with not too much seriousness.”

Sir Hiram Maxim wrote: “I give you my candid opinion that what you have done is of very great value to the civilization of the world. There is no man living whose words carry greater weight than your own, as no one's writings are so eagerly sought after by all classes.”

Clemens himself in his note-book set down this aphorism:

“Do right and you will be conspicuous.”

CCXV. SUMMER AT “THE LAIR”

In June Clemens took the family to Saranac Lake, to Ampersand. They occupied a log cabin which he called “The Lair,” on the south shore, near the water's edge, a remote and beautiful place where, as had happened before, they were so comfortable and satisfied that they hoped to return another summer. There were swimming and boating and long walks in the woods; the worry and noise of the world were far away. They gave little enough attention to the mails. They took only a weekly paper, and were likely to allow it to lie in the postoffice uncalled for. Clemens, especially, loved the place, and wrote to Twichell:

I am on the front porch (lower one-main deck) of our little bijou of
a dwelling-house. The lake edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under
me that I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-poxed with
rain splashes--for there is a heavy down pour. It is charmingly
like sitting snuggled up on a ship's deck with the stretching sea
all around but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rainstorm
is depressing, while here of course the effect engendered is just a
deep sense of comfort & contentment. The heavy forest shuts us
solidly in on three sides--there are no neighbors. There are
beautiful little tan-colored impudent squirrels about. They take
tea 5 P.M. (not invited) at the table in the woods where Jean does
my typewriting, & one of them has been brave enough to sit upon
Jean's knee with his tail curved over his back & munch his food.
They come to dinner 7 P.M. on the front porch (not invited), but
Clara drives them away. It is an occupation which requires some
industry & attention to business. They all have the one name
--Blennerhasset, from Burr's friend--& none of them answers to it
except when hungry.

Clemens could work at “The Lair,” often writing in shady seclusions along the shore, and he finished there the two-part serial,--[ Published in Harper's Magazine for January and February, 1902.]--“The Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” intended originally as a burlesque on Sherlock Holmes. It did not altogether fulfil its purpose, and is hardly to be ranked as one of Mark Twain's successes. It contains, however, one paragraph at least by which it is likely to be remembered, a hoax--his last one--on the reader. It runs as follows:

It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and
laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and
flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind nature
for the wingless wild things that have their home in the tree-tops
and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their
purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the
slanting sweep of woodland, the sensuous fragrance of innumerable
deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere, far in the
empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing;
everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and the peace of God.

The warm light and luxury of this paragraph are factitious. The careful reader will, note that its various accessories are ridiculously associated, and only the most careless reader will accept the oesophagus as a bird. But it disturbed a great many admirers, and numerous letters of inquiry came wanting to know what it was all about. Some suspected the joke and taunted him with it; one such correspondent wrote:

MY DEAR MARK TWAIN,--Reading your “Double-Barrelled Detective Story”
in the January Harper's late one night I came to the paragraph where
you so beautifully describe “a crisp and spicy morning in early
October.” I read along down the paragraph, conscious only of its
woozy sound, until I brought up with a start against your oesophagus
in the empty sky. Then I read the paragraph again. Oh, Mark Twain!
Mark Twain! How could you do it? Put a trap like that into the
midst of a tragical story? Do serenity and peace brood over you
after you have done such a thing?

Who lit the lilacs, and which end up do they hang? When did larches
begin to flame, and who set out the pomegranates in that canyon?
What are deciduous flowers, and do they always “bloom in the fall,
tra la”?

I have been making myself obnoxious to various people by demanding
their opinion of that paragraph without telling them the name of the
author. They say, “Very well done.” “The alliteration is so
pretty.” “What's an oesophagus, a bird?” “What's it all mean,
anyway?” I tell them it means Mark Twain, and that an oesophagus is
a kind of swallow. Am I right? Or is it a gull? Or a gullet?

Hereafter if you must write such things won't you please be so kind
as to label them?
Very sincerely yours,
ALLETTA F. DEAN.

Mark Twain to Miss Dean:

Don't you give that oesophagus away again or I'll never trust you
with another privacy!

So many wrote, that Clemens finally felt called upon to make public confession, and as one searching letter had been mailed from Springfield, Massachusetts, he made his reply through the Republican of that city. After some opening comment he said:

I published a short story lately & it was in that that I put the
oesophagus. I will say privately that I expected it to bother some
people--in fact, that was the intention--but the harvest has been
larger than I was calculating upon. The oesophagus has gathered in
the guilty and the innocent alike, whereas I was only fishing for
the innocent--the innocent and confiding.

He quoted a letter from a schoolmaster in the Philippines who thought the passage beautiful with the exception of the curious creature which “slept upon motionless wings.” Said Clemens:

Do you notice? Nothing in the paragraph disturbed him but that one
word. It shows that that paragraph was most ably constructed for
the deception it was intended to put upon the reader. It was my
intention that it should read plausibly, and it is now plain that it
does; it was my intention that it should be emotional and touching,
and you see yourself that it fetched this public instructor. Alas!
if I had but left that one treacherous word out I should have
scored, scored everywhere, and the paragraph would have slidden
through every reader's sensibilities like oil and left not a
suspicion behind.

The other sample inquiry is from a professor in a New England
university. It contains one naughty word (which I cannot bear to
suppress), but he is not in the theological department, so it is no
harm:

“DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--'Far in the empty sky a solitary oesophagus
slept upon motionless wing.'

“It is not often I get a chance to read much periodical literature,
but I have just gone through at this belated period, with much
gratification and edification, your 'Double-Barrelled Detective
Story.'

“But what in hell is an oesophagus? I keep one myself, but it never
sleeps in the air or anywhere else. My profession is to deal with
words, and oesophagus interested me the moment I lighted upon it.
But, as a companion of my youth used to say, 'I'll be eternally,
co-eternally cussed' if I can make it out. Is it a joke or am I an
ignoramus?”

Between you and me, I was almost ashamed of having fooled that man,
but for pride's sake I was not going to say so. I wrote and told
him it was a joke--and that is what I am now saying to my
Springfield inquirer. And I told him to carefully read the whole
paragraph and he would find not a vestige of sense in any detail of
it. This also I recommend to my Springfield inquirer.

I have confessed. I am sorry--partially. I will not do so any
more--for the present. Don't ask me any more questions; let the
oesophagus have a rest--on his same old motionless wing.

He wrote Twichell that the story had been a six-day 'tour de force', twenty-five thousand words, and he adds:

How long it takes a literary seed to sprout sometimes! This seed was
planted in your house many years ago when you sent me to bed with a
book not heard of by me until then--Sherlock Holmes....
I've done a grist of writing here this summer, but not for
publication soon, if ever. I did write two satisfactory articles
for early print, but I've burned one of them & have buried the other
in my large box of posthumous stuff. I've got stacks of literary
remains piled up there.

Early in August Clemens went with H. H. Rogers in his yacht Kanawha on a cruise to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Rogers had made up a party, including ex-Speaker Reed, Dr. Rice, and Col. A. G. Paine. Young Harry Rogers also made one of the party. Clemens kept a log of the cruise, certain entries of which convey something of its spirit. On the 11th, at Yarmouth, he wrote:

Fog-bound. The garrison went ashore. Officers visited the yacht in
the evening & said an anvil had been missed. Mr. Rogers paid for
the anvil.

August 13th. There is a fine picture-gallery here; the sheriff
photographed the garrison, with the exception of Harry (Rogers) and
Mr. Clemens.

August 14th. Upon complaint of Mr. Reed another dog was procured.
He said he had been a sailor all his life, and considered it
dangerous to trust a ship to a dog-watch with only one dog in it.

Poker, for a change.

August 15th. To Rockland, Maine, in the afternoon, arriving about 6
P.M. In the night Dr. Rice baited the anchor with his winnings &
caught a whale 90 feet long. He said so himself. It is thought
that if there had been another witness like Dr. Rice the whale would
have been longer.

August 16th. We could have had a happy time in Bath but for the
interruptions caused by people who wanted Mr. Reed to explain votes
of the olden time or give back the money. Mr. Rogers recouped them.

Another anvil missed. The descendant of Captain Kidd is the only
person who does not blush for these incidents. Harry and Mr.
Clemens blush continually. It is believed that if the rest of the
garrison were like these two the yacht would be welcome everywhere
instead of being quarantined by the police in all the ports. Mr.
Clemens & Harry have attracted a great deal of attention, & men have
expressed a resolve to turn over a new leaf & copy after them from
this out.

Evening. Judge Cohen came over from another yacht to pay his
respects to Harry and Mr. Clemens, he having heard of their
reputation from the clergy of these coasts. He was invited by the
gang to play poker apparently as a courtesy & in a spirit of seeming
hospitality, he not knowing them & taking it all at par. Mr. Rogers
lent him clothes to go home in.

August 17th. The Reformed Statesman growling and complaining again
--not in a frank, straightforward way, but talking at the Commodore,
while letting on to be talking to himself. This time he was
dissatisfied about the anchor watch; said it was out of date,
untrustworthy, & for real efficiency didn't begin with the
Waterbury, & was going on to reiterate, as usual, that he had been a
pilot all his life & blamed if he ever saw, etc., etc., etc.

But he was not allowed to finish. We put him ashore at Portland.

That is to say, Reed landed at Portland, the rest of the party returning with the yacht.

“We had a noble good time in the yacht,” Clemens wrote Twichell on their return. “We caught a Chinee missionary and drowned him.”

Twichell had been invited to make one of the party, and this letter was to make him feel sorry he had not accepted.

CCXVI. RIVERDALE--A YALE DEGREE

The Clemens household did not return to 14 West Tenth Street. They spent a week in Elmira at the end of September, and after a brief stop in New York took up their residence on the northern metropolitan boundary, at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, in the old Appleton home. They had permanently concluded not to return to Hartford. They had put the property there into an agent's hands for sale. Mrs. Clemens never felt that she had the strength to enter the house again.

They had selected the Riverdale place with due consideration. They decided that they must have easy access to the New York center, but they wished also to have the advantage of space and spreading lawn and trees, large rooms, and light. The Appleton homestead provided these things. It was a house built in the first third of the last century by one of the Morris family, so long prominent in New York history. On passing into the Appleton ownership it had been enlarged and beautified and named “Holbrook Hall.” It overlooked the Hudson and the Palisades. It had associations: the Roosevelt family had once lived there, Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall, and others of their intellectual rank had been entertained there during its occupation by the first Appleton, the founder of the publishing firm. The great hall of the added wing was its chief feature. Clemens once remembered:

“We drifted from room to room on our tour of inspection, always with a growing doubt as to whether we wanted that house or not; but at last, when we arrived in a dining-room that was 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and had two great fireplaces in it, that settled it.”

There were pleasant neighbors at Riverdale, and had it not been for the illnesses that seemed always ready to seize upon that household the home there might have been ideal. They loved the place presently, so much so that they contemplated buying it, but decided that it was too costly. They began to prospect for other places along the Hudson shore. They were anxious to have a home again--one that they could call their own.

Among the many pleasant neighbors at Riverdale were the Dodges, the Quincy Adamses, and the Rev. Mr. Carstensen, a liberal-minded minister with whom Clemens easily affiliated. Clemens and Carstensen visited back and forth and exchanged views. Once Mr. Carstensen told him that he was going to town to dine with a party which included the Reverend Gottheil, a Catholic bishop, an Indian Buddhist, and a Chinese scholar of the Confucian faith, after which they were all going to a Yiddish theater. Clemens said:

“Well, there's only one more thing you need to make the party complete--that is, either Satan or me.”

Howells often came to Riverdale. He was living in a New York apartment, and it was handy and made an easy and pleasant outing for him. He says:

“I began to see them again on something like the sweet old terms. They lived far more unpretentiously than they used, and I think with a notion of economy, which they had never very successfully practised. I recall that at the end of a certain year in Hartford, when they had been saving and paying cash for everything, Clemens wrote, reminding me of their avowed experiment, and asking me to guess how many bills they had at New-Year's; he hastened to say that a horse-car would not have held them. At Riverdale they kept no carriage, and there was a snowy night when I drove up to their handsome old mansion in the station carryall, which was crusted with mud, as from the going down of the Deluge after transporting Noah and his family from the Ark to whatever point they decided to settle provisionally. But the good talk, the rich talk, the talk that could never suffer poverty of mind or soul was there, and we jubilantly found ourselves again in our middle youth.”

Both Howells and Clemens were made doctors of letters by Yale that year and went over in October to receive their degrees. It was Mark Twain's second Yale degree, and it was the highest rank that an American institution of learning could confer.

Twichell wrote:

I want you to understand, old fellow, that it will be in its intention the highest public compliment, and emphatically so in your case, for it will be tendered you by a corporation of gentlemen, the majority of whom do not at all agree with the views on important questions which you have lately promulgated in speech and in writing, and with which you are identified to the public mind. They grant, of course, your right to hold and express those views, though for themselves they don't like 'em; but in awarding you the proposed laurel they will make no count of that whatever. Their action will appropriately signify simply and solely their estimate of your merit and rank as a man of letters, and so, as I say, the compliment of it will be of the pure, unadulterated quality.

Howells was not especially eager to go, and tried to conspire with Clemens to arrange some excuse which would keep them at home.

I remember with satisfaction [he wrote] our joint success in keeping away from the Concord Centennial in 1875, and I have been thinking we might help each other in this matter of the Yale Anniversary. What are your plans for getting left, or shall you trust to inspiration?

Their plans did not avail. Both Howells and Clemens went to New Haven to receive their honors.

When they had returned, Howells wrote formally, as became the new rank:

DEAR SIR,--I have long been an admirer of your complete works,
several of which I have read, and I am with you shoulder to shoulder
in the cause of foreign missions. I would respectfully request a
personal interview, and if you will appoint some day and hour most
inconvenient to you I will call at your baronial hall. I cannot
doubt, from the account of your courtesy given me by the Twelve
Apostles, who once visited you in your Hartford home and were
mistaken for a syndicate of lightning-rod men, that our meeting will
be mutually agreeable.

Yours truly,
W. D. HOWELLS.
DR. CLEMENS.

CCXVII. MARK TWAIN IN POLITICS

There was a campaign for the mayoralty of New York City that fall, with Seth Low on the Fusion ticket against Edward M. Shepard as the Tammany candidate. Mark Twain entered the arena to try to defeat Tammany Hall. He wrote and he spoke in favor of clean city government and police reform. He was savagely in earnest and openly denounced the clan of Croker, individually and collectively. He joined a society called 'The Acorns'; and on the 17th of October, at a dinner given by the order at the Waldorf-Astoria, delivered a fierce arraignment, in which he characterized Croker as the Warren Hastings of New York. His speech was really a set of extracts from Edmund Burke's great impeachment of Hastings, substituting always the name of Croker, and paralleling his career with that of the ancient boss of the East India Company.

It was not a humorous speech. It was too denunciatory for that. It probably contained less comic phrasing than any former effort. There is hardly even a suggestion of humor from beginning to end. It concluded with this paraphrase of Burke's impeachment:

I impeach Richard Croker of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach
him in the name of the people, whose trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the people of America, whose
national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of
justice which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has
cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every
age, rank, situation, and condition of life.

The Acorn speech was greatly relied upon for damage to the Tammany ranks, and hundreds of thousands of copies of it were printed and circulated.--[The “Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany” speech had originally been written as an article for the North American Review.]

Clemens was really heart and soul in the campaign. He even joined a procession that marched up Broadway, and he made a speech to a great assemblage at Broadway and Leonard Street, when, as he said, he had been sick abed two days and, according to the doctor, should be in bed then.

But I would not stay at home for a nursery disease, and that's what
I've got. Now, don't let this leak out all over town, but I've been
doing some indiscreet eating--that's all. It wasn't drinking. If
it had been I shouldn't have said anything about it.

I ate a banana. I bought it just to clinch the Italian vote for
fusion, but I got hold of a Tammany banana by mistake. Just one
little nub of it on the end was nice and white. That was the
Shepard end. The other nine-tenths were rotten. Now that little
white end won't make the rest of the banana good. The nine-tenths
will make that little nub rotten, too.

We must get rid of the whole banana, and our Acorn Society is going
to do its share, for it is pledged to nothing but the support of
good government all over the United States. We will elect the
President next time.

It won't be I, for I have ruined my chances by joining the Acorns,
and there can be no office-holders among us.

There was a movement which Clemens early nipped in the bud--to name a political party after him.

“I should be far from willing to have a political party named after me,” he wrote, “and I would not be willing to belong to a party which allowed its members to have political aspirations or push friends forward for political preferment.”

In other words, he was a knight-errant; his sole purpose for being in politics at all--something he always detested--was to do what he could for the betterment of his people.

He had his reward, for when Election Day came, and the returns were in, the Fusion ticket had triumphed and Tammany had fallen. Clemens received his share of the credit. One paper celebrated him in verse:

Who killed Croker?
I, said Mark Twain,
I killed Croker,
I, the jolly joker!

Among Samuel Clemens's literary remains there is an outline plan for a “Casting-Vote party,” whose main object was “to compel the two great parties to nominate their best man always.” It was to be an organization of an infinite number of clubs throughout the nation, no member of which should seek or accept a nomination for office in any political appointment, but in each case should cast its vote as a unit for the candidate of one of the two great political parties, requiring that the man be of clean record and honest purpose.

From constable up to President [runs his final clause] there is no
office for which the two great parties cannot furnish able, clean,
and acceptable men. Whenever the balance of power shall be lodged
in a permanent third party, with no candidate of its own and no
function but to cast its whole vote for the best man put forward by
the Republicans and Democrats, these two parties will select the
best man they have in their ranks. Good and clean government will
follow, let its party complexion be what it may, and the country
will be quite content.

It was a Utopian idea, very likely, as human nature is made; full of that native optimism which was always overflowing and drowning his gloomier logic. Clearly he forgot his despair of humanity when he formulated that document, and there is a world of unselfish hope in these closing lines:

If in the hands of men who regard their citizenship as a high trust
this scheme shall fail upon trial a better must be sought, a better
must be invented; for it cannot be well or safe to let the present
political conditions continue indefinitely. They can be improved,
and American citizenship should arouse up from its disheartenment
and see that it is done.

Had this document been put into type and circulated it might have founded a true Mark Twain party.

Clemens made not many more speeches that autumn, closing the year at last with the “Founder's Night” speech at The Players, the short address which, ending on the stroke of midnight, dedicates each passing year to the memory of Edwin Booth, and pledges each new year in a loving-cup passed in his honor.

CCXVIII. NEW INTERESTS AND INVESTMENTS

The spirit which a year earlier had prompted Mark Twain to prepare his “Salutation from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century” inspired him now to conceive the “Stupendous International Procession,” a gruesome pageant described in a document (unpublished) of twenty-two typewritten pages which begin:

THE STUPENDOUS PROCESSION

At the appointed hour it moved across the world in following order:

The Twentieth Century

A fair young creature, drunk and disorderly, borne in the arms of
Satan. Banner with motto, “Get What You Can, Keep What You Get.”

Guard of Honor--Monarchs, Presidents, Tammany Bosses, Burglars, Land
Thieves, Convicts, etc., appropriately clothed and bearing the
symbols of their several trades.

Christendom

A majestic matron in flowing robes drenched with blood. On her head
a golden crown of thorns; impaled on its spines the bleeding heads
of patriots who died for their countries Boers, Boxers, Filipinos;
in one hand a slung-shot, in the other a Bible, open at the text “Do
unto others,” etc. Protruding from pocket bottle labeled “We bring
you the blessings of civilization.” Necklace-handcuffs and a
burglar's jimmy.
Supporters--At one elbow Slaughter, at the other Hypocrisy.
Banner with motto--“Love Your Neighbor's Goods as Yourself.”
Ensign--The Black Flag.
Guard of Honor--Missionaries and German, French, Russian, and
British soldiers laden with loot.

And so on, with a section for each nation of the earth, headed each by the black flag, each bearing horrid emblems, instruments of torture, mutilated prisoners, broken hearts, floats piled with bloody corpses. At the end of all, banners inscribed:

“All White Men are Born Free and Equal.”

“Christ died to make men holy,
Christ died to make men free.”

with the American flag furled and draped in crepe, and the shade of Lincoln towering vast and dim toward the sky, brooding with sorrowful aspect over the far-reaching pageant. With much more of the same sort. It is a fearful document, too fearful, we may believe, for Mrs. Clemens ever to consent to its publication.

Advancing years did little toward destroying Mark Twain's interest in human affairs. At no time in his life was he more variously concerned and employed than in his sixty-seventh year--matters social, literary, political, religious, financial, scientific. He was always alive, young, actively cultivating or devising interests--valuable and otherwise, though never less than important to him.

He had plenty of money again, for one thing, and he liked to find dazzlingly new ways for investing it. As in the old days, he was always putting “twenty-five or forty thousand dollars,” as he said, into something that promised multiplied returns. Howells tells how he found him looking wonderfully well, and when he asked the name of his elixir he learned that it was plasmon.

I did not immediately understand that plasmon was one of the
investments which he had made from “the substance of things hoped
for,” and in the destiny of a disastrous disappointment. But after
paying off the creditors of his late publishing firm he had to do
something with his money, and it was not his fault if he did not
make a fortune out of plasmon.

It was just at this period (the beginning of 1902) that he was promoting with his capital and enthusiasm the plasmon interests in America, investing in it one of the “usual amounts,” promising to make Howells over again body and soul with the life-giving albuminate. Once he wrote him explicit instructions:

Yes--take it as a medicine--there is nothing better, nothing surer
of desired results. If you wish to be elaborate--which isn't
necessary--put a couple of heaping teaspoonfuls of the powder in an
inch of milk & stir until it is a paste; put in some more milk and
stir the paste to a thin gruel; then fill up the glass and drink.

Or, stir it into your soup.

Or, into your oatmeal.

Or, use any method you like, so's you get it down--that is the only
essential.

He put another “usual sum” about this time in a patent cash register which was acknowledged to be “a promise rather than a performance,” and remains so until this day.

He capitalized a patent spiral hat-pin, warranted to hold the hat on in any weather, and he had a number of the pins handsomely made to present to visitors of the sex naturally requiring that sort of adornment and protection. It was a pretty and ingenious device and apparently effective enough, though it failed to secure his invested thousands.

He invested a lesser sum in shares of the Booklover's Library, which was going to revolutionize the reading world, and which at least paid a few dividends. Even the old Tennessee land will-o'-the-wisp-long since repudiated and forgotten--when it appeared again in the form of a possible equity in some overlooked fragment, kindled a gentle interest, and was added to his list of ventures.

He made one substantial investment at this period. They became more and more in love with the Hudson environment, its beauty and its easy access to New York. Their house was what they liked it to be--a gathering--place for friends and the world's notables, who could reach it easily and quickly from New York. They had a steady procession of company when Mrs. Clemens's health would permit, and during a single week in the early part of this year entertained guests at no less than seventeen out of their twenty-one meals, and for three out of the seven nights--not an unusual week. Their plan for buying a home on the Hudson ended with the purchase of what was known as Hillcrest, or the Casey place, at Tarrytown, overlooking that beautiful stretch of river, the Tappan Zee, close to the Washington Irving home. The beauty of its outlook and surroundings appealed to them all. The house was handsome and finely placed, and they planned to make certain changes that would adapt it to their needs. The price, which was less than fifty thousand dollars, made it an attractive purchase; and without doubt it would have made them a suitable and happy home had it been written in the future that they should so inherit it.

Clemens was writing pretty steadily these days. The human race was furnishing him with ever so many inspiring subjects, and he found time to touch more or less on most of them. He wreaked his indignation upon the things which exasperated him often--even usually--without the expectation of print; and he delivered himself even more inclusively at such times as he walked the floor between the luncheon or dinner courses, amplifying on the poverty of an invention that had produced mankind as a supreme handiwork. In a letter to Howells he wrote:

Your comments on that idiot's “Ideals” letter reminds me that I preached a good sermon to my family yesterday on his particular layer of the human race, that grotesquest of all the inventions of the Creator. It was a good sermon, but coldly received, & it seemed best not to try to take up a collection.

He once told Howells, with the wild joy of his boyish heart, how Mrs. Clemens found some compensation, when kept to her room by illness, in the reflection that now she would not hear so much about the “damned human race.”

Yet he was always the first man to champion that race, and the more unpromising the specimen the surer it was of his protection, and he never invited, never expected gratitude.

One wonders how he found time to do all the things that he did. Besides his legitimate literary labors and his preachments, he was always writing letters to this one and that, long letters on a variety of subjects, carefully and picturesquely phrased, and to people of every sort. He even formed a curious society, whose members were young girls--one in each country of the earth. They were supposed to write to him at intervals on some subject likely to be of mutual interest, to which letters he agreed to reply. He furnished each member with a typewritten copy of the constitution and by-laws of the juggernaut Club, as he called it, and he apprised each of her election, usually after this fashion:

I have a club--a private club, which is all my own. I appoint the
members myself, & they can't help themselves, because I don't allow
them to vote on their own appointment & I don't allow them to
resign! They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but
who have written friendly letters to me. By the laws of my club
there can be only one member in each country, & there can be no male
member but myself. Some day I may admit males, but I don't know
--they are capricious & inharmonious, & their ways provoke me a good
deal. It is a matter, which the club shall decide. I have made
four appointments in the past three or four months: You as a member
for Scotland--oh, this good while! a young citizeness of Joan of
Arc's home region as a member for France; a Mohammedan girl as
member for Bengal; & a dear & bright young niece of mine as member
for the United States--for I do not represent a country myself, but
am merely member-at-large for the human race. You must not try to
resign, for the laws of the club do not allow that. You must
console yourself by remembering that you are in the best company;
that nobody knows of your membership except yourself; that no member
knows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are levied
and no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend one!).
One of my members is a princess of a royal house, another is the
daughter of a village bookseller on the continent of Europe, for the
only qualification for membership is intellect & the spirit of good-
will; other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count. May
I send you the constitution & laws of the club? I shall be so glad
if I may.

It was just one of his many fancies, and most of the active memberships would not long be maintained; though some continued faithful in their reports, as he did in his replies, to the end.

One of the more fantastic of his conceptions was a plan to advertise for ante-mortem obituaries of himself--in order, as he said, that he might look them over and enjoy them and make certain corrections in the matter of detail. Some of them he thought might be appropriate to read from the platform.

I will correct them--not the facts, but the verdicts--striking out
such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the other
side, and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character.

He was much taken with the new idea, and his request for such obituaries, with an offer of a prize for the best--a portrait of himself drawn by his own hand--really appeared in Harper's Weekly later in the year. Naturally he got a shower of responses--serious, playful, burlesque. Some of them were quite worth while.

The obvious “Death loves a shining Mark” was of course numerously duplicated, and some varied it “Death loves an Easy Mark,” and there was “Mark, the perfect man.”

The two that follow gave him especial pleasure.

OBITUARY FOR “MARK TWAIN”

Worthy of his portrait, a place on his monument, as well as a place
among his “perennial-consolation heirlooms”:

“Got up; washed; went to bed.”

The subject's own words (see Innocents Abroad). Can't go back on
your own words, Mark Twain. There's nothing “to strike out”;
nothing “to replace.” What more could be said of any one?

“Got up!”--Think of the fullness of meaning! The possibilities of
life, its achievements--physical, intellectual, spiritual. Got up
to the top!--the climax of human aspiration on earth!

“Washed”--Every whit clean; purified--body, soul, thoughts,
purposes.

“Went to bed”--Work all done--to rest, to sleep. The culmination of
the day well spent!

God looks after the awakening.

Mrs. S. A. OREN-HAYNES.

Mark Twain was the only man who ever lived, so far as we know, whose
lies were so innocent, and withal so helpful, as to make them worth
more than a whole lot of fossilized priests' eternal truths.

D. H. KENNER.

CCXIX. YACHTING AND THEOLOGY

Clemens made fewer speeches during the Riverdale period. He was as frequently demanded, but he had a better excuse for refusing, especially the evening functions. He attended a good many luncheons with friendly spirits like Howells, Matthews, James L. Ford, and Hamlin Garland. At the end of February he came down to the Mayor's dinner given to Prince Henry of Prussia, but he did not speak. Clemens used to say afterward that he had not been asked to speak, and that it was probably because of his supposed breach of etiquette at the Kaiser's dinner in Berlin; but the fact that Prince Henry sought him out, and was most cordially and humanly attentive during a considerable portion of the evening, is against the supposition.

Clemens attended a Yale alumni dinner that winter and incidentally visited Twichell in Hartford. The old question of moral responsibility came up and Twichell lent his visitor a copy of Jonathan Edwards's 'Freedom of the Will' for train perusal. Clemens found it absorbing. Later he wrote Twichell his views.

DEAR JOE,--(After compliments.)--[Meaning “What a good time you gave
me; what a happiness it was to be under your roof again,” etc. See
opening sentence of all translations of letters passing between Lord
Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]--From Bridgeport to New
York, thence to home, & continuously until near midnight I wallowed
& reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immensely
refreshed & fine at ten this morning, but with a strange & haunting
sense of having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic.
It is years since I have known these sensations. All through the
book is the glare of a resplendent intellect gone mad--a marvelous
spectacle. No, not all through the book--the drunk does not come
on till the last third, where what I take to be Calvinism & its God
begins to show up & shine red & hideous in the glow from the fires
of hell, their only right and proper adornment.

Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Armenian position) that the
man (or his soul or his will) never creates an impulse itself, but
is moved to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound!

Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses
the one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly
correct! An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane.

Up to that point he could have written Chapters III & IV of my
suppressed Gospel. But there we seem to separate. He seems to
concede the indisputable & unshaken dominion of Motive & Necessity
(call them what he may, these are exterior forces & not under the
man's authority, guidance, or even suggestion); then he suddenly
flies the logical track & (to all seeming) makes the man & not those
exterior forces responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words, &
acts. It is frank insanity.

I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and
Necessity he grants a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a
mere machine--an automatic machine--which is handled entirely from
the outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing; not
an ounce of its fuel, & not so much as a bare suggestion to that
exterior engineer as to what the machine shall do nor how it shall
do it nor when.

After that concession it was time for him to get alarmed & shirk
--for he was pointed straight for the only rational & possible next
station on that piece of road--the irresponsibility of man to God.

And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result:

Man is commanded to do so & so.

It has been ordained from the beginning of time that some men
sha'n't & others can't.

These are to blame: let them be damned.

I enjoy the Colonel very much, & shall enjoy the rest of him with an
obscene delight.

Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you & yours!
MARK.

Clemens was moved to set down some theology of his own, and did so in a manuscript which he entitled, “If I Could Be There.” It is in the dialogue form he often adopted for polemic writing. It is a colloquy between the Master of the Universe and a Stranger. It begins: I. If I could be there, hidden under the steps of the throne, I should hear conversations like this:

A STRANGER. Lord, there is one who needs to be punished, and has been overlooked. It is in the record. I have found it.

LORD. By searching?

S. Yes, Lord.

L. Who is it? What is it?

S. A man.

L. Proceed.

S. He died in sin. Sin committed by his great-grandfather.

L. When was this?

S. Eleven million years ago.

L. Do you know what a microbe is?

S. Yes, Lord. It is a creature too small to be detected by my eye.

L. He commits depredations upon your blood?

S. Yes, Lord.

L. I give you leave to subject him to a billion years of misery for this offense. Go! Work your will upon him.

S. But, Lord, I have nothing against him; I am indifferent to him.

L. Why?

S. He is so infinitely small and contemptible. I am to him as is a mountain-range to a grain of sand.

L. What am I to man?

S. (Silent.)