Chapter V: Part 5

DEAR MISS MADELINE, Your good & admiring & affectionate brother has
told me of your sorrowful share in the trolley disaster which
brought unaccustomed tears to millions of eyes & fierce resentment
against those whose criminal indifference to their responsibilities
caused it, & the reminder has brought back to me a pang out of that
bygone time. I wish I could take you sound & whole out of your bed
& break the legs of those officials & put them in it--to stay there.
For in my spirit I am merciful, and would not break their necks &
backs also, as some would who have no feeling.

It is your brother who permits me to write this line--& so it is not
an intrusion, you see.

May you get well-& soon!
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

A very little later he was writing another letter on a similar subject to St. Clair McKelway, who had narrowly escaped injury in a railway accident.

DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.

As I understand the telegrams, the engineers of your train had never
seen a locomotive before . . . . The government's official
report, showing that our railways killed twelve hundred persons last
year & injured sixty thousand, convinces me that under present
conditions one Providence is not enough properly & efficiently to
take care of our railroad business. But it is characteristically
American--always trying to get along short-handed & save wages.

A massacre of Jews in Moscow renewed his animosity for semi-barbaric Russia. Asked for a Christmas sentiment, he wrote:

It is my warm & world-embracing Christmas hope that all of us that
deserve it may finally be gathered together in a heaven of rest &
peace, & the others permitted to retire into the clutches of Satan,
or the Emperor of Russia, according to preference--if they have a
preference.

An article, "The Tsar's Soliloquy," written at this time, was published in the North American Review for March (1905). He wrote much more, but most of the other matter he put aside. On a subject like that he always discarded three times as much as he published, and it was usually about three times as terrific as that which found its way into type. "The Soliloquy," however, is severe enough. It represents the Tsar as contemplating himself without his clothes, and reflecting on what a poor human specimen he presents:

Is it this that 140,000,000 Russians kiss the dust before and
worship?--manifestly not! No one could worship this spectacle which
is Me. Then who is it, what is it, that they worship? Privately,
none knows better than I: it is my clothes! Without my clothes I
should be as destitute of authority as any other naked person. No
one could tell me from a parson and barber tutor. Then who is the
real Emperor of Russia! My clothes! There is no other.

The emperor continues this fancy, and reflects on the fierce cruelties that are done in his name. It was a withering satire on Russian imperialism, and it stirred a wide response. This encouraged Clemens to something even more pretentious and effective in the same line. He wrote "King Leopold's Soliloquy," the reflections of the fiendish sovereign who had maimed and slaughtered fifteen millions of African subjects in his greed--gentle, harmless blacks-men, women, and little children whom he had butchered and mutilated in his Congo rubber-fields. Seldom in the history of the world have there been such atrocious practices as those of King Leopold in the Congo, and Clemens spared nothing in his picture of them. The article was regarded as not quite suitable for magazine publication, and it was given to the Congo Reform Association and issued as a booklet for distribution, with no return to the author, who would gladly have written a hundred times as much if he could have saved that unhappy race and have sent Leopold to the electric chair.--[The book was price-marked twenty-five cents, but the returns from such as were sold went to the cause. Thousands of them were distributed free. The Congo, a domain four times as large as the German empire, had been made the ward of Belgium at a convention in Berlin by the agreement of fourteen nations, America and thirteen European states. Leopold promptly seized the country for his personal advantage and the nations apparently found themselves powerless to depose him. No more terrible blunder was ever committed by an assemblage of civilized people.]

Various plans and movements were undertaken for Congo reform, and Clemens worked and wrote letters and gave his voice and his influence and exhausted his rage, at last, as one after another of the half-organized and altogether futile undertakings showed no results. His interest did not die, but it became inactive. Eventually he declared: "I have said all I can say on that terrible subject. I am heart and soul in any movement that will rescue the Congo and hang Leopold, but I cannot write any more."

His fires were likely to burn themselves out, they raged so fiercely. His final paragraph on the subject was a proposed epitaph for Leopold when time should have claimed him. It ran:

Here under this gilded tomb lies rotting the body of one the smell
of whose name will still offend the nostrils of men ages upon ages
after all the Caesars and Washingtons & Napoleons shall have ceased
to be praised or blamed & been forgotten--Leopold of Belgium.

Clemens had not yet lost interest in the American policy in the Philippines, and in his letters to Twichell he did not hesitate to criticize the President's attitude in this and related matters. Once, in a moment of irritation, he wrote:

DEAR JOE,--I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the
President. If I could only find the words to define it with! Here
they are, to a hair--from Leonard Jerome:

"For twenty years I have loved Roosevelt the man, and hated
Roosevelt the statesman and politician."

It's mighty good. Every time in twenty-five years that I have met
Roosevelt the man a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the
hand-grip; but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman &
politician I find him destitute of morals & not respect-worthy. It
is plain that where his political self & party self are concerned he
has nothing resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations
he is naively indifferent to the restraints of duty & even unaware
of them; ready to kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever
it gets in his way....

But Roosevelt is excusable--I recognize it & (ought to) concede it.
We are all insane, each in his own way, & with insanity goes
irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to
keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman & politician, is insane &
irresponsible.

He wrote a great deal more from time to time on this subject; but that is the gist of his conclusions, and whether justified by time, or otherwise, it expresses today the deduction of a very large number of people. It is set down here, because it is a part of Mark Twain's history, and also because a little while after his death there happened to creep into print an incomplete and misleading note (since often reprinted), which he once made in a moment of anger, when he was in a less judicial frame of mind. It seems proper that a man's honest sentiments should be recorded concerning the nation's servants.

Clemens wrote an article at this period which he called the "War Prayer." It pictured the young recruits about to march away for war--the excitement and the celebration--the drum-beat and the heart-beat of patriotism--the final assembly in the church where the minister utters that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder, Thy clarion, and lightning, Thy sword!

and the "long prayer" for victory to the nation's armies. As the prayer closes a white-robed stranger enters, moves up the aisle, and takes the preacher's place; then, after some moments of impressive silence, he begins:

"I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!.....
He has heard the prayer of His servant, your shepherd, & will grant
it if such shall be your desire after I His messenger shall have
explained to you its import--that is to say its full import. For it
is like unto many of the prayers of men in that it asks for more
than he who utters it is aware of--except he pause & think.

"God's servant & yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused & taken
thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two--one uttered, the other
not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all
supplications, the spoken & the unspoken . . . .

"You have heard your servant's prayer--the uttered part of it. I am
commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it--that
part which the pastor--and also you in your hearts--fervently
prayed, silently. And ignorantly & unthinkingly? God grant that it
was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our
God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is
completed into those pregnant words.

"Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken
part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go
forth to battle--be Thou near them! With them--in spirit--we
also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to
smite the foe.

"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody
shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields
with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the
thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us
to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help
us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with
unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their
little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their
desolated land in rags & hunger & thirst, sport of the sun-
flames of summer & the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit,
worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave &
denied it--for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their
hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage,
make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain
the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask of
one who is the Spirit of love & who is the ever-faithful refuge
& friend of all that are sore beset, & seek His aid with humble
& contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord; & Thine shall be
the praise & honor & glory now & ever, Amen."

(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it,
speak!--the messenger of the Most High waits."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It was believed, afterward, that the man was a lunatic, because
there was no sense in what he said.

To Dan Beard, who dropped in to see him, Clemens read the "War Prayer," stating that he had read it to his daughter Jean, and others, who had told him he must not print it, for it would be regarded as sacrilege.

"Still you--are going to publish it, are you not?"

Clemens, pacing up and down the room in his dressing-gown and slippers, shook his head.

"No," he said, "I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead."

He did not care to invite the public verdict that he was a lunatic, or even a fanatic with a mission to destroy the illusions and traditions and conclusions of mankind. To Twichell he wrote, playfully but sincerely:

Am I honest? I give you my word of honor (privately) I am not. For seven years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought to publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is. We are certainly all honest in one or several ways--every man in the world--though I have a reason to think I am the only one whose blacklist runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty solitude.

It was his Gospel he referred to as his unpublished book, his doctrine of Selfishness, and of Man the irresponsible Machine. To Twichell he pretended to favor war, which he declared, to his mind, was one of the very best methods known of diminishing the human race.

What a life it is!--this one! Everything we try to do, somebody intrudes & obstructs it. After years of thought & labor I have arrived within one little bit of a step of perfecting my invention for exhausting the oxygen in the globe's air during a stretch of two minutes, & of course along comes an obstructor who is inventing something to protect human life. Damn such a world anyway.

He generally wrote Twichell when he had things to say that were outside of the pale of print. He was sure of an attentive audience of one, and the audience, whether it agreed with him or not, would at least understand him and be honored by his confidence. In one letter of that year he said:

I have written you to-day, not to do you a service, but to do myself one. There was bile in me. I had to empty it or lose my day to-morrow. If I tried to empty it into the North American Review--oh, well, I couldn't afford the risk. No, the certainty! The certainty that I wouldn't be satisfied with the result; so I would burn it, & try again to-morrow; burn that and try again the next day. It happens so nearly every time. I have a family to support, & I can't afford this kind of dissipation. Last winter when I was sick I wrote a magazine article three times before I got it to suit me. I Put $500 worth of work on it every day for ten days, & at last when I got it to suit me it contained but 3,000 words-$900. I burned it & said I would reform.

And I have reformed. I have to work my bile off whenever it gets to where I can't stand it, but I can work it off on you economically, because I don't have to make it suit me. It may not suit you, but that isn't any matter; I'm not writing it for that. I have used you as an equilibrium--restorer more than once in my time, & shall continue, I guess. I would like to use Mr. Rogers, & he is plenty good-natured enough, but it wouldn't be fair to keep him rescuing me from my leather-headed business snarls & make him read interminable bile-irruptions besides; I can't use Howells, he is busy & old & lazy, & won't stand it; I dasn't use Clara, there's things I have to say which she wouldn't put up with--a very dear little ashcat, but has claws. And so--you're It.

[See the preface to the "Autobiography of Mark Twain": 'I am writing
from the grave. On these terms only can a man be approximately
frank. He cannot be straitly and unqualifiedly frank either in the
grave or out of it.' D.W.]

CCXXXV

A SUMMER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

He took for the summer a house at Dublin, New Hampshire, the home of Henry Copley Greene, Lone Tree Hill, on the Monadnock slope. It was in a lovely locality, and for neighbors there were artists, literary people, and those of kindred pursuits, among them a number of old friends. Colonel Higginson had a place near by, and Abbott H. Thayer, the painter, and George de Forest Brush, and the Raphael Pumpelly family, and many more.

Colonel Higginson wrote Clemens a letter of welcome as soon as the news got out that he was going to Dublin; and Clemens, answering, said:

I early learned that you would be my neighbor in the summer & I
rejoiced, recognizing in you & your family a large asset. I hope
for frequent intercourse between the two households. I shall have
my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the rest-
cure in this city to the rest-cure in Norfolk, Connecticut; & we
shall not see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the
middle of October.

Jean, the younger daughter, went to Dublin & saw the house & came
back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old--manifestly there
is no lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were
shipmates in a wild excursion perilously near 40 years ago.

Aldrich was here half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the
fields, with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired
wanting for that man to get old.

They went to Dublin in May, and became at once a part of the summer colony which congregated there. There was much going to and fro among the different houses, pleasant afternoons in the woods, mountain-climbing for Jean, and everywhere a spirit of fine, unpretentious comradeship.

The Copley Greene house was romantically situated, with a charming outlook. Clemens wrote to Twichell:

We like it here in the mountains, in the shadows of Monadnock. It
is a woody solitude. We have no near neighbors. We have neighbors
and I can see their houses scattered in the forest distances, for we
live on a hill. I am astonished to find that I have known 8 of
these 14 neighbors a long time; 10 years is the shortest; then seven
beginning with 25 years & running up to 37 years' friendship. It is
the most remarkable thing I ever heard of.

This letter was written in July, and he states in it that he has turned out one hundred thousand words of a large manuscript. . It was a fantastic tale entitled "3,000 Years among the Microbes," a sort of scientific revel--or revelry--the autobiography of a microbe that had been once a man, and through a failure in a biological experiment transformed into a cholera germ when the experimenter was trying to turn him into a bird. His habitat was the person of a disreputable tramp named Blitzowski, a human continent of vast areas, with seething microbic nations and fantastic life problems. It was a satire, of course --Gulliver's Lilliput outdone--a sort of scientific, socialistic, mathematical jamboree.

He tired of it before it reached completion, though not before it had attained the proportions of a book of size. As a whole it would hardly have added to his reputation, though it is not without fine and humorous passages, and certainly not without interest. Its chief mission was to divert him mentally that summer during, those days and nights when he would otherwise have been alone and brooding upon his loneliness.--[For extracts from "3,000 Years among the Microbes" see Appendix V, at the end of this work.] MARK TWAIN'S SUGGESTED TITLE-PAGE FOR HIS MICROBE BOOK:

3000 YEARS
AMONG THE MICROBES

By a Microbe

WITH NOTES
added by the same Hand
7000 years later

Translated from the Original
Microbic
by

Mark Twain

His inability to reproduce faces in his mind's eye he mourned as an increasing calamity. Photographs were lifeless things, and when he tried to conjure up the faces of his dead they seemed to drift farther out of reach; but now and then kindly sleep brought to him something out of that treasure-house where all our realities are kept for us fresh and fair, perhaps for a day when we may claim them again. Once he wrote to Mrs. Crane:

SUSY DEAR,--I have had a lovely dream. Livy, dressed in black, was
sitting up in my bed (here) at my right & looking as young & sweet
as she used to when she was in health. She said, "What is the name
of your sweet sister?" I said, "Pamela." "Oh yes, that is it, I
thought it was--(naming a name which has escaped me) won't you write
it down for me?" I reached eagerly for a pen & pad, laid my hands
upon both, then said to myself, "It is only a dream," and turned
back sorrowfully & there she was still. The conviction flamed
through me that our lamented disaster was a dream, & this a reality.
I said, "How blessed it is, how blessed it is, it was all a dream,
only a dream!" She only smiled and did not ask what dream I meant,
which surprised me. She leaned her head against mine & kept saying,
"I was perfectly sure it was a dream; I never would have believed it
wasn't." I think she said several things, but if so they are gone
from my memory. I woke & did not know I had been dreaming. She was
gone. I wondered how she could go without my knowing it, but I did
not spend any thought upon that. I was too busy thinking of how
vivid & real was the dream that we had lost her, & how unspeakably
blessed it was to find that it was not true & that she was still
ours & with us.

He had the orchestrelle moved to Dublin, although it was no small undertaking, for he needed the solace of its harmonies; and so the days passed along, and he grew stronger in body and courage as his grief drifted farther behind him. Sometimes, in the afternoon or in the evening; when the neighbors had come in for a little while, he would walk up and down and talk in his old, marvelous way of all the things on land and sea, of the past and of the future, "Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate," of the friends he had known and of the things he had done, of the sorrow and absurdities of the world.

It was the same old scintillating, incomparable talk of which Howells once said:

"We shall never know its like again. When he dies it will die with him."

It was during the summer at Dublin that Clemens and Rogers together made up a philanthropic ruse on Twichell. Twichell, through his own prodigal charities, had fallen into debt, a fact which Rogers knew. Rogers was a man who concealed his philanthropies when he could, and he performed many of them of which the world will never know: In this case he said:

"Clemens, I want to help Twichell out of his financial difficulty. I will supply the money and you will do the giving. Twichell must think it comes from you."

Clemens agreed to this on the condition that he be permitted to leave a record of the matter for his children, so that he would not appear in a false light to them, and that Twichell should learn the truth of the gift, sooner or later. So the deed was done, and Twichell and his wife lavished their thanks upon Clemens, who, with his wife, had more than once been their benefactors, making the deception easy enough now. Clemens writhed under these letters of gratitude, and forwarded them to Clara in Norfolk, and later to Rogers himself. He pretended to take great pleasure in this part of the conspiracy, but it was not an unmixed delight. To Rogers he wrote:

I wanted her [Clara] to see what a generous father she's got. I
didn't tell her it was you, but by and by I want to tell her, when I
have your consent; then I shall want her to remember the letters. I
want a record there, for my Life when I am dead, & must be able to
furnish the facts about the Relief-of-Lucknow-Twichell in case I
fall suddenly, before I get those facts with your consent, before
the Twichells themselves.

I read those letters with immense pride! I recognized that I had
scored one good deed for sure on my halo account. I haven't had
anything that tasted so good since the stolen watermelon.

P. S.-I am hurrying them off to you because I dasn't read them
again! I should blush to my heels to fill up with this unearned
gratitude again, pouring out of the thankful hearts of those poor
swindled people who do not suspect you, but honestly believe I gave
that money.

Mr. Rogers hastily replied:

MY DEAR CLEMENS,--The letters are lovely. Don't breathe. They are
so happy! It would be a crime to let them think that you have in
any way deceived them. I can keep still. You must. I am sending
you all traces of the crime, so that you may look innocent and tell
the truth, as you usually do when you think you can escape
detection. Don't get rattled.

Seriously. You have done a kindness. You are proud of it, I know.
You have made your friends happy, and you ought to be so glad as to
cheerfully accept reproof from your conscience. Joe Wadsworth and I
once stole a goose and gave it to a poor widow as a Christmas
present. No crime in that. I always put my counterfeit money on
the plate. "The passer of the sasser" always smiles at me and I get
credit for doing generous things. But seriously again, if you do
feel a little uncomfortable wait until I see you before you tell
anybody. Avoid cultivating misery. I am trying to loaf ten solid
days. We do hope to see you soon.

The secret was kept, and the matter presently (and characteristically) passed out of Clemens's mind altogether. He never remembered to tell Twichell, and it is revealed here, according to his wish.

The Russian-Japanese war was in progress that summer, and its settlement occurred in August. The terms of it did not please Mark Twain. When a newspaper correspondent asked him for an expression of opinion on the subject he wrote:

Russia was on the highroad to emancipation from an insane and
intolerable slavery. I was hoping there would be no peace until
Russian liberty was safe. I think that this was a holy war, in the
best and noblest sense of that abused term, and that no war was ever
charged with a higher mission.

I think there can be no doubt that that mission is now defeated and
Russia's chain riveted; this time to stay. I think the Tsar will
now withdraw the small humanities that have been forced from him,
and resume his medieval barbarisms with a relieved spirit and an
immeasurable joy. I think Russian liberty has had its last chance
and has lost it.

I think nothing has been gained by the peace that is remotely
comparable to what has been sacrificed by it. One more battle would
have abolished the waiting chains of billions upon billions of
unborn Russians, and I wish it could have been fought. I hope I am
mistaken, yet in all sincerity I believe that this peace is entitled
to rank as the most conspicuous disaster in political history.

It was the wisest public utterance on the subject--the deep, resonant note of truth sounding amid a clamor of foolish joy-bells. It was the message of a seer--the prophecy of a sage who sees with the clairvoyance of knowledge and human understanding. Clemens, a few days later, was invited by Colonel Harvey to dine with Baron Rosen and M. Sergius Witte; but an attack of his old malady--rheumatism--prevented his acceptance. His telegram of declination apparently pleased the Russian officials, for Witte asked permission to publish it, and declared that he was going to take it home to show to the Tsar. It was as follows:

To COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than glad of this opportunity to meet the illustrious magicians who came here equipped with nothing but a pen, & with it have divided the honors of the war with the sword. It is fair to presume that in thirty centuries history will not get done in admiring these men who attempted what the world regarded as the impossible & achieved it. MARK TWAIN.

But this was a modified form. His original draft would perhaps have been less gratifying to that Russian embassy. It read:

To COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more
than glad of this opportunity to meet those illustrious magicians
who with the pen have annulled, obliterated, & abolished every high
achievement of the Japanese sword and turned the tragedy of a
tremendous war into a gay & blithesome comedy. If I may, let me in
all respect and honor salute them as my fellow-humorists, I taking
third place, as becomes one who was not born to modesty, but by
diligence & hard work is acquiring it.
MARK.

There was still another form, brief and expressive:

DEAR COLONEL,--No, this is a love-feast; when you call a lodge of sorrow send for me. MARK.

Clemens's war sentiment was given the widest newspaper circulation, and brought him many letters, most of them applauding his words. Charles Francis Adams wrote him:

It attracted my attention because it so exactly expresses the views
I have myself all along entertained.

And this was the gist of most of the expressed sentiments which came to him.

Clemens wrote a number of things that summer, among them a little essay entitled, "The Privilege of the Grave"--that is to say, free speech. He was looking forward, he said, to the time when he should inherit that privilege, when some of the things he had said, written and laid away, could be published without damage to his friends or family. An article entitled, "Interpreting the Deity," he counted as among the things to be uttered when he had entered into that last great privilege. It is an article on the reading of signs and auguries in all ages to discover the intentions of the Almighty, with historical examples of God's judgments and vindications. Here is a fair specimen. It refers to the chronicle of Henry Huntington:

All through this book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the
intentions of God and with the reasons for the intentions.
Sometimes very often, in fact--the act follows the intention after
such a wide interval of time that one wonders how Henry could fit
one act out of a hundred to one intention, and get the thing right
every time, when there was such abundant choice among acts and
intentions. Sometimes a man offends the Deity with a crime, and is
punished for it thirty years later; meantime he has committed a
million other crimes: no matter, Henry can pick out the one that
brought the worms. Worms were generally used in those days for the
slaying of particularly wicked people. This has gone out now, but
in the old times it was a favorite. It always indicated a case of
"wrath." For instance:

"The just God avenging Robert Fitzhildebrand's perfidity, a worm
grew in his vitals which, gradually gnawing its way through his
intestines, fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with
excruciating sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was
by a fitting punishment brought to his end" (p. 400).

It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it
was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some
authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt.

The entire article is in this amusing, satirical strain, and might well enough be printed to-day. It is not altogether clear why it was withheld, even then.

He finished his Eve's Diary that summer, and wrote a story which was originally planned to oblige Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske, to aid her in a crusade against bullfighting in Spain. Mrs. Fiske wrote him that she had read his dog story, written against the cruelties of vivisection, and urged him to do something to save the horses that, after faithful service, were sacrificed in the bull-ring. Her letter closed:

I have lain awake nights very often wondering if I dare ask you to
write a story of an old horse that is finally given over to the
bull-ring. The story you would write would do more good than all
the laws we are trying to have made and enforced for the prevention
of cruelty to animals in Spain. We would translate and circulate
the story in that country. I have wondered if you would ever write
it.

With most devoted homage,
Sincerely yours,
MINNIE MADDERN FISKE.

Clemens promptly replied:

DEAR MRS. FISKE, I shall certainly write the story. But I may not get it to suit me, in which case it will go in the fire. Later I will try it again--& yet again--& again. I am used to this. It has taken me twelve years to write a short story--the shortest one I ever wrote, I think. --[Probably "The Death Disk:"]--So do not be discouraged; I will stick to this one in the same way.

Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

It was an inspiring subject, and he began work on it immediately. Within a month from the time he received Mrs. Fiske's letter he had written that pathetic, heartbreaking little story, "A Horse's Tale," and sent it to Harper's Magazine for illustration. In a letter written to Mr. Duneka at the time, he tells of his interest in the narrative, and adds:

This strong interest is natural, for the heroine is my small
daughter Susy, whom we lost. It was not intentional--it was a good
while before I found it out, so I am sending you her picture to use
--& to reproduce with photographic exactness the unsurpassable
expression & all. May you find an artist who has lost an idol.

He explains how he had put in a good deal of work, with his secretary, on the orchestrelle to get the bugle-calls.

We are to do these theatricals this evening with a couple of
neighbors for audience, and then pass the hat.

It is not one of Mark Twain's greatest stories, but its pathos brings the tears, and no one can read it without indignation toward the custom which it was intended to oppose. When it was published, a year later, Mrs. Fiske sent him her grateful acknowledgments, and asked permission to have it printed for pamphlet circulation m Spain.

A number of more or less notable things happened in this, Mark Twain's seventieth year. There was some kind of a reunion going on in California, and he was variously invited to attend. Robert Fulton, of Nevada, was appointed a committee of one to invite him to Reno for a great celebration which was to be held there. Clemens replied that he remembered, as if it were but yesterday, when he had disembarked from the Overland stage in front of the Ormsby Hotel, in Carson City, and told how he would like to accept the invitation.

If I were a few years younger I would accept it, and promptly, and I would go. I would let somebody else do the oration, but as for me I would talk--just talk. I would renew my youth; and talk--and talk--and talk--and have the time of my life! I would march the unforgotten and unforgetable antiques by, and name their names, and give them reverent hail and farewell as they passed--Goodman, McCarthy, Gillis, Curry, Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart, Neely Johnson, Hal Clayton, North, Root--and my brother, upon whom be peace!--and then the desperadoes, who made life a joy, and the "slaughter-house," a precious possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake, Jack Williams, and the rest of the crimson discipleship, and so on, and so on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you are going now.

Those were the days!--those old ones. They will come no more; youth will come no more. They were so full to the brim with the wine of life; there have been no others like them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would you like me to come out there and cry? It would not beseem my white head.

Good-by. I drink to you all. Have a good time-and take an old man's blessing.

In reply to another invitation from H. H. Bancroft, of San Francisco, he wrote that his wandering days were over, and that it was his purpose to sit by the fire for the rest of his "remnant of life."

A man who, like me, is going to strike 70 on the 30th of next
November has no business to be flitting around the way Howells does
--that shameless old fictitious butterfly. (But if he comes don't
tell him I said it, for it would hurt him & I wouldn't brush a flake
of powder from his wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his
indestructible youth anyway. Howells will be 88 in October.)

And it was either then or on a similar occasion that he replied after this fashion:

I have done more for San Francisco than any other of its old
residents. Since I left there it has increased in population fully
300,000. I could have done more--I could have gone earlier--it was
suggested.

Which, by the way, is a perfect example of Mark Twain's humorous manner, the delicately timed pause, and the afterthought. Most humorists would have been contented to end with the statement, "I could have gone earlier." Only Mark Twain could have added that final exquisite touch --"it was suggested."

CCXXXVI

AT PIER 70

Mark Twain was nearing seventy, the scriptural limitation of life, and the returns were coming in. Some one of the old group was dying all the time. The roll-call returned only a scattering answer. Of his oldest friends, Charles Henry Webb, John Hay, and Sir Henry Irving, all died that year. When Hay died Clemens gave this message to the press:

I am deeply grieved, & I mourn with the nation this loss which is
irreparable. My friendship with Mr. Hay & my admiration of him
endured 38 years without impairment.

It was only a little earlier that he had written Hay an anonymous letter, a copy of which he preserved. It here follows:

DEAR & HONORED SIR,--I never hear any one speak of you & of your
long roll of illustrious services in other than terms of pride &
praise--& out of the heart. I think I am right in believing you to
be the only man in the civil service of the country the cleanness of
whose motives is never questioned by any citizen, & whose acts
proceed always upon a broad & high plane, never by accident or
pressure of circumstance upon a narrow or low one. There are
majorities that are proud of more than one of the nation's great
servants, but I believe, & I think I know, that you are the only one
of whom the entire nation is proud. Proud & thankful.

Name & address are lacking here, & for a purpose: to leave you no
chance to make my words a burden to you and a reproach to me, who
would lighten your burdens if I could, not add to them.

Irving died in October, and Clemens ordered a wreath for his funeral. To MacAlister he wrote:

I profoundly grieve over Irving's death. It is another reminder.
My section of the procession has but a little way to go. I could
not be very sorry if I tried.

Mark Twain, nearing seventy, felt that there was not much left for him to celebrate; and when Colonel Harvey proposed a birthday gathering in his honor, Clemens suggested a bohemian assembly over beer and sandwiches in some snug place, with Howells, Henry Rogers, Twichell, Dr. Rice, Dr. Edward Quintard, Augustus Thomas, and such other kindred souls as were still left to answer the call. But Harvey had something different in view: something more splendid even than the sixty-seventh birthday feast, more pretentious, indeed, than any former literary gathering. He felt that the attainment of seventy years by America's most distinguished man of letters and private citizen was a circumstance which could not be moderately or even modestly observed. The date was set five days later than the actual birthday--that is to say, on December 5th, in order that it might not conflict with the various Thanksgiving holidays and occasions. Delmonico's great room was chosen for the celebration of it, and invitations were sent out to practically every writer of any distinction in America, and to many abroad. Of these nearly two hundred accepted, while such as could not come sent pathetic regrets.

What an occasion it was! The flower of American literature gathered to do honor to its chief. The whole atmosphere of the place seemed permeated with his presence, and when Colonel Harvey presented William Dean Howells, and when Howells had read another double-barreled sonnet, and introduced the guest of the evening with the words, "I will not say, 'O King, live forever,' but, 'O King, live as long as you like!'" and Mark Twain rose, his snow-white hair gleaming above that brilliant assembly, it seemed that a world was speaking out in a voice of applause and welcome. With a great tumult the throng rose, a billow of life, the white handkerchiefs flying foam-like on its crest. Those who had gathered there realized that it was a mighty moment, not only in his life but in theirs. They were there to see this supreme embodiment of the American spirit as he scaled the mountain-top. He, too, realized the drama of that moment--the marvel of it--and he must have flashed a swift panoramic view backward over the long way he had come, to stand, as he had himself once expressed it, "for a single, splendid moment on the Alps of fame outlined against the sun." He must have remembered; for when he came to speak he went back to the very beginning, to his very first banquet, as he called it, when, as he said, "I hadn't any hair; I hadn't any teeth; I hadn't any clothes." He sketched the meagerness of that little hamlet which had seen his birth, sketched it playfully, delightfully, so that his hearers laughed and shouted; but there was always a tenderness under it all, and often the tears were not far beneath the surface. He told of his habits of life, how he had attained seventy years by simply sticking to a scheme of living which would kill anybody else; how he smoked constantly, loathed exercise, and had no other regularity of habits. Then, at last, he reached that wonderful, unforgetable close:

Threescore years and ten!

It is the scriptural statute of limitations. After that you owe no
active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-
expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your
term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become
an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions
are not for you, nor any bugle-call but "lights out." You pay the
time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer--and
without prejudice--for they are not legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so
many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave
you will never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night,
and winter, and the late homecomings from the banquet and the lights
and laughter through the deserted streets--a desolation which would
not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends
are sleeping and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them,
but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can never
disturb them more--if you shrink at the thought of these things you
need only reply, "Your invitation honors me and pleases me because
you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy,
and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read
my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and
that when you in your turn shall arrive at Pier 70 you may step
aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your
course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart."

The tears that had been lying in wait were not restrained now. If there were any present who did not let them flow without shame, who did not shout their applause from throats choked with sobs, the writer of these lines failed to see them or to hear of them. There was not one who was ashamed to pay the great tribute of tears.

Many of his old friends, one after another, rose to tell their love for him--Brander Matthews, Cable, Kate Douglas Riggs, Gilder, Carnegie, Bangs, Bacheller--they kept it up far into the next morning. No other arrival at Pier 70 ever awoke a grander welcome.

CCXXXVII

AFTERMATH

The announcement of the seventieth birthday dinner had precipitated a perfect avalanche of letters, which continued to flow in until the news accounts of it precipitated another avalanche. The carriers' bags were stuffed with greetings that came from every part of the world, from every class of humanity. They were all full of love and tender wishes. A card signed only with initials said: "God bless your old sweet soul for having lived."

Aldrich, who could not attend the dinner, declared that all through the evening he had been listening in his mind to a murmur of voices in the hall at Delmonico's. A group of English authors in London combined in a cable of congratulations. Anstey, Alfred Austin, Balfour, Barrie, Bryce, Chesterton, Dobson, Doyle, Gosse, Hardy, Hope, Jacobs, Kipling, Lang, Parker, Tenniel, Watson, and Zangwill were among the signatures.

Helen Keller wrote:

And you are seventy years old? Or is the report exaggerated, like
that of your death? I remember, when I saw you last, at the house
of dear Mr. Hutton, in Princeton, you said:

"If a man is a pessimist before he is forty-eight he knows too much.
If he is an optimist after he is forty-eight he knows too little."

Now we know you are an optimist, and nobody would dare to accuse one
on the "seven-terraced summit" of knowing little. So probably you
are not seventy after all, but only forty-seven!

Helen Keller was right. Mark Twain was not a pessimist in his heart, but only by premeditation. It was his observation and his logic that led him to write those things that, even in their bitterness, somehow conveyed that spirit of human sympathy which is so closely linked to hope. To Miss Keller he wrote:

"Oh, thank you for your lovely words!"

He was given another birthday celebration that month--this time by the Society of Illustrators. Dan Beard, president, was also toast-master; and as he presented Mark Twain there was a trumpet-note, and a lovely girl, costumed as Joan of Arc, entered and, approaching him, presented him with a laurel wreath. It was planned and carried out as a surprise to him, and he hardly knew for the moment whether it was a vision or a reality. He was deeply affected, so much so that for several moments he could not find his voice to make any acknowledgments.

Clemens was more than ever sought now, and he responded when the cause was a worthy one. He spoke for the benefit of the Russian sufferers at the Casino on December 18th. Madame Sarah Bernhardt was also there, and spoke in French. He followed her, declaring that it seemed a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an audience our rude English after hearing that divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue.

It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has
always been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is! How
expressive it seems to be! How full of grace it is!

And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how limpid
it is! And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to
understand it.

It is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame
Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her. I
have seen her play, as we all have, and, oh, that is divine; but I
have always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself--her fiery self.
I have wanted to know that beautiful character.

Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I
always feel young when I come in the presence of young people.

And truly, at seventy, Mark Twain was young, his manner, his movement, his point of view-these were all, and always, young.

A number of palmists about that time examined impressions of his hand without knowledge as to the owner, and they all agreed that it was the hand of a man with the characteristics of youth, with inspiration, and enthusiasm, and sympathy--a lover of justice and of the sublime. They all agreed, too, that he was a deep philosopher, though, alas! they likewise agreed that he lacked the sense of humor, which is not as surprising as it sounds, for with Mark Twain humor was never mere fun-making nor the love of it; rather it was the flower of his philosophy --its bloom and fragrance.

When the fanfare and drum-beat of his birthday honors had passed by, and a moment of calm had followed, Mark Twain set down some reflections on the new estate he had achieved. The little paper, which forms a perfect pendant to the "Seventieth Birthday Speech," here follows:

OLD AGE

I think it likely that people who have not been here will be
interested to know what it is like. I arrived on the thirtieth of
November, fresh from carefree & frivolous 69, & was disappointed.

There is nothing novel about it, nothing striking, nothing to thrill
you & make your eye glitter & your tongue cry out, "Oh, it is
wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" Yes, it is disappointing. You
say, "Is this it?--this? after all this talk and fuss of a thousand
generations of travelers who have crossed this frontier & looked
about them & told what they saw & felt? Why, it looks just like
69."

And that is true. Also it is natural, for you have not come by the
fast express; you have been lagging & dragging across the world's
continents behind oxen; when that is your pace one country melts
into the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the
change; 70 looks like 69; 69 looked like 68; 68 looked like 67--& so
on back & back to the beginning. If you climb to a summit & look
back--ah, then you see!

Down that far-reaching perspective you can make out each country &
climate that you crossed, all the way up from the hot equator to the
ice-summit where you are perched. You can make out where Infancy
verged into Boyhood; Boyhood into down-lipped Youth; Youth into
bearded, indefinite Young-Manhood; indefinite Young-Manhood into
definite Manhood; definite Manhood, with large, aggressive
ambitions, into sobered & heedful Husbandhood & Fatherhood; these
into troubled & foreboding Age, with graying hair; this into Old
Age, white-headed, the temple empty, the idols broken, the
worshipers in their graves, nothing left but You, a remnant, a
tradition, belated fag-end of a foolish dream, a dream that was so
ingeniously dreamed that it seemed real all the time; nothing left
but You, center of a snowy desolation, perched on the ice-summit,
gazing out over the stages of that long trek & asking Yourself,
"Would you do it again if you had the chance?"

CCXXXVIII

THE WRITER MEETS MARK TWAIN

We have reached a point in this history where the narrative becomes mainly personal, and where, at the risk of inviting the charge of egotism, the form of the telling must change.

It was at the end of 1901 that I first met Mark Twain--at The Players Club on the night when he made the Founder's Address mentioned in an earlier chapter.

I was not able to arrive in time for the address, but as I reached the head of the stairs I saw him sitting on the couch at the dining-room entrance, talking earnestly to some one, who, as I remember it, did not enter into my consciousness at all. I saw only that crown of white hair, that familiar profile, and heard the slow modulations of his measured speech. I was surprised to see how frail and old he looked. From his pictures I had conceived him different. I did not realize that it was a temporary condition due to a period of poor health and a succession of social demands. I have no idea how long I stood there watching him. He had been my literary idol from childhood, as he had been of so many others; more than that, for the personality in his work had made him nothing less than a hero to his readers.