Chapter DCCCLVI: Preface: From the Preface to the English Edition of "mark Twain's Sketches" (8)

You probably do not know a great deal about that boat. It was the most important steamboat in the world. I was there and saw it. Admiral Harrington was there at the time. It need not surprise you, for he is not as old as he looks. That little boat was interesting in every way. The size of it. The boat was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet long. The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two hundred feet. You see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again] --the Admiral says it was a flat boat. Then her tonnage--you know nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her tonnage. We know the speed she made. She made four miles---and sometimes five miles. It was on her initial trip, on, August 11, 1807, that she made her initial trip, when she went from [consults Admiral] Jersey City--to Chicago. That's right. She went by way of Albany. Now comes the tonnage of that boat. Tonnage of a boat means the amount of displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can shove in a day. The tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey he can displace in a day.

Robert Fulton named the 'Clermont' in honor of his bride, that is, Clermont was the name of the county-seat.

I feel that it surprises you that I know so much. In my remarks of welcome of Admiral Harrington I am not going to give him compliments. Compliments always embarrass a man. You do not know anything to say. It does not inspire you with words. There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not said enough.

The Admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated together a great deal a friendly way in the time of Pocahontas. That incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father, Powhatan's club, was gotten up by the Admiral and myself to advertise Jamestown.

At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the facilities of advertising that you have.

I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations--in public service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and then--but it was a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. I do not think it is at all a necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington's public history. You know that it is in the histories. I am not here to tell you anything about his public life, but to expose his private life.

I am something of a poet. When the great poet laureate, Tennyson, died, and I found that the place was open, I tried to get it--but I did not get it. Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. When I was down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood and Par-am. I made this rhyme:

"The people of Johnswood are pious and good;
The people of Par-am they don't care a----."

I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but as long as such men as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country will never cease. I will say that the same high qualities, the same moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of conduct, of observation, and expression have caused Admiral Harrington to be mistaken for me--and I have been mistaken for him.

A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have the honor and privilege of introducing to you Admiral Harrington.

LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN

ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE,
NOVEMBER 11, 1893

In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said:

"To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings.
The place where last we met about the table has vanished, and
to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all
our own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be
spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for
full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future
that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the
bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters;
for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to
genius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being who
has not heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long years
ago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit
and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad
to educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the
American joke. The world has looked on and applauded while he
has broken many images. He has led us in imagination all over
the globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike the
Mississippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we have
laughed at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process of
reasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are
actually dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the
foot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping
bitter tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in the
flesh. What name is there in literature that can be likened to
his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this
table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only
parallel!"

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,--I have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously phrased or so well deserved. I return thanks for them from a full heart and an appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence: While I am charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to me. To be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and if I read your countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad to see this club in such palatial quarters. I remember it twenty years ago when it was housed in a stable.

Now when I was studying for the ministry there were two or three things that struck my attention particularly. At the first banquet mentioned in history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was invited to stand up and have his say. They were all there, his brethren, David and Goliath, and--er, and if he had had such experience as I have had he would have waited until those other people got through talking. He got up and testified to all his failings. Now if he had waited before telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he might not have given himself away as he did, and I think that I would give myself away if I should go on. I think I'd better wait until the others hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make an explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I'll deny it happened.

Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech, replying
to a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner, Charles
A. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others, each
welcoming the guest of honor.

I don't see that I have a great deal to explain. I got off very well, considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. I don't see that Mr. Low said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana. However, I will say that I never heard so many lies told in one evening as were told by Mr. McKelway--and I consider myself very capable; but even in his case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding how much he hadn't found out. By accident he missed the very things that I didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism.

I have been on the continent of Europe for two and a half years. I have met many Americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find that nearly all preserved their Americanism. I have found they all like to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the Stars and Stripes. I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth and glorified monarchical institutions.

I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years I met only one person who had fallen a victim to the shams--I think we may call them shams--of nobilities and of heredities. She was entirely lost in them. After I had listened to her for a long time, I said to her: "At least you must admit that we have one merit. We are not like the Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country to leave it. Thank God, we don't!"

COPYRIGHT

With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and
a number of other authors, Mr. Clemens appeared before the
committee December 6, 1906. The new Copyright Bill
contemplated an author's copyright for the term of his life and
for fifty years thereafter, applying also for the benefit of
artists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the
talking. F. D. Millet made a speech for the artists, and John
Philip Sousa for the musicians.

Mr. Clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chief
feature. He made a speech, the serious parts of which created
a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the Senators
and Representatives in roars of laughter.

I have read this bill. At least I have read such portions as I could understand. Nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised legislator.

I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it.

It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the Copyright law I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster culture added, and anything else.

I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shaft not steal," but I am trying to use more polite language.

The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one class, the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it.

I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit. I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to real estate.

Doctor Bale has suggested that a man might just as well, after discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the Government step in and take it away.

What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence.

And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation after generation forever, for they never die. In a few weeks or months or years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monument. I hope I shall not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself. But I shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of my copyright. My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I can use, but my children can use it. I can get along; I know a lot of trades. But that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I can because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. I hope Congress will extend to them the charity which they have failed to get from me.

Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous--strenuous about race-suicide--should come to me and try to get me to use my large political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this Congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I should try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to him, "Leave it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself. Only one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit. If they have reached that limit let them go right on. Let them have all the liberty they want. In restricting that family to twenty-two children you are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while."

It is the very same with copyright. One author per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all. This nation can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per year.

I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two year limit. Therefore why put a limit at all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children.

If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with Cooper; you can follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe, and there you have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson, and you have to stand still and look further. You find Howells and T. B. Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you question if you can name twenty persons in the United States who--in a whole century have written books that would live forty-two years. Why, you could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. Add the wives and children and you could put the result on, two or three more benches.

One hundred persons--that is the little, insignificant crowd whose bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit to anybody? You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have gone to the wife and children.

When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman asked me what limit I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity." I could see some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such thing as property in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before Queen Anne's time; they had perpetual copyright. He said, "What is a book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be no property in it."

I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.

He said real estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. To him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on that harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania.

That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to Cairo Railway would be built.

Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist before.

So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be under any limitation at all. We don't ask for that. Fifty years from now we shall ask for it.

I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. I do seem to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that I have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous, liberal nature; I can't help it. I feel the same sort of charity to everybody that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving, weaving, weaving around. He watched his chance, and by and by when the steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on the portico.

And the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched the door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He got to the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so unsteady that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top and raised his foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step, with his arm around the newel-post, and he said:

"God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this."

IN AID OF THE BLIND

ADDRESS AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION FOR
PROMOTING THE INTERESTS OF THE BLIND AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA,
MARCH 29, 1906

If you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my conduct I will offer the explanation that I never presided at a meeting of any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out of my line. I supposed I could do anything anybody else could, but I recognize that experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that experience. I don't feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to impress an audience. I shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a meeting like this, and I shall just take the humble place of the Essex band.

There was a great gathering in a small New England town, about twenty-five years ago. I remember that circumstance because there was something that happened at that time. It was a great occasion. They gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns around. It was an extraordinary occasion.

The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. It praised the orators, the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this in honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives toward the end. Having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and glorification, he found he still had one band left over. He had to say something about it, and he said: "The Essex band done the best it could."

I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am going to get through as well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. I have got all the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has called the meeting. But they are too voluminous. I could not pack those statistics into my head, and I had to give it up. I shall have to just reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. There are too many statistics and figures for me. I never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that, as soon as I reach nine times seven--

[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. He was trying to figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer, and the speaker resumed:]

I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage a statistic.

"This association for the--"

[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again he was obliged to turn to Mr. McKelway.]

Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. It's a long name. If I could I would write it out for you and let you take it home and study it, but I don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Carnegie is down in Virginia somewhere. Well, anyway, the object of that association which has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands of very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will push it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give them a little of your assistance out of your pockets.

The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work for them to do so that they may earn, their own bread. Now it is dismal enough to be blind--it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to do with their hands. The time passes so heavily that it is never day or night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ their minds, it is drearier and drearier.

And then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could have something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the same time earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which is the result of the labor of one's own hands. They need that cheer and pleasure. It is the only way you can turn their night into day, to give them happy hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the blessed sun. That you can do in the way I speak of.

Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss the light. Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years old --their lives are unendingly dreary. But they can be taught to use their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. That association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has taught its blind to make many things. They make them better than most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes. The goods they make are readily salable. People like them. And so they are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. They pass their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did.

What this association needs and wants is $15,000. The figures are set down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would not be here. And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or some time. Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.

I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part with it. It is always for good objects, of course. This is the plan: When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like as not. Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or fifty, or whatever the sum maybe. Let him contribute ten or twenty a year. He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him to contribute a large amount. When you get used to it you would rather contribute than borrow money.

I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897 when I was in London and said: "The gentleman who has been so liberal in taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her in his will, and now they don't know what to do." They were proposing to raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400 or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton and said: "Go on, get up your fund. It will be slow, but if you want quick work, I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking people to contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people wouldn't feel the burden of it. And he wrote back saying he had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in, a single afternoon. We would like to do something just like that to-night. We will take as many checks as you care to give. You can leave your donations in the big room outside.

I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall never forget that experience. I have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or four hours, and the sufferings that I endured and the mishaps and the accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when I feel for the blind and always shall feel. I once went to Heidelberg on an excursion. I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph Twichell, of Hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact. I always travel with clergymen when I can. It is better for them, it is better for me. And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather and without a lightning rod is a good one. The Reverend Twichell is one of those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients for a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. In that old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years. We went to the inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colossal bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of. It was as big as this room.

I didn't take much notice of the place. I didn't really get my bearings. I noticed Twichell got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind in which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and I was way up north at the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between.

We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep. It was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you hear various kinds of noises now and then. A mouse away off in the southwest. You throw things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse. But I couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I would give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance.

I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle, but I didn't think of it until it was too late. It was the darkest place that ever was. There has never been darkness any thicker than that. It just lay in cakes.

I thought that before dressing I would accumulate my clothes. I pawed around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor except one sock. I couldn't get on the track of that sock. It might have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. But I didn't think of that. I went excursioning on my hands and knees. Presently I thought, "I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed again." That is what I tried to do during the next three hours. I had lost the bearings of that bed. I was going in the wrong direction all the time. By-and-by I came in collision with a chair and that encouraged me.

It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there was only a chair here and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this territory, and I thought maybe after I found that chair I might find the next one. Well, I did. And I found another and another and another. I kept going around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions, and finally when I banged into another chair I almost lost my temper. And I raised up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high.

I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. And when I saw myself in the mirror I was frightened out of my wits. I don't allow any ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and smashed at it. A million pieces. Then I reflected. That's the way I always do, and it's unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has clear judgment. And I had judgment, and I would have had to pay for that mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was Twichell who broke it.

Then I got down, on my hands and knees and went on another exploring expedition.

As far as I could remember there were six chairs in that Oklahoma, and one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your head when rushing madly along. In the course of time I collided with thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out there. It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condition when I got through with it. I went on and on, and at last got to a place where I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. I knew that wasn't in the middle of the room. Up to that time I was afraid I had gotten out of the city.

I was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher of water about a foot high, and it was at the head of Twichell's bed, but I didn't know it. I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at it, but it didn't help any and came right down in Twichell's face and nearly drowned him. But it woke him up. I was grateful to have company on any terms. He lit a match, and there I was, way down south when I ought to have been back up yonder. My bed was out of sight it was so far away. You needed a telescope to find it. Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed him off and we got sociable.

But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedometer on my leg. Twichell and I were in a pedometer match. Twichell had longer legs than I. The only way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. I always walk in my sleep, and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him. After all, I never found that sock. I never have seen it from that day to this. But that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. That was one of the most serious occasions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of it without somebody thinking it isn't serious. You try it and see how serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that night.

[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He then introduced Joseph H. Choate, saying:]

It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate. I don't have to really introduce him. I don't have to praise him, or to flatter him. I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has ever produced. And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five years more. He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly. He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher in his countrymen's esteem and affection, I would say that word whether it was true or not.

DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE
MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL, JANUARY 21, 1909

The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars.

GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,--I am glad to be among my own kind to-night. I was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally as deadly a profession. It wasn't so very long ago that I became a member of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record is one that can't be scoffed at.

As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have always had a good deal to do with burglars--not officially, but through their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September--we got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been sorry ever since. They did us a great service they scared off all the servants in the place.

I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives which otherwise would have been lost.

I have been practising now for seven months. When I settled on my farm in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled--and since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you.

I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School. I am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.

Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division of responsibility. I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a sexton, and an undertaker. The combination is air-tight, and once a man is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him.

These four of us--three in the regular profession and the fourth an undertaker--are all good men. There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding undertaker. Bill is there in every respect. He is a little lukewarm on general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. Like my old Southern, friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere.

Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor. Ruggles is one of the best men I have got. He also is not much on general medicine, but he is a fine horse-doctor. Ferguson doesn't make any money off him.

You see, the combination started this way. When I got up to Redding and had become a doctor, I looked around to see what my chances were for aiding in, the great work. The first thing I did was to determine what manner of doctor I was to be. Being a Connecticut farmer, I naturally consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath.

Then I got circulating about, and got in touch with Ferguson and Ruggles. Ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he couldn't see where it helped horses.

Well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community, and it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and that was race-suicide. And driving about the country-side I was told by my fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable disease. But it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to stop it or we'll have to move.

We've had some funny experiences up there in Redding. Not long ago a fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face. We asked him what was the matter. We always hold consultations on every case, as there isn't business enough for four. He said he didn't know, but that he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis. We treated him for that, and I never saw a man die more peacefully.

That same afternoon my dog Tige treed an African gentleman. We chained up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had appendicitis. We asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes, that he'd like to know if there was anything in it. So we cut him open and found nothing in him but darkness. So we diagnosed his case as infidelity, because he was dark inside. Tige is a very clever dog, and aids us greatly.

The other day a patient came to me and inquired if I was old Doctor Clemens--

As a practitioner I have given a great deal of my attention to Bright's disease. I have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable. Listen:

Rule 1. When approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise President --I mean an all-wise Providence--well, anyway, it's the same thing--has seen fit to afflict with disease--well, the rule is simple, even if it is old-fashioned.

Rule 2. I've forgotten just what it is, but--

Rule 3. This is always indispensable: Bleed your patient.

MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH

ADDRESS DELIVERED JUNE 4, 1902, AT COLUMBIA, MO.

When the name of Samuel L. Clemens was called the humorist
stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently
hesitated. There was a dead silence for a moment. Suddenly
the entire audience rose and stood in silence. Some one began
to spell out the word Missouri with an interval between the
letters. All joined in. Then the house again became silent.
Mr. Clemens broke the spell:

As you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], I guess, I suppose I had better stand too.

[Then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech. As the great humorist spoke of his recent visit to Hannibal, his old home, his voice trembled.]

You cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said]. In fact, when I found myself shaking hands with persons I had not seen for fifty years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when I last saw them, I experienced emotions that I had never expected, and did not know were in me. I was profoundly moved anal saddened to think that this was the last time, perhaps, that I would ever behold those kind old faces and dear old scenes of childhood.

[The humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the audience was in a continual roar of laughter. He was particularly amused at the eulogy on himself read by Gardiner Lathrop in conferring the degree.] He has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said Mr. Clemens] by telling the truth about me.

I have seen it stated in print that as a boy I had been guilty of stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons. I read a story to this effect very closely not long ago, and I was convinced of one thing, which was that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal, and that I had not acted right in doing so. I wish now, however, to make an honest statement, which is that I do not believe, in all my checkered career, I stole a ton of peaches.

One night I stole--I mean I removed--a watermelon from a wagon while the owner was attending to another customer. I crawled off to a secluded spot, where I found that it was green. It was the greenest melon in the Mississippi Valley. Then I began to reflect. I began to be sorry. I wondered what George Washington would have done had he been in my place. I thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which comes to a man with a good resolution, and I took up that watermelon and took it back to its owner. I handed him the watermelon and told him to reform. He took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good one in place of the green melon, I forgave him.

I told him that I would still be a customer of his, and that I cherished no ill-feeling because of the incident--that would remain green in my memory.

BUSINESS

The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual banquet,
March 30, 1901, at the Y. M. C. A. Building. Mr. James G.
Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank, made the first speech of
the evening, after which Mr. Clemens was introduced by Mr.
Bailey as the personal friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the
types of successful business men.

MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker as myself all the rest of the night. I took exception to the introducing of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great financier present. I am a financier. But my methods are not the same as Mr. Cannon's.

I cannot say that I have turned out the great business man that I thought I was when I began life. But I am comparatively young yet, and may learn. I am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was that I got the big-head early in the game. I want to explain to you a few points of difference between the principles of business as I see them and those that Mr. Cannon believes in.

He says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your employer. That's all right--as a theory. What is the matter with loyalty to yourself? As nearly as I can understand Mr. Cannon's methods, there is one great drawback to them. He wants you to work a great deal. Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more-restful. My idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and the employee the idle one. The employer should be the worried man, and the employee the happy one. And why not? He gets the salary. My plan is to get another man to do the work for me. In that there's more repose. What I want is repose first, last, and all the time.

Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success; they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness. Well, diligence is all right. Let it go as a theory. Honesty is the best policy--when there is money in it. But truthfulness is one of the most dangerous--why, this man is misleading you.

I had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this. I was acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening, which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. It only reached me this morning. I was mortified at the discourtesy into which I had been brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by my hosts. As I had accepted your invitation, of course I had to send regrets to my other friends.

When I started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking over my shoulder. Women always want to know what is going on. Said she "Should not that read in the third person?" I conceded that it should, put aside what I was writing, and commenced over again. That seemed to satisfy her, and so she sat down and let me proceed. I then--finished my first note--and so sent what I intended. I never could have done this if I had let my wife know the truth about it. Here is what I wrote:

TO THE OHIO SOCIETY,--I have at this moment received a most kind
invitation (eleven days old) from Mr. Southard, president; and a
like one (ten days old) from Mr. Bryant, president of the Press
Club. I thank the society cordially for the compliment of these
invitations, although I am booked elsewhere and cannot come.

But, oh, I should like to know the name of the Lightning Express by
which they were forwarded; for I owe a friend a dozen chickens, and
I believe it will be cheaper to send eggs instead, and let them
develop on the road.
Sincerely yours,
Mark TWAIN.

I want to tell you of some of my experiences in business, and then I will be in a position to lay down one general rule for the guidance of those who want to succeed in business. My first effort was about twenty-five years ago. I took hold of an invention--I don't know now what it was all about, but some one came to me tend told me it was a good thing, and that there was lots of money in it. He persuaded me to invest $15,000, and I lived up to my beliefs by engaging a man to develop it. To make a long story short, I sunk $40,000 in it.

Then I took up the publication of a book. I called in a publisher and said to him: "I want you to publish this book along lines which I shall lay down. I am the employer, and you are the employee. I am going to show them some new kinks in the publishing business. And I want you to draw on me for money as you go along," which he did. He drew on me for $56,000. Then I asked him to take the book and call it off. But he refused to do that.

My next venture was with a machine for doing something or other. I knew less about that than I did about the invention. But I sunk $170,000 in the business, and I can't for the life of me recollect what it was the machine was to do.

I was still undismayed. You see, one of the strong points about my business life was that I never gave up. I undertook to publish General Grant's book, and made $140,000 in six months. My axiom is, to succeed in business: avoid my example.

CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR

At the dinner given in honor of Andrew Carnegie by the Lotos
Club, March 17, 1909, Mr. Clemens appeared in a white suit from
head to feet. He wore a white double-breasted coat, white
trousers, and white shoes. The only relief was a big black
cigar, which he confidentially informed the company was not
from his usual stack bought at $3 per barrel.

The State of Missouri has for its coat of arms a barrel-head with two Missourians, one on each side of it, and mark the motto--"United We Stand, Divided We Fall." Mr. Carnegie, this evening, has suffered from compliments. It is interesting to hear what people will say about a man. Why, at the banquet given by this club in my honor, Mr. Carnegie had the inspiration for which the club is now honoring him. If Dunfermline contributed so much to the United States in contributing Mr. Carnegie, what would have happened if all Scotland had turned out? These Dunfermline folk have acquired advantages in coming to America.

Doctor McKelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation, when he said of Mr. Carnegie:

"There is a man who wants to pay more taxes than he is charged." Richard Watson Gilder did very well for a poet. He advertised his magazine. He spoke of hiring Mr. Carnegie--the next thing he will be trying to hire me.

If I undertook--to pay compliments I would do it stronger than any others have done it, for what Mr. Carnegie wants are strong compliments. Now, the other side of seventy, I have preserved, as my chiefest virtue, modesty.

ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE

ADDRESS AT A DINNER OF THE MANHATTAN DICKENS FELLOWSHIP,
NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 7, 1906

This dinner was in commemoration of the ninety-fourth
anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. On an other
occasion Mr. Clemens told the same story with variations and a
different conclusion to the University Settlement Society.

I always had taken an interest in young people who wanted to become poets. I remember I was particularly interested in one budding poet when I was a reporter. His name was Butter.

One day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that he was going to commit suicide--he was tired of life, not being able to express his thoughts in poetic form. Butter asked me what I thought of the idea.

I said I would; that it was a good idea. "You can do me a friendly turn. You go off in a private place and do it there, and I'll get it all. You do it, and I'll do as much for you some time."