Mark Twain's Speeches Part 10

I turned over and tried to count, but I couldn't keep my mind on it. I kept thinking of that grewsome ma.s.s. I was losing count all the time, and going back and beginning over again. Oh no; I wasn't frightened-just annoyed. But by the time I'd gotten to the century mark I turned cautiously over and opened my eyes with great fort.i.tude.

The moonlight revealed to me a marble-white human hand. Well, maybe I wasn't embarra.s.sed! But then that changed to a creepy feeling again, and I thought I'd try the counting again. I don't know how many hours or weeks it was that I lay there counting hard. But the moonlight crept up that white arm, and it showed me a lead face and a terrible wound over the heart.

I could scarcely say that I was terror-stricken or anything like that. But somehow his eyes interested me so that I went right out of the window. I didn't need the sash. But it seemed easier to take it than leave it behind.

Now, let that teach you a lesson-I don't know just what it is. But at seventy years old I find that memory of peculiar value to me. I have been unconsciously guided by it all these years. Things that seemed pigeon-holed and remote are a perpetual influence. Yes, you're taught in so many ways. And you're so felicitously taught when you don't know it.

Here's something else that taught me a good deal.

When I was seventeen I was very bashful, and a sixteen-year-old girl came to stay a week with us. She was a peach, and I was seized with a happiness not of this world.

One evening my mother suggested that, to entertain her, I take her to the theatre. I didn't really like to, because I was seventeen and sensitive about appearing in the streets with a girl. I couldn't see my way to enjoying my delight in public. But we went.

I didn't feel very happy. I couldn't seem to keep my mind on the play. I became conscious, after a while, that that was due less to my lovely company than my boots. They were sweet to look upon, as smooth as skin, but fitted ten time as close. I got oblivious to the play and the girl and the other people and everything but my boots until-I hitched one partly off. The sensation was sensuously perfect: I couldn't help it. I had to get the other off, partly. Then I was obliged to get them off altogether, except that I kept my feet in the legs so they couldn't get away.

From that time I enjoyed the play. But the first thing I knew the curtain came down, like that, without my notice, and-I hadn't any boots on. What's more, they wouldn't go on. I tugged strenuously. And the people in our row got up and fussed and said things until the peach and I simply had to move on.

We moved-the girl on one arm and the boots under the other.

We walked home that way, sixteen blocks, with a retinue a mile long: Every time we pa.s.sed a lamp-post, death gripped one at the throat. But we, got home-and I had on white socks.

If I live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years old I don't suppose I could ever forget that walk. I, remember, it about as keenly as the chagrin I suffered on another occasion.

At one time in our domestic history we had a colored butler who had a failing. He could never remember to ask people who came to the door to state their business. So I used to suffer a good many calls unnecessarily.

One morning when I was especially busy he brought me a card engraved with a name I did not know. So I said, "What does he wish to see me for?" and Sylvester said, "Ah couldn't ask him, sah; he, wuz a genlinun." "Return instantly," I thundered, "and inquire his mission. Ask him what's his game." Well, Sylvester returned with the announcement that he had lightning-rods to sell. "Indeed," said I, "things are coming to a fine pa.s.s when lightning-rod agents send up engraved cards." "He has pictures," added Sylvester. "Pictures, indeed! He maybe peddling etchings. Has he a Russia leather case?" But Sylvester was too frightened to remember. I said; "I am going down to make it hot for that upstart!"

I went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way. When I got to the parlor I was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid courtesy. And when I looked in the door, sure enough he had a Russia leather case in his hand. But I didn't happen to notice that it was our Russia leather case.

And if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of etchings spread out before him. But I didn't happen to notice that they were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some unguessed purpose.

Very curtly I asked the gentleman his business. With a surprised, timid manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at Onteora, and they had asked him to call. Fine lie, I thought, and I froze him.

He seemed to be kind of non-plussed, and sat there fingering the etchings in the case until I told him he needn't bother, because we had those. That pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarra.s.sed way, to pick up another from the floor. But I stopped him. I said, "We've got that, too." He seemed pitifully amazed, but I was congratulating myself on my great success.

Finally the gentleman asked where Mr. Winton lived; he'd met him in the mountains, too. So I said I'd show him gladly. And I did on the spot. And when he was gone I felt queer, because there were all his etchings spread out on the floor.

Well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in. I showed her the card, and told her all exultantly. To my dismay she nearly fainted. She told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way. And she pushed me out of the door, and commanded me to get over to the Wintons in a hurry and get him back.

I came into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Winton was sitting up very stiff in a chair, beating me at my own game. Well, I began, to put another light on things. Before many seconds Mrs. Winton saw it was time to change her temperature. In five minutes I had asked the man to luncheon, and she to dinner, and so on.

We made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the time of his life. Why, I don't believe we let him get sober the whole time.

I trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons I have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher things, and elevate you to plans far above the old-and-and- And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had a better time with you to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago.

QUEEN VICTORIA

ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES CLUB, AT DELMONICO'S, MONDAY, MAY 25, IN HONOR OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S BIRTHDAY

Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five yards and attributed the shot to Mark twain. The duel did not take place. Mr. Clemens continued as follows: It also happened that I was the means of stopping duelling in Nevada, for a law was pa.s.sed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and the Governor, hearing of my marksmans.h.i.+p, said that if he got me I should go to prison for the full term. That's why I left Nevada, and I have not been there since.

You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country in this commemoration of the birthday of that n.o.ble lady whose life was consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will still be formed in the generations that are to come-a life which finds its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded l.u.s.tre across the abysses of s.p.a.ce long after its fires have been extinguished at their source.

As a woman the Queen was all that the most exacting standards could require. As a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had no peer in her time among either, monarchs or commoners. As a monarch she was without reproach in her great office. We may not venture, perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other. It is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified.

In those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to a place in that sc.r.a.p-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call tradition. Which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live always. And with it her character-a fame rare in the history of thrones, dominions, princ.i.p.alities, and powers, since it will not rest upon harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and freely vouchsafed. She mended broken hearts where she could, but she broke none.

What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we shall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and supported her-Prince Albert's. We need not talk any idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossible war between the two countries; there will be no war while we remain sane and the son of Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. In conclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter the voice of my country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and also in cordially wis.h.i.+ng him a long life and a happy reign.

JOAN OF ARC

ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF ILl.u.s.tRATORS, GIVEN AT THE ALDINE a.s.sOCIATION CLUB, DECEMBER 22, 1905

Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young woman attired as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle, courtesied reverently and tendered Mr. Clemens a laurel wreath on a satin pillow. He tried to speak, but his voice failed from excess of emotion. "I thank you!" he finally exclaimed, and, pulling him self together, he began his speech.

Now there is an ill.u.s.tration [pointing to the retreating Joan of Arc]. That is exactly what I wanted-precisely what I wanted-when I was describing to myself Joan of Arc, after studying her history and her character for twelve years diligently.

That was the product-not the conventional Joan of Arc. Wherever you find the conventional Joan of Arc in history she is an offence to anybody who knows the story of that wonderful girl.

Why, she was-she was almost supreme in several details. She had a marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a n.o.ble spirit, was absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words, her everything-she was only eighteen years old.

Now put that heart into such a breast-eighteen years old-and give it that masterly intellect which showed in the face, and furnish it with that almost G.o.d-like spirit, and what are you going to have? The conventional Joan of Arc? Not by any means. That is impossible. I cannot comprehend any such thing as that.

You must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we just saw. And her spirit must look out of the eyes. The figure should be-the figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture!

I hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the conventional, you have got it at second-hand. Certainly, if you had studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but when you have the common convention you stick to that.

You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a Joan of Arc-that lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely, because she was a girl he can not see the divinity in her, and so he paints a peasant, a coa.r.s.e and lubberly figure-the figure of a cotton-bale, and he clothes that in the coa.r.s.est raiment of the peasant region just like a fish woman, her hair cropped short like a Russian peasant, and that face of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the glories which are in the spirit and in her heart that expression in that face is always just the fixed expression of a ham.

But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has Sir Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist, the ill.u.s.trator, does not often get the idea of the man whose book he is ill.u.s.trating. Here is a very remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr. Beard, who ill.u.s.trated a book of mine. You may never have heard of it. I will tell you about it now-A Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Now, Beard got everything that I put into that book and a little more besides. Those pictures of Beard's in that book-oh, from the first page to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and the insolence of priest-craft and king-craft-those creatures that make slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off. Beard put it all in that book. I meant it to be there. I put a lot of it there and Beard put the rest.

What publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he saved them. He did not waste any on the ill.u.s.trations. He had a very good artist-Williams-who had never taken a lesson in drawing. Everything he did was original. The publisher hired the cheapest wood-engraver he could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of that. You can see that if Williams had had a chance he would have made some very good pictures. He had a good heart and good intentions.

I had a character in the first book he ill.u.s.trated-The Innocents Abroad. That was a boy seventeen or eighteen years old-Jack Van Nostrand-a New York boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature. He and I tried to get Williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of Jack that would be worthy of Jack.

Jack was a most singular combination. He was born and reared in New York here. He was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he expressed a feeling he did it in Bowery slang, and it was a most curious combination-that delicacy of his and that apparent coa.r.s.eness. There was no coa.r.s.eness inside of Jack at all, and Jack, in the course of seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that was marvellous-ignorance of various things, not of all things. For instance, he did not know anything about the Bible. He had never been in Sunday-school. Jack got more out of the Holy Land than anybody else, because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of surprises to him.

I said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that "The song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't sing. It sounded absurd, but it was charged on Jack as a fact, and as he went along through that country he had a proper foil in an old rebel colonel, who was superintendent and head engineer in a large Sunday-school in Wheeling, West Virginia. That man was full of enthusiasm wherever he went, and would stand and deliver himself of speeches, and Jack would listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder.

Jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the first overland stage-coach. That man's name who ran that line of stages-well, I declare that name is gone. Well, names will go.

Halliday-ah, that's the name-Ben Halliday, your uncle [turning to Mr. Carnegie]. That was the fellow-Ben Halliday-and Jack was full of admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages made-and it was good speed-one hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and night, and it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of the Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a speech), so he called us up to him. He called up five sinners and three saints. It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified me. And he said: "Here are the Fords of the Jordan-a monumental place. At this very point, when Moses brought the children of Israel through-he brought the children of Israel from Egypt through the desert you see them-he guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty years, and brought them to this spot safe and sound. There you see-there is the scene of what Moses did."

And Jack said: "Moses who?"

"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that! Moses, the great law-giver! Moses, the great patriot! Moses, the great warrior! Moses, the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these people through these three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed there safe and sound."

Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years. Ben Halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty-six hours."

Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. Jack was not ignorant on all subjects. That boy was a deep student in the history of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to the marrow. There was a subject that interested him all the time. Other subjects were of no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into the picture.

Yes, Williams wanted to do it. He said: "I will make him as innocent as a virgin." He thought a moment, and then said, "I will make him as innocent as an unborn virgin;" which covered the ground.

I was reminded of Jack because I came across a letter to-day which is over thirty years old that Jack wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption. He was very long and slim, poor creature; and in a year or two after he got back from that excursion, to the Holy Land he went on a ride on horseback through Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two.

He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine; and he said: "I have ridden horseback"-this was three years after-"I hate ridden horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you never see anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle station-ten miles apart, twenty miles apart. Now you tell Clemens that in all that stretch of four hundred miles I have seen only two books-the Bible and 'Innocents Abroad'. Tell Clemens the Bible was in a very good condition."

I say that he had studied, and he had, the real Saxon liberty, the acquirement of our liberty, and Jack used to repeat some verses-I don't know where they came from, but I thought of them to-day when I saw that letter-that that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted lines from that unknown poet: "For he had sat at Sidney's feet And walked with him in plain apart, And through the centuries heard the beat Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart."

And he was that kind of a boy. He should have lived, and yet he should not have lived, because he died at that early age-he couldn't have been more than twenty-he had seen all there was to see in the world that was worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion, is the only valuable thing in it. He had arrived at that point where presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the realities of life, and G.o.d help the man that has arrived at that point.

ACCIDENT INSURANCE-ETC.

DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON GENTLEMAN,-I am glad, indeed, to a.s.sist in welcoming the distinguished guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of brothers working sweetly hand in hand-the Colt's arms company making the destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance citizens paying for the victims when they pa.s.s away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to a.s.sist in welcoming our guest-first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he is in sympathy with insurance, and has been the means of making many other men cast their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no n.o.bler field for human effort than the insurance line of business-especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have a.s.sumed a kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest-as an advertis.e.m.e.nt. I do not seem, to care for poetry any more. I do not care for politics-even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent inst.i.tution. In all my experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.

I will remark here, by way of advertis.e.m.e.nt, that that n.o.ble charity which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY is an inst.i.tution, which is peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it his custom. No man pan take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year is out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appet.i.te left him, he ceased to smile-said life was but a weariness. Three weeks ago I got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit in this land-has a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around on a shutter.

I will say in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I curl say the same far the rest of the speakers.

OSTEOPATHY

On February 27, 1901, Mr. Clemens appeared before the a.s.sembly Committee in Albany, New York, in favor of the Seymour bill legalizing the practice of osteopathy.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,-Dr. Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave me the character. I have heard my character discussed a thousand times before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did not get more than half of them.

I was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way. What remarkable names those diseases have! It makes me envious of the man that has them all. I have had many diseases, and am thankful for all I have had.

One of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in Sweden, a treatment which I took. It is, I suppose, a kindred thing. There is apparently no great difference between them. I was a year and a half in London and Sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, Mr. Kildren.

I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't.

The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed with power. It stands between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor I must employ. When my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by the State. Now then, it doesn't seem logical that the State shall depart from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and take the other position in the matter of smaller consequence-the health of the body.

The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the State. Oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the State you create the same condition as prevailed in the Garden of Eden.

You want the thing that you can't have. I didn't care much about the osteopaths, but as soon as I found they were going to drive them out I got in a state of uneasiness, and I can't sleep nights now.

I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden about the prohibited apple. Adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it, just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it.

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.

I was the subject of my mother's experiment. She was wise. She made experiments cautiously. She didn't pick out just any child in the flock. No, she chose judiciously. She chose one she could spare, and she couldn't spare the others. I was the choice child of the flock; so I had to take all of the experiments.

In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure. Mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through. A bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect. Then I was rubbed down with flannels, sheet was dipped in the water, and I was put to bed. I perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with me.

But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and I didn't care for that. When they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my conscience, the exudation of sin. It purified me spiritually, and it remains until this day.

I have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy. I took a chance at the latter for old times' sake, for, three tines, when a boy, mother's new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family physician to pull me out.