Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0153/01530.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 11KB | 210 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01530}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
Running For Governor}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{twain
never
mark
next
time
upon
blank
candidate
day
governor}
$Date{1893}
$Log{}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        Running For Governor
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

Running For Governor

     A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great State of New
York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an
independent ticket.  I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage over
these gentlemen, and that was - good character.  It was easy to see by the
newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good name, that
time had gone by.  It was plain that in these latter years they had become
familiar with all manner of shameful crimes.  But at the very moment that I
was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret, there was a muddy
undercurrent of discomfort "riling" the deeps of my happiness, and that was -
the having to hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of
such people.  I grew more and more disturbed.  Finally I wrote my grandmother
about it.  Her answer came quick and sharp.  She said -

     "You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed of -
not one.  Look at the newspapers - look at them and comprehend what sort of
characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see if you are willing to
lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with them."

     It was my very thought!  I did not sleep a single moment that night. But
after all I could not recede.  I was fully committed, and must go on with the
fight.  As I was looking listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across
this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.

     "Perjury. - Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a
candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be
convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Chochin China, in
1863; the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native widow and her
helpless family of a meagre plantain-patch, their only stay and support in
their bereavement and desolation.  Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to
the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up.  Will he do
it?"

     I thought I should burst with amazement!  Such a cruel, heartless charge.
I never had seen Cochin China!  I never had heard of Wakawak!  I didn't know a
plantain-patch from a kangaroo!  I did not know what to do. I was crazed and
helpless.  I let the day slip away without doing anything at all.  The next
morning the same paper had this - nothing more: -

     "Significant. - Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent
about the Cochin China perjury."

     [Mem. - During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me
in any other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."]

     Next came the Gazette, with this: -

     "Wanted to Know. - Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain
to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him!) the
little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana losing small valuables from
time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably found on Mr.
Twain's person or in his 'trunk' (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt
compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred
and feathered him, and rode him on a rail, and then advised him to leave a
permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp.  Will he do
this?"

     Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that?  For I never was
in Montana in my life.

     [After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as "Twain, the Montana
Thief."]

     I got to picking up papers apprehensively - much as one would lift a
desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One
day this met my eye: -

     "The Lie Nailed! - By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, Esq.,
of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty Mulligan, of Water
Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's vile statement that the
lamented grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged
for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous lie, without a shadow of
foundation in fact.  It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful
means resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the dead in
their graves and defiling their honored names with slander.  When we think of
the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and
friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and
insulted public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer.  But no!
let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though if passion
should get the better of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the
traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and
no court punish the perpetrators of the deed)."

     The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed
with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the "outraged
and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows
in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such property as
they could carry when they went.  And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and
say that I never slandered Mr. Blank's grandfather. More: I had never even
heard of him or mentioned him up to that day and date.

     [I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always
referred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."]

     The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:

     "A Sweet Candidate. - Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting
speech at the mass meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to
time!  A telegram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a
runaway team, and his leg broken in two places - sufferer lying in great
agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort.  And
the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend
that they did not know what was the real reason of the absence of the
abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer.  A certain man
was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of beastly
intoxication.  It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that
this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself.  We have them at last!  This
is a case that admits of no shirking.  The voice of the people demands in
thunder-tones, 'Who was that man?'"

     It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was
really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion.  Three long
years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine, or liquor of
any kind.

     [It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw
myself confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue of
that journal without a pang - notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous
fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]

     By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my
mail matter.  This form was common -

     "How about that old woman you kiked off your premises which was beging.
Pol Pry."

     And this -

     "There is things which you have done which is unbeknowens to anybody but
me.  You better trot out a few dols. to yours truly, or you'll hear thro' the
papers from Handy Andy."

     This is about the idea.  I could continue them till the reader was
surfeited, if desirable.

     Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesale
bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of
blackmailing to me.

     [In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain the Filthy
Corruptionist," and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."]

     By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to all
the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my
party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer.  As
if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of
the papers the very next day: -

     "Behold the man! - The independent candidate still maintains silence.
Because he dare not speak.  Every accusation against him has been amply
proved, and they have been endorsed and re-endorsed by his own eloquent
silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted.  Look upon your
candidate, Independents!  Look upon the Infamous Perjurer!  the Montana Thief!
the Body-Snatcher!  Contemplate your incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy
Corruptionist!  your Loathsome Embracer!  Gaze upon him - ponder him well -
and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned
this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dare not open his mouth
in denial of any one of them!"

     There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so in deep
humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless charges and
mean and wicked falsehoods.  But I never finished the task, for the very next
morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously
charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all it inmates, because it
obstructed the view from my house.  This threw me into a sort of panic.  Then
came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative
demand that the grave should be opened.  This drove me to the verge of
distraction.  On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and
incompetent old relatives to prepare the food for the foundling hospital when
I was warden.  I was wavering - wavering.  And at last, as a due and fitting
climax to the shameless persecution that party rancor had inflicted upon me,
nine little toddling children, of all shades of color and degrees of
raggedness, were taught to rush on to the platform at a public meeting, and
clasp me around the legs and call me Pa!

     I gave it up.  I hauled down my colors and surrendered.  I was not equal
to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the State of New York, and
so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of spirit
signed it, "Truly yours, once a decent man, but now

     Mark Twain,

     I. P., M. T., B. S., D. T., F. C., and L. E."