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THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE



Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus,
tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful
of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike,
and never doing it.  It was a lovely reason, woodsy, balmy, delicious,
and had once been populous, long years before, but now the
people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude.
They went away when the surface diggings gave out.  In one place,
where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies
and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse
of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life
had ever been present there.  This was down toward Tuttletown.
In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads,
one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy,
and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors
and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were
deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed
families who could neither sell them nor give them away.  Now and then,
half an hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest
mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the
cottage-builders. In some few cases these cabins were still occupied;
and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant
was the very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend
on another thing, too--that he was there because he had once had
his opportunity to go home to the States rich, and had not done it;
had rather lost his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved
to sever all communication with his home relatives and friends,
and be to them thenceforth as one dead.  Round about California
in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men--
pride-smitten poor fellows, grizzled and old at forty, whose secret
thoughts were made all of regrets and longings--regrets for their
wasted lives, and longings to be out of the struggle and done with it all.

It was a lonesome land!  Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses
of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse
of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad
to be alive.  And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon,
when I caught sight of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift.
This person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was
standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages
of the sort already referred to.  However, this one hadn't
a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted
and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard,
which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing.
I was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home--
it was the custom of the country..

It was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily
and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this
implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups,
bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war
pictures from the Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls.
That was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a
nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something
in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted
by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be,
that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment.
I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so,
and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul
in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies
and lamp-mats, and Windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with
sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little
unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes
about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would
miss in a moment if they were taken away.  The delight that was
in my heart showed in my face, and the man saw it and was pleased;
saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it had been spoken.

"All her work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself--
every bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full
of affectionate worship.  One of those soft Japanese fabrics
with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a
picture-frame was out of adjustment.  He noticed it, and rearranged
it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge
the effect before he got it to suit him.  Then he gave it a light
finishing pat or two with his hand, and said:  "She always does that.
You can't tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something
until you've done that--you can see it yourself after it's done,
but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of it.
It's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair
after she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon.  I've seen her
fix all these things so much that I can do them all just her way,
though I don't know the law of any of them.  But she knows the law.
She knows the why and the how both; but I don't know the why;
I only know the how."

He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom
as I had not seen for years:  white counterpane, white pillows,
carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror
and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand,
with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish,
and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white
for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation.
So my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words:

"All her work; she did it all herself--every bit.  Nothing here
that hasn't felt the touch of her hand.  Now you would think--
But I mustn't talk so much."

By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail
of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place,
where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit;
and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways,
you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man
wanted me to discover for myself.  I knew it perfectly, and I knew
he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so I
tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him.
I failed several times, as I could see out of the corner of my eye
without being told; but at last I knew I must be looking straight
at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves
from him.  He broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together,
and cried out:

"That's it!  You've found it.  I knew you would.  It's her picture."

I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall,
and did find there what I had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case.
It contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful,
as it seemed to me, that I had ever seen.  The man drank the admiration
from my face, and was fully satisfied.

"Nineteen her last birthday," he said, as he put the picture back;
"and that was the day we were married.  When you see her--ah, just wait
till you see her!"

"Where is she?  When will she be in?"

"Oh, she's away now.  She's gone to see her people.  They live
forty or fifty miles from here.  She's been gone two weeks today."

"When do you expect her back?"

"This is Wednesday.  She'll be back Saturday, in the evening--
about nine o'clock, likely."

I felt a sharp sense of disappointment.

"I'm sorry, because I'll be gone then," I said, regretfully.

"Gone?  No--why should you go?  Don't go.  She'll be disappointed."

She would be disappointed--that beautiful creature!  If she had said
the words herself they could hardly have blessed me more.  I was
feeling a deep, strong longing to see her--a longing so supplicating,
so insistent, that it made me afraid.  I said to myself:  "I will
go straight away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake."

"You see, she likes to have people come and stop with us--
people who know things, and can talk--people like you.  She delights
in it; for she knows--oh, she knows nearly everything herself,
and can talk, oh, like a bird--and the books she reads, why, you would
be astonished.  Don't go; it's only a little while, you know,
and she'll be so disappointed."

I heard the words, but hardly noticed them, I was so deep in my
thinkings and strugglings.  He left me, but I didn't know.
Presently he was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he
held it open before me and said:

"There, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her,
and you wouldn't."

That second glimpse broke down my good resolution.  I would stay
and take the risk.  That night we smoked the tranquil pipe,
and talked till late about various things, but mainly about her;
and certainly I had had no such pleasant and restful time for many
a day.  The Thursday followed and slipped comfortably away.
Toward twilight a big miner from three miles away came--one of
the grizzled, stranded pioneers--and gave us warm salutation,
clothed in grave and sober speech.  Then he said:

"I only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when
is she coming home.  Any news from her?"

"Oh, yes, a letter.  Would you like to hear it, Tom?"

"Well, I should think I would, if you don't mind, Henry!"

Henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip
some of the private phrases, if we were willing; then he went
on and read the bulk of it--a loving, sedate, and altogether
charming and gracious piece of handiwork, with a postscript full
of affectionate regards and messages to Tom, and Joe, and Charley,
and other close friends and neighbors.

As the reader finished, he glanced at Tom, and cried out:

"Oho, you're at it again!  Take your hands away, and let me see
your eyes.  You always do that when I read a letter from her.
I will write and tell her."

"Oh no, you mustn't, Henry.  I'm getting old, you know, and any
little disappointment makes me want to cry.  I thought she'd
be here herself, and now you've got only a letter."

"Well, now, what put that in your head?  I thought everybody knew
she wasn't coming till Saturday."

"Saturday!  Why, come to think, I did know it.  I wonder
what's the matter with me lately?  Certainly I knew it.
Ain't we all getting ready for her?  Well, I must be going now.
But I'll be on hand when she comes, old man!"

Late Friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his
cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little
gaiety and a good time Saturday night, if Henry thought she wouldn't
be too tired after her journey to be kept up.

"Tired?  She tired!  Oh, hear the man!  Joe, YOU know she'd sit up
six weeks to please any one of you!"

When Joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read,
and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up;
but he said he was such an old wreck that THAT would happen to him
if she only just mentioned his name.  "Lord, we miss her so!"
he said.

Saturday afternoon I found I was taking out my watch pretty often.
Henry noticed it, and said, with a startled look:

"You don't think she ought to be here soon, do you?"

I felt caught, and a little embarrassed; but I laughed, and said
it was a habit of mine when I was in a state of expenctancy.
But he didn't seem quite satisfied; and from that time on he began
to show uneasiness.  Four times he walked me up the road to a point
whence we could see a long distance; and there he would stand,
shading his eyes with his hand, and looking.  Several times he said:

"I'm getting worried, I'm getting right down worried.  I know
she's not due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems
to be trying to warn me that something's happened.  You don't
think anything has happened, do you?"

I began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness;
and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time,
I lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him.
It seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded
and so humble after that, that I detested myself for having done
the cruel and unnecessary thing.  And so I was glad when Charley,
another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled
up to Henry to hear the letter read, and talked over the preparations
for the welcome.  Charley fetched out one hearty speech after another,
and did his best to drive away his friend's bodings and apprehensions.

"Anything HAPPENED to her?  Henry, that's pure nonsense.  There isn't
anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that.
What did the letter say?  Said she was well, didn't it?  And said
she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it?  Did you ever know her
to fail of her word?  Why, you know you never did.  Well, then,
don't you fret; she'll BE here, and that's absolutely certain,
and as sure as you are born.  Come, now, let's get to decorating--
not much time left."

Pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived, and then all hands set about adoring
the house with flowers.  Toward nine the three miners said that
as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up,
for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for
a good, old-fashioned break-down. A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet--
these were the instruments.  The trio took their places side by side,
and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat time with
their big boots.

It was getting very close to nine.  Henry was standing in the door
with his eyes directed up the road, his body swaying to the torture
of his mental distress.  He had been made to drink his wife's
health and safety several times, and now Tom shouted:

"All hands stand by!  One more drink, and she's here!"

Joe brought the glasses on a waiter, and served the party.
I reached for one of the two remaining glasses, but Joe growled
under his breath:

"Drop that!  Take the other."

Which I did.  Henry was served last.  He had hardly swallowed his
drink when the clock began to strike.  He listened till it finished,
his face growing pale and paler; then he said:

"Boys, I'm sick with fear.  Help me--I want to lie down!"

They helped him to the sofa.  He began to nestle and drowse,
but presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said:
"Did I hear horses' feet?  Have they come?"

One of the veterans answered, close to his ear:  "It was Jimmy
Parish come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up
the road a piece, and coming along.  Her horse is lame, but she'll
be here in half an hour."

"Oh, I'm SO thankful nothing has happened!"

He was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth.
In a moment those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked
him into his bed in the chamber where I had washed my hands.
They closed the door and came back.  Then they seemed preparing to leave;
but I said:  "Please don't go, gentlemen.  She won't know me; I am
a stranger."

They glanced at each other.  Then Joe said:

"She?  Poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!"

"Dead?"

"That or worse.  She went to see her folks half a year after she
was married, and on her way back, on a Saturday evening, the Indians
captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been
heard of since."

"And he lost his mind in consequence?"

"Never has been sane an hour since.  But he only gets bad when
that time of year comes round.  Then we begin to drop in here,
three days before she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard
from her, and Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers,
and get everything ready for a dance.  We've done it every year
for nineteen years.  The first Saturday there was twenty-seven
of us, without counting the girls; there's only three of us now,
and the girls are gone.  We drug him to sleep, or he would go wild;
then he's all right for another year--thinks she's with him till the
last three or four days come round; then he begins to look for her,
and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it
to us.  Lord, she was a darling!"


***




A HELPLESS SITUATION



Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern,
a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance,
yet I cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me.
It affects me as the locomotive always affects me:  I saw to myself,
"I have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way,
yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive
you is clearly beyond human genius--you can't exist, you don't exist,
yet here you are!"

I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one.  I yearn to print it,
and where is the harm?  The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt,
and if I conceal her name and address--her this-world address--
I am sure her shade will not mind.  And with it I wish to print
the answer which I wrote at the time but probably did not send.
If it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy,
for I find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter.
To that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send,
fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; I have done it many
a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort.


THE LETTER


X------, California, JUNE 3, 1879.

Mr. S. L. Clemens, HARTFORD, CONN.:


Dear Sir,--You will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed
to write and ask a favor of you.  let your memory go back to your days
in the Humboldt mines--'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett
and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was
half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp--
strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the
desert to where the last claim was, at the divide.  The lean-to
you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down
through one night, as told about by you in ROUGHING IT--my uncle
Simmons remembers it very well.  He lived in the principal cabin,
half-way up the divide, along with Dixon and Parker and Smith.
It had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks,
and was the only one that had.  You and your party were there on
the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, Uncle Simmons
often speaks of it.  It seems curious that dried-apple-pie should
have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far
Humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim
the regular bill of fare was.  Sixteen years ago--it is a long time.
I was a little girl then, only fourteen.  I never saw you, I lived
in Washoe.  But Uncle Simmons ran across you every now and then,
all during those weeks that you and party were there working
your claim which was like the rest.  The camp played out long
and long ago, there wasn't silver enough in it to make a button.
You never saw my husband, but he was there after you left, AND LIVED
IN THAT VERY LEAN-TO, a bachelor then but married to me now.
He often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days,
he would have taken the lean-to. He got hurt in the old Hal Clayton
claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast
and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best
he could.  It landed him clear down on the train and hit a Piute.
For weeks they thought he would not get over it but he did,
and is all right, now.  Has been ever since.  This is a long
introduction but it is the only way I can make myself known.
The favor I ask I feel assured your generous heart will grant:
Give me some advice about a book I have written.  I do not claim
anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as most
of the books of the times.  I am unknown in the literary world
and you know what that means unless one has some one of influence
(like yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you.
I would like to place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you
would suggest.

This is a secret from my husband and family.  I intend
it as a surprise in case I get it published.

Feeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write
me a letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see
them for me and then let me hear.

I appeal to you to grant me this favor.  With deepest gratitude I
think you for your attention.


One knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing
letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other
direction across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly,
unceasingly, unrestingly.  It goes to every well-known merchant,
and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and Mayor,
and Congressman, and Governor, and editor, and publisher, and author,
and broker, and banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed
to have "influence."  It always follows the one pattern:  "You do
not know me, BUT YOU ONCE KNEW A RELATIVE OF MINE," etc., etc.
We should all like to help the applicants, we should all be glad
to do it, we should all like to return the sort of answer that
is desired, but--Well, there is not a thing we can do that would
be a help, for not in any instance does that latter ever come from
anyone who CAN be helped.  The struggler whom you COULD help does
his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger.
He has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and
with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone.
That pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable,
the unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it?
What do you find to say?  You do not want to inflict a wound;
you hunt ways to avoid that.  What do you find?  How do you get out
of your hard place with a contend conscience?  Do you try to explain?
The old reply of mine to such a letter shows that I tried that once.
Was I satisfied with the result?  Possibly; and possibly not;
probably not; almost certainly not.  I have long ago forgotten all
about it.  But, anyway, I append my effort:


THE REPLY


I know Mr. H., and I will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection
you find you still desire it.  There will be a conversation.
I know the form it will take.  It will be like this:


MR.  H. How do her books strike you?

MR.  CLEMENS.  I am not acquainted with them.

H. Who has been her publisher?

C. I don't know.

H. She HAS one, I suppose?

C. I--I think not.

H. Ah.  You think this is her first book?

C. Yes--I suppose so.  I think so.

H. What is it about?  What is the character of it?

C. I believe I do not know.

H. Have you seen it?

C. Well--no, I haven't.

H. Ah-h. How long have you known her?

C. I don't know her.

H. Don't know her?

C. No.

H. Ah-h. How did you come to be interested in her book, then?

C. Well, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her,
and mentioned you.

H. Why should she apply to you instead of me?

C. She wished me to use my influence.

H. Dear me, what has INFLUENCE to do with such a matter?

C. Well, I think she thought you would be more likely to examine
her book if you were influenced.

H. Why, what we are here FOR is to examine books--anybody's book
that comes along.  It's our BUSINESS.  Why should we turn away
a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? It would be foolish.
No publisher does it.  On what ground did she request your influence,
since you do not know her?  She must have thought you knew her
literature and could speak for it.  Is that it?

C. No; she knew I didn't.

H. Well, what then?  She had a reason of SOME sort for believing you
competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations
to do it?

C. Yes, I--I knew her uncle.

H. Knew her UNCLE?

C. Yes.

H. Upon my word!  So, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature;
he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed;
you are satisfied, and therefore--

C. NO, that isn't all, there are other ties.  I know the cabin
her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I
came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID
know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he
went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit
an Indian in the back with almost fatal consequences.

H. To HIM, or to the Indian?

C. She didn't say which it was.

H. (WITH A SIGH). It certainly beats the band!  You don't know HER,
you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when
the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build
an estimate of her book upon, so far as I--

C. I knew her uncle.  You are forgetting her uncle.

H. Oh, what use is HE?  Did you know him long?  How long was it?

C. Well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have
met him, anyway.  I think it was that way; you can't tell about
these things, you know, except when they are recent.

H. Recent?  When was all this?

C. Sixteen years ago.

H. What a basis to judge a book upon!  As first you said you knew him,
and not you don't know whether you did or not.

C. Oh yes, I know him; anyway, I think I thought I did; I'm perfectly
certain of it.

H. What makes you think you thought you knew him?

C. Why, she says I did, herself.

H. SHE says so!

C. Yes, she does, and I DID know him, too, though I don't remember
it now.

H. Come--how can you know it when you don't remember it.

C. _I_ don't know.  That is, I don't know the process, but I DO know
lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things
that I don't know.  It's so with every educated person.

H. (AFTER A PAUSE). Is your time valuable?

C. No--well, not very.

H. Mine is.

So I came away then, because he was looking tired.  Overwork, I reckon;
I never do that; I have seen the evil effects of it.  My mother
was always afraid I work overwork myself, but I never did.

Dear madam, you see how it would happen if I went there.  He would
ask me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him,
and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed
more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on
account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done.
I wish I could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not
care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them,
it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything
but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence.
But they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them,
no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen.  If you will send
yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it,
I can assure you of that.


***



A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION



Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting
by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest
curiosities of modern life.  Yesterday I was writing a deep article
on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was
going on in the room.  I notice that one can always write best when
somebody is talking through a telephone close by.  Well, the thing
began in this way.  A member of our household came in and asked me
to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown.
I have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from
calling up the central office themselves.  I don't know why,
but they do.  So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued:

CENTRAL OFFICE.  (GRUFFY.) Hello!

I. Is it the Central Office?

C. O. Of course it is.  What do you want?

I. Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please?

C. O. All right.  Just keep your ear to the telephone.

Then I heard K-LOOK, K-LOOK, K'LOOK--KLOOK-KLOOK-KLOOK-LOOK-LOOK! then
a horrible "gritting" of teeth, and finally a piping female voice:
Y-e-s? (RISING INFLECTION.) Did you wish to speak to me?

Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down.
Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world--
a conversation with only one end of it.  You hear questions asked;
you don't hear the answer.  You hear invitations given; you hear
no thanks in return.  You have listening pauses of dead silence,
followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations
of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay.  You can't make head or tail
of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the
other end of the wire says.  Well, I heard the following remarkable
series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted--
for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone:

Yes?  Why, how did THAT happen?

Pause.

What did you say?

Pause.

Oh no, I don't think it was.

Pause.

NO!  Oh no, I didn't mean THAT.  I meant, put it in while it
is still boiling--or just before it COMES to a boil.

Pause.

WHAT?

Pause.

I turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge.

Pause.

Yes, I like that way, too; but I think it's better to baste it
on with Valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort.
It gives it such an air--and attracts so much noise.

Pause.

It's forty-ninth Deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive.
I think we ought all to read it often.

Pause.

Perhaps so; I generally use a hair pin.

Pause.

What did you say?  (ASIDE.) Children, do be quiet!

Pause

OH!  B FLAT!  Dear me, I thought you said it was the cat!

Pause.

Since WHEN?

Pause.

Why, _I_ never heard of it.

Pause.

You astound me!  It seems utterly impossible!

Pause.

WHO did?

Pause.

Good-ness gracious!

Pause.

Well, what IS this world coming to?  Was it right in CHURCH?

Pause.

And was her MOTHER there?

Pause.

Why, Mrs. Bagley, I should have died of humiliation!  What did
they DO?

Long pause.

I can't be perfectly sure, because I haven't the notes by me;
but I think it goes something like this:  te-rolly-loll-loll, loll
lolly-loll-loll, O tolly-loll-loll-LEE-LY-LI-I-do! And then REPEAT,
you know.

Pause.

Yes, I think it IS very sweet--and very solemn and impressive,
if you get the andantino and the pianissimo right.

Pause.

Oh, gum-drops, gum-drops! But I never allow them to eat striped candy.
And of course they CAN'T, till they get their teeth, anyway.

Pause.

WHAT?

Pause.

Oh, not in the least--go right on.  He's here writing--it doesn't
bother HIM.

Pause.

Very well, I'll come if I can.  (ASIDE.) Dear me, how it does tire
a person's arm to hold this thing up so long!  I wish she'd--

Pause.

Oh no, not at all; I LIKE to talk--but I'm afraid I'm keeping you
from your affairs.

Pause.

Visitors?

Pause.

No, we never use butter on them.

Pause.

Yes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they
are very unhealthy when they are out of season.  And HE doesn't
like them, anyway--especially canned.

Pause.

Oh, I think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty
cents a bunch.

Pause.

MUST you go?  Well, GOOD-by.

Pause.

Yes, I think so.  GOOD-by.

Pause.

Four o'clock, then--I'll be ready.  GOOD-by.

Pause.

Thank you ever so much.  GOOD-by.

Pause.

Oh, not at all!--just as fresh--WHICH?  Oh, I'm glad to hear you
say that.  GOOD-by.

(Hangs up the telephone and says, "Oh, it DOES tire a person's
arm so!")

A man delivers a single brutal "Good-by," and that is the end of it.
Not so with the gentle sex--I say it in their praise; they cannot
abide abruptness.



***


EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON:  A TALE



These two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins,
or something of that sort.  While still babies they became orphans,
and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly
grew very fond of them.  The Brants were always saying:  "Be pure,
honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success
in life is assured."  The children heard this repeated some thousands
of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves
long before they could say the Lord's Prayer; it was painted over
the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read.
It was destined to be the unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life.
Sometimes the Brants changed the wording a little, and said:
"Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never
lack friends."

Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him.  When he wanted
candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented
himself without it.  When Baby Benton wanted candy, he cried for it
until he got it.  Baby Mills took care of his toys; Baby Benton
always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself
to insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house,
little Edward was persuaded to yield up his play-things to him.

When the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense
in one respect:  he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he
shone frequently in new ones, with was not the case with Eddie.
The boys grew apace.  Eddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie an
increasing solicitude.  It was always sufficient to say, in answer
to Eddie's petitions, "I would rather you would not do it"--
meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing,
and all sorts of things which boys delight in.  But NO answer
was sufficient for Georgie; he had to be humored in his desires,
or he would carry them with a high hand.  Naturally, no boy got
more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no body
ever had a better time.  The good Brants did not allow the boys
to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed
at that hour; Eddie honorably remained, but Georgie usually slipped
out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight.
It seemed impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the
Brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles,
to stay in.  The good Brants gave all their time and attention
to vain endeavors to regulate Georgie; they said, with grateful
tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed no efforts of theirs,
he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect.

By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed
to a trade:  Edward went voluntarily; George was coaxed and bribed.
Edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the
good Brants; they praised him, so did his master; but George ran away,
and it cost Mr. Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get
him back.  By and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble.
He ran away a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him.
Trouble and expense for Mr. Brant once more; and, besides, it was with
the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master
to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft.

Edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner
in his master's business.  George did not improve; he kept the loving
hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full
of inventive activities to protect him from ruin.  Edward, as a boy,
had interested himself in Sunday-schools, debating societies,
penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity
associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but
steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies,
and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men.  This
excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his "natural bent."

Finally, the old people died.  The will testified their loving
pride in Edward, and left their little property to George--
because he "needed it"; whereas, "owing to a bountiful Providence,"
such was not the case with Edward.  The property was left to
George conditionally:  he must buy out Edward's partner with it;
else it must go to a benevolent organization called the Prisoner's
Friend Society.  The old people left a letter, in which they begged
their dear son Edward to take their place and watch over George,
and help and shield him as they had done.

Edward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in
the business.  He was not a valuable partner:  he had been meddling
with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now,
and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly.  Edward had
been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time.
They loved each other dearly, and--But about this period George began
to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying
to Edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her--
she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it:
she must marry "poor George" and "reform him."  It would break
her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty.
So she married George, and Edward's heart came very near breaking,
as well as her own.  However, Edward recovered, and married another girl--
a very excellent one she was, too.

Children came to both families.  Mary did her honest best to reform
her husband, but the contract was too large.  George went on drinking,
and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly.
A great many good people strove with George--they were always at it,
in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty,
and did not mend his ways.  He added a vice, presently--that of
secret gambling.  He got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the
firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far
and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of
the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless.

Times were hard, now, and they grew worse.  Edward moved his family
into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work.
He begged for it, but in was really not to be had.  He was astonished
to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished
and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had
had in him faded out and disappeared.  Still, he MUST get work;
so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it.
At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod,
and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that NOBODY knew
him or cared anything about him.  He was not able to keep up
his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged,
and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under
the disgrace of suspension.

But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest,
the faster George rose in them.  He was found lying, ragged and drunk,
in the gutter one morning.  A member of the Ladies' Temperance Refuge
fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him,
kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him.
An account of it was published.

General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great
many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their
countenance and encouragement.  He did not drink a drop for two months,
and meantime was the pet of the good.  Then he fell--in the gutter;
and there was general sorrow and lamentation.  But the noble
sisterhood rescued him again.  They cleaned him up, they fed him,
they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got
him his situation again.  An account of this, also, was published,
and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration
of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl.
A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing
speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively:  "We are
not about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle
in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view
with dry eyes."  There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton,
escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge,
stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge.  The air
was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy.  Everybody wrung
the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary
was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero.
An account of it was published.

George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully
rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were
found for him.  Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing,
as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense
amount of good.

He was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals--
that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get
a large sum of money at the bank.  A mighty pressure was brought
to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it
was partially successful--he was "sent up" for only two years.
When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent
were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary
with a pardon in his pocket, the Prisoner's Friend Society met him
at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all
the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice,
encouragement and help.  Edward Mills had once applied to the Prisoner's
Friend Society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question,
"Have you been a prisoner?" made brief work of his case.

While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been
quietly making head against adversity.  He was still poor, but was
in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected
and trusted cashier of a bank.  George Benton never came near him,
and was never heard to inquire about him.  George got to indulging
in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him,
but nothing definite.

One winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank,
and found Edward Mills there alone.  They commanded him to reveal
the "combination," so that they could get into the safe.  He refused.
They threatened his life.  He said his employers trusted him,
and he could not be traitor to that trust.  He could die, if he must,
but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up
the "combination."  The burglars killed him.

The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved
to be George Benton.  A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and
orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged
that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation
of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming
forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family,
now bereft of support.  The result was a mass of solid cash amounting
to upward of five hundred dollars--an average of nearly three-eights
of a cent for each bank in the Union.  The cashier's own bank
testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly
failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were not square,
and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon
to escape detection and punishment.

George Benton was arraigned for trial.  Then everybody seemed to
forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George.
Everything that money and influence could do was done to save him,
but it all failed; he was sentenced to death.  Straightway the
Governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon;
they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids;
by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans.
But no, the Governor--for once--would not yield.

Now George Benton experienced religion.  The glad news flew all around.
From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and
fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing,
and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption,
except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments.

This sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and George
Benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing
audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce.
His grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while,
and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft:
"He has fought the good fight."

The brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription:  "Be pure,
honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--"

Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was
so given.

The cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said;
but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing
that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded,
have collected forty-two thousand dollars--and built a Memorial
Church with it.


***



THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE



Chapter I


In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said:

"Here are gifts.  Take one, leave the others.  And be wary,
chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable."

The gifts were five:  Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death.
The youth said, eagerly:

"There is no need to consider"; and he chose Pleasure.

He went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth
delights in.  But each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing,
vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him.  In the end he said:
"These years I have wasted.  If I could but choose again, I would
choose wisely.



Chapter II


The fairy appeared, and said:

"Four of the gifts remain.  Choose once more; and oh, remember--
time is flying, and only one of them is precious."

The man considered long, then chose Love; and did not mark the tears
that rose in the fairy's eyes.

After many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home.
And he communed with himself, saying:  "One by one they have gone
away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last.
Desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour
of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, as sold me I have paid
a thousand hours of grief.  Out of my heart of hearts I curse him."



Chapter III


"Choose again."  It was the fairy speaking.

"The years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so.
Three gifts remain.  Only one of them has any worth--remember it,
and choose warily."

The man reflected long, then chose Fame; and the fairy, sighing,
went her way.

Years went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he
sat solitary in the fading day, thinking.  And she knew his thought:

"My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue,
and it seemed well with me for a little while.  How little a while
it was!  Then came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate;
then persecution.  Then derision, which is the beginning of the end.
And last of all came pity, which is the funeral of fame.  Oh,
the bitterness and misery of renown! target for mud in its prime,
for contempt and compassion in its decay."



Chapter IV


"Chose yet again."  It was the fairy's voice.

"Two gifts remain.  And do not despair.  In the beginning there
was but one that was precious, and it is still here."

"Wealth--which is power!  How blind I was!" said the man.
"Now, at last, life will be worth the living.  I will spend,
squander, dazzle.  These mockers and despisers will crawl in the
dirt before me, and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy.
I will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit,
all contentments of the body that man holds dear.  I will buy,
buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck
grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.
I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass;
I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so."

Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering
in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed,
and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:

"Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies!
And miscalled, every one.  They are not gifts, but merely lendings.
Pleasure, Love, Fame, Riches:  they are but temporary disguises for
lasting realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty.  The fairy said true;
in all her store there was but one gift which was precious,
only one that was not valueless.  How poor and cheap and mean I
know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one,
that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and
enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames
and griefs that eat the mind and heart.  Bring it!  I am weary,
I would rest."



Chapter V


The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.
She said:

"I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child.  It was ignorant,
but trusted me, asking me to choose for it.  You did not ask me
to choose."

"Oh, miserable me!  What is left for me?"

"What not even you have deserved:  the wanton insult of Old Age."


***



THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES


From My Unpublished Autobiography



Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet,
faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature
of Mark Twain:


"Hartford, March 10, 1875.


"Please do not use my name in any way.  Please do not even divulge
that fact that I own a machine.  I have entirely stopped using
the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter
with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I
would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had
made in the use of it, etc., etc.  I don't like to write letters,
and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding
little joker."


A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine
and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that.
Mr. Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter
from his unpublished autobiography:



1904.  VILLA QUARTO, FLORENCE, JANUARY.


Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me,
but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language"--
the kind of language that soothes vexation.

I have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography.
Between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap--
more than thirty years!  It is sort of lifetime.  In that wide interval
much has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us.
At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity.
The person who owned one was a curiosity, too.  But now it is the
other way about:  the person who DOESN'T own one is a curiosity.
I saw a type-machine for the first time in--what year?  I suppose it
was 1873--because Nasby was with me at the time, and it was in Boston.
We must have been lecturing, or we could not have been in Boston,
I take it.  I quitted the platform that season.

But never mind about that, it is no matter.  Nasby and I saw
the machine through a window, and went in to look at it.
The salesman explained it to us, showed us samples of its work,
and said it could do fifty-seven words a minute--a statement
which we frankly confessed that we did not believe.  So he put
his type-girl to work, and we timed her by the watch.  She actually
did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds.  We were partly convinced,
but said it probably couldn't happen again.  But it did.
We timed the girl over and over again--with the same result always:
she won out.  She did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we
pocketed them as fast as she turned them out, to show as curiosities.
The price of the machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars.
I bought one, and we went away very much excited.

At the hotel we got out our slips and were a little disappointed
to find that they contained the same words.  The girl had economized
time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart.
However, we argued--safely enough--that the FIRST type-girl must
naturally take rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them
could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a
half of what was in it.  If the machine survived--IF it survived--
experts would come to the front, by and by, who would double the girl's
output without a doubt.  They would do one hundred words a minute--
my talking speed on the platform.  That score has long ago been beaten.

At home I played with the toy, repeated and repeating and repeated "The
Boy stood on the Burning Deck," until I could turn that boy's adventure
out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then I resumed the pen,
for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors.
They carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck.

By and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters,
merely), and my last until now.  The machine did not do both capitals
and lower case (as now), but only capitals.  Gothic capitals they were,
and sufficiently ugly.  I remember the first letter I dictated.
it was to Edward Bok, who was a boy then.  I was not acquainted
with him at that time.  His present enterprising spirit is not new--
he had it in that early day.  He was accumulating autographs, and was
not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph LETTER.
I furnished it--in type-written capitals, SIGNATURE AND ALL.
It was long; it was a sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches.
I said writing was my TRADE, my bread-and-butter; I said it was
not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade; would he
ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for
a corpse?

Now I come to an important matter--as I regard it.  In the year
'74 the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine
ON THE MACHINE.  In a previous chapter of this Autobiography I
have claimed that I was the first person in the world that ever had
a telephone in the house for practical purposes; I will now claim--
until dispossess--that I was the first person in the world to APPLY
THE TYPE-MACHINE TO LITERATURE.  That book must have been THE
ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER.  I wrote the first half of it in '72,
the rest of it in '74.  My machinist type-copied a book for me
in '74, so I concluded it was that one.

That early machine was full of caprices, full of defects--devilish ones.
It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues.
After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character,
so I thought I would give it to Howells.  He was reluctant, for he
was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains
so to this day.  But I persuaded him.  He had great confidence in me,
and I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not
believe myself.  He took it home to Boston, and my morals began
to improve, but his have never recovered.

He kept it six months, and then returned it to me.  I gave it away
twice after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back.  Then I
gave it to our coachman, Patrick McAleer, who was very grateful,
because he did not know the animal, and thought I was trying to
make him wiser and better.  As soon as he got wiser and better he
traded it to a heretic for a side-saddle which he could not use,
and there my knowledge of its history ends.


***



ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER



It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval
villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence.  I cannot speak
the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I
am busy, and too indolent when I am not; wherefore some will
imagine that I am having a dull time of it.  But it is not so.
The "help" are all natives; they talk Italian to me, I answer
in English; I do not understand them, they do not understand me,
consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied.  In order
to be just and fair, I throw in an Italian word when I have one,
and this has a good influence.  I get the word out of the morning paper.
I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that Italian words
do not keep in this climate.  They fade toward night, and next
morning they are gone.  But it is no matter; I get a new one out
of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it
while it lasts.  I have no dictionary, and I do not want one;
I can select words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect.
Many of them have French or German or English look, and these are
the ones I enslave for the day's service.  That is, as a rule.
Not always.  If I find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look
and warbles musically along I do not care to know the meaning of it;
I pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if I pronounce it
carefully HE will understand it, and that's enough.

Yesterday's word was AVANTI.  It sounds Shakespearian, and probably
means Avaunt and quit my sight.  Today I have a whole phrase:
SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO.  I do not know what it means, but it seems
to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction.  Although as a rule
my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, I have
several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason,
and these come very handy when I get into a long conversation and need
things to fire up with in monotonous stretches.  One of the best ones
is DOV' `E IL GATTO.  It nearly always produces a pleasant surprise,
therefore I save it up for places where I want to express applause
or admiration.  The fourth word has a French sound, and I think
the phrase means "that takes the cake."

During my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy
and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was
well content without it.  It has been four weeks since I had seen
a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace,
and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight.
Then came a change that was to be expected:  the appetite for news
began to rise again, after this invigorating rest.  I had to feed it,
but I was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again;
I determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one.
So I examined an Italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that,
and on that exclusively.  On that exclusively, and without help of
a dictionary.  In this way I should surely be well protected against
overloading and indigestion.

A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement.
There were no scare-heads. That was good--supremely good.  But there
were headings--one-liners and two-liners--and that was good too;
for without these, one must do as one does with a German paper--pay our
precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover,
in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you.
The headline is a valuable thing.

Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles,
robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we
knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when
they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them,
as a rule.  Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has
no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage,
and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit.
By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to
take no vital interest in it--indeed, you almost get tired of it.
As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only--
people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles,
ten thousand miles from where you are.  Why, when you come to think
of it, who cares what becomes of those people?  I would not give
the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre
of those others.  And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed
up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah
of outlanders gone rotten.  Give me the home product every time.

Very well.  I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would
suit me:  five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local;
they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say
one's friends.  In the matter of world news there was not too much,
but just about enough.  I subscribed.  I have had no occasion
to regret it.  Every morning I get all the news I need for the day;
sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text.  I have never
had to call for a dictionary yet.  I read the paper with ease.
Often I do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me,
but no matter, I get the idea.  I will cut out a passage or two,
then you see how limpid the language is:


Il ritorno dei Beati d'Italia

Elargizione del Re all' Ospedale italiano


The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back--
they have been to England.  The second line seems to mean that they
enlarged the King at the Italian hospital.  With a banquet, I suppose.
An English banquet has that effect.  Further:


Il ritorno dei Sovrani

a Roma


ROMA, 24, ore 22,50.--I Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono
a Roma domani alle ore 15,51.


Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see.  Date of the telegram,
Rome, November 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o'clock. The
telegram seems to say, "The Sovereigns and the Royal Children expect
themselves at Rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o'clock."

I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight
and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk.
In the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty.
If these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 P.M., by my reckoning.


Spettacolli del di 25

TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA--(Ore 20,30)--Opera.  BOH`EME. TEATRO
ALFIERI.--Compagnia drammatica Drago--(Ore 20,30)--LA LEGGE.
ALHAMBRA--(Ore 20,30)--Spettacolo variato.  SALA EDISON--
Grandiosoo spettacolo Cinematografico:  QUO VADIS?--Inaugurazione della
Chiesa Russa--In coda al Direttissimo--Vedute di Firenze con
gran movimeno--America:  Transporto tronchi giganteschi--I ladri
in casa del Diavolo--Scene comiche.  CINEMATOGRAFO--Via Brunelleschi
n.  4.--Programma straordinario, DON CHISCIOTTE--Prezzi populari.


The whole of that is intelligible to me--and sane and rational, too--
except the remark about the Inauguration of a Russian Chinese.
That one oversizes my hand.  Give me five cards.

This is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded
and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes,
disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world--thanks be!
Today I find only a single importation of the off-color sort:


Una Principessa

che fugge con un cocchiere


PARIGI, 24.--Il MATIN ha da Berlino che la principessa
Schovenbare-Waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre.  Sarebbe partita
col suo cocchiere.

La Principassa ha 27 anni.


Twenty-seven years old, and scomparve--scampered--on the 9th November.
You see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman.
I hope Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I am afraid the chances
are that she has.  SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO.

There are several fires:  also a couple of accidents.  This is
one of them:


Grave disgrazia sul Ponte Vecchio


Stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre Giuseppe Sciatti, di anni 55,
di Casellina e Torri, passava dal Ponte Vecchio, stando seduto sopra
un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo,
rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo.

Lo Sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo
della pubblica vettura n.  365, lo transporto a San Giovanni di Dio.

Ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba
destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50
giorni salvo complicazioni.


What it seems to say is this:  "Serious Disgrace on the Old
Old Bridge.  This morning about 7.30, Mr. Joseph Sciatti, aged 55,
of Casellina and Torri, while standing up in a sitting posture
on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?),
lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left
leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle.

"Said Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens,
who by means of public cab No. 365 transported to St. John of God."

Paragraph No. 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that
the medico set the broken left leg--right enough, since there
was nothing the matter with the other one--and that several
are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around
in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene.

I am sure I hope so myself.

There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a
language which you are not acquainted with--the charm that always goes
with the mysterious and the uncertain.  You can never be absolutely
sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances;
you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the
baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt.
A dictionary would spoil it.  Sometimes a single word of doubtful
purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a
whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped
in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar
and commonplace but for that benefaction.  Would you be wise to draw
a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful?

After a couple of days' rest I now come back to my subject and seek
a case in point.  I find it without trouble, in the morning paper;
a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris.  All the words
save one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian:


Revolverate in teatro


PARIGI, 27.--La PATRIE ha da Chicago:

Il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto
espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety,
questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella.
Il guardiano ripose.  Nacque una scarica generale.  Grande panico
tra gli spettatori.  Nessun ferito.


TRANSLATION.--"Revolveration in Theater.  PARIS, 27TH.  LA PATRIE
has from Chicago:  The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace,
Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke
in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends,
tir'o (Fr. TIR'E, Anglice PULLED) manifold revolver-shots;
great panic among the spectators.  Nobody hurt."

It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera
of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so
came near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France.
But it does excite me.  It excites me because I cannot make out,
for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer.
I was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident,
until I came to that word "spalleggiato," then the bottom fell out.
You notice what a rich gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery,
that word sheds all over the whole Wallachian tragedy.  That is the charm
of the thing, that is the delight of it.  This is where you begin,
this is where you revel.  You can guess and guess, and have all
the fun you like; you need not be afraid there will be an end to it;
none is possible, for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you
a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one.
All the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound,
or their spelling--this one doesn't, this one throws out no hints,
this one keeps its secret.  If there is even the slightest slight
shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive
fact that "spalleggiato" carries our word "egg" in its stomach.
Well, make the most out of it, and then where are you at?
You conjecture that the spectator which was smoking in spite
of the prohibition and become reprohibited by the guardians,
was "egged on" by his friends, and that was owing to that evil
influence that he initiated the revolveration in theater that has
galloped under the sea and come crashing through the European
press without exciting anybody but me.  But are you sure,
are you dead sure, that that was the way of it?  No. Then the
uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm.
Guess again.

If I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would
study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings,
but there is no such work on the market.  The existing phrase-books
are inadequate.  They are well enough as far as they go, but when
you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.


***



ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR



I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful
language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently
found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times.
It is because, if he does not know the WERE'S and the WAS'S and the
MAYBE'S and the HAS-BEENS'S apart, confusions and uncertainties
can arise.  He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next
week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last.
Even more previously, sometimes.  Examination and inquiry showed
me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded
and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed
the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that
had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always
dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble.

Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection,
confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the
fact that the Verb was the storm-center. This discovery made plain
the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty
and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper
was daily endeavoring to convey to me:  I must catch a Verb and
tame it.  I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities,
I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and
forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try
upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main
shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.

I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred
in families, and that the members of each family have certain features
or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it
from the other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not.
I had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair,
so to speak, but the tail--the Termination--and that these tails
are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can
tell a Pluperfect from a Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as
certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process,
the result of observation and culture.  I should explain that I
am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang
of the grammar are called Regular.  There are other--I am not meaning
to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born out of wedlock,
of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute
of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included.
But of these pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say.  I do not
approve of them, I do not encourage them; I am prudishly delicate
and sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence.

But, as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break
it into harness.  One is enough.  Once familiar with its assortment
of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal
its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past
or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is
engaged in some other line of business--its tail will give it away.
I found out all these things by myself, without a teacher.

I selected the verb AMARE, TO LOVE.  Not for any personal reason,
for I am indifferent about verbs; I care no more for one verb than
for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in
foreign languages you always begin with that one.  Why, I don't know.
It is merely habit, I suppose; the first teacher chose it,
Adam was satisfied, and there hasn't been a successor since with
originality enough to start a fresh one.  For they ARE a pretty
limited lot, you will admit that?  Originality is not in their line;
they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old
moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go"
into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness.

I knew I must look after those details myself; therefore I thought
them out and wrote them down, and set for the FACCHINO and explained
them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together
a good stock company among the CONTADINI, and design the costumes,
and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three
days to begin on this Verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner.
I told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman,
and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant
or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform
for each squad, so that I could tell a Pluperfect from a Compound
Future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under
his own special and particular command, with the rank of Brigadier,
and I to pay the freight.

I then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb,
and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being
chambered for fifty-seven rounds--fifty-seven ways of saying I LOVE
without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl
that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks.

It seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go
into action with this mitrailleuse, so I ordered it to the rear
and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive
to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned
flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple
at two hundred yards and kill at forty--an arrangement suitable for a
beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart
and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign.

But in vain.  He was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being
of the same build, all Gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery,
fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half.
But he said the auxiliary verb AVERE, TO HAVE, was a tidy thing,
and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in
going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation I
chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom
and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business.

I will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic.
Mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one.


At the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready.
I was also ready, with a stenographer.  We were in a room called
the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated
by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews.  At 9:30
the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command;
the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared
at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on.  Down they filed,
a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own
and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality:
first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the
Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green
and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and stripes,
then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple and silver--
and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned
and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and
dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld.  I could not keep back
the tears.  Presently:

"Halt!" commanded the Brigadier.

"Front--face!"

"Right dress!"

"Stand at ease!"

"One--two--three.  In unison--RECITE!"

It was fine.  In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven
Haves in the Italian language burst forth in an exalting
and splendid confusion.  Then came commands:

"About--face!  Eyes--front!  Helm alee--hard aport!  Forward--march!"
and the drums let go again.

When the last Termination had disappeared, the commander said
the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions.
I said:

"They say I HAVE, THOU HAST, HE HAS, and so on, but they don't say WHAT.
It will be better, and more definite, if they have something
to have; just an object, you know, a something--anything will do;
anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well
as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see."

He said:

"It is a good point.  Would a dog do?"

I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see.  So he sent
out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog.


The six privates of the Present Tense now filed in, in charge
of Sergeant AVERE (TO HAVE), and displaying their banner.
They formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus:

"IO HO UN CANE, I have a dog."

"TU HAI UN CANE, thou hast a dog."

"EGLI HA UN CANE, he has a dog."

"NOI ABBIAMO UN CANE, we have a dog."

"VOI AVETE UN CANE, you have a dog."

"EGLINO HANNO UN CANE, they have a dog."

No comment followed.  They returned to camp, and I reflected a while.
The commander said:

"I fear you are disappointed."

"Yes," I said; "they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive;
they have no expression, no elocution.  It isn't natural; it could
never happen in real life.  A person who had just acquired a dog
is either blame' glad or blame' sorry.  He is not on the fence.
I never saw a case.  What the nation do you suppose is the matter
with these people?"

He thought maybe the trouble was with the dog.  He said:

"These are CONTADINI, you know, and they have a prejudice against dogs--
that is, against marimane.  Marimana dogs stand guard over people's
vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief
and an inconvenience to persons who want other people's things
at night.  In my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana,
and have soured on him."

I saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable:
we must try something else; something, if possible, that could
evoke sentiment, interest, feeling.

"What is cat, in Italian?"  I asked.

"Gatto."

"Is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?"

"Gentleman cat."

"How are these people as regards that animal?"

"We-ll, they--they--"

"You hesitate:  that is enough.  How are they about chickens?"

He tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy.  I understood.

"What is chicken, in Italian?"  I asked.

"Pollo, PODERE."  (Podere is Italian for master.  It is a title
of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) "Pollo is one
chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute
a plural, it is POLLI."

"Very well, polli will do.  Which squad is detailed for duty next?"

"The Past Definite."

"Send out and order it to the front--with chickens.  And let them
understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference."

He gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness
in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect:

"Convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens."
He turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained,
"It will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire."

A few minutes elapsed.  Then the squad marched in and formed up,
their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted:

"EBBI POLLI, I had chickens!"

"Good!"  I said.  "Go on, the next."

"AVEST POLLI, thou hadst chickens!"

"Fine!  Next!"

"EBBE POLLI, he had chickens!"

"Moltimoltissimo!  Go on, the next!"

"AVEMMO POLLI, we had chickens!"

"Basta-basta aspettatto avanti--last man--CHARGE!"

"EBBERO POLLI, they had chickens!"

Then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left,
and retired in great style on the double-quick. I was enchanted,
and said:

"Now, doctor, that is something LIKE!  Chickens are the ticket,
there is no doubt about it.  What is the next squad?"

"The Imperfect."

"How does it go?"

"IO AVENA, I had, TU AVEVI, thou hadst, EGLI AVENA, he had,
NOI AV--"

Wait--we've just HAD the hads.  what are you giving me?"

"But this is another breed."

"What do we want of another breed?  Isn't one breed enough?
HAD is HAD, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling
isn't going to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know
that yourself."

"But there is a distinction--they are not just the same Hads."

"How do you make it out?"

"Well, you use that first Had when you are referring to something
that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment;
you use the other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time
and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way."

'Why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself.  Look here:
If I have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a
position right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance
to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets
one Had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but
restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions,
and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time,
and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise,
and all that sort of thing, why--why, the inhumanity of it is enough,
let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing
consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering
the place for nothing.  These finical refinements revolt me;
it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism
to keep in office a Had that is so delicate it can't come out when
the wind's in the nor'west--I won't have this dude on the payroll.
Cancel his exequator; and look here--"

"But you miss the point.  It is like this.  You see--"

"Never mind explaining, I don't care anything about it.  Six Hads
is enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe;
I don't want any stock in a Had Trust.  Knock out the Prolonged
and Indefinitely Continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway."

"But I beg you, podere!  It is often quite indispensable in cases where--"

"Pipe the next squad to the assault!"

But it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun
floated up out of far-off Florence, followed by the usual softened
jangle of church-bells, Florentine and suburban, that bursts out in
murmurous response; by labor-union law the COLAZIONE [1] must stop;
stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen
and best of the breed of Hads.

- - -

1.  Colazione is Italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance,
a sitting.--M.T.


***



A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY



Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I
would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure,
I yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender
my history.

Ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.
The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of
the family by the name of Higgins.  This was in the eleventh century,
when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England.
Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal
name (except when one of them now and then took a playful
refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins,
is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir.
It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone.
All the old families do that way.

Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the
highway in William Rufus's time.  At about the age of thirty he went
to one of those fine old English places of resort called Newgate,
to see about something, and never returned again.  While there he
died suddenly.

Augustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the
year 1160.  He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old
saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,
and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump.
He was a born humorist.  But he got to going too far with it;
and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties,
the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high
place on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate the people and have
a good time.  He never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long.

Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows
a succession of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows,
who always went into battle singing, right behind the army,
and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it.

This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism
that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that
one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.

Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar."
He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand.  And he could imitate anybody's
hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head
off to see it.  He had infinite sport with his talent.  But by and
by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness
of the work spoiled his hand.  Still, he enjoyed life all the time
he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals,
was some forty-two years.  In fact, he died in harness.  During all
those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through
with one contract a week till the government gave him another.  He was
a perfect pet.  And he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists,
and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society,
called the Chain Gang.  He always wore his hair short, had a
preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government.
He was a sore loss to his country.  For he was so regular.

Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain.
He came over to this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger.
He appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition.
He complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening
to go ashore unless there was a change.  He wanted fresh shad.
Hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about
the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander,
and saying he did not believe Columbus knew where he was going
to or had ever been there before.  The memorable cry of "Land ho!"
thrilled every heart in the ship but his.  He gazed awhile through a
piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water,
and then said:  "Land be hanged--it's a raft!"

When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, be brought
nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief
marked "B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C.," one woolen one
marked "D. F.," and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during
the voyage he worried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more
airs about it, than all the rest of the passengers put together.
If the ship was "down by the head," and would not steer, he would
go and move his "trunk" further aft, and then watch the effect.
If the ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to Columbus to detail
some men to "shift that baggage."  In storms he had to be gagged,
because his wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the
men to hear the orders.  The man does not appear to have been
openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted
in the ship's log as a "curious circumstance" that albeit he brought
his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in
four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne baskets.
But when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering way,
that some of this things were missing, and was going to search
the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw
him overboard.  They watched long and wonderingly for him to
come up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide.
But while every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side,
and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was observed with
consternation that the vessel was adrift and the anchor-cable hanging
limp from the bow.  Then in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we
find this quaint note:

"In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone
downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam
sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne
of a ghun!"

Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with
pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white
person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating
and civilizing our Indians.  He built a commodious jail and put
up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction
that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on
the Indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them.
At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty,
and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see
his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America,
and while there received injuries which terminated in his death.

The great-grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred
and something, and was known in our annals as "the old Admiral,"
though in history he had other titles.  He was long in command of
fleets of swift vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service
in hurrying up merchantmen.  Vessels which he followed and kept
his eagle eye on, always made good fair time across the ocean.
But if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do,
his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer--
and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it
there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did.
And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors
of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and
a bath.  He called it "walking a plank."  All the pupils liked it.
At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it.
When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always
burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost.
At last this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years
and honors.  And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed
that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have
been resuscitated.

Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth
century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary.
He converted sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them
that a dog-tooth necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough
clothing to come to divine service in.  His poor flock loved
him very, very dearly; and when his funeral was over, they got up
in a body (and came out of the restaurant) with tears in their eyes,
and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary,
and they wished they had some more of him.

Pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye-Twain)
adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General
Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington.
It was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington
from behind a tree.  So far the beautiful romantic narrative
in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes
on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage
said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the Great Spirit
for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle
against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity
of history.  What he did say was:

"It ain't no (hic) no use.  'At man's so drunk he can't stan'
still long enough for a man to hit him.  I (hic) I can't 'ford
to fool away any more am'nition on him."

That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good,
plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself
to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.

I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving
that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier
a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century),
and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit
was reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow
feared that the only reason why Washington's case is remembered
and the others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy came true,
and in that of the others it didn't. There are not books enough
on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other
unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat
pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled.

I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are
so thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that I have
not felt it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention
them in the order of their birth.  Among these may be mentioned
Richard Brinsley Twain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain,
alias Sixteen-String Jack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard;
Ananias Twain, alias Baron Munchausen; John George Twain,
alias Captain Kydd; and then there are George Francis Twain,
Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam's Ass--they all belong
to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed
from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch,
whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order
to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for,
they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.

It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry
down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely
of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself,
which I now do.

I was born without teeth--and there Richard III.  had the advantage
of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I
had the advantage of him.  My parents were neither very poor nor
conspicuously honest.

But now a thought occurs to me.  My own history would really seem
so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom
to leave it unwritten until I am hanged.  If some other biographies I
have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred,
it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public.
How does it strike you?


***



HOW TO TELL A STORY

The Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference

from Comic and Witty Stories



I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told.
I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been
almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for
many years.

There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--
the humorous.  I will talk mainly about that one.  The humorous story
is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French.
The humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling;
the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER.

The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander
around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular;
but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point.
The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.

The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art--
and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling
the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it.  The art of telling
a humorous story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print--
was created in America, and has remained at home.

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best
to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is
anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you
beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard,
then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh
when he gets through.  And sometimes, if he has had good success,
he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it
and glance around from face to face, collecting applause,
and then repeat it again.  It is a pathetic thing to see.

Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story
finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it.
Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will
divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual
and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it
is a nub.

Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience
presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise,
as if wondering what they had found to laugh at.  Dan Setchell
used it before him, Nye and Riley and others use it today.

But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub;
he shouts it at you--every time.  And when he prints it,
in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it,
puts some whopping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes
explains it in a parenthesis.  All of which is very depressing,
and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.

Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote
which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen
hundred years.  The teller tells it in this way:


THE WOUNDED SOLDIER


In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off
appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear,
informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained;
whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate,
proceeded to carry out his desire.  The bullets and cannon-balls
were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter
took the wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer
being aware of it.  In no long time he was hailed by an officer,
who said:

"Where are you going with that carcass?"

"To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!"

"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean
his head, you booby."

Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood
looking down upon it in great perplexity.  At length he said:

"It is true, sir, just as you have said."  Then after a pause he added,
"BUT HE TOLD ME IT WAS HIS LEG!!!!!"


Here the narrator bursts into explosion after
explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that
nub from time to time through his gasping and shriekings and suffocatings.

It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form;
and isn't worth the telling, after all.  Put into the humorous-story
form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have
ever listened to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.

He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has
just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny,
and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor.  But he can't remember it;
so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round,
putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only
retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others
that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then
and stopping to correct them and explain how he came to make them;
remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper place
and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good
while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt,
and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned,
and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway--
better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all--
and so on, and so on, and so on.

The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself,
and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep
from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes
in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the
ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted,
and the tears are running down their faces.

The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness
of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result
is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious.
This is art--and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it;
but a machine could tell the other story.

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering
and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they
are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position
is correct.  Another feature is the slurring of the point.  A third
is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it,
as if one where thinking aloud.  The fourth and last is the pause.

Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal.  He would
begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to
think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently
absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way;
and that was the remark intended to explode the mine--and it did.

For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man
in New Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation
would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he
would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could
beat a drum better than any man I ever saw."

The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story,
and a frequently recurring feature, too.  It is a dainty thing,
and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must
be exactly the right length--no more and no less--or it fails
of its purpose and makes trouble.  If the pause is too short the
impressive point is passed, and the audience have had time to divine
that a surprise is intended--and then you can't surprise them,
of course.

On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause
in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important
thing in the whole story.  If I got it the right length precisely,
I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make
some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out
of her seat--and that was what I was after.  This story was called
"The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion.  You can practice
with it yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right.


THE GOLDEN ARM


Once 'pon a time dey wuz a momsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de
prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife.  En bimeby she died,
en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her.
Well, she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down.
He wuz pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep,
caze he want dat golden arm so bad.

When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up,
he did, en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her
up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de 'win, en
plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow.  Den all on a sudden he
stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take
a listening attitude) en say:  "My LAN', what's dat?"

En he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together
and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind),
"Bzzz-z-zzz"--en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear
a VOICE!--he hear a voice all mix' up in de win'--can't hardly
tell 'em 'part--"Bzzz--zzz--W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?"
(You must begin to shiver violently now.)

En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "Oh, my!  OH, my lan'!" en de win'
blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos'
choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead,
he so sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us
comin AFTER him!  "Bzzz--zzz--zzz W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--ARM?"

When he git to de pasture he hear it agin--closter now,
en A-COMIN'!--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat
the wind and the voice). When he git to de house he rush upstairs
en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay da shiverin'
en shakin'--en den way out dah he hear it AGIN!--en a-COMIN'! En
bimeby he hear (pause--awed, listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat HIT'S
A-COMIN' UPSTAIRS!  Den he hear de latch, en he KNOW it's in de room!

Den pooty soon he know it's a-STANNIN' BY DE BED!  (Pause.) Den--
he know it's a-BENDIN' DOWN OVER HIM--en he cain't skasely git
his breath!  Den--den--he seem to feel someth'n' C-O-L-D, right down
'most agin his head!  (Pause.)

Den de voice say, RIGHT AT HIS YEAR--"W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?"
(You must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then you stare
steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor--
a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build
itself in the deep hush.  When it has reached exactly the right length,
jump suddenly at that girl and yell, "YOU'VE got it!"

If you've got the PAUSE right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and
spring right out of her shoes.  But you MUST get the pause right;
and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and
uncertain thing you ever undertook.


***



GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT


A Biographical Sketch



The stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began
with his death--that is to say, the notable features of his biography
began with the first time he died.  He had been little heard of up
to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him;
we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals.
His was a most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history
would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature.
Therefore, I have carefully collated the materials for such a work,
from authentic sources, and here present them to the public.  I have
rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character,
with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools
for the instruction of the youth of my country.

The name of the famous body-servant of General Washington was George.
After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century,
and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence,
it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master
to rest in his peaceful grave by the Potomac.  Ten years afterward--
in 1809--full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all
who knew him.  The Boston GAZETTE of that date thus refers to
the event:


George, the favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington,
died in Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years.
His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to
within a few minutes of his decease.  He was present at the second
installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral,
and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with
those noted events.


From this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of
General Washington until May, 1825, at which time he died again.
A Philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence:


At Macon, Ga., last week, a colored man named George, who was the
favorite body-servant of General Washington, died at the advanced
age of 95 years.  Up to within a few hours of his dissolution he
was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly
recollect the second installation of Washington, his death
and burial, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton,
the griefs and hardships of Valley Forge, etc.  Deceased was
followed to the grave by the entire population of Macon.


On the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject
of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum
of the orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again.
The St. Louis REPUBLICAN of the 25th of that month spoke as follows:


"ANOTHER RELIC OF THE REVOLUTION GONE.


"George, once the favorite body-servant of General Washington,
died yesterday at the house of Mr. John Leavenworth in this city,
at the venerable age of 95 years.  He was in the full possession
of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly
recollected the first and second installations and death of
President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles
of Trenton and Monmouth, the sufferings of the patriot army at
Valley Forge, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence,
the speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Delegates,
and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest.
Few white men die lamented as was this aged negro.  The funeral
was very largely attended."


During the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch
appeared at intervals at Fourth-of-July celebrations in various
parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with
flattering success.  But in the fall of 1855 he died again.
The California papers thus speak of the event:


ANOTHER OLD HERO GONE


Died, at Dutch Flat, on the 7th of March, George (once the confidential
body-servant of General Washington), at the great age of 95 years.
His memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful
storehouse of interesting reminiscences.  He could distinctly recollect
the first and second installations and death of President Washington,
the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth,
and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence,
and Braddock's defeat.  George was greatly respected in Dutch Flat,
and it is estimated that there were 10,000 people present at
his funeral.


The last time the subject of this sketch died was in June, 1864; and until
we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died permanently
this time.  The Michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event:


ANOTHER CHERISHED REMNANT OF THE REVOLUTION GONE


George, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of
George Washington, died in Detroit last week, at the patriarchal age
of 95 years.  To the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded,
and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations
and death of Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles
of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the
Declaration of Independence, Braddock's defeat, the throwing over
of the tea in Boston harbor, and the landing of the Pilgrims.
He died greatly respected, and was followed to the grave by a vast
concourse of people.


The faithful old servant is gone!  We shall never see him more until
he turns up again.  He has closed his long and splendid career
of dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep
who have earned their rest.  He was in all respects a remarkable man.
He held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history;
and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew.
If he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery
of America.

The above r'esum'e of his biography I believe to be substantially
correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice
in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety.
One fault I find in all the notices of his death I have quoted,
and this ought to be correct.  In them he uniformly and impartially
died at the age of 95.  This could not have been.  He might have
done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued
it indefinitely.  Allowing that when he first died, he died at
the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864.
But his age did not keep pace with his recollections.  When he died
the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the Pilgrims,
which took place in 1620.  He must have been about twenty years
old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert
that the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood
of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this
life finally.

Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his
sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his
biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation.

P.S.--I see by the papers that this imfamous old fraud has just
died again, in Arkansas.  This makes six times that he is known
to have died, and always in a new place.  The death of Washington's
body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone;
the people are tired of it; let it cease.  This well-meaning
but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the
expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands
of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that
a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them.
Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer
the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time,
publish to the world that General Washington's favorite colored
body-servant has died again.


***



WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE "TWO-YEAR-OLDS"



All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion
nowadays of saying "smart" things on most occasions that offer,
and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything
at all.  Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings,
the rising generation of children are little better than idiots.
And the parents must surely be but little better than the children,
for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile
imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals.
I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of
personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so
many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said
anything smart when I was a child.  I tried it once or twice, but it
was not popular.  The family were not expecting brilliant remarks
from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest.
But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might
have happened to me if I had dared to utter some of the smart things
of this generation's "four-year-olds" where my father could hear me.
To have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end
would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning.
He was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity.
If I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said them in
his hearing, he would have destroyed me.  He would, indeed.  He would,
provided the opportunity remained with him.  But it would not,
for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first
and say my smart thing afterward.  The fair record of my life has
been tarnished by just one pun.  My father overheard that, and he
hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life.
If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right;
but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I
had done.

I made one of those remarks ordinarily called "smart things"
before that, but it was not a pun.  Still, it came near causing a
serious rupture between my father and myself.  My father and mother,
my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present,
and the conversation turned on a name for me.  I was lying there
trying some India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring
to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on
people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would
enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else.
Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on
your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying
to cut them on your big toe?  And did you never get out of patience
and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut?
To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday.  And they did,
to some children.  But I digress.  I was lying there trying the
India-rubber rings.  I remember looking at the clock and noticing
that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old,
and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so
unsparingly lavished upon me.  My father said:

"Abraham is a good name.  My grandfather was named Abraham."

My mother said:

"Abraham is a good name.  Very well.  Let us have Abraham for one
of his names."

I said:

"Abraham suits the subscriber."

My father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said:

"What a little darling it is!"

My father said:

"Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name."

My mother assented, and said:

"No names are better.  Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names."

I said:

"All right.  Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly.
Pass me that rattle, if you please.  I can't chew India-rubber rings
all day."

Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication.
I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost.
So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children
when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon
by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt
had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had
gone too far.  I took a vicious bite out of an India-rubber ring,
and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing.
Presently my father said:

"Samuel is a very excellent name."

I saw that trouble was coming.  Nothing could prevent it.  I laid
down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle's
silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier,
the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine,
and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter
and break when I needed wholesome entertainment.  Then I put on my
little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one
hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor.
I said to myself, Now, if the worse comes to worst, I am ready.
Then I said aloud, in a firm voice:

"Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel."

"My son!"

"Father, I mean it.  I cannot."

"Why?"

"Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name."

"My son, this is unreasonable.  Many great and good men have been
named Samuel."

"Sir, I have yet to hear of the first instance."

"What!  There was Samuel the prophet.  Was not he great and good?"

"Not so very."

"My son!  With His own voice the Lord called him."

"Yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!"

And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me.
He overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was
over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other
useful information; and by means of this compromise my father's
wrath was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might
have become a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable.
But just judging by this episode, what would my father have done
to me if I had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat,
sickly things these "two-years-olds" say in print nowadays?
In my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family.


***



AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE



I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston ADVERTISER:


AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN


Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been
descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all.
We have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with
terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story,
and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned
his INNOCENTS ABROAD to the book-agent with the remark that "the
man who could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot."
But Mark Twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string
of trophies.  The SATURDAY REVIEW, in its number of October 8th,
reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in England,
and reviews it seriously.  We can imagine the delight of the humorist
in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing
in itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article
in full in his next monthly Memoranda.


(Publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority
for reproducing the SATURDAY REVIEW'S article in full in these pages.
I dearly wanted to do it, for I cannot write anything half so
delicious myself.  If I had a cast-iron dog that could read this
English criticism and preserve his austerity, I would drive him
off the door-step.)


(From the London "Saturday Review.")


REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS


THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.  A Book of Travels.  By Mark Twain.
London:  Hotten, publisher.  1870.


Lord Macaulay died too soon.  We never felt this so deeply as when we
finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.
Macaulay died too soon--for none but he could mete out complete
and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence,
the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance
of this author.

To say that the INNOCENTS ABROAD is a curious book, would be to
use the faintest language--would be to speak of the Matterhorn
as a neat elevation or of Niagara as being "nice" or "pretty."
"Curious" is too tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity
of this work.  There is no word that is large enough or long enough.
Let us, therefore, photograph a passing glimpse of book and author,
and trust the rest to the reader.  Let the cultivated English student
of human nature picture to himself this Mark Twain as a person capable
of doing the following-described things--and not only doing them,
but with incredible innocence PRINTING THEM calmly and tranquilly
in a book.  For instance:

He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get shaved,
and the first "rake" the barber gave him with his razor it LOOSENED
HIS "HIDE" and LIFTED HIM OUT OF THE CHAIR.

This is unquestionably exaggerated.  In Florence he was so annoyed
by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a
frantic spirit of revenge.  There is, of course, no truth in this.
He gives at full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen
hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the ruins
of the Coliseum, among the dirt and mold and rubbish.  It is a
sufficient comment upon this statement to remark that even a cast-iron
program would not have lasted so long under such circumstances.
In Greece he plainly betrays both fright and flight upon one occasion,
but with frozen effrontery puts the latter in this falsely tamed form:
"We SIDLED toward the Piraeus."  "Sidled," indeed!  He does not hesitate
to intimate that at Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course,
he got down, took him under his arm, carried him to the road again,
pointed him right, remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till
it was time to restore the beast to the path once more.  He states
that a growing youth among his ship's passengers was in the constant
habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals.
In Palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend
the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them;
yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was
an impossibility.  He mentions, as if it were the most commonplace
of matters, that he cut a Moslem in two in broad daylight in Jerusalem,
with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword, and would have shed more blood IF
HE HAD HAD A GRAVEYARD OF HIS OWN.  These statements are unworthy
a moment's attention.  Mr. Twain or any other foreigner who did
such a thing in Jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly
lose his life.  But why go on?  Why repeat more of his audacious
and exasperating falsehoods?  Let us close fittingly with this one:
he affirms that "in the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople
I got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime,
and general impurity, that I wore out more than two thousand
pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then
some Christian hide peeled off with them."  It is monstrous.
Such statements are simply lies--there is no other name for them.
Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades
the American nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly
good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods,
this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this INNOCENTS ABROAD,
has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several
of the states as a text-book!

But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance
are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author.  In one
place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man,
unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window,
going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike
simplicity that he "was not scared, but was considerably agitated."
It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely
unconscious that Lucrezia Borgia ever existed off the stage.
He is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough
to criticize, the Italians' use of their own tongue.  He says they
spell the name of their great painter "Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy"--
and then adds with a na:ivet'e possible only to helpless ignorance,
"foreigners always spell better than they pronounce."  In another
place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase "tare
an ouns" into an Italian's mouth.  In Rome he unhesitatingly
believes the legend that St. Philip Neri's heart was so inflamed
with divine love that it burst his ribs--believes it wholly
because an author with a learned list of university degrees strung
after his name endorses it--"otherwise," says this gentle idiot,
"I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for dinner."
Our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the Grotto del Cane
on purpose to test its poisoning powers on a dog--got elaborately
ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog.
A wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself,
but with this harmless creature everything comes out.  He hurts
his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed Pompeii,
and presently, when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed
in the next square, conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains
of the ancient Street Commissioner, and straightway his horror softens
down to a sort of chirpy contentment with the condition of things.
In Damascus he visits the well of Ananias, three thousand years old,
and is as surprised and delighted as a child to find that the water
is "as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday."
In the Holy Land he gags desperately at the hard Arabic and Hebrew
Biblical names, and finally concludes to call them Baldwinsville,
Williamsburgh, and so on, "for convenience of spelling."

We have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity
and innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance.
We do not know where to begin.  And if we knew where to begin,
we certainly would not know where to leave off.  We will give
one specimen, and one only.  He did not know, until he got to Rome,
that Michael Angelo was dead!  And then, instead of crawling away
and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express
a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out
of his troubles!

No, the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his
uncultivation for himself.  The book is absolutely dangerous,
considering the magnitude and variety of its misstatements,
and the convincing confidence with which they are made.
And yet it is a text-book in the schools of America.

The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the
Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in
art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a
proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display.  But what is
the manner of his study?  And what is the progress he achieves?
To what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures
of Italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at?  Read:

"When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven,
we know that that is St. Mark.  When we see a monk with a book and a pen,
looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know
that that is St. Matthew.  When we see a monk sitting on a rock,
looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him,
and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome.
Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter
of baggage.  When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven,
but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are.
We do this because we humbly wish to learn."

He then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these
several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed
simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen
"Some More" of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually
"begin to take an absorbing interest in them"--the vulgar boor.

That we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one
will deny.  That is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the
confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown.  That the book
is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent
upon every page.  Having placed our judgment thus upon record,
let us close with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this
volume there is some good to be found; for whenever the author talks
of his own country and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make
himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive.
No one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs,
about life in the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada;
about the Indians of the plains and deserts of the West,
and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of
gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the
moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows
to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the Humboldt
mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night.
These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing.
It is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind.
His book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it
just barely escaped being quite valuable also.


(One month later)


Latterly I have received several letters, and see a number of
newspaper paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about
the same tenor.  I here give honest specimens.  One is from a New
York paper, one is from a letter from an old friend, and one is
from a letter from a New York publisher who is a stranger to me.
I humbly endeavor to make these bits toothsome with the remark that
the article they are praising (which appeared in the December GALAXY,
and PRETENDED to be a criticism from the London SATURDAY REVIEW
on my INNOCENTS ABROAD) WAS WRITTEN BY MYSELF, EVERY LINE OF IT:


The HERALD says the richest thing out is the "serious critique"
in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, on Mark Twain's INNOCENTS ABROAD.
We thought before we read it that it must be "serious," as everybody
said so, and were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it,
we are bound to confess that next to Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog"
it's the finest bit of humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many
a day.


(I do not get a compliment like that every day.)


I used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading
the criticism in THE GALAXY from the LONDON REVIEW, have discovered
what an ass I must have been.  If suggestions are in order, mine is,
that you put that article in your next edition of the INNOCENTS,
as an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor
in competition with it.  It is as rich a thing as I ever read.


(Which is strong commendation from a book publisher.)


The London Reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, "serious" creature
he pretends to be, _I_ think; but, on the contrary, has a keep
appreciation and enjoyment of your book.  As I read his article in
THE GALAXY, I could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh.
But he is writing for Catholics and Established Church people,
and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is
a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his
head with owlish density.  He is a magnificent humorist himself.


(Now that is graceful and handsome.  I take off my hat to my life-long
friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread
over my heart, I say, in the language of Alabama, "You do me proud.")

I stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but I did not mean
any harm.  I saw by an item in the Boston ADVERTISER that a solemn,
serious critique on the English edition of my book had appeared
in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, and the idea of SUCH a literary
breakfast by a stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too
much for a naturally weak virtue, and I went home and burlesqued it--
reveled in it, I may say.  I never saw a copy of the real SATURDAY
REVIEW criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed
to the printer.  But when I did get hold of a copy, I found it
to be vulgar, awkwardly written, ill-natured, and entirely serious
and in earnest.  The gentleman who wrote the newspaper paragraph
above quoted had not been misled as to its character.

If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him.  No, I will not
kill him; I will win his money.  I will bet him twenty to one,
and let any New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I
have above made as to the authorship of the article in question are
entirely true.  Perhaps I may get wealthy at this, for I am willing
to take all the bets that offer; and if a man wants larger odds,
I will give him all he requires.  But he ought to find out whether
I am betting on what is termed "a sure thing" or not before he
ventures his money, and he can do that by going to a public
library and examining the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th,
which contains the real critique.

Bless me, some people thought that _I_ was the "sold" person!


P.S.--I cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory
thing of all--this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition,
with his happy, chirping confidence.  It is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER:


Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar.
Nine smokers out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article,
three for a quarter, to fifty-cent Partaga, if kept in ignorance
of the cost of the latter.  The flavor of the Partaga is too delicate
for palates that have been accustomed to Connecticut seed leaf.
So it is with humor.  The finer it is in quality, the more danger
of its not being recognized at all.  Even Mark Twain has been taken
in by an English review of his INNOCENTS ABROAD.  Mark Twain is by
no means a coarse humorist, but the Englishman's humor is so much
finer than his, that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and "lafts
most consumedly."


A man who cannot learn stands in his own light.  Hereafter, when I
write an article which I know to be good, but which I may have reason
to fear will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much,
coming from an American, I will aver that an Englishman wrote it
and that it is copied from a London journal.  And then I will occupy
a back seat and enjoy the cordial applause.


(Still later)


Mark Twain at last sees that the SATURDAY REVIEW'S criticism of his
INNOCENTS ABROAD was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the
thought of having been so badly sold.  He takes the only course left him,
and in the last GALAXY claims that HE wrote the criticism himself,
and published it in THE GALAXY to sell the public.  This is ingenious,
but unfortunately it is not true.  If any of our readers will take
the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original
article in the SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, which, on comparison,
will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY.
The best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold,
and say no more about it.


The above is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER, and is a falsehood.
Come to the proof.  If the ENQUIRER people, through any agent,
will produce at THE GALAXY office a London SATURDAY REVIEW
of October 8th, containing an "article which, on comparison,
will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY,
I will pay to that agent five hundred dollars cash.  Moreover, if at
any specified time I fail to produce at the same place a copy
of the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, containing a lengthy
criticism upon the INNOCENTS ABROAD, entirely different, in every
paragraph and sentence, from the one I published in THE GALAXY,
I will pay to the ENQUIRER agent another five hundred dollars cash.
I offer Sheldon & Co., publishers, 500 Broadway, New York,
as my "backers."  Any one in New York, authorized by the ENQUIRER,
will receive prompt attention.  It is an easy and profitable way
for the ENQUIRER people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful,
deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs.  Will they swallow
that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to THE
GALAXY office.  I think the Cincinnati ENQUIRER must be edited
by children.


***



A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY



Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902.

THE HON.  THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, WASHINGTON, D. C.:


Sir,--Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached
an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in
straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order:

Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace,
gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred.

Twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking.

Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866,
eligible for kindlings.

Please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in Riverdale
at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to

Your obliged servant,

Mark Twain, Who will be very grateful, and will vote right.


***



AMENDED OBITUARIES

TO THE EDITOR:


Sir,--I am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three
years away.  Necessarily, I must go soon.  It is but matter-of-course
wisdom, then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in
order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness,
in place of waiting until the last day, when, as we have often seen,
the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been
marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste
of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic
to work together harmoniously, taking turn about and giving each
other friendly assistance--not perhaps in fielding, which could
hardly be expected, but at least in the minor offices of keeping
game and umpiring; by consequence of which conflict of interests
and absence of harmonious action a draw has frequently resulted
where this ill-fortune could not have happened if the houses had been
set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in season,
and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper to it.

In setting my earthly house in order I find it of moment that I
should attend in person to one or two matters which men in my
position have long had the habit of leaving wholly to others,
with consequences often most regrettable.  I wish to speak of only
one of these matters at this time:  Obituaries.  Of necessity,
an Obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand
as by that of the subject of it.  In such a work it is not the Facts
that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist
shall throw upon them, the meaning which he shall dress them in,
the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgments
which he shall deliver upon them.  The Verdicts, you understand:
that is the danger-line.

In considering this matter, in view of my approaching change,
it has seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible,
to acquire, by courtesy of the press, access to my standing obituaries,
with the privilege--if this is not asking too much--of editing,
not their Facts, but their Verdicts.  This, not for the present profit,
further than as concerns my family, but as a favorable influence
usable on the Other Side, where there are some who are not friendly
to me.

With this explanation of my motives, I will now ask you of your
courtesy to make an appeal for me to the public press.  It is my
desire that such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me
lying in their pigeonholes, with a view to sudden use some day,
will not wait longer, but will publish them now, and kindly send
me a marked copy.  My address is simply New York City--I have no
other that is permanent and not transient.

I will correct them--not the Facts, but the Verdicts--striking out
such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the Other Side,
and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character.
I should, of course, expect to pay double rates for both the omissions
and the substitutions; and I should also expect to pay quadruple
rates for all obituaries which proved to be rightly and wisely worded
in the originals, thus requiring no emendations at all.

It is my desire to leave these Amended Obituaries neatly bound
behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family,
and as an heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite
commercial value for my remote posterity.

I beg, sir, that you will insert this Advertisement (1t-eow, agate,
inside), and send the bill to

Yours very respectfully.

Mark Twain.


P.S.--For the best Obituary--one suitable for me to read in public,
and calculated to inspire regret--I desire to offer a Prize,
consisting of a Portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink
without previous instructions.  The ink warranted to be the kind
used by the very best artists.


***



A MONUMENT TO ADAM



Some one has revealed to the TRIBUNE that I once suggested
to Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up
a monument to Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project.
There is more to it than that.  The matter started as a joke,
but it came somewhat near to materializing.

It is long ago--thirty years.  Mr. Darwin's DESCENT OF MAN has been
in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised
by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals.  In tracing
the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had
left Adam out altogether.  We had monkeys, and "missing links,"
and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no Adam.  Jesting with
Mr. Beecher and other friends in Elmira, I said there seemed to be
a likelihood that the world would discard Adam and accept the monkey,
and that in the course of time Adam's very name would be forgotten
in the earth; therefore this calamity ought to be averted;
a monument would accomplish this, and Elmira ought not to waste
this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor and herself a credit.

Then the unexpected happened.  Two bankers came forward and took
hold of the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they
saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town.
The project had seemed gently humorous before--it was more than
that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it.
The bankers discussed the monument with me.  We met several times.
They proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five
thousand dollars.  The insane oddity of a monument set up in a village
to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without
any such help, would advertise Elmira to the ends of the earth--
and draw custom.  It would be the only monument on the planet
to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could
never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the
Milky Way.

People would come from every corner of the globe and stop off
to look at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out
Adam's monument.  Elmira would be a Mecca; there would be pilgrim
ships at pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways;
libraries would be written about the monument, every tourist would
kodak it, models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth,
its form would become as familiar as the figure of Napoleon.

One of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and I think
the other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with
certainty now whether that was the figure or not.  We got designs made--
some of them came from Paris.

In the beginning--as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke--
I had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to
Congress begging the government to built the monument, as a testimony
of the Great Republic's gratitude to the Father of the Human Race
and as a token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation
when his older children were doubting and deserting him.  It seemed
to me that this petition ought to be presented, now--it would be
widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would
advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly.
So I sent it to General Joseph R. Hawley, who was then in the House,
and he said he would present it.  But he did not do it.  I think
he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it:
it was too serious, to gushy, too sentimental--the House might take it
for earnest.

We ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could
have managed it without any great difficulty, and Elmira would
now be the most celebrated town in the universe.

Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor
characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam,
and now the TRIBUNE has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of
thirty years ago.  Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business.
It is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd.


***



A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN



[The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from him,
we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark Twain.--
Editor.]

TO THE EDITOR OF HARPER'S WEEKLY:


Dear Sir and Kinsman,--Let us have done with this frivolous talk.
The American Board accepts contributions from me every year:
then why shouldn't it from Mr. Rockefeller?  In all the ages,
three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been
conscience-money, as my books will show:  then what becomes of
the sting when that term is applied to Mr. Rockefeller's gift?
The American Board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards.
Bequests, you understand.  Conscience-money. Confession of an old
crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one; for deceased's
contribution is a robbery of his heirs.  Shall the Board decline
bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and
generally for both?

Allow me to continue.  The charge must persistently and resentfully
and remorselessly dwelt upon is that Mr. Rockefeller's contribution is
incurably tainted by perjury--perjury proved against him in the courts.
IT MAKES US SMILE--down in my place!  Because there isn't a rich
man in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before
the tax board.  They are all caked with perjury, many layers thick.
Iron-clad, so to speak.  If there is one that isn't, I desire
to acquire him for my museum, and will pay Dinosaur rates.
Will you say it isn't infraction of the law, but only annual evasion
of it?  Comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like--
FOR THE PRESENT.  But by and by, when you arrive, I will show you
something interesting:  a whole hell-full of evaders!  Sometimes a
frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but I get those others every time.

To return to my muttons.  I wish you to remember that my rich
perjurers are contributing to the American Board with frequency:
it is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it
is the wages of sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is _I_
that contribute it; and, finally, it is therefore as I have said:
since the Board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it
decline them from Mr. Rockefeller, who is as good as I am, let the
courts say what they may?


Satan.


***




INTRODUCTION TO "THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN

PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH"


by Pedro Carolino



In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing
which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty:  and that is,
that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the
English language lasts.  Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness,
and its enchanting na:ivet'e, as are supreme and unapproachable,
in their way, as are Shakespeare's sublimities.  Whatsoever is
perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable:  nobody can
imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow;
it is perfect, it must and will stand alone:  its immortality
is secure.

It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have
received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave
and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful,
the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish.  Long notices of it
have appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews,
and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it
has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly
every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world.
Every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time
or another; I had mine fifteen years ago.  The book gets out of print,
every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season;
but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue
and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some
London or Continental or American press, and runs a new course around
the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world's laughter.

Many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities
were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume
carefully through and keep that opinion.  It was written in
serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright
idiot who believed he knew something of the English language,
and could impart his knowledge to others.  The amplest proof
of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page.
There are sentences in the book which could have been manufactured
by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and deliberate
purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other sentences,
and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever achieve--
nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance,
when unbacked by inspiration.

It is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the
author's Preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience
is at rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for
his nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance:


We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him,
and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the
acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the Youth,
at which we dedicate him particularly.


One cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness.
To prove that this is true, I will open it at random and copy
the page I happen to stumble upon.  Here is the result:



DIALOGUE 16


For To See the Town



Anothony, go to accompany they gentilsmen, do they see the town.

We won't to see all that is it remarquable here.

Come with me, if you please.  I shall not folget nothing what can
to merit your attention.  Here we are near to cathedral; will you
come in there?

We will first to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there
for to look the interior.

Admire this master piece gothic architecture's.

The chasing of all they figures is astonishing' indeed.

The cupola and the nave are not less curious to see.

What is this palace how I see yonder?

It is the town hall.

And this tower here at this side?

It is the Observatory.

The bridge is very fine, it have ten arches, and is constructed
of free stone.

The streets are very layed out by line and too paved.

What is the circuit of this town?

Two leagues.

There is it also hospitals here?

It not fail them.

What are then the edifices the worthest to have seen?

It is the arsnehal, the spectacle's hall, the Cusiomhouse,
and the Purse.

We are going too see the others monuments such that the public
pawnbroker's office, the plants garden's, the money office's,
the library.

That it shall be for another day; we are tired.



DIALOGUE 17


To Inform One'self of a Person



How is that gentilman who you did speak by and by?

Is a German.

I did think him Englishman.

He is of the Saxony side.

He speak the french very well.

Tough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish
and english, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan,
he speak the frenche as the Frenches himselves.  The Spanishesmen
believe him Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman.  It is
difficult to enjoy well so much several languages.


The last remark contains a general truth; but it ceases to be a truth
when one contracts it and apples it to an individual--provided that
that individual is the author of this book, Sehnor Pedro Carolino.
I am sure I should not find it difficult "to enjoy well so much
several languages"--or even a thousand of them--if he did the
translating for me from the originals into his ostensible English.


***



ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS



Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for
every trifling offense.  This retaliation should only be resorted
to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.

If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one
of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one,
you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless.
And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless
your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able
to do it.

You ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away
from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise
of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the
river on a grindstone.  In the artless simplicity natural to this
time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction.
In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured
the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.

If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother,
do not correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him,
because it will spoil his clothes.  It is better to scald him a little,
for then you obtain desirable results.  You secure his immediate
attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time
your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person,
and possibly the skin, in spots.

If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply
that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate
that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly
in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.

You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you
are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home
from school when you let on that you are sick.  Therefore you ought
to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims,
and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you
too much.

Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged.
You ought never to "sass" old people unless they "sass" you first.


***



POST-MORTEM POETRY [1]



In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant
to see adopted throughout the land.  It is that of appending to
published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry.
Any one who is in the habit of reading the daily Philadelphia
LEDGER must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes
to extinguished worth.  In Philadelphia, the departure of a child
is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial
than by the accustomed solacing poesy in the PUBLIC LEDGER.
In that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge
of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse.
For instance, in a late LEDGER I find the following (I change
the surname):


DIED


Hawks.--On the 17th inst., Clara, the daughter of Ephraim
and Laura Hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days.


That merry shout no more I hear,

No laughing child I see,

No little arms are around my neck,

No feet upon my knee;


No kisses drop upon my cheek,

These lips are sealed to me.

Dear Lord, how could I give Clara up

To any but to Thee?


A child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented.
From the LEDGER of the same date I make the following extract,
merely changing the surname, as before:


Becket.--On Sunday morning, 19th inst., John P., infant son
of George and Julia Becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days.


That merry shout no more I hear,

No laughing child I see,

No little arms are round my neck,

No feet upon my knee;


No kisses drop upon my cheek;

These lips are sealed to me.

Dear Lord, how could I give Johnnie up

To any but to Thee?


The similarity of the emotions as produced in the mourners in these
two instances is remarkably evidenced by the singular similarity
of thought which they experienced, and the surprising coincidence
of language used by them to give it expression.

In the same journal, of the same date, I find the following
(surname suppressed, as before):


Wagner.--On the 10th inst., Ferguson G., the son of William
L. and Martha Theresa Wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day.


That merry shout no more I hear,

No laughing child I see,

No little arms are round my neck,

No feet upon my knee;


No kisses drop upon my cheek,

These lips are sealed to me.

Dear Lord, how could I give Ferguson up

To any but to Thee?


It is strange what power the reiteration of an essentially poetical
thought has upon one's feelings.  When we take up the LEDGER
and read the poetry about little Clara, we feel an unaccountable
depression of the spirits.  When we drift further down the column
and read the poetry about little Johnnie, the depression and spirits
acquires and added emphasis, and we experience tangible suffering.
When we saunter along down the column further still and read
the poetry about little Ferguson, the word torture but vaguely
suggests the anguish that rends us.

In the LEDGER (same copy referred to above) I find the following
(I alter surname, as usual):


Welch.--On the 5th inst., Mary C. Welch, wife of William B. Welch,
and daughter of Catharine and George W. Markland, in the 29th year
of her age.


A mother dear, a mother kind,

Has gone and left us all behind.

Cease to weep, for tears are vain,

Mother dear is out of pain.


Farewell, husband, children dear,

Serve thy God with filial fear,

And meet me in the land above,

Where all is peace, and joy, and love.


What could be sweeter than that?  No collection of salient facts
(without reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated
than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives,
and no more concise and comprehensive program of farewells,
post-mortuary general orders, etc., could be framed in any
form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza.
These things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer, and better.
Another extract:


Ball.--On the morning of the 15th inst., Mary E., daughter of John
and Sarah F. Ball.


'Tis sweet to rest in lively hope

That when my change shall come

Angels will hover round my bed,

To waft my spirit home.


The following is apparently the customary form for heads of families:


Burns.--On the 20th inst., Michael Burns, aged 40 years.


Dearest father, thou hast left us,

Hear thy loss we deeply feel;

But 'tis God that has bereft us,

He can all our sorrows heal.


Funeral at 2 o'clock sharp.


There is something very simple and pleasant about the following,
which, in Philadelphia, seems to be the usual form for consumptives
of long standing.  (It deplores four distinct cases in the single
copy of the LEDGER which lies on the Memoranda editorial table):


Bromley.--On the 29th inst., of consumption, Philip Bromley,
in the 50th year of his age.


Affliction sore long time he bore,

Physicians were in vain--

Till God at last did hear him mourn,

And eased him of his pain.


That friend whom death from us has torn,

We did not think so soon to part;

An anxious care now sinks the thorn

Still deeper in our bleeding heart.


This beautiful creation loses nothing by repetition.  On the contrary,
the oftener one sees it in the LEDGER, the more grand and awe-inspiring
it seems.

With one more extract I will close:


Doble.--On the 4th inst., Samuel Pervil Worthington Doble,
aged 4 days.


Our little Sammy's gone,

His tiny spirit's fled;

Our little boy we loved so dear

Lies sleeping with the dead.


A tear within a father's eye,

A mother's aching heart,

Can only tell the agony

How hard it is to part.


Could anything be more plaintive than that, without requiring further
concessions of grammar?  Could anything be likely to do more toward
reconciling deceased to circumstances, and making him willing to go?
Perhaps not.  The power of song can hardly be estimated.  There is
an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical
suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations
to be desired.  This element is present in the mortuary poetry
of Philadelphia degree of development.

The custom I have been treating of is one that should be adopted
in all the cities of the land.

It is said that once a man of small consequence died, and the
Rev. T. K. Beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon--
a man who abhors the lauding of people, either dead or alive,
except in dignified and simple language, and then only for merits
which they actually possessed or possess, not merits which they
merely ought to have possessed.  The friends of the deceased got
up a stately funeral.  They must have had misgivings that the
corpse might not be praised strongly enough, for they prepared
some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was left
unsaid on that subject that a fervid imagination and an unabridged
dictionary could compile, and these they handed to the minister
as he entered the pulpit.  They were merely intended as suggestions,
and so the friends were filled with consternation when the minister
stood in the pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds
and ends in ghastly detail and in a loud voice!  And their
consternation solidified to petrification when he paused at the end,
contemplated the multitude reflectively, and then said, impressively:

"The man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that.
Let us pray!"

And with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the
man would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following
transcendent obituary poem.  There is something so innocent,
so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied
about this peerless "hog-wash," that the man must be made of stone
who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone
and quivering in his marrow.  There is no need to say that this
poem is genuine and in earnest, for its proofs are written all
over its face.  An ingenious scribbler might imitate it after
a fashion, but Shakespeare himself could not counterfeit it.
It is noticeable that the country editor who published it did
not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its
kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show.
He did not dare to say no to the dread poet--for such a poet
must have been something of an apparition--but he just shoveled
it into his paper anywhere that came handy, and felt ashamed,
and put that disgusted "Published by Request" over it, and hoped
that his subscribers would overlook it or not feel an impulse to read it:


(Published by Request


LINES

Composed on the death of Samuel and Catharine Belknap's children


by M. A. Glaze



Friends and neighbors all draw near,

And listen to what I have to say;

And never leave your children dear

When they are small, and go away.


But always think of that sad fate,

That happened in year of '63;

Four children with a house did burn,

Think of their awful agony.


Their mother she had gone away,

And left them there alone to stay;

The house took fire and down did burn;

Before their mother did return.


Their piteous cry the neighbors heard,

And then the cry of fire was given;

But, ah! before they could them reach,

Their little spirits had flown to heaven.


Their father he to war had gone,

And on the battle-field was slain;

But little did he think when he went away,

But what on earth they would meet again.


The neighbors often told his wife

Not to leave his children there,

Unless she got some one to stay,

And of the little ones take care.


The oldest he was years not six,

And the youngest only eleven months old,

But often she had left them there alone,

As, by the neighbors, I have been told.


How can she bear to see the place.

Where she so oft has left them there,

Without a single one to look to them,

Or of the little ones to take good care.


Oh, can she look upon the spot,

Whereunder their little burnt bones lay,

But what she thinks she hears them say,

''Twas God had pity, and took us on high.'


And there may she kneel down and pray,

And ask God her to forgive;

And she may lead a different life

While she on earth remains to live.


Her husband and her children too,

God has took from pain and woe.

May she reform and mend her ways,

That she may also to them go.


And when it is God's holy will,

O, may she be prepared

To meet her God and friends in peace,

And leave this world of care.

- - -


1.  Written in 1870.


***



THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED



The man in the ticket-office said:

"Have an accident insurance ticket, also?"

"No," I said, after studying the matter over a little.  "No, I
believe not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today.
However, tomorrow I don't travel.  Give me one for tomorrow."

The man looked puzzled.  He said:

"But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel
by rail--"

"If I am going to travel by rail I sha'n't need it.  Lying at home
in bed is the thing _I_ am afraid of."

I had been looking into this matter.  Last year I traveled twenty
thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I traveled
over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail;
and the year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of ten
thousand miles, exclusively by rail.  I suppose if I put in all
the little odd journeys here and there, I may say I have traveled
sixty thousand miles during the three years I have mentioned.
AND NEVER AN ACCIDENT.

For a good while I said to myself every morning:  "Now I
have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much
increased that I shall catch it this time.  I will be shrewd,
and buy an accident ticket."  And to a dead moral certainty I
drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started
or a bone splintered.  I got tired of that sort of daily bother,
and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month.
I said to myself, "A man CAN'T buy thirty blanks in one bundle."

But I was mistaken.  There was never a prize in the the lot.
I could read of railway accidents every day--the newspaper
atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way.
I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business,
and had nothing to show for it.  My suspicions were aroused, and I
began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery.
I found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual
that had ever had an accident or made a cent.  I stopped buying
accident tickets and went to ciphering.  The result was astounding.
THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME.

I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all
the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters,
less than THREE HUNDRED people had really lost their lives by those
disasters in the preceding twelve months.  The Erie road was set
down as the most murderous in the list.  It had killed forty-six--
or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the
number was double that of any other road.  But the fact straightway
suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did
more business than any other line in the country; so the double
number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise.

By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester
the Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day--16 altogether;
and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons.  That is about a million
in six months--the population of New York City.  Well, the Erie kills
from 13 to 23 persons of ITS million in six months; and in the same
time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds!  My flesh crept,
my hair stood on end.  "This is appalling!"  I said.  "The danger
isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds.
I will never sleep in a bed again."

I had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of
the Erie road.  It was plain that the entire road must transport
at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day.  There are
many short roads running out of Boston that do fully half as much;
a great many such roads.  There are many roads scattered about the
Union that do a prodigious passenger business.  Therefore it was fair
to presume that an average of 2,500 passengers a day for each road
in the country would be almost correct.  There are 846 railway
lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are 2,115,000. So the
railways of America move more than two millions of people every day;
six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting
the Sundays.  They do that, too--there is no question about it;
though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction
of my arithmetic; for I have hunted the census through and through,
and I find that there are not that many people in the United States,
by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least.
They must use some of the same people over again, likely.

San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are 60
deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they
have luck.  That is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight
times as many in New York--say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health
of the two places is the same.  So we will let it stand as a fair
presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that
consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die
every year.  That amounts to one-fortieth of our total population.
One million of us, then, die annually.  Out of this million ten
or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned,
or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way,
such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations,
getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking
through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines,
or committing suicide in other forms.  The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46;
the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each;
and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that
appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds!

You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds.
The railroads are good enough for me.

And my advice to all people is, Don't stay at home any more than
you can help; but when you have GOT to stay at home a while,
buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights.
You cannot be too cautious.

[One can see now why I answered that ticket-agent in the manner
recorded at the top of this sketch.]

The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble
more than is fair about railroad management in the United States.
When we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen
thousand railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life
and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is,
NOT that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth,
but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred!


***



PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III



I never can look at those periodical portraits in THE GALAXY magazine
without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist.
I have seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time--
acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of Europe--
but never any that moved me as these portraits do.

There is a portrait of Monsignore Capel in the November number,
now COULD anything be sweeter than that?  And there was Bismarck's,
in the October number; who can look at that without being purer
and stronger and nobler for it?  And Thurlow and Weed's picture
in the September number; I would not have died without seeing that,
no, not for anything this world can give.  But looks back still
further and recall my own likeness as printed in the August number;
if I had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared,
I would have got up and visited the artist.

I sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that I
can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning.
I know them all as thoroughly as if I had made them myself; I know
every line and mark about them.  Sometimes when company are present
I shuffle the portraits all up together, and then pick them out
one by one and call their names, without referring to the printing
on the bottom.  I seldom make a mistake--never, when I am calm.

I have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till
my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor.
But first one thing and then another interferes, and so the thing
is delayed.  Once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind
of light they needed in the attic.  The old simpleton! it is as dark
as a tomb up there.  But she does not know anything about art,
and so she has no reverence for it.  When I showed her my "Map of
the Fortifications of Paris," she said it was rubbish.

Well, from nursing those portraits so long, I have come at last
to have a perfect infatuation for art.  I have a teacher now,
and my enthusiasm continually and tumultuously grows, as I learn
to use with more and more facility the pencil, brush, and graver.
I am studying under De Mellville, the house and portrait painter.
[His name was Smith when he lived in the West.] He does any kind
of artist work a body wants, having a genius that is universal,
like Michael Angelo.  Resembles that great artist, in fact.
The back of his head is like this, and he wears his hat-brim tilted
down on his nose to expose it.

I have been studying under De Mellville several months now.
The first month I painted fences, and gave general satisfaction.
The next month I white-washed a barn.  The third, I was doing
tin roofs; the forth, common signs; the fifth, statuary to stand
before cigar shops.  This present month is only the sixth, and I am
already in portraits!

The humble offering which accompanies these remarks [see figure]--
the portrait of his Majesty William III., King of Prussia--
is my fifth attempt in portraits, and my greatest success.
It has received unbounded praise from all classes of the community,
but that which gratifies me most is the frequent and cordial verdict
that it resembles the GALAXY portraits.  Those were my first love,
my earliest admiration, the original source and incentive of my
art-ambition. Whatever I am in Art today, I owe to these portraits.
I ask no credit for myself--I deserve none.  And I never take any,
either.  Many a stranger has come to my exhibition (for I have had my
portrait of King William on exhibition at one dollar a ticket), and
would have gone away blessing ME, if I had let him, but I never did.
I always stated where I got the idea.

King William wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have
thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added.
But it was not possible.  There was not room for side-whiskers and
epaulets both, and so I let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets,
for the sake of style.  That thing on his hat is an eagle.
The Prussian eagle--it is a national emblem.  When I saw hat I
mean helmet; but it seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet
that a body can have confidence in.

I wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract
a little attention to the GALAXY portraits.  I feel persuaded it can
be accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment.
I write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men,
and if I can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all I ask;
the reading-matter will take care of itself.


COMMENDATIONS OF THE PORTRAIT


There is nothing like it in the Vatican.  Pius IX.


It has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it,
which many of the first critics of Arkansas have objected to in the
Murillo school of Art.  Ruskin.


The expression is very interesting.  J.W. Titian.


(Keeps a macaroni store in Venice, at the old family stand.)


It is the neatest thing in still life I have seen for years.

Rosa Bonheur.


The smile may be almost called unique.  Bismarck.


I never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before.
De Mellville.


There is a benignant simplicity about the execution of this
work which warms the heart toward it as much, full as much,
as it fascinates the eye.  Landseer.


One cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist.

Frederick William.


Send me the entire edition--together with the plate and the
original portrait--and name your own price.  And--would you
like to come over and stay awhile with Napoleon at Wilhelmsh:ohe?
It shall not cost you a cent.  William III.


***



DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?



Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and
petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity
a geologic period.



The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend,
and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged
to the brim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve
to an old sore place:

"Many a time I've had to listen without retort to an old saying
that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance
for a return jibe:  'An Englishman does dearly love a lord';
but after this I shall talk back, and say, 'How about the Americans?'"

It is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get.
The man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery.
The man he says it to, thinks the same.  It departs on its travels,
is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as
a piece of rare and acute observation, but as being exhaustively
true and profoundly wise; and so it presently takes its place
in the world's list of recognized and established wisdoms,
and after that no one thinks of examining it to see whether it is
really entitled to its high honors or not.  I call to mind instances
of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness is not
surpassed by the one about the Englishman and his love for a lord:
one of them records the American's Adoration of the Almighty Dollar,
the other the American millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cash for
a title, with a husband thrown in.

It isn't merely the American that adores the Almighty Dollar,
it is the human race.  The human race has always adored the hatful
of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings,
or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives,
or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses,
or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the
railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded cash, or--
anything that stands for wealth and consideration and independence,
and can secure to the possessor that most precious of all things,
another man's envy.  It was a dull person that invented the idea
that the American's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than
another's.

Rich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea;
it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America
was discovered.  European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever;
and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy
the husband without it.  They must put up the "dot," or there is
no trade.  The commercialization of brides is substantially universal,
except in America.  It exists with us, to some little extent,
but in no degree approaching a custom.

"The Englishman dearly loves a lord."

What is the soul and source of this love?  I think the thing could
be more correctly worded:

"The human race dearly envies a lord."

That is to say, it envies the lord's place.  Why?  On two accounts,
I think:  its Power and its Conspicuousness.

Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light
of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure
and comprehend, I think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as
passionate as is that of any other nation.  No one can care less
for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact
with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but I will not
allow that any Englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has
the average American who has lived long years in a European capital
and fully learned how immense is the position the lord occupies.

Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience,
to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred
will be there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up
with desire to see a personage who is so much talked about.
They envy him; but it is Conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the
Power that is lodged in his royal quality and position, for they
have but a vague and spectral knowledge and appreciation of that;
though their environment and associations they have been accustomed
to regard such things lightly, and as not being very real; consequently,
they are not able to value them enough to consumingly envy them.

But, whenever an American (or other human being) is in the presence,
for the first time, of a combination of great Power and Conspicuousness
which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity
and pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy--
whether he suspects it or not.  At any time, on any day, in any part
of America, you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger
by calling his attention to any other passing stranger and saying:

"Do you see that gentleman going along there?  It is Mr. Rockefeller."

Watch his eye.  It is a combination of power and conspicuousness
which the man understands.

When we understand rank, we always like to rub against it.
When a man is conspicuous, we always want to see him.  Also, if he
will pay us an attention we will manage to remember it.  Also, we
will mention it now and then, casually; sometimes to a friend,
or if a friend is not handy, we will make out with a stranger.

Well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness?  At once we
think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities
in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there.
But that is a mistake.  Rank holds its court and receives its homage
on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher;
and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder,
and commands its due of deference and envy.

To worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege
of all the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised
in democracies as well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent,
among those creatures whom we impertinently call the Lower Animals.
For even they have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in
this matter they are paupers as compared to us.

A Chinese Emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions
of subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him.
A Christian Emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large
part of the Christian world outside of his domains; but he is
a matter of indifference to all China.  A king, class A, has an
extensive worship; a king, class B, has a less extensive worship;
class C, class D, class E get a steadily diminishing share of worship;
class L (Sultan of Zanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W
(half-king of Samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little
patch of sovereignty.

Take the distinguished people along down.  Each has his group
of homage-payers. In the navy, there are many groups; they start
with the Secretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster--
and below; for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of
these groups will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles,
or his strength, or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired
and envied by his group.  The same with the army; the same
with the literary and journalistic craft; the publishing craft;
the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U. S. Steel; the class A hotel--
and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the class A prize-fighter--
and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear down to the lowest
and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with its one boy
that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa,
bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent
admiration and envy.

There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this
human race's fondness for contact with power and distinction,
and for the reflected glory it gets out of it.  The king, class A,
is happy in the state banquet and the military show which the
emperor provides for him, and he goes home and gathers the queen
and the princelings around him in the privacy of the spare room,
and tells them all about it, and says:

"His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most
friendly way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!--
and everybody SEEING him do it; charming, perfectly charming!"

The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police
parade provided for him by the king, class B, and goes home
and tells the family all about it, and says:

"And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke
and a chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away
and laughing and chatting, just the same as if we had been born
in the same bunk; and all the servants in the anteroom could see
us doing it!  Oh, it was too lovely for anything!"

The king, class Q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him
by the king, class M, and goes home and tells the household about it,
and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors
in the gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot.

Emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the
bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside,
and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which.
We are unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments
paid us, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown.
There is not one of us, from the emperor down,, but is made like that.
Do I mean attentions shown us by the guest?  No, I mean simply
flattering attentions, let them come whence they may.  We despise
no source that can pay us a pleasing attention--there is no source
that is humble enough for that.  You have heard a dear little girl
say to a frowzy and disreputable dog:  "He came right to me and let
me pat him on the head, and he wouldn't let the others touch him!"
and you have seen her eyes dance with pride in that high distinction.
You have often seen that.  If the child were a princess, would that
random dog be able to confer the like glory upon her with his
pretty compliment?  Yes; and even in her mature life and seated
upon a throne, she would still remember it, still recall it,
still speak of it with frank satisfaction.  That charming and
lovable German princess and poet, Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania,
remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields "talked to her"
when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book;
and that the squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued
compliment of not being afraid of them; and "once one of them,
holding a nut between its sharp little teeth, ran right up against
my father"--it has the very note of "He came right to me and let
me pat him on the head"--"and when it saw itself reflected in his
boot it was very much surprised, and stopped for a long time to
contemplate itself in the polished leather"--then it went its way.
And the birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came
boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put
no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds,
and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride
that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal
friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship
to her injury:  "never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee."
And here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's
elation in being singled out, among all the company of children,
for the random dog's honor-conferring attentions.  "Even in the very
worst summer for wasps, when, in lunching out of doors, our table
was covered with them and every one else was stung, they never
hurt me."

When a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are
able to add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne,
remembers with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and
distinctions conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of
the forest, we are helped to realize that complimentary attentions,
homage, distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast--
that they are a nobility-conferring power apart.

We all like these things.  When the gate-guard at the railway-station
passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets,
I feel as the king, class A, felt when the emperor put the imperial
hand on his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child
felt when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized
the others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her
and stung the rest; and I felt just so, four years ago in Vienna
(and remember it yet), when the helmeted police shut me off,
with fifty others, from a street which the Emperor was to pass through,
and the captain of the squad turned and saw the situation and said
indignantly to that guard:

"Can't you see it is the Herr Mark Twain?  Let him through!"

It was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before I forget
the wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my
buttons when I marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my
fellow-rabble, and noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful
expression which said, as plainly as speech could have worded it:
"And who in the nation is the Herr Mark Twain UM GOTTESWILLEN?"

How many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark:

"I stood as close to him as I am to you; I could have put out my
hand and touched him."

We have all heard it many and many a time.  It was a proud
distinction to be able to say those words.  It brought envy to
the speaker, a kind of glory; and he basked in it and was happy
through all his veins.  And who was it he stood so close to?
The answer would cover all the grades.  Sometimes it was a king;
sometimes it was a renowned highwayman; sometimes it was an unknown
man killed in an extraordinary way and made suddenly famous by it;
always it was a person who was for the moment the subject of public
interest of a village.

"I was there, and I saw it myself."  That is a common and
envy-compelling remark.  It can refer to a battle; to a handing;
to a coronation; to the killing of Jumbo by the railway-train;
to the arrival of Jenny Lind at the Battery; to the meeting of the
President and Prince Henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac;
to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway;
to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning.
It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has
seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to.  The man who was absent
and didn't see him to anything, will scoff.  It is his privilege;
and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself,
to be different from other Americans, and better.  As his opinion
of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates
and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction
of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure
in it if he can.  My life has been embittered by that kind of persons.
If you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallen
to your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try
to make believe that the thing you took for a special distinction
was nothing of the kind and was meant in quite another way.
Once I was received in private audience by an emperor.  Last week
I was telling a jealous person about it, and I could see him wince
under it, see him bite, see him suffer.  I revealed the whole episode
to him with considerable elaboration and nice attention to detail.
When I was through, he asked me what had impressed me most.
I said:

"His Majesty's delicacy.  They told me to be sure and back
out from the presence, and find the door-knob as best I could;
it was not allowable to face around.  Now the Emperor knew it would
be a difficult ordeal for me, because of lack of practice; and so,
when it was time to part, he turned, with exceeding delicacy,
and pretended to fumble with things on his desk, so I could get
out in my own way, without his seeing me."

It went home!  It was vitriol!  I saw the envy and disgruntlement rise
in the man's face; he couldn't keep it down.  I saw him try to fix
up something in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction.
I enjoyed that, for I judged that he had his work cut out for him.
He struggled along inwardly for quite a while; then he said,
with a manner of a person who has to say something and hasn't anything
relevant to say:

"You said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?"

"Yes; _I_ never said anything to match them."

I had him again.  He had to fumble around in his mind as much
as another minute before he could play; then he said in as mean
a way as I ever heard a person say anything:

"He could have been counting the cigars, you know."

I cannot endure a man like that.  It is nothing to him how unkind
he is, so long as he takes the bloom off.  It is all he cares for.

"An Englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord,"
(or other conspicuous person.) It includes us all.  We love to be
noticed by the conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such,
or with a conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion,
even in the forty-seventh, if we cannot do better.  This accounts
for some of our curious tastes in mementos.  It accounts for the large
private trade in the Prince of Wales's hair, which chambermaids
were able to drive in that article of commerce when the Prince made
the tour of the world in the long ago--hair which probably did
not always come from his brush, since enough of it was marketed
to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts for the fact that the rope
which lynches a negro in the presence of ten thousand Christian
spectators is salable five minutes later at two dollars and inch;
it accounts for the mournful fact that a royal personage does not
venture to wear buttons on his coat in public.

We do love a lord--and by that term I mean any person whose situation
is higher than our own.  The lord of the group, for instance:
a group of peers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums,
a group of sailors, a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians,
a group of college girls.  No royal person has ever been the object
of a more delirious loyalty and slavish adoration than is paid
by the vast Tammany herd to its squalid idol in Wantage.  There is
not a bifurcated animal in that menagerie that would not be proud
to appear in a newspaper picture in his company.  At the same time,
there are some in that organization who would scoff at the people
who have been daily pictured in company with Prince Henry, and would
say vigorously that THEY would not consent to be photographed
with him--a statement which would not be true in any instance.
There are hundreds of people in America who would frankly say to you
that they would not be proud to be photographed in a group with
the Prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people would
believe it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true.
We have a large population, but we have not a large enough one,
by several millions, to furnish that man.  He has not yet been begotten,
and in fact he is not begettable.

You may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person
in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it
is a crowd of ten thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats,
horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle--
there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one
who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning,
with the intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing
and keeping it if he shall find so much of his person in it as his
starboard ear.

We all love to get some of the drippings of Conspicuousness, and we
will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more.
We may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend
it to ourselves privately--and we don't. We do confess in public
that we are the noblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit,
and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places
of our souls we recognize that, if we ARE the noblest work, the less
said about it the better.

We of the North poke fun at the South for its fondness of titles--
a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they
are genuine or pinchbeck.  We forget that whatever a Southerner
likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of
predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people.
There is no variety in the human race.  We are all children,
all children of the one Adam, and we love toys.  We can soon acquire
that Southern disease if some one will give it a start.  It already
has a start, in fact.  I have been personally acquainted with over
eighty-four thousand persons who, at one time or another in their lives,
have served for a year or two on the staffs of our multitudinous
governors, and through that fatality have been generals temporarily,
and colonels temporarily, and judge-advocates temporarily; but I
have known only nine among them who could be hired to let the title
go when it ceased to be legitimate.  I know thousands and thousands
of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century;
but I am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter
if you failed to call them "Governor" in it.  I know acres and acres
of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days,
but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not
raise if you addressed them as "Mr." instead of "Hon." The first thing
a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude,
and get itself photographed.  Each member frames his copy and takes
it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous
place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire
what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around
to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure
in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated
with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "It's me!"

Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room
in Washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on
to read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?--
keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see
if he is being observed and admired?--those same old letters
which he fetches in every morning?  Have you seen it?  Have you
seen him show off?  It is THE sight of the national capital.
Except one; a pathetic one.  That is the ex-Congressman: the poor
fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory
and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought
to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself
away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers,
and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed,
ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise;
dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety,
hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed,
the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates.
Have you seen him?  He clings piteously to the one little shred that
is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor";
and works it hard and gets what he can out of it.  That is the saddest
figure I know of.

Yes, we do so love our little distinctions!  And then we loftily
scoff at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we
only had his chance--ah!  "Senator" is not a legitimate title.
A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you
or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington,
there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to
that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it--
which you may do quite unrebuked.  Then those same Senators smile
at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the South!

Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may.
And we work them for all they are worth.  In prayer we call
ourselves "worms of the dust," but it is only on a sort of tacit
understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par.  WE--
worms of the dust!  Oh, no, we are not that.  Except in fact;
and we do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves.

As a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be Croker, or a duke,
or a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the
head of our group.  Many years ago, I saw a greasy youth in overalls
standing by the HERALD office, with an expectant look in his face.
Soon a large man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder.
That was what the boy was waiting for--the large man's notice.
The pat made him proud and happy, and the exultation inside of him
shone out through his eyes; and his mates were there to see the pat
and envy it and wish they could have that glory.  The boy belonged
down cellar in the press-room, the large man was king of the
upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. The light in the boy's
face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group.
The pat was an accolade.  It was as precious to the boy as it would
have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had
been delivered by his sovereign with a sword.  The quintessence
of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values;
in truth there was no difference present except an artificial one--
clothes.

All the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon
or be noticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness;
and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals,
descend to man's level in this matter.  In the Jardin des Plantes
I have see a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend
of an elephant that I was ashamed of her.


***



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY



MONDAY.--This new creature with the long hair is a good deal
in the way.  It is always hanging around and following me about.
I don't like this; I am not used to company.  I wish it would stay
with the other animals.  . . . Cloudy today, wind in the east;
think we shall have rain.  . . . WE?  Where did I get that word--
the new creature uses it.

TUESDAY.--Been examining the great waterfall.  It is the finest thing
on the estate, I think.  The new creature calls it Niagara Falls--
why, I am sure I do not know.  Says it LOOKS like Niagara Falls.
That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility.
I get no chance to name anything myself.  The new creature names
everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest.
And always that same pretext is offered--it LOOKS like the thing.
There is a dodo, for instance.  Says the moment one looks at it
one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo."  It will have to
keep that name, no doubt.  It wearies me to fret about it, and it
does no good, anyway.  Dodo!  It looks no more like a dodo than
I do.

WEDNESDAY.--Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not
have it to myself in peace.  The new creature intruded.  When I
tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with,
and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise
such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress.
I wish it would not talk; it is always talking.  That sounds like a
cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so.
I have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange
sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming
solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note.  And this new sound
is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear,
first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to sounds
that are more or less distant from me.

FRIDAY.  The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do.
I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty--
GARDEN OF EDEN.  Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any
longer publicly.  The new creature says it is all woods and rocks
and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden.  Says it
LOOKS like a park, and does not look like anything BUT a park.
Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named NIAGARA
FALLS PARK.  This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me.
And already there is a sign up:


KEEP OFF


THE GRASS


My life is not as happy as it was.

SATURDAY.--The new creature eats too much fruit.  We are going
to run short, most likely.  "We" again--that is ITS word; mine, too,
now, from hearing it so much.  Good deal of fog this morning.
I do not go out in the fog myself.  This new creature does.
It goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet.
And talks.  It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.

SUNDAY.--Pulled through.  This day is getting to be more and more trying.
It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest.
I had already six of them per week before.  This morning found
the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.

MONDAY.--The new creature says its name is Eve.  That is all right,
I have no objections.  Says it is to call it by, when I want it
to come.  I said it was superfluous, then.  The word evidently
raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word
and will bear repetition.  It says it is not an It, it is a She.
This is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were
nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk.

TUESDAY.--She has littered the whole estate with execrable names
and offensive signs:


This way to the Whirlpool


This way to Goat Island


Cave of the Winds this way


She says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was
any custom for it.  Summer resort--another invention of hers--
just words, without any meaning.  What is a summer resort?
But it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.

FRIDAY.--She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls.
What harm does it do?  Says it makes her shudder.  I wonder why;
I have always done it--always liked the plunge, and coolness.
I supposed it was what the Falls were for.  They have no other
use that I can see, and they must have been made for something.
She says they were only made for scenery--like the rhinoceros and
the mastodon.

I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her.
Went over in a tub--still not satisfactory.  Swam the Whirlpool and
the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit.  It got much damaged.  Hence, tedious
complaints about my extravagance.  I am too much hampered here.
What I need is a change of scene.

SATURDAY.--I escaped last Tuesday night, and traveled two days,
and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my
tracks as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast
which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful
noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.
I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again
when occasion offers.  She engages herself in many foolish things;
among others; to study out why the animals called lions and tigers
live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they
wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other.
This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other,
and that would introduce what, as I understand, is called "death";
and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the Park.
Which is a pity, on some accounts.

SUNDAY.--Pulled through.

MONDAY.--I believe I see what the week is for:  it is to give time
to rest up from the weariness of Sunday.  It seems a good idea.
. . . She has been climbing that tree again.  Clodded her out of it.
She said nobody was looking.  Seems to consider that a sufficient
justification for chancing any dangerous thing.  Told her that.
The word justification moved her admiration--and envy, too, I thought.
It is a good word.

TUESDAY.--She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body.
This is at least doubtful, if not more than that.  I have not
missed any rib.  . . . She is in much trouble about the buzzard;
says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it;
thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh.  The buzzard must
get along the best it can with what is provided.  We cannot overturn
the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.

SATURDAY.--She fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at
herself in it, which she is always doing.  She nearly strangled,
and said it was most uncomfortable.  This made her sorry for the
creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues
to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come
when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence
to her, she is such a numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out
and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm,
but I have noticed them now and then all day and I don't see that
they are any happier there then they were before, only quieter.
When night comes I shall throw them outdoors.  I will not sleep
with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among
when a person hasn't anything on.

SUNDAY.--Pulled through.

TUESDAY.--She has taken up with a snake now.  The other animals are glad,
for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them;
and I am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get
a rest.

FRIDAY.--She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree,
and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education.
I told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce
death into the world.  That was a mistake--it had been better
to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could
save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent
lions and tigers.  I advised her to keep away from the tree.
She said she wouldn't. I foresee trouble.  Will emigrate.

WEDNESDAY.--I have had a variegated time.  I escaped last night,
and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get
clear of the Park and hide in some other country before the
trouble should begin; but it was not to be.  About an hour after
sun-up, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands
of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other,
according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest
of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion
and every beast was destroying its neighbor.  I knew what it meant--
Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world.
. . . The tigers ate my house, paying no attention when I ordered
them to desist, and they would have eaten me if I had stayed--
which I didn't, but went away in much haste.  . . . I found this place,
outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she
has found me out.  Found me out, and has named the place Tonawanda--
says it LOOKS like that.  In fact I was not sorry she came,
for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some
of those apples.  I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry.
It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no
real force except when one is well fed.  . . . She came curtained
in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she
meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down,
she tittered and blushed.  I had never seen a person titter
and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic.
She said I would soon know how it was myself.  This was correct.
Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half-eaten--certainly the
best one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season--
and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then
spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some
more and not make a spectacle or herself.  She did it, and after this
we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected
some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper
for public occasions.  They are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish,
and that is the main point about clothes.  . . . I find she is a
good deal of a companion.  I see I should be lonesome and depressed
without her, now that I have lost my property.  Another thing,
she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.
She will be useful.  I will superintend.

TEN DAYS LATER.--She accuses ME of being the cause of our disaster!
She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured
her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts.
I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts.
She said the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative
term meaning an aged and moldy joke.  I turned pale at that,
for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them
could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed
that they were new when I made them.  She asked me if I had made
one just at the time of the catastrophe.  I was obliged to admit
that I had made one to myself, though not aloud.  It was this.
I was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful
it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!"
Then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and I let
it fly, saying, "It would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble
UP there!"--and I was just about to kill myself with laughing at
it when all nature broke loose in war and death and I had to flee
for my life.  "There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it;
the Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut,
and said it was coeval with the creation."  Alas, I am indeed
to blame.  Would that I were not witty; oh, that I had never had
that radiant thought!

NEXT YEAR.--We have named it Cain.  She caught it while I was up country
trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a
couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four, she isn't
certain which.  It resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation.
That is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment.
The difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different
and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps, though when I put it in the
water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before
there was opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter.
I still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is,
and will not let me have it to try.  I do not understand this.
The coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature
and made her unreasonable about experiments.  She thinks more
of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able
to explain why.  Her mind is disordered--everything shows it.
Sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it
complains and wants to get to the water.  At such times the water
comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she
pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth
to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways.
I have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it
troubles me greatly.  She used to carry the young tigers around so,
and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play;
she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed
with them.

SUNDAY.--She doesn't work, Sundays, but lies around all tired out,
and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool
noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes
it laugh.  I have not seen a fish before that could laugh.
This makes me doubt.  . . . I have come to like Sunday myself.
Superintending all the week tires a body so.  There ought to be
more Sundays.  In the old days they were tough, but now they
come handy.

WEDNESDAY.--It isn't a fish.  I cannot quite make out what it is.
It makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo"
when it is.  It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not
a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop;
it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish,
though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not.
It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up.
I have not seen any other animal do that before.  I said I believed it
was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it.
In my judgment it is either an enigma or some king of a bug.
If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its arrangements are.
I never had a thing perplex me so.

THREE MONTHS LATER.--The perplexity augments instead of diminishing.
I sleep but little.  It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on
its four legs now.  Yet it differs from the other four legged animals,
in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this
causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high
in the air, and this is not attractive.  It is built much as we are,
but its method of traveling shows that it is not of our breed.
The short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is a of
the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of that species,
since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does.
Still it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been
catalogued before.  As I discovered it, I have felt justified
in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it,
and hence have called it KANGAROORUM ADAMIENSIS.  . . . It must have
been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since.
It must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when
discontented it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times
the noise it made at first.  Coercion does not modify this, but has
the contrary effect.  For this reason I discontinued the system.
She reconciles it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she
had previously told me she wouldn't give it.  As already observed,
I was not at home when it first came, and she told me she found it
in the woods.  It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it
must be so, for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find
another one to add to my collection, and for this to play with;
for surely then it would be quieter and we could tame it more easily.
But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all,
no tracks.  It has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself;
therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track?
I have set a dozen traps, but they do no good.  I catch all small
animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out
of curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for.  They never
drink it.

THREE MONTHS LATER.--The Kangaroo still continues to grow, which is
very strange and perplexing.  I never knew one to be so long getting
its growth.  It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur,
but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer,
and instead of being black is red.  I am like to lose my mind over
the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable
zoological freak.  If I could catch another one--but that is hopeless;
it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain.  But I
caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one,
being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin
at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy
from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not
know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it
is among friends; but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at
the sight of the kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen
one before.  I pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is
nothing I can do to make it happy.  If I could tame it--but that is
out of the question; the more I try the worse I seem to make it.
It grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow
and passion.  I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it.
That seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right.
It might be lonelier than ever; for since I cannot find another one,
how could IT?

FIVE MONTHS LATER.--It is not a kangaroo.  No, for it supports
itself by holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its
hind legs, and then falls down.  It is probably some kind of a bear;
and yet it has no tail--as yet--and no fur, except upon its head.
It still keeps on growing--that is a curious circumstance,
for bears get their growth earlier than this.  Bears are dangerous--
since our catastrophe--and I shall not be satisfied to have this
one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on.
I have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go,
but it did no good--she is determined to run us into all sorts
of foolish risks, I think.  She was not like this before she lost
her mind.

A FORTNIGHT LATER.--I examined its mouth.  There is no danger yet:
it has only one tooth.  It has no tail yet.  It makes more noise
now than it ever did before--and mainly at night.  I have moved out.
But I shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has
more teeth.  If it gets a mouthful of teeth it will be time for it
to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to
be dangerous.

FOUR MONTHS LATER.--I have been off hunting and fishing a month,
up in the region that she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it
is because there are not any buffaloes there.  Meantime the bear
has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs,
and says "poppa" and "momma."  It is certainly a new species.
This resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course,
and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is
still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do.
This imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur
and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new
kind of bear.  The further study of it will be exceedingly interesting.
Meantime I will go off on a far expedition among the forests of
the north and make an exhaustive search.  There must certainly be
another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it
has company of its own species.  I will go straightway; but I will
muzzle this one first.

THREE MONTHS LATER.--It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have
had no success.  In the mean time, without stirring from the
home estate, she has caught another one!  I never saw such luck.
I might have hunted these woods a hundred years, I never would
have run across that thing.

NEXT DAY.--I have been comparing the new one with the old one,
and it is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed.
I was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she
is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so I have
relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake.  It would
be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away.
The old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot,
having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much,
and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree.
I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot;
and yet I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been
everything else it could think of since those first days when it
was a fish.  The new one is as ugly as the old one was at first;
has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular
head without any fur on it.  She calls it Abel.

TEN YEARS LATER.--They are BOYS; we found it out long ago.
It was their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us;
we were not used to it.  There are some girls now.  Abel is a good boy,
but if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him.  After all
these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning;
it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it
without her.  At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should
be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life.
Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me
to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit!


***



EVE'S DIARY


Translated from the Original



SATURDAY.--I am almost a whole day old, now.  I arrived yesterday.
That is as it seems to me.  And it must be so, for if there was
a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I
should remember it.  It could be, of course, that it did happen,
and that I was not noticing.  Very well; I will be very watchful now,
and if any day-before-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it.
It will be best to start right and not let the record get confused,
for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be
important to the historian some day.  For I feel like an experiment,
I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person
to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel
convinced that that is what I AM--an experiment; just an experiment,
and nothing more.

Then if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it?  No, I think not;
I think the rest of it is part of it.  I am the main part of it,
but I think the rest of it has its share in the matter.  Is my
position assured, or do I have to watch it and take care of it?
The latter, perhaps.  Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance
is the price of supremacy.  [That is a good phrase, I think, for one
so young.]

Everything looks better today than it did yesterday.  In the rush of
finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged condition,
and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish and remnants
that the aspects were quite distressing.  Noble and beautiful works
of art should not be subjected to haste; and this majestic new world
is indeed a most noble and beautiful work.  And certainly marvelously
near to being perfect, notwithstanding the shortness of the time.
There are too many stars in some places and not enough in others,
but that can be remedied presently, no doubt.  The moon got
loose last night, and slid down and fell out of the scheme--
a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it.  There isn't
another thing among the ornaments and decorations that is comparable
to it for beauty and finish.  It should have been fastened better.
If we can only get it back again--

But of course there is no telling where it went to.  And besides,
whoever gets it will hide it; I know it because I would do it myself.
I believe I can be honest in all other matters, but I already
begin to realize that the core and center of my nature is love
of the beautiful, a passion for the beautiful, and that it would
not be safe to trust me with a moon that belonged to another person
and that person didn't know I had it.  I could give up a moon that I
found in the daytime, because I should be afraid some one was looking;
but if I found it in the dark, I am sure I should find some kind
of an excuse for not saying anything about it.  For I do love moons,
they are so pretty and so romantic.  I wish we had five or six;
I would never go to bed; I should never get tired lying on the moss-bank
and looking up at them.

Stars are good, too.  I wish I could get some to put in my hair.
But I suppose I never can.  You would be surprised to find how far
off they are, for they do not look it.  When they first showed,
last night, I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach,
which astonished me; then I tried clods till I was all tired out,
but I never got one.  It was because I am left-handed and cannot
throw good.  Even when I aimed at the one I wasn't after I
couldn't hit the other one, though I did make some close shots,
for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of
the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them,
and if I could have held out a little longer maybe I could have
got one.

So I cried a little, which was natural, I suppose, for one of my age,
and after I was rested I got a basket and started for a place on the
extreme rim of the circle, where the stars were close to the ground
and I could get them with my hands, which would be better, anyway,
because I could gather them tenderly then, and not break them.
But it was farther than I thought, and at last I had go give it up;
I was so tired I couldn't drag my feet another step; and besides,
they were sore and hurt me very much.

I couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold;
but I found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most
adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant,
because they live on strawberries.  I had never seen a tiger before,
but I knew them in a minute by the stripes.  If I could have one
of those skins, it would make a lovely gown.

Today I am getting better ideas about distances.  I was so eager
to get hold of every pretty thing that I giddily grabbed for it,
sometimes when it was too far off, and sometimes when it was but
six inches away but seemed a foot--alas, with thorns between!
I learned a lesson; also I made an axiom, all out of my own head--
my very first one; THE SCRATCHED EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE THORN.
I think it is a very good one for one so young.

I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon,
at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could.  But I was
not able to make out.  I think it is a man.  I had never seen a man,
but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is.
I realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any
of the other reptiles.  If it is a reptile, and I suppose it is;
for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile.
It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads
itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may
be architecture.

I was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it
turned around, for I thought it was going to chase me; but by
and by I found it was only trying to get away, so after that I
was not timid any more, but tracked it along, several hours,
about twenty yards behind, which made it nervous and unhappy.
At last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree.  I waited
a good while, then gave it up and went home.

Today the same thing over.  I've got it up the tree again.

SUNDAY.--It is up there yet.  Resting, apparently.  But that is
a subterfuge:  Sunday isn't the day of rest; Saturday is appointed
for that.  It looks to me like a creature that is more interested
in resting than it anything else.  It would tire me to rest so much.
It tires me just to sit around and watch the tree.  I do wonder
what it is for; I never see it do anything.

They returned the moon last night, and I was SO happy!  I think
it is very honest of them.  It slid down and fell off again,
but I was not distressed; there is no need to worry when one has
that kind of neighbors; they will fetch it back.  I wish I could
do something to show my appreciation.  I would like to send them
some stars, for we have more than we can use.  I mean I, not we,
for I can see that the reptile cares nothing for such things.

It has low tastes, and is not kind.  When I went there yesterday
evening in the gloaming it had crept down and was trying to catch
the little speckled fishes that play in the pool, and I had
to clod it to make it go up the tree again and let them alone.
I wonder if THAT is what it is for?  Hasn't it any heart?
Hasn't it any compassion for those little creature?  Can it be
that it was designed and manufactured for such ungentle work?
It has the look of it.  One of the clods took it back of the ear,
and it used language.  It gave me a thrill, for it was the first time I
had ever heard speech, except my own.  I did not understand the words,
but they seemed expressive.

When I found it could talk I felt a new interest in it, for I
love to talk; I talk, all day, and in my sleep, too, and I am
very interesting, but if I had another to talk to I could be twice
as interesting, and would never stop, if desired.

If this reptile is a man, it isn't an IT, is it?  That wouldn't
be grammatical, would it?  I think it would be HE.  I think so.
In that case one would parse it thus:  nominative, HE; dative, HIM;
possessive, HIS'N. Well, I will consider it a man and call it he
until it turns out to be something else.  This will be handier
than having so many uncertainties.

NEXT WEEK SUNDAY.--All the week I tagged around after him and tried
to get acquainted.  I had to do the talking, because he was shy,
but I didn't mind it.  He seemed pleased to have me around, and I
used the sociable "we" a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him
to be included.

WEDNESDAY.--We are getting along very well indeed, now, and getting
better and better acquainted.  He does not try to avoid me any more,
which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him.
That pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can,
so as to increase his regard.  During the last day or two I
have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this
has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line,
and is evidently very grateful.  He can't think of a rational name
to save him, but I do not let him see that I am aware of his defect.
Whenever a new creature comes along I name it before he has time
to expose himself by an awkward silence.  In this way I have
saved him many embarrassments.  I have no defect like this.
The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is.  I don't
have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly,
just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am
sure it wasn't in me half a minute before.  I seem to know just
by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal
it is.

When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it
in his eye.  But I saved him.  And I was careful not to do it
in a way that could hurt his pride.  I just spoke up in a quite
natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming
of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there
isn't the dodo!"  I explained--without seeming to be explaining--
how I know it for a dodo, and although I thought maybe he was
a little piqued that I knew the creature when he didn't, it was
quite evident that he admired me.  That was very agreeable, and I
thought of it more than once with gratification before I slept.
How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have
earned it!

THURSDAY.--my first sorrow.  Yesterday he avoided me and seemed
to wish I would not talk to him.  I could not believe it,
and thought there was some mistake, for I loved to be with him,
and loved to hear him talk, and so how could it be that he could
feel unkind toward me when I had not done anything?  But at last it
seemed true, so I went away and sat lonely in the place where I first
saw him the morning that we were made and I did not know what he
was and was indifferent about him; but now it was a mournful place,
and every little think spoke of him, and my heart was very sore.
I did not know why very clearly, for it was a new feeling; I had
not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and I could
not make it out.

But when night came I could not bear the lonesomeness, and went
to the new shelter which he has built, to ask him what I had done
that was wrong and how I could mend it and get back his kindness again;
but he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow.

SUNDAY.--It is pleasant again, now, and I am happy; but those were
heavy days; I do not think of them when I can help it.

I tried to get him some of those apples, but I cannot learn to
throw straight.  I failed, but I think the good intention pleased him.
They are forbidden, and he says I shall come to harm; but so I
come to harm through pleasing him, why shall I care for that harm?

MONDAY.--This morning I told him my name, hoping it would interest him.
But he did not care for it.  It is strange.  If he should tell me
his name, I would care.  I think it would be pleasanter in my ears
than any other sound.

He talks very little.  Perhaps it is because he is not bright,
and is sensitive about it and wishes to conceal it.  It is
such a pity that he should feel so, for brightness is nothing;
it is in the heart that the values lie.  I wish I could make him
understand that a loving good heart is riches, and riches enough,
and that without it intellect is poverty.

Although he talks so little, he has quite a considerable
vocabulary.  This morning he used a surprisingly good word.
He evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he
worked in in twice afterward, casually.  It was good casual art,
still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception.
Without a doubt that seed can be made to grow, if cultivated.

Where did he get that word?  I do not think I have ever used it.

No, he took no interest in my name.  I tried to hide my disappointment,
but I suppose I did not succeed.  I went away and sat on the
moss-bank with my feet in the water.  It is where I go when I hunger
for companionship, some one to look at, some one to talk to.
It is not enough--that lovely white body painted there in the pool--
but it is something, and something is better than utter loneliness.
It talks when I talk; it is sad when I am sad; it comforts me with
its sympathy; it says, "Do not be downhearted, you poor friendless girl;
I will be your friend."  It IS a good friend to me, and my only one;
it is my sister.

That first time that she forsook me! ah, I shall never forget that--
never, never.  My heart was lead in my body!  I said, "She was all
I had, and now she is gone!"  In my despair I said, "Break, my heart;
I cannot bear my life any more!" and hid my face in my hands,
and there was no solace for me.  And when I took them away,
after a little, there she was again, white and shining and beautiful,
and I sprang into her arms!

That was perfect happiness; I had known happiness before, but it was
not like this, which was ecstasy.  I never doubted her afterward.
Sometimes she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the
whole day, but I waited and did not doubt; I said, "She is busy,
or she is gone on a journey, but she will come."  And it was so:
she always did.  At night she would not come if it was dark, for she
was a timid little thing; but if there was a moon she would come.
I am not afraid of the dark, but she is younger than I am; she was
born after I was.  Many and many are the visits I have paid her;
she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard--and it is
mainly that.

TUESDAY.--All the morning I was at work improving the estate;
and I purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get
lonely and come.  But he did not.

At noon I stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all
about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers,
those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of God out of the
sky and preserve it!  I gathered them, and made them into wreaths
and garlands and clothed myself in them while I ate my luncheon--
apples, of course; then I sat in the shade and wished and waited.
But he did not come.

But no matter.  Nothing would have come of it, for he does not
care for flowers.  He called them rubbish, and cannot tell one
from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.  He does
not care for me, he does not care for flowers, he does not care
for the painted sky at eventide--is there anything he does care for,
except building shacks to coop himself up in from the good clean rain,
and thumping the melons, and sampling the grapes, and fingering
the fruit on the trees, to see how those properties are coming along?

I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it
with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had,
and soon I got an awful fright.  A thin, transparent bluish film
rose out of the hole, and I dropped everything and ran!  I thought
it was a spirit, and I WAS so frightened!  But I looked back, and it
was not coming; so I leaned against a rock and rested and panted,
and let my limps go on trembling until they got steady again;
then I crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there
was occasion; and when I was come near, I parted the branches
of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man was about,
I was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone.
I went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole.
I put my finger in, to feel it, and said OUCH! and took it
out again.  It was a cruel pain.  I put my finger in my mouth;
and by standing first on one foot and then the other, and grunting,
I presently eased my misery; then I was full of interest, and began
to examine.

I was curious to know what the pink dust was.  Suddenly the name of it
occurred to me, though I had never heard of it before.  It was FIRE!
I was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world.
So without hesitation I named it that--fire.

I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added
a new thing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this,
and was proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him
and tell him about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem--
but I reflected, and did not do it.  No--he would not care for it.
He would ask what it was good for, and what could I answer? for if it
was not GOOD for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful--

So I sighed, and did not go.  For it wasn't good for anything;
it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could
not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless, it was a foolishness
and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words.
But to me it was not despicable; I said, "Oh, you fire, I love you,
you dainty pink creature, for you are BEAUTIFUL--and that is enough!"
and was going to gather it to my breast.  But refrained.
Then I made another maxim out of my head, though it was so nearly
like the first one that I was afraid it was only a plagiarism:
"THE BURNT EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE FIRE."

I wrought again; and when I had made a good deal of fire-dust I emptied
it into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home
and keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it
sprayed up and spat out at me fiercely, and I dropped it and ran.
When I looked back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching
and rolling away like a cloud, and instantly I thought of the name
of it--SMOKE!--though, upon my word, I had never heard of smoke before.

Soon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke,
and I named them in an instant--FLAMES--and I was right, too,
though these were the very first flames that had ever been
in the world.  They climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly
in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke,
and I had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture,
it was so new and strange and so wonderful and so beautiful!

He came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for
many minutes.  Then he asked what it was.  Ah, it was too bad that he
should ask such a direct question.  I had to answer it, of course,
and I did.  I said it was fire.  If it annoyed him that I should know
and he must ask; that was not my fault; I had no desire to annoy him.
After a pause he asked:

"How did it come?"

Another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer.

"I made it."

The fire was traveling farther and farther off.  He went to the edge
of the burned place and stood looking down, and said:

"What are these?"

"Fire-coals."

He picked up one to examine it, but changed his mind and put it
down again.  Then he went away.  NOTHING interests him.

But I was interested.  There were ashes, gray and soft and delicate
and pretty--I knew what they were at once.  And the embers;
I knew the embers, too.  I found my apples, and raked them out,
and was glad; for I am very young and my appetite is active.
But I was disappointed; they were all burst open and spoiled.
Spoiled apparently; but it was not so; they were better than raw ones.
Fire is beautiful; some day it will be useful, I think.

FRIDAY.--I saw him again, for a moment, last Monday at nightfall,
but only for a moment.  I was hoping he would praise me for trying
to improve the estate, for I had meant well and had worked hard.
But he was not pleased, and turned away and left me.  He was also
displeased on another account:  I tried once more to persuade him
to stop going over the Falls.  That was because the fire had revealed
to me a new passion--quite new, and distinctly different from love,
grief, and those others which I had already discovered--FEAR.  And it
is horrible!--I wish I had never discovered it; it gives me dark moments,
it spoils my happiness, it makes me shiver and tremble and shudder.
But I could not persuade him, for he has not discovered fear yet,
and so he could not understand me.


Extract from Adam's Diary


Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and
make allowances.  She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world
is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for
delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it
and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it.
And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage,
blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains,
the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon
sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering
in the wastes of space--none of them is of any practical value,
so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty,
that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them.
If she could quiet down and keep still a couple minutes at a time,
it would be a reposeful spectacle.  In that case I think I could
enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming
to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature--
lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once
when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder,
with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes,
watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she
was beautiful.

MONDAY NOON.--If there is anything on the planet that she is not
interested in it is not in my list.  There are animals that I am
indifferent to, but it is not so with her.  She has no discrimination,
she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures,
every new one is welcome.

When the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded
it as an acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good
sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things.
She wanted to domesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the
homestead and move out.  She believed it could be tamed by kind
treatment and would be a good pet; I said a pet twenty-one feet
high and eight-four feet long would be no proper thing to have
about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without
meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it,
for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded.

Still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she
couldn't give it up.  She thought we could start a dairy with it,
and wanted me to help milk it; but I wouldn't; it was too risky.
The sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway.  Then she
wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery.  Thirty or forty feet
of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she
thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got
to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would
have hurt herself but for me.

Was she satisfied now?  No. Nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration;
untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them.
It is the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel the
influence of it; if I were with her more I think I should take it
up myself.  Well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus:
she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could
stand in the river and use him for a bridge.  It turned out that he
was already plenty tame enough--at least as far as she was concerned--
so she tried her theory, but it failed:  every time she got him
properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him,
he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain.  Like the
other animals.  They all do that.


FRIDAY.--Tuesday--Wednesday--Thursday--and today:  all without
seeing him.  It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better
to be alone than unwelcome.

I HAD to have company--I was made for it, I think--so I made
friends with the animals.  They are just charming, and they have
the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour,
they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you
and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready
for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose.
I think they are perfect gentlemen.  All these days we have had such
good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever.  Lonesome!  No,
I should say not.  Why, there's always a swarm of them around--
sometimes as much as four or five acres--you can't count them;
and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the
furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color
and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes,
that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't;
and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings;
and when the sun strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing
up of all the colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out.

We have made long excursions, and I have see a great deal of the world;
almost all of it, I think; and so I am the first traveler,
and the only one.  When we are on the march, it is an imposing sight--
there's nothing like it anywhere.  For comfort I ride a tiger
or a leopard, because it is soft and has a round back that fits me,
and because they are such pretty animals; but for long distance
or for scenery I ride the elephant.  He hoists me up with his trunk,
but I can get off myself; when we are ready to camp, he sits and I
slide down the back way.

The birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there
are no disputes about anything.  They all talk, and they all talk
to me, but it must be a foreign language, for I cannot make out
a word they say; yet they often understand me when I talk back,
particularly the dog and the elephant.  It makes me ashamed.
It shows that they are brighter than I am, for I want to be the
principal Experiment myself--and I intend to be, too.

I have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but I
wasn't at first.  I was ignorant at first.  At first it used to vex
me because, with all my watching, I was never smart enough to be
around when the water was running uphill; but now I do not mind it.
I have experimented and experimented until now I know it never
does run uphill, except in the dark.  I know it does in the dark,
because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course,
if the water didn't come back in the night.  It is best to prove
things by actual experiment; then you KNOW; whereas if you depend
on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated.

Some things you CAN'T find out; but you will never know you can't
by guessing and supposing:  no, you have to be patient and go on
experimenting until you find out that you can't find out.  And it is
delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting.
If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull.  Even trying
to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying
to find out and finding out, and I don't know but more so.
The secret of the water was a treasure until I GOT it; then the
excitement all went away, and I recognized a sense of loss.

By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers,
and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence
you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply
knowing it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now.
But I shall find a way--then THAT excitement will go.  Such things
make me sad; because by and by when I have found out everything
there won't be any more excitements, and I do love excitements so!
The other night I couldn't sleep for thinking about it.

At first I couldn't make out what I was made for, but now I think it
was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy
and thank the Giver of it all for devising it.  I think there are many
things to learn yet--I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying
too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks.  I hope so.  When you
cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight;
then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time.
I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so.  I wonder why
it is?  Of course it DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to?
I suppose it is an optical illusion.  I mean, one of them is.
I don't know which one.  It may be the feather, it may be the clod;
I can't prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other
is a fake, and let a person take his choice.

By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last.
I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky.
Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt,
they can all melt the same night.  That sorrow will come--I know it.
I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can
keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory,
so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore
those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again,
and double them by the blur of my tears.


After the Fall


When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me.  It was beautiful,
surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost,
and I shall not see it any more.

The Garden is lost, but I have found HIM, and am content.
He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength
of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth
and sex.  If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know,
and do not really much care to know; so I suppose that this kind
of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one's
love for other reptiles and animals.  I think that this must be so.
I love certain birds because of their song; but I do not love Adam
on account of his singing--no, it is not that; the more he sings
the more I do not get reconciled to it.  Yet I ask him to sing,
because I wish to learn to like everything he is interested in.
I am sure I can learn, because at first I could not stand it,
but now I can.  It sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; I can get
used to that kind of milk.

It is not on account of his brightness that I love him--no, it is
not that.  He is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is,
for he did not make it himself; he is as God make him, and that
is sufficient.  There was a wise purpose in it, THAT I know.
In time it will develop, though I think it will not be sudden;
and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is.

It is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and
his delicacy that I love him.  No, he has lacks in this regard,
but he is well enough just so, and is improving.

It is not on account of his industry that I love him--no, it is
not that.  I think he has it in him, and I do not know why he
conceals it from me.  It is my only pain.  Otherwise he is frank
and open with me, now.  I am sure he keeps nothing from me but this.
It grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it
spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but I will put it out of my mind;
it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full
to overflowing.

It is not on account of his education that I love him--no, it is
not that.  He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude
of things, but they are not so.

It is not on account of his chivalry that I love him--no, it is not that.
He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex,
I think, and he did not make his sex.  Of course I would not have
told on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity
of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make
my sex.

Then why is it that I love him?  MERELY BECAUSE HE IS MASCULINE,
I think.

At bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love
him without it.  If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go
on loving him.  I know it.  It is a matter of sex, I think.

He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him
and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities.
He he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should
love him; and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray
for him, and watch by his bedside until I died.

Yes, I think I love him merely because he is MINE and is MASCULINE.
There is no other reason, I suppose.  And so I think it is as I
first said:  that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings
and statistics.  It just COMES--none knows whence--and cannot
explain itself.  And doesn't need to.

It is what I think.  But I am only a girl, the first that has
examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance
and inexperience I have not got it right.


Forty Years Later


It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this
life together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth,
but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves,
until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.

But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I;
for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is
to me--life without him would not be life; now could I endure it?
This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up
while my race continues.  I am the first wife; and in the last wife I
shall be repeated.


At Eve's Grave


ADAM:  Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.