ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS’ FUND FAIR IN THE METROPOLITANOPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, MAY 6, 1907Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fairopen. Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr. Clemens, said:“We intend to make this a banner week in the history of theFund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be heactor, singer, dancer, or workman. We have spent more than$40,000 during the past year. Charity covers a multitude ofsins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. At theopening of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin Boothand Joseph Jefferson. In their place we have to-day thatAmerican institution and apostle of wide humanity—Mark Twain.”
As Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues. This is true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over. Mr. Frohman has told you something of the object and something of the character of the work. He told me he would do this—and he has kept his word! I had expected to hear of it through the newspapers. I wouldn’t trust anything between Frohman and the newspapers—except when it’s a case of charity!
You should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and many a year. When you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse. You are all under obligation to him. This is your opportunity to be his benefactor—to help provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities.
At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. If you offer a twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive $19 in change. There is to be no robbery here. There is to be no creed here—no religion except charity. We want to raise $250,000—and that is a great task to attempt.
The President has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in Washington. Now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash.
By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open. I call the ball game. Let the transmuting begin!
The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in Russia waslaunched on the evening of April 11, 1906, at the Club A house, 3 FifthAvenue, with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal spokesmen. Mr.Clemens made an introductory address, presenting Mr. Gorky.
If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of the Tsar’s domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go ahead and do it. We need not discuss the methods by which that purpose is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or averted for a while, but if it must come—
I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot in Russia, to make that country free. I am certain that it will be successful, as it deserves to be. Any such movement should have and deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for funds as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just and powerful meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us. Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying to do the same thing in Russia.
The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off. If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free.
On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casinofor the benefit of the Russian sufferers. After theperformance Mr. Clemens spoke.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—It seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an audience like this our rude English tongue, after we have heard that divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue.
It has always been a marvel to me—that French language; it has always been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is. How expressive it seems to be. How full of grace it is.
And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid it is. And, oh, I am always deceived—I always think I am going to understand it.
Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her.
I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but I have always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself—her fiery self. I have wanted to know that beautiful character.
Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself—for I always feel young when I come in the presence of young people.
I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years ago—when Madame Bernhardt came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was going to play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely women—a widow and her daughter—neighbors of ours, highly cultivated ladies they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were very poor, and they said “Well, we must not spend six dollars on a pleasure of the mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if it must go at all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat.”
And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great pleasure of seeing Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors equally highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those good-hearted Joneses sent that six dollars—deprived themselves of it—and sent it to those poor Smiths to buy bread with. And those Smiths took it and bought tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt.
Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also.
Now, I was going to make a speech—I supposed I was, but I am not. It is late, late; and so I am going to tell a story; and there is this advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of that story, and you are bound to get it—it flashes, it flames, it is the jewel in the toad’s head—you don’t overlook that.
Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost opportunity—oh, the lost opportunity. Anybody in this house who has reached the turn of life—sixty, or seventy, or even fifty, or along there—when he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that is.
You younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those words—the lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived and felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity.
Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that, whose lament is that.
I was in a village which is a suburb of New Bedford several years ago—well, New Bedford is a suburb of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the other way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great centre of the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth century, and I was up there at Fair Haven some years ago with a friend of mine.
There was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we were there in the afternoon. This great building was filled, like this great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and I started down the centre aisle. He saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said “Now, look at that bronzed veteran—at that mahogany-faced man. Now, tell me, do you see anything about that man’s face that is emotional? Do you see anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there are fires that can be started? Would you ever imagine that that is a human volcano?”
“Why, no,” I said, “I would not. He looks like a wooden Indian in front of a cigar store.”
“Very well,” said my friend, “I will show you that there is emotion even in that unpromising place. I will just go to that man and I will just mention in the most casual way an incident in his life. That man is getting along toward ninety years old. He is past eighty. I will mention an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. Now, just watch the effect, and it will be so casual that if you don’t watch you won’t know when I do say that thing—but you just watch the effect.”
He went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark or two. I could not catch up. They were so casual I could not recognize which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old man was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with profanity of the most exquisite kind. You never heard such accomplished profanity. I never heard it also delivered with such eloquence.
I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then—more than if I had been uttering it myself. There is nothing like listening to an artist—all his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and earthquake.
Then this friend said to me: “Now, I will tell you about that. About sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just come home from a three years’ whaling voyage. He came into that village of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief mate, he was going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and happy about it.
“Then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the Father Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region. Therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn’t anybody for miles and miles around that had not taken the pledge.
“So you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond of his grog. And he was just an outcast, because when they found he would not join Father Mathew’s Society they ostracized him, and he went about that town three weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness—the only human being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it privately.
“If you don’t know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your fellow-man, may you never know it. Then he recognized that there was something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the fellowship of your fellow-man. And at last he gave it up, and at nine o’clock one night he went down to the Father Mathew Temperance Society, and with a broken heart he said: ‘Put my name down for membership in this society.’
“And then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning they came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his was ready to sail on a three years’ voyage. In a minute he was on board that ship and gone.
“And he said—well, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and so that whole voyage of three years was a three years’ agony to that man because he saw all the time the mistake he had made.
“He felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it, and there was the torturous Smell of it.
“He went through the whole, three years of suffering, and at last coming into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow two feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his crew torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had his reward. He really did get to shore at last, and jumped and ran and bought a jug and rushed to the society’s office, and said to the secretary:
“‘Take my name off your membership books, and do it right away! I have got a three years’ thirst on.’
“And the secretary said: ‘It is not necessary. You were blackballed!’”
ADDRESS AT THE CELEBRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S 92ND BIRTHDAYANNIVERSARY, CARNEGIE HALL, FEBRUARY 11, 1901, TO RAISE FUNDSFOR THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY AT CUMBERLAND GAP, TENN.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—The remainder of my duties as presiding chairman here this evening are but two—only two. One of them is easy, and the other difficult. That is to say, I must introduce the orator, and then keep still and give him a chance. The name of Henry Watterson carries with it its own explanation. It is like an electric light on top of Madison Square Garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out of the darkness. You mention the name of Henry Watterson, and your minds are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and achievements. A journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel. Yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel.
It is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any collusion or prearrangement, that he and I, both of whom were rebels related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy. I don’t know as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact, nevertheless. Colonel Watterson and I were both rebels, and we are blood relations. I was a second lieutenant in a Confederate company for a while—oh, I could have stayed on if I had wanted to. I made myself felt, I left tracks all around the country. I could have stayed on, but it was such weather. I never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in all my life.
The Colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, I suppose, to destroy the Union. He did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would have done so. I had a plan, and I fully intended to drive General Grant into the Pacific Ocean—if I could get transportation. I told Colonel Watterson about it. I told him what he had to do. What I wanted him to do was to surround the Eastern army and wait until I came up. But he was insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that. And what was the consequence? The Union was preserved. This is the first time I believe that that secret has ever been revealed.
No one outside of the family circle, I think, knew it before; but there the facts are. Watterson saved the Union; yes, he saved the Union. And yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made toward granting him a pension. That is the way things are done. It is a case where some blushing ought to be done. You ought to blush, and I ought to blush, and he—well, he’s a little out of practice now.
ADDRESS MADE ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 19, 1906Mr. Clemens had been asked to address the association by Gen.Frederick D. Grant, president. He was offered a fee of $1,000,but refused it, saying:“I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keepthe $1,000, and add it to the Memorial Fund as my contributionto erect a monument in New York to the memory of the man whoapplied steam to navigation.”At this meeting Mr. Clemens made this formal announcement fromthe platform:“This is my last appearance on the paid platform. I shall notretire from the gratis platform until I am buried, and courtesywill compel me to keep still and not disturb the others. Now,since I must, I shall say good-bye. I see many faces in thisaudience well known to me. They are all my friends, and I feelthat those I don’t know are my friends, too. I wish toconsider that you represent the nation, and that in sayinggood-bye to you I am saying good-bye to the nation. In thegreat name of humanity, let me say this final word: I offer anappeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers,mothers, and helpless little children. They were sheltered andhappy two days ago. Now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless,and homeless, the victims of a great disaster. So I beg ofyou, I beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses andremember San Francisco, the smitten city.”
I wish to deliver a historical address. I’ve been studying the history of—-er—a—let me see—a [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over to Gen. Fred D. Grant, who sat at the head of the platform. He leaned over in a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and continued]. Oh yes! I’ve been studying Robert Fulton. I’ve been studying a biographical sketch of Robert Fulton, the inventor of—er—a—let’s see—ah yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the Morse sewing—machine. Also, I understand he invented the air—diria—pshaw! I have it at last—the dirigible balloon. Yes, the dirigible—but it is a difficult word, and I don’t see why anybody should marry a couple of words like that when they don’t want to be married at all and are likely to quarrel with each other all the time. I should put that couple of words under the ban of the United States Supreme Court, under its decision of a few days ago, and take ’em out and drown ’em.
I used to know Fulton. It used to do me good to see him dashing through the town on a wild broncho.
And Fulton was born in—-er—a—Well, it doesn’t make much difference where he was born, does it? I remember a man who came to interview me once, to get a sketch of my life. I consulted with a friend—a practical man—before he came, to know how I should treat him.
“Whenever you give the interviewer a fact,” he said, “give him another fact that will contradict it. Then he’ll go away with a jumble that he can’t use at all. Be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiot—just be natural.” That’s what my friend told me to do, and I did it.
“Where were you born?” asked the interviewer.
“Well-er-a,” I began, “I was born in Alabama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich Islands; I don’t know where, but right around there somewhere. And you had better put it down before you forget it.”
“But you weren’t born in all those places,” he said.
“Well, I’ve offered you three places. Take your choice. They’re all at the same price.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“I shall be nineteen in June,” I said.
“Why, there’s such a discrepancy between your age and your looks,” he said.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” I said, “I was born discrepantly.”
Then we got to talking about my brother Samuel, and he told me my explanations were confusing.
“I suppose he is dead,” I said. “Some said that he was dead and some said that he wasn’t.”
“Did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not?” asked the reporter.
“There was a mystery,” said I. “We were twins, and one day when we were two weeks old—that is, he was one week old, and I was one week old—we got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. We never could tell which. One of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand. There it is on my hand. This is the one that was drowned. There’s no doubt about it.
“Where’s the mystery?” he said.
“Why, don’t you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin?” I answered. I didn’t explain it any more because he said the explanation confused him. To me it is perfectly plain.
But, to get back to Fulton. I’m going along like an old man I used to know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because he switched off into something else. He used to tell about how his grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. The old man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up. The ram was observing him, and took the old man’s action as an invitation.
Just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. She used to loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she received company. The eye didn’t fit the friend’s face, and it was loose. And whenever she winked it would turn over.
Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about how he believed accidents never happened.
“There was an Irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks,” he said, “and a Dutchman was standing on the ground below. The Irishman fell on the Dutchman and killed him. Accident? Never! If the Dutchman hadn’t been there the Irishman would have been killed. Why didn’t the Irishman fall on a dog which was next to the Dutchman? Because the dog would have seen him coming.”
Then he’d get off from the Dutchman to an uncle named Reginald Wilson. Reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the machinery’s belt. He went excursioning around the factory until he was properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet. His wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a monument to his memory. It read:
Sacred to the memoryofsixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpetcontaining the mortal remainders ofREGINALD WILSONGo thou and do likewise
And so on he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether something else happened.
ADDRESS DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 23, 1907Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in introducing Mr.Clemens, said:“The people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionaterecollection for the man who has contributed so much to theprogress of the world and the happiness of mankind.” As Mr.Clemens came down to the platform the applause became louderand louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for silence.It was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after theapplause ceased before Mr. Clemens could speak. He attemptedit once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheeredagain loudly.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I am but human, and when you, give me a reception like that I am obliged to wait a little while I get my voice. When you appeal to my head, I don’t feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do feel it.
We are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of American history, and not only in American history, but in the world’s history.
Indeed it was—the application of steam by Robert Fulton.
It was a world event—there are not many of them. It is peculiarly an American event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in effect. We should regard this day as a very great American holiday. We have not many that are exclusively American holidays. We have the Fourth of July, which we regard as an American holiday, but it is nothing of the kind. I am waiting for a dissenting voice. All great efforts that led up to the Fourth of July were made, not by Americans, but by English residents of America, subjects of the King of England.
They fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which are incorporated in the Declaration of Independence; but they were not Americans. They signed the Declaration of Independence; no American’s name is signed to that document at all. There never was an American such as you and I are until after the Revolution, when it had all been fought out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the Constitution, and the recognition of the Independence of America by all powers.
While we revere the Fourth of July—and let us always revere it, and the liberties it conferred upon us—yet it was not an American event, a great American day.
It was an American who applied that steam successfully. There are not a great many world events, and we have our full share. The telegraph, telephone, and the application of steam to navigation—these are great American events.
To-day I have been requested, or I have requested myself, not to confine myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things, and to introduce one of the nation’s celebrants.
Admiral Harrington here is going to tell you all that I have left untold. I am going to tell you all that I know, and then he will follow up with such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he knows.
No doubt you have heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat is suffering neglect.
You probably do not know a great deal about that boat. It was the most important steamboat in the world. I was there and saw it. Admiral Harrington was there at the time. It need not surprise you, for he is not as old as he looks. That little boat was interesting in every way. The size of it. The boat was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet long. The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two hundred feet. You see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again]—the Admiral says it was a flat boat. Then her tonnage—you know nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her tonnage. We know the speed she made. She made four miles—-and sometimes five miles. It was on her initial trip, on, August 11, 1807, that she made her initial trip, when she went from [consults Admiral] Jersey City—to Chicago. That’s right. She went by way of Albany. Now comes the tonnage of that boat. Tonnage of a boat means the amount of displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can shove in a day. The tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey he can displace in a day.
Robert Fulton named the ‘Clermont’ in honor of his bride, that is, Clermont was the name of the county-seat.
I feel that it surprises you that I know so much. In my remarks of welcome of Admiral Harrington I am not going to give him compliments. Compliments always embarrass a man. You do not know anything to say. It does not inspire you with words. There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me—I always feel that they have not said enough.
The Admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated together a great deal in a friendly way in the time of Pocahontas. That incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father, Powhatan’s club, was gotten up by the Admiral and myself to advertise Jamestown.
At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the facilities of advertising that you have.
I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations—in public service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and then—but it was a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. I do not think it is at all a necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington’s public history. You know that it is in the histories. I am not here to tell you anything about his public life, but to expose his private life.
I am something of a poet. When the great poet laureate, Tennyson, died, and I found that the place was open, I tried to get it—but I did not get it. Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. When I was down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood and Par-am. I made this rhyme:
“The people of Johnswood are pious and good;The people of Par-am they don’t care a——.”
I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but as long as such men as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country will never cease. I will say that the same high qualities, the same moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of conduct, of observation, and expression have caused Admiral Harrington to be mistaken for me—and I have been mistaken for him.
A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have the honor and privilege of introducing to you Admiral Harrington.
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE,NOVEMBER 11, 1893In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said:“To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings.The place where last we met about the table has vanished, andto-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is allour own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now bespread in honor of one who has been a member of the club forfull a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the futurethat our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be thebearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters;for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage togenius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being whohas not heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long yearsago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of witand eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroadto educate the untutored European in the subtleties of theAmerican joke. The world has looked on and applauded while hehas broken many images. He has led us in imagination all overthe globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike theMississippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we havelaughed at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process ofreasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies areactually dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at thefoot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weepingbitter tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in theflesh. What name is there in literature that can be likened tohis? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about thistable can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his onlyparallel!”
MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,—I have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously phrased or so well deserved. I return thanks for them from a full heart and an appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence: While I am charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to me. To be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and if I read your countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad to see this club in such palatial quarters. I remember it twenty years ago when it was housed in a stable.
Now when I was studying for the ministry there were two or three things that struck my attention particularly. At the first banquet mentioned in history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was invited to stand up and have his say. They were all there, his brethren, David and Goliath, and—er, and if he had had such experience as I have had he would have waited until those other people got through talking. He got up and testified to all his failings. Now if he had waited before telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he might not have given himself away as he did, and I think that I would give myself away if I should go on. I think I’d better wait until the others hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make an explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I’ll deny it happened.
Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech, replyingto a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner, CharlesA. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others, eachwelcoming the guest of honor.
I don’t see that I have a great deal to explain. I got off very well, considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. I don’t see that Mr. Low said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana. However, I will say that I never heard so many lies told in one evening as were told by Mr. McKelway—and I consider myself very capable; but even in his case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding how much he hadn’t found out. By accident he missed the very things that I didn’t want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism.
I have been on the continent of Europe for two and a half years. I have met many Americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find that nearly all preserved their Americanism. I have found they all like to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the Stars and Stripes. I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth and glorified monarchical institutions.
I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years I met only one person who had fallen a victim to the shams—I think we may call them shams—of nobilities and of heredities. She was entirely lost in them. After I had listened to her for a long time, I said to her: “At least you must admit that we have one merit. We are not like the Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country to leave it. Thank God, we don’t!”
With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, anda number of other authors, Mr. Clemens appeared before thecommittee December 6, 1906. The new Copyright Billcontemplated an author’s copyright for the term of his life andfor fifty years thereafter, applying also for the benefit ofartists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of thetalking. F. D. Millet made a speech for the artists, and JohnPhilip Sousa for the musicians.Mr. Clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chieffeature. He made a speech, the serious parts of which createda strong impression, and the humorous parts set the Senatorsand Representatives in roars of laughter.
I have read this bill. At least I have read such portions as I could understand. Nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised legislator.
I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the author’s life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it.
It isn’t objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the Copyright law I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster culture added, and anything else.
I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. I don’t like to be obliged to use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, “Thou shalt not steal,” but I am trying to use more polite language.
The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one class, the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it.
I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit. I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man’s labor. There is no limit to real estate.
Doctor Hale has suggested that a man might just as well, after discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the Government step in and take it away.
What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of people. But it doesn’t do anything of the kind. It merely takes the author’s property, takes his children’s bread, and gives the publisher double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence.
And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation after generation forever, for they never die. In a few weeks or months or years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monument. I hope I shall not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself. But I shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of my copyright. My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I can use, but my children can use it. I can get along; I know a lot of trades. But that goes to my daughters, who can’t get along as well as I can because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don’t know anything and can’t do anything. I hope Congress will extend to them the charity which they have failed to get from me.
Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous—strenuous about race-suicide—should come to me and try to get me to use my large political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this Congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I should try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to him, “Leave it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself. Only one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit. If they have reached that limit let them go right on. Let them have all the liberty they want. In restricting that family to twenty-two children you are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while.”
It is the very same with copyright. One author per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that’s all. This nation can’t produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per year.
I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two year limit. Therefore why put a limit at all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children.
If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with Cooper; you can follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe, and there you have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson, and you have to stand still and look further. You find Howells and T. B. Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you question if you can name twenty persons in the United States who—in a whole century have written books that would live forty-two years. Why, you could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. Add the wives and children and you could put the result on, two or three more benches.
One hundred persons—that is the little, insignificant crowd whose bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit to anybody? You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have gone to the wife and children.
When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman asked me what limit I would propose. I said, “Perpetuity.” I could see some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such thing as property in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before Queen Anne’s time; they had perpetual copyright. He said, “What is a book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be no property in it.”
I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas.
He said real estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. To him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on that harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania.
That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to Cairo Railway would be built.
Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an idea in somebody’s head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist before.
So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be under any limitation at all. We don’t ask for that. Fifty years from now we shall ask for it.
I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. I do seem to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that I have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous, liberal nature; I can’t help it. I feel the same sort of charity to everybody that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o’clock in the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving, weaving, weaving around. He watched his chance, and by and by when the steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on the portico.
And the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched the door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He got to the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so unsteady that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top and raised his foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step, with his arm around the newel-post, and he said:
“God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this.”