“I have been reading an old astronomy; it speaks of the perfect lineof curvature of the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and Ihave imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up aball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand.It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and he would turn itover in his hand and rub it with his thumb, and where he rubbed overthe mountain ranges he might say, 'There seems to be some slightroughness here, but I can't detect it with my eye; it seemsperfectly smooth to look at.' The Himalayas to him, the highestpeak, would be one-sixty-thousandth of his height, or about the one-thousandth part of an inch as compared with the average man.”
I spoke of having somewhere read of some very tiny satellites, one as small, perhaps, as six miles in diameter, yet a genuine world.
“Could a man live on a world so small as that?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he said. “The gravitation that holds it together wouldhold him on, and he would always seem upright, the same as here.His horizon would be smaller, but even if he were six feet tall hewould only have one foot for each mile of that world's diameter, soyou see he would be little enough, even for a world that he couldwalk around in half a day.”
He talked astronomy a great deal—marvel astronomy. He had no real knowledge of the subject, and I had none of any kind, which made its ungraspable facts all the more thrilling. He was always thrown into a sort of ecstasy by the unthinkable distances of space—the supreme drama of the universe. The fact that Alpha Centauri was twenty-five trillions of miles away—two hundred and fifty thousand times the distance of our own remote sun, and that our solar system was traveling, as a whole, toward the bright star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra, at the rate of forty-four miles a second, yet would be thousands upon thousands of years reaching its destination, fairly enraptured him.
The astronomical light-year—that is to say, the distance which light travels in a year—was one of the things which he loved to contemplate; but he declared that no two authorities ever figured it alike, and that he was going to figure it for himself. I came in one morning, to find that he had covered several sheets of paper with almost interminable rows of ciphers, and with a result, to him at least, entirely satisfactory. I am quite certain that he was prouder of those figures and their enormous aggregate than if he had just completed an immortal tale; and when he added that the nearest fixed star—Alpha Centauri—was between four and five light-years distant from the earth, and that there was no possible way to think that distance in miles or even any calculable fraction of it, his glasses shone and his hair was roached up as with the stimulation of these stupendous facts.
By and by he said:
“I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.' Oh! I am looking forward to that.” And a little later he added:
“I've got some kind of a heart disease, and Quintard won't tell me whether it is the kind that carries a man off in an instant or keeps him lingering along and suffering for twenty years or so. I was in hopes that Quintard would tell me that I was likely to drop dead any minute; but he didn't. He only told me that my blood-pressure was too strong. He didn't give me any schedule; but I expect to go with Halley's comet.”
I seem to have omitted making any entries for a few days; but among his notes I find this entry, which seems to refer to some discussion of a favorite philosophy, and has a special interest of its own:
July 14, 1909. Yesterday's dispute resumed, I still maintainingthat, whereas we can think, we generally don't do it. Don't do it,& don't have to do it: we are automatic machines which actunconsciously. From morning till sleeping-time, all day long. Allday long our machinery is doing things from habit & instinct, &without requiring any help or attention from our poor little 7-by-9thinking apparatus. This reminded me of something: thirty yearsago, in Hartford, the billiard-room was my study, & I wrote myletters there the first thing every morning. My table lay twopoints off the starboard bow of the billiard-table, & the door ofexit and entrance bore northeast&-by-east-half-east from thatposition, consequently you could see the door across the length ofthe billiard-table, but you couldn't see the floor by the saidtable. I found I was always forgetting to ask intruders to carry myletters down-stairs for the mail, so I concluded to lay them on thefloor by the door; then the intruder would have to walk over them, &that would indicate to him what they were there for. Did it? No,it didn't. He was a machine, & had habits. Habits take precedenceof thought.Now consider this: a stamped & addressed letter lying on the floor—lying aggressively & conspicuously on the floor—is an unusualspectacle; so unusual a spectacle that you would think an intrudercouldn't see it there without immediately divining that it was notthere by accident, but had been deliberately placed there & for adefinite purpose. Very well—it may surprise you to learn that thatmost simple & most natural & obvious thought would never occur toany intruder on this planet, whether he be fool, half-fool, or themost brilliant of thinkers. For he is always an automatic machine &has habits, & his habits will act before his thinking apparatus canget a chance to exert its powers. My scheme failed because everyhuman being has the habit of picking up any apparently misplacedthing & placing it where it won't be stepped on.My first intruder was George. He went and came without sayinganything. Presently I found the letters neatly piled up on thebilliard-table. I was astonished. I put them on the floor again.The next intruder piled them on the billiard-table without a word.I was profoundly moved, profoundly interested. So I set the trapagain. Also again, & again, & yet again—all day long. I caughtevery member of the family, & every servant; also I caught the threefinest intellects in the town. In every instance old, time-wornautomatic habit got in its work so promptly that the thinkingapparatus never got a chance.
I do not remember this particular discussion, but I do distinctly recall being one of those whose intelligence was not sufficient to prevent my picking up the letter he had thrown on the floor in front of his bed, and being properly classified for doing it.
Clemens no longer kept note-books, as in an earlier time, but set down innumerable memoranda-comments, stray reminders, and the like—on small pads, and bunches of these tiny sheets accumulated on his table and about his room. I gathered up many of them then and afterward, and a few of these characteristic bits may be offered here.
KNEE
It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest & truest & highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.
JEHOVAH
He is all-good. He made man for hell or hell for man, one or the other—take your choice. He made it hard to get into heaven and easy to get into hell. He commended man to multiply & replenish-what? Hell.
MODESTY ANTEDATES CLOTHES
& will be resumed when clothes are no more. [The latter part of this aphorism is erased and underneath it he adds:]
MODESTY DIED
when clothes were born.
MODESTY DIEDwhen false modesty was born.HISTORY
A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
MORALS
are not the important thing—nor enlightenment—nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is the needs of the body, not of the mind & spirit.
SUGGESTION
There is conscious suggestion & there is unconscious suggestion—both come from outside—whence all ideas come.
DUELS
I think I could wipe out a dishonor by crippling the other man, but I don't see how I could do it by letting him cripple me.
I have no feeling of animosity toward people who do not believe as I do; I merely do not respect 'em. In some serious matters (relig.) I would have them burnt.
I am old now and once was a sinner. I often think of it with a kind of soft regret. I trust my days are numbered. I would not have that detail overlooked.
She was always a girl, she was always young because her heart was young; & I was young because she lived in my heart & preserved its youth from decay.
He often busied himself working out more extensively some of the ideas that came to him—moral ideas, he called them. One fancy which he followed in several forms (some of them not within the privilege of print) was that of an inquisitive little girl, Bessie, who pursues her mother with difficult questionings.—[Under Appendix w, at the end of this volume, the reader will find one of the “Bessie” dialogues.]—He read these aloud as he finished them, and it is certain that they lacked neither logic nor humor.
Sometimes he went to a big drawer in his dresser, where he kept his finished manuscripts, and took them out and looked over them, and read parts of them aloud, and talked of the plans he had had for them, and how one idea after another had been followed for a time and had failed to satisfy him in the end.
Two fiction schemes that had always possessed him he had been unable to bring to any conclusion. Both of these have been mentioned in former chapters; one being the notion of a long period of dream-existence during a brief moment of sleep, and the other being the story of a mysterious visitant from another realm. He had experimented with each of these ideas in no less than three forms, and there was fine writing and dramatic narrative in all; but his literary architecture had somehow fallen short of his conception. “The Mysterious Stranger” in one of its forms I thought might be satisfactorily concluded, and he admitted that he could probably end it without much labor. He discussed something of his plans, and later I found the notes for its conclusion. But I suppose he was beyond the place where he could take up those old threads, though he contemplated, fondly enough, the possibility, and recalled how he had read at least one form of the dream tale to Howells, who had urged him to complete it.
August 5, 1909. This morning I noticed on a chair a copy of Flaubert's Salammbo which I recently lent him. I asked if he liked it.
“No,” he said, “I didn't like any of it.”
“But you read it?”
“Yes, I read every line of it.”
“You admitted its literary art?”
“Well, it's like this: If I should go to the Chicago stockyards and they should kill a beef and cut it up and the blood should splash all over everything, and then they should take me to another pen and kill another beef and the blood should splash over everything again, and so on to pen after pen, I should care for it about as much as I do for that book.”
“But those were bloody days, and you care very much for that period in history.”
“Yes, that is so. But when I read Tacitus and know that I am reading history I can accept it as such and supply the imaginary details and enjoy it, but this thing is such a continuous procession of blood and slaughter and stench it worries me. It has great art—I can see that. That scene of the crucified lions and the death canon and the tent scene are marvelous, but I wouldn't read that book again without a salary.”
August 16. He is reading Suetonius, which he already knows by heart—so full of the cruelties and licentiousness of imperial Rome.
This afternoon he began talking about Claudius.
“They called Claudius a lunatic,” he said, “but just see what nice fancies he had. He would go to the arena between times and have captives and wild beasts brought out and turned in together for his special enjoyment. Sometimes when there were no captives on hand he would say, 'Well, never mind; bring out a carpenter.' Carpentering around the arena wasn't a popular job in those days. He went visiting once to a province and thought it would be pleasant to see how they disposed of criminals and captives in their crude, old-fashioned way, but there was no executioner on hand. No matter; the Emperor of Rome was in no hurry—he would wait. So he sat down and stayed there until an executioner came.”
I said, “How do you account for the changed attitude toward these things? We are filled with pity to-day at the thought of torture and suffering.”
“Ah! but that is because we have drifted that way and exercised the quality of compassion. Relax a muscle and it soon loses its vigor; relax that quality and in two generations—in one generation—we should be gloating over the spectacle of blood and torture just the same. Why, I read somewhere a letter written just before the Lisbon catastrophe in 1755 about a scene on the public square of Lisbon: A lot of stakes with the fagots piled for burning and heretics chained for burning. The square was crowded with men and women and children, and when those fires were lighted, and the heretics began to shriek and writhe, those men and women and children laughed so they were fairly beside themselves with the enjoyment of the scene. The Greeks don't seem to have done these things. I suppose that indicates earlier advancement in compassion.”
Colonel Harvey and Mr. Duneka came up to spend the night. Mr. Clemens had one of his seizures during the evening. They come oftener and last longer. One last night continued for an hour and a half. I slept there.
September 7. To-day news of the North Pole discovered by Peary. Five days ago the same discovery was reported by Cook. Clemens's comment: “It's the greatest joke of the ages.” But a moment later he referred to the stupendous fact of Arcturus being fifty thousand times as big as the sun.
September 21. This morning he told me, with great glee, the dream he had had just before wakening. He said:
“I was in an automobile going slowly, with 'a little girl beside me,and some uniformed person walking along by us. I said, 'I'll getout and walk, too'; but the officer replied, 'This is only one ofthe smallest of our fleet.'“Then I noticed that the automobile had no front, and there were twocannons mounted where the front should be. I noticed, too, that wewere traveling very low, almost down on the ground. Presently wegot to the bottom of a hill and started up another, and I foundmyself walking ahead of the 'mobile. I turned around to look forthe little girl, and instead of her I found a kitten capering besideme, and when we reached the top of the hill we were looking out overa most barren and desolate waste of sand-heaps without a speck ofvegetation anywhere, and the kitten said, 'This view beggars alladmiration.' Then all at once we were in a great group of peopleand I undertook to repeat to them the kitten's remark, but when Itried to do it the words were so touching that I broke down andcried, and all the group cried, too, over the kitten's movingremark.”The joy with which he told this absurd sleep fancy made it supremelyridiculous and we laughed until tears really came.
One morning he said: “I was awake a good deal in the night, and I tried to think of interesting things. I got to working out geological periods, trying to think of some way to comprehend them, and then astronomical periods. Of course it's impossible, but I thought of a plan that seemed to mean something to me. I remembered that Neptune is two billion eight hundred million miles away. That, of course, is incomprehensible, but then there is the nearest fixed star with its twenty-five trillion miles—twenty-five trillion—or nearly a thousand times as far, and then I took this book and counted the lines on a page and I found that there was an average of thirty-two lines to the page and two hundred and forty pages, and I figured out that, counting the distance to Neptune as one line, there were still not enough lines in the book by nearly two thousand to reach the nearest fixed star, and somehow that gave me a sort of dim idea of the vastness of the distance and kind of a journey into space.”
Later I figured out another method of comprehending a little of that great distance by estimating the existence of the human race at thirty thousand years (Lord Kelvin's figures) and the average generation to have been thirty-three years with a world population of 1,500,000,000 souls. I assumed the nearest fixed star to be the first station in Paradise and the first soul to have started thirty thousand years ago. Traveling at the rate of about thirty miles a second, it would just now be arriving in Alpha Centauri with all the rest of that buried multitude stringing out behind at an average distance of twenty miles apart.
Few things gave him more pleasure than the contemplation of such figures as these. We made occasional business trips to New York, and during one of them visited the Museum of Natural History to look at the brontosaur and the meteorites and the astronomical model in the entrance hall. To him these were the most fascinating things in the world. He contemplated the meteorites and the brontosaur, and lost himself in strange and marvelous imaginings concerning the far reaches of time and space whence they had come down to us.
Mark Twain lived curiously apart from the actualities of life. Dwelling mainly among his philosophies and speculations, he observed vaguely, or minutely, what went on about him; but in either case the fact took a place, not in the actual world, but in a world within his consciousness, or subconsciousness, a place where facts were likely to assume new and altogether different relations from those they had borne in the physical occurrence. It not infrequently happened, therefore, when he recounted some incident, even the most recent, that history took on fresh and startling forms. More than once I have known him to relate an occurrence of the day before with a reality of circumstance that carried absolute conviction, when the details themselves were precisely reversed. If his attention were called to the discrepancy, his face would take on a blank look, as of one suddenly aroused from dreamland, to be followed by an almost childish interest in your revelation and ready acknowledgment of his mistake. I do not think such mistakes humiliated him; but they often surprised and, I think, amused him.
Insubstantial and deceptive as was this inner world of his, to him it must have been much more real than the world of flitting physical shapes about him. He would fix you keenly with his attention, but you realized, at last, that he was placing you and seeing you not as a part of the material landscape, but as an item of his own inner world—a world in which philosophies and morals stood upright—a very good world indeed, but certainly a topsy-turvy world when viewed with the eye of mere literal scrutiny. And this was, mainly, of course, because the routine of life did not appeal to him. Even members of his household did not always stir his consciousness.
He knew they were there; he could call them by name; he relied upon them; but his knowledge of them always suggested the knowledge that Mount Everest might have of the forests and caves and boulders upon its slopes, useful, perhaps, but hardly necessary to the giant's existence, and in no important matter a part of its greater life.
In a letter which Clemens wrote to Miss Wallace at this time, he tells of a concert given at Stormfield on September 21st for the benefit of the new Redding Library. Gabrilowitsch had so far recovered that he was up and about and able to play. David Bispham, the great barytone, always genial and generous, agreed to take part, and Clara Clemens, already accustomed to public singing, was to join in the program. The letter to Miss Wallace supplies the rest of the history.
We had a grand time here yesterday. Concert in aid of the littlelibrary.TEAMGabrilowitsch, pianist.David Bispham, vocalist.Clara Clemens, ditto.Mark Twain, introduces of team.Detachments and squads and groups and singles came from everywhere—Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Redding, Redding Ridge, Ridgefield,and even from New York: some in 60-h.p. motor-cars, some inbuggies and carriages, and a swarm of farmer-young-folk on footfrom miles around—525 altogether.If we hadn't stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before theperformance we should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into thelibrary (not quite all had seats), we filled the loggia, the dining-room, the hall, clear into the billiard-room, the stairs, and thebrick-paved square outside the dining-room door.The artists were received with a great welcome, and it woke them up,and I tell you they performed to the Queen's taste! The program wasan hour and three-quarters long and the encores added a half-hour toit. The enthusiasm of the house was hair-lifting. They all stayedan hour after the close to shake hands and congratulate.We had no dollar seats except in the library, but we accumulated$372 for the Building Fund. We had tea at half past six for adozen—the Hawthornes, Jeannette Gilder, and her niece, etc.; andafter 8-o'clock dinner we had a private concert and a ball in thebare-stripped library until 10; nobody present but the team and Mr.and Mrs. Paine and Jean and her dog. And me. Bispham did “DannyDeever” and the “Erlkonig” in his majestic, great organ-tones andartillery, and Gabrilowitsch played the accompaniments as they werenever played before, I do suppose.
There is not much to add to that account. Clemens, introducing the performers, was the gay feature of the occasion. He spoke of the great reputation of Bispham and Gabrilowitsch; then he said:
“My daughter is not as famous as these gentlemen, but she is ever so much better-looking.”
The music of the evening that followed, with Gabrilowitsch at the piano and David Bispham to sing, was something not likely ever to be repeated. Bispham sang the “Erlkonig” and “Killiecrankie” and the “Grenadiers” and several other songs. He spoke of having sung Wagner's arrangement of the “Grenadiers” at the composer's home following his death, and how none of the family had heard it before.
There followed dancing, and Jean Clemens, fine and handsome, apparently full of life and health, danced down that great living-room as care-free as if there was no shadow upon her life. And the evening was distinguished in another way, for before it ended Clara Clemens had promised Ossip Gabrilowitsch to become his wife.
The wedding of Ossip Gabrilowitsch and Clara Clemens was not delayed. Gabrilowitsch had signed for a concert tour in Europe, and unless the marriage took place forthwith it must be postponed many months. It followed, therefore, fifteen days after the engagement. They were busy days. Clemens, enormously excited and pleased over the prospect of the first wedding in his family, personally attended to the selection of those who were to have announcement-cards, employing a stenographer to make the list.
October 6th was a perfect wedding-day. It was one of those quiet, lovely fall days when the whole world seems at peace. Claude, the butler, with his usual skill in such matters, had decorated the great living-room with gay autumn foliage and flowers, brought in mainly from the woods and fields. They blended perfectly with the warm tones of the walls and furnishings, and I do not remember ever having seen a more beautiful room. Only relatives and a few of the nearest friends were invited to the ceremony. The Twichells came over a day ahead, for Twichell, who had assisted in the marriage rites between Samuel Clemens and Olivia Langdon, was to perform that ceremony for their daughter now. A fellow-student of the bride and groom when they had been pupils of Leschetizky, in Vienna—Miss Ethel Newcomb—was at the piano and played softly the Wedding March from “Taunhauser.” Jean Clemens was the only bridesmaid, and she was stately and classically beautiful, with a proud dignity in her office. Jervis Langdon, the bride's cousin and childhood playmate, acted as best man, and Clemens, of course, gave the bride away. By request he wore his scarlet Oxford gown over his snowy flannels, and was splendid beyond words. I do not write of the appearance of the bride and groom, for brides and grooms are always handsome and always happy, and certainly these were no exception. It was all so soon over, the feasting ended, and the principals whirling away into the future. I have a picture in my mind of them seated together in the automobile, with Richard Watson Gilder standing on the step for a last good-by, and before them a wide expanse of autumn foliage and distant hills. I remember Gilder's voice saying, when the car was on the turn, and they were waving back to us:
“Over the hills and far away,Beyond the utmost purple rim,Beyond the night, beyond the day,Through all the world she followed him.”
The matter of the wedding had been kept from the newspapers until the eve of the wedding, when the Associated Press had been notified. A representative was there; but Clemens had characteristically interviewed himself on the subject, and it was only necessary to hand the reporter a typewritten copy. Replying to the question (put to himself), “Are you pleased with the marriage?” he answered:
Yes, fully as much as any marriage could please me or any otherfather. There are two or three solemn things in life and a happymarriage is one of them, for the terrors of life are all to come.I am glad of this marriage, and Mrs. Clemens would be glad, for shealways had a warm affection for Gabrilowitsch.
There was another wedding at Stormfield on the following afternoon—an imitation wedding. Little Joy came up with me, and wished she could stand in just the spot where she had seen the bride stand, and she expressed a wish that she could get married like that. Clemens said:
“Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it.”
Then he happened to remember a ridiculous boy-doll—a white-haired creature with red coat and green trousers, a souvenir imitation of himself from one of the Rogerses' Christmas trees. He knew where it was, and he got it out. Then he said:
“Now, Joy, we will have another wedding. This is Mr. Colonel Williams, and you are to become his wedded wife.”
So Joy stood up very gravely and Clemens performed the ceremony, and I gave the bride away, and Joy to him became Mrs. Colonel Williams thereafter, and entered happily into her new estate.
A harvest of letters followed the wedding: a general congratulatory expression, mingled with admiration, affection, and good-will. In his interview Clemens had referred to the pain in his breast; and many begged him to deny that there was anything serious the matter with him, urging him to try this relief or that, pathetically eager for his continued life and health. They cited the comfort he had brought to world-weary humanity and his unfailing stand for human justice as reasons why he should live. Such letters could not fail to cheer him.
A letter of this period, from John Bigelow, gave him a pleasure of its own. Clemens had written Bigelow, apropos of some adverse expression on the tariff:
Thank you for any hard word you can say about the tariff. I guessthe government that robs its own people earns the future it ispreparing for itself.
Bigelow was just then declining an invitation to the annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce. In sending his regrets he said:
The sentiment I would propose if I dared to be present would be thewords of Mark Twain, the statesman:“The government that robs its own people earns the future it ispreparing for itself.”
Now to Clemens himself he wrote:
Rochefoucault never said a cleverer thing, nor Dr. Franklin a wiserone.... Be careful, or the Demos will be running you forPresident when you are not on your guard.Yours more than ever,JOHN BIGELOW.
Among the tributes that came, was a sermon by the Rev. Fred Window Adams, of Schenectady, New York, with Mark Twain as its subject. Mr. Adams chose for his text, “Take Mark and bring him with thee; for he is profitable for the ministry,” and he placed the two Marks, St. Mark and Mark Twain, side by side as ministers to humanity, and characterized him as “a fearless knight of righteousness.” A few weeks later Mr. Adams himself came to Stormfield, and, like all open-minded ministers of the Gospel, he found that he could get on very well indeed with Mark Twain.
In spite of the good-will and the good wishes Clemens's malady did not improve. As the days grew chillier he found that he must remain closer indoors. The cold air seemed to bring on the pains, and they were gradually becoming more severe; then, too, he did not follow the doctor's orders in the matter of smoking, nor altogether as to exercise.
To Miss Wallace he wrote:
I can't walk, I can't drive, I'm not down-stairs much, and I don't see company, but I drink barrels of water to keep the pain quiet; I read, and read, and read, and smoke, and smoke, and smoke all the time (as formerly), and it's a contented and comfortable life.
But this was not altogether accurate as to details. He did come down-stairs many times daily, and he persisted in billiards regardless of the paroxysms. We found, too, that the seizures were induced by mental agitation. One night he read aloud to Jean and myself the first chapter of an article, “The Turning-Point in My Life,” which he was preparing for Harper's Bazar. He had begun it with one of his impossible burlesque fancies, and he felt our attitude of disappointment even before any word had been said. Suddenly he rose, and laying his hand on his breast said, “I must lie down,” and started toward the stair. I supported him to his room and hurriedly poured out the hot water. He drank it and dropped back on the bed.
“Don't speak to me,” he said; “don't make me talk.”
Jean came in, and we sat there several moments in silence. I think we both wondered if this might not be the end; but presently he spoke of his own accord, declaring he was better, and ready for billiards.
We played for at least an hour afterward, and he seemed no worse for the attack. It is a curious malady—that angina; even the doctors are acquainted with its manifestations, rather than its cause. Clemens's general habits of body and mind were probably not such as to delay its progress; furthermore, there had befallen him that year one of those misfortunes which his confiding nature peculiarly invited—a betrayal of trust by those in whom it had been boundlessly placed—and it seems likely that the resulting humiliation aggravated his complaint. The writing of a detailed history of this episode afforded him occupation and a certain amusement, but probably did not contribute to his health. One day he sent for his attorney, Mr. Charles T. Lark, and made some final revisions in his will.—[Mark Twain's estate, later appraised at something more than $600,000 was left in the hands of trustees for his daughters. The trustees were Edward E. Loomis, Jervis Langdon, and Zoheth S. Freeman. The direction of his literary affairs was left to his daughter Clara and the writer of this history.]
To see him you would never have suspected that he was ill. He was in good flesh, and his movement was as airy and his eye as bright and his face as full of bloom as at any time during the period I had known him; also, he was as light-hearted and full of ideas and plans, and he was even gentler—having grown mellow with age and retirement, like good wine.
And of course he would find amusement in his condition. He said:
“I have always pretended to be sick to escape visitors; now, for the first time, I have got a genuine excuse. It makes me feel so honest.”
And once, when Jean reported a caller in the livingroom, he said:
“Jean, I can't see her. Tell her I am likely to drop dead any minute and it would be most embarrassing.”
But he did see her, for it was a poet—Angela Morgan—and he read her poem, “God's Man,” aloud with great feeling, and later he sold it for her to Collier's Weekly.
He still had violent rages now and then, remembering some of the most notable of his mistakes; and once, after denouncing himself, rather inclusively, as an idiot, he said:
“I wish to God the lightning would strike me; but I've wished that fifty thousand times and never got anything out of it yet. I have missed several good chances. Mrs. Clemens was afraid of lightning, and would never let me bare my head to the storm.”
The element of humor was never lacking, and the rages became less violent and less frequent.
I was at Stormfield steadily now, and there was a regular routine of afternoon sessions of billiards or reading, in which we were generally alone; for Jean, occupied with her farming and her secretary labors, seldom appeared except at meal-times. Occasionally she joined in the billiard games; but it was difficult learning and her interest was not great. She would have made a fine player, for she had a natural talent for games, as she had for languages, and she could have mastered the science of angles as she had mastered tennis and French and German and Italian. She had naturally a fine intellect, with many of her father's characteristics, and a tender heart that made every dumb creature her friend.
Katie Leary, who had been Jean's nurse, once told how, as a little child, Jean had not been particularly interested in a picture of the Lisbon earthquake, where the people were being swallowed up; but on looking at the next page, which showed a number of animals being overwhelmed, she had said:
“Poor things!”
Katie said:
“Why, you didn't say that about the people!”
But Jean answered:
“Oh, they could speak.”
One night at the dinner-table her father was saying how difficult it must be for a man who had led a busy life to give up the habit of work.
“That is why the Rogerses kill themselves,” he said. “They would rather kill themselves in the old treadmill than stop and try to kill time. They have forgotten how to rest. They know nothing but to keep on till they drop.”
I told of something I had read not long before. It was about an aged lion that had broken loose from his cage at Coney Island. He had not offered to hurt any one; but after wandering about a little, rather aimlessly, he had come to a picket-fence, and a moment later began pacing up and down in front of it, just the length of his cage. They had come and led him back to his prison without trouble, and he had rushed eagerly into it. I noticed that Jean was listening anxiously, and when I finished she said:
“Is that a true story?”
She had forgotten altogether the point in illustration. She was concerned only with the poor old beast that had found no joy in his liberty.
Among the letters that Clemens wrote just then was one to Miss Wallace, in which he described the glory of the fall colors as seen from his windows.
The autumn splendors passed you by? What a pity! I wish you hadbeen here. It was beyond words! It was heaven & hell & sunset &rainbows & the aurora all fused into one divine harmony, & youcouldn't look at it and keep the tears back.Such a singing together, & such a whispering together, & such asnuggling together of cozy, soft colors, & such kissing & caressing,& such pretty blushing when the sun breaks out & catches thosedainty weeds at it—you remember that weed-garden of mine?—& then—then the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance—oh, hearingabout it is nothing, you should be here to see it!
In the same letter he refers to some work that he was writing for his own satisfaction—'Letters from the Earth'; said letters supposed to have been written by an immortal visitant and addressed to other immortals in some remote sphere.
I'll read passages to you. This book will never be published—in fact it couldn't be, because it would be felony... Paineenjoys it, but Paine is going to be damned one of these days, Isuppose.
I very well remember his writing those 'Letters from the Earth'. He read them to me from time to time as he wrote them, and they were fairly overflowing with humor and philosophy and satire concerning the human race. The immortal visitor pointed out, one after another, the absurdities of mankind, his ridiculous conception of heaven, and his special conceit in believing that he was the Creator's pet—the particular form of life for which all the universe was created. Clemens allowed his exuberant fancy free rein, being under no restrictions as to the possibility of print or public offense. He enjoyed them himself, too, as he read them aloud, and we laughed ourselves weak over his bold imaginings.
One admissible extract will carry something of the flavor of these chapters. It is where the celestial correspondent describes man's religion.
His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing,grotesque. I give you my word it has not a single feature in itthat he actually values. It consists—utterly and entirely—ofdiversions which he cares next to nothing about here in the earth,yet he is quite sure he will like in heaven. Isn't it curious?Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for itis not so. I will give you the details.Most, men do not sing, most men cannot sing, most men will not staywhere others are singing if it be continued more than two hours.Note that.Only about two men in a hundred can play upon a musical instrument,and not four in a hundred have any wish to learn how. Set thatdown.Many men pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, theothers make a short-cut.More men go to church than want to.To forty-nine men in fifty the Sabbath day is a dreary, dreary bore.Further, all sane people detest noise.All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their lives.Monotony quickly wearies them.Now then, you have the facts. You know what men don't enjoy. Well,they have invented a heaven, out of their own heads, all bythemselves; guess what it is like? In fifteen hundred years youcouldn't do it. They have left out the very things they care formost their dearest pleasures—and replaced them with prayer!In man's heaven everybody sings. There are no exceptions. The manwho did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing onearth sings there. Thus universal singing is not casual, notoccasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on all daylong and every day during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybodystays where on earth the place would be empty in two hours. Thesinging is of hymns alone. Nay, it is one hymn alone. The wordsare always the same in number—they are only about a dozen—there isno rhyme—there is no poetry. “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna unto thehighest!” and a few such phrases constitute the whole service.Meantime, every person is playing on a harp! Consider the deafeninghurricane of sound. Consider, further, it is a praise service—aservice of compliment, flattery, adulation. Do you ask who it isthat is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insanecompliment, and who not only endures it but likes it, enjoys it,requires it, commands it? Hold your breath: It is God! This race'sGod I mean—their own pet invention.
Most of the ideas presented in this his last commentary on human absurdities were new only as to phrasing. He had exhausted the topic long ago, in one way or another; but it was one of the themes in which he never lost interest. Many subjects became stale to him at last; but the curious invention called man remained a novelty to him to the end.
From my note-book: