DEAR SIR,—I have long been an admirer of your complete works,several of which I have read, and I am with you shoulder to shoulderin the cause of foreign missions. I would respectfully request apersonal interview, and if you will appoint some day and hour mostinconvenient to you I will call at your baronial hall. I cannotdoubt, from the account of your courtesy given me by the TwelveApostles, who once visited you in your Hartford home and weremistaken for a syndicate of lightning-rod men, that our meeting willbe mutually agreeable.Yours truly,W. D. HOWELLS.DR. CLEMENS.
There was a campaign for the mayoralty of New York City that fall, with Seth Low on the Fusion ticket against Edward M. Shepard as the Tammany candidate. Mark Twain entered the arena to try to defeat Tammany Hall. He wrote and he spoke in favor of clean city government and police reform. He was savagely in earnest and openly denounced the clan of Croker, individually and collectively. He joined a society called 'The Acorns'; and on the 17th of October, at a dinner given by the order at the Waldorf-Astoria, delivered a fierce arraignment, in which he characterized Croker as the Warren Hastings of New York. His speech was really a set of extracts from Edmund Burke's great impeachment of Hastings, substituting always the name of Croker, and paralleling his career with that of the ancient boss of the East India Company.
It was not a humorous speech. It was too denunciatory for that. It probably contained less comic phrasing than any former effort. There is hardly even a suggestion of humor from beginning to end. It concluded with this paraphrase of Burke's impeachment:
I impeach Richard Croker of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeachhim in the name of the people, whose trust he has betrayed.I impeach him in the name of all the people of America, whosenational character he has dishonored.I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws ofjustice which he has violated.I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he hascruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in everyage, rank, situation, and condition of life.
The Acorn speech was greatly relied upon for damage to the Tammany ranks, and hundreds of thousands of copies of it were printed and circulated.—[The “Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany” speech had originally been written as an article for the North American Review.]
Clemens was really heart and soul in the campaign. He even joined a procession that marched up Broadway, and he made a speech to a great assemblage at Broadway and Leonard Street, when, as he said, he had been sick abed two days and, according to the doctor, should be in bed then.
But I would not stay at home for a nursery disease, and that's whatI've got. Now, don't let this leak out all over town, but I've beendoing some indiscreet eating—that's all. It wasn't drinking. Ifit had been I shouldn't have said anything about it.I ate a banana. I bought it just to clinch the Italian vote forfusion, but I got hold of a Tammany banana by mistake. Just onelittle nub of it on the end was nice and white. That was theShepard end. The other nine-tenths were rotten. Now that littlewhite end won't make the rest of the banana good. The nine-tenthswill make that little nub rotten, too.We must get rid of the whole banana, and our Acorn Society is goingto do its share, for it is pledged to nothing but the support ofgood government all over the United States. We will elect thePresident next time.It won't be I, for I have ruined my chances by joining the Acorns,and there can be no office-holders among us.
There was a movement which Clemens early nipped in the bud—to name a political party after him.
“I should be far from willing to have a political party named after me,” he wrote, “and I would not be willing to belong to a party which allowed its members to have political aspirations or push friends forward for political preferment.”
In other words, he was a knight-errant; his sole purpose for being in politics at all—something he always detested—was to do what he could for the betterment of his people.
He had his reward, for when Election Day came, and the returns were in, the Fusion ticket had triumphed and Tammany had fallen. Clemens received his share of the credit. One paper celebrated him in verse:
Who killed Croker?I, said Mark Twain,I killed Croker,I, the jolly joker!
Among Samuel Clemens's literary remains there is an outline plan for a “Casting-Vote party,” whose main object was “to compel the two great parties to nominate their best man always.” It was to be an organization of an infinite number of clubs throughout the nation, no member of which should seek or accept a nomination for office in any political appointment, but in each case should cast its vote as a unit for the candidate of one of the two great political parties, requiring that the man be of clean record and honest purpose.
From constable up to President [runs his final clause] there is nooffice for which the two great parties cannot furnish able, clean,and acceptable men. Whenever the balance of power shall be lodgedin a permanent third party, with no candidate of its own and nofunction but to cast its whole vote for the best man put forward bythe Republicans and Democrats, these two parties will select thebest man they have in their ranks. Good and clean government willfollow, let its party complexion be what it may, and the countrywill be quite content.
It was a Utopian idea, very likely, as human nature is made; full of that native optimism which was always overflowing and drowning his gloomier logic. Clearly he forgot his despair of humanity when he formulated that document, and there is a world of unselfish hope in these closing lines:
If in the hands of men who regard their citizenship as a high trustthis scheme shall fail upon trial a better must be sought, a bettermust be invented; for it cannot be well or safe to let the presentpolitical conditions continue indefinitely. They can be improved,and American citizenship should arouse up from its disheartenmentand see that it is done.
Had this document been put into type and circulated it might have founded a true Mark Twain party.
Clemens made not many more speeches that autumn, closing the year at last with the “Founder's Night” speech at The Players, the short address which, ending on the stroke of midnight, dedicates each passing year to the memory of Edwin Booth, and pledges each new year in a loving-cup passed in his honor.
The spirit which a year earlier had prompted Mark Twain to prepare his “Salutation from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century” inspired him now to conceive the “Stupendous International Procession,” a gruesome pageant described in a document (unpublished) of twenty-two typewritten pages which begin:
THE STUPENDOUS PROCESSIONAt the appointed hour it moved across the world in following order:The Twentieth CenturyA fair young creature, drunk and disorderly, borne in the arms ofSatan. Banner with motto, “Get What You Can, Keep What You Get.”Guard of Honor—Monarchs, Presidents, Tammany Bosses, Burglars, LandThieves, Convicts, etc., appropriately clothed and bearing thesymbols of their several trades.ChristendomA majestic matron in flowing robes drenched with blood. On her heada golden crown of thorns; impaled on its spines the bleeding headsof patriots who died for their countries Boers, Boxers, Filipinos;in one hand a slung-shot, in the other a Bible, open at the text “Dounto others,” etc. Protruding from pocket bottle labeled “We bringyou the blessings of civilization.” Necklace-handcuffs and aburglar's jimmy.Supporters—At one elbow Slaughter, at the other Hypocrisy.Banner with motto—“Love Your Neighbor's Goods as Yourself.”Ensign—The Black Flag.Guard of Honor—Missionaries and German, French, Russian, andBritish soldiers laden with loot.
And so on, with a section for each nation of the earth, headed each by the black flag, each bearing horrid emblems, instruments of torture, mutilated prisoners, broken hearts, floats piled with bloody corpses. At the end of all, banners inscribed:
“All White Men are Born Free and Equal.”“Christ died to make men holy,Christ died to make men free.”
with the American flag furled and draped in crepe, and the shade of Lincoln towering vast and dim toward the sky, brooding with sorrowful aspect over the far-reaching pageant. With much more of the same sort. It is a fearful document, too fearful, we may believe, for Mrs. Clemens ever to consent to its publication.
Advancing years did little toward destroying Mark Twain's interest in human affairs. At no time in his life was he more variously concerned and employed than in his sixty-seventh year—matters social, literary, political, religious, financial, scientific. He was always alive, young, actively cultivating or devising interests—valuable and otherwise, though never less than important to him.
He had plenty of money again, for one thing, and he liked to find dazzlingly new ways for investing it. As in the old days, he was always putting “twenty-five or forty thousand dollars,” as he said, into something that promised multiplied returns. Howells tells how he found him looking wonderfully well, and when he asked the name of his elixir he learned that it was plasmon.
I did not immediately understand that plasmon was one of theinvestments which he had made from “the substance of things hopedfor,” and in the destiny of a disastrous disappointment. But afterpaying off the creditors of his late publishing firm he had to dosomething with his money, and it was not his fault if he did notmake a fortune out of plasmon.
It was just at this period (the beginning of 1902) that he was promoting with his capital and enthusiasm the plasmon interests in America, investing in it one of the “usual amounts,” promising to make Howells over again body and soul with the life-giving albuminate. Once he wrote him explicit instructions:
Yes—take it as a medicine—there is nothing better, nothing surerof desired results. If you wish to be elaborate—which isn'tnecessary—put a couple of heaping teaspoonfuls of the powder in aninch of milk & stir until it is a paste; put in some more milk andstir the paste to a thin gruel; then fill up the glass and drink.Or, stir it into your soup.Or, into your oatmeal.Or, use any method you like, so's you get it down—that is the onlyessential.
He put another “usual sum” about this time in a patent cash register which was acknowledged to be “a promise rather than a performance,” and remains so until this day.
He capitalized a patent spiral hat-pin, warranted to hold the hat on in any weather, and he had a number of the pins handsomely made to present to visitors of the sex naturally requiring that sort of adornment and protection. It was a pretty and ingenious device and apparently effective enough, though it failed to secure his invested thousands.
He invested a lesser sum in shares of the Booklover's Library, which was going to revolutionize the reading world, and which at least paid a few dividends. Even the old Tennessee land will-o'-the-wisp-long since repudiated and forgotten—when it appeared again in the form of a possible equity in some overlooked fragment, kindled a gentle interest, and was added to his list of ventures.
He made one substantial investment at this period. They became more and more in love with the Hudson environment, its beauty and its easy access to New York. Their house was what they liked it to be—a gathering—place for friends and the world's notables, who could reach it easily and quickly from New York. They had a steady procession of company when Mrs. Clemens's health would permit, and during a single week in the early part of this year entertained guests at no less than seventeen out of their twenty-one meals, and for three out of the seven nights—not an unusual week. Their plan for buying a home on the Hudson ended with the purchase of what was known as Hillcrest, or the Casey place, at Tarrytown, overlooking that beautiful stretch of river, the Tappan Zee, close to the Washington Irving home. The beauty of its outlook and surroundings appealed to them all. The house was handsome and finely placed, and they planned to make certain changes that would adapt it to their needs. The price, which was less than fifty thousand dollars, made it an attractive purchase; and without doubt it would have made them a suitable and happy home had it been written in the future that they should so inherit it.
Clemens was writing pretty steadily these days. The human race was furnishing him with ever so many inspiring subjects, and he found time to touch more or less on most of them. He wreaked his indignation upon the things which exasperated him often—even usually—without the expectation of print; and he delivered himself even more inclusively at such times as he walked the floor between the luncheon or dinner courses, amplifying on the poverty of an invention that had produced mankind as a supreme handiwork. In a letter to Howells he wrote:
Your comments on that idiot's “Ideals” letter reminds me that I preached a good sermon to my family yesterday on his particular layer of the human race, that grotesquest of all the inventions of the Creator. It was a good sermon, but coldly received, & it seemed best not to try to take up a collection.
He once told Howells, with the wild joy of his boyish heart, how Mrs. Clemens found some compensation, when kept to her room by illness, in the reflection that now she would not hear so much about the “damned human race.”
Yet he was always the first man to champion that race, and the more unpromising the specimen the surer it was of his protection, and he never invited, never expected gratitude.
One wonders how he found time to do all the things that he did. Besides his legitimate literary labors and his preachments, he was always writing letters to this one and that, long letters on a variety of subjects, carefully and picturesquely phrased, and to people of every sort. He even formed a curious society, whose members were young girls—one in each country of the earth. They were supposed to write to him at intervals on some subject likely to be of mutual interest, to which letters he agreed to reply. He furnished each member with a typewritten copy of the constitution and by-laws of the juggernaut Club, as he called it, and he apprised each of her election, usually after this fashion:
I have a club—a private club, which is all my own. I appoint themembers myself, & they can't help themselves, because I don't allowthem to vote on their own appointment & I don't allow them toresign! They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), butwho have written friendly letters to me. By the laws of my clubthere can be only one member in each country, & there can be no malemember but myself. Some day I may admit males, but I don't know—they are capricious & inharmonious, & their ways provoke me a gooddeal. It is a matter, which the club shall decide. I have madefour appointments in the past three or four months: You as a memberfor Scotland—oh, this good while! a young citizeness of Joan ofArc's home region as a member for France; a Mohammedan girl asmember for Bengal; & a dear & bright young niece of mine as memberfor the United States—for I do not represent a country myself, butam merely member-at-large for the human race. You must not try toresign, for the laws of the club do not allow that. You mustconsole yourself by remembering that you are in the best company;that nobody knows of your membership except yourself; that no memberknows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are leviedand no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend one!).One of my members is a princess of a royal house, another is thedaughter of a village bookseller on the continent of Europe, for theonly qualification for membership is intellect & the spirit of good-will; other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count. MayI send you the constitution & laws of the club? I shall be so gladif I may.
It was just one of his many fancies, and most of the active memberships would not long be maintained; though some continued faithful in their reports, as he did in his replies, to the end.
One of the more fantastic of his conceptions was a plan to advertise for ante-mortem obituaries of himself—in order, as he said, that he might look them over and enjoy them and make certain corrections in the matter of detail. Some of them he thought might be appropriate to read from the platform.
I will correct them—not the facts, but the verdicts—striking outsuch clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the otherside, and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character.
He was much taken with the new idea, and his request for such obituaries, with an offer of a prize for the best—a portrait of himself drawn by his own hand—really appeared in Harper's Weekly later in the year. Naturally he got a shower of responses—serious, playful, burlesque. Some of them were quite worth while.
The obvious “Death loves a shining Mark” was of course numerously duplicated, and some varied it “Death loves an Easy Mark,” and there was “Mark, the perfect man.”
The two that follow gave him especial pleasure.
OBITUARY FOR “MARK TWAIN”Worthy of his portrait, a place on his monument, as well as a placeamong his “perennial-consolation heirlooms”:“Got up; washed; went to bed.”The subject's own words (see Innocents Abroad). Can't go back onyour own words, Mark Twain. There's nothing “to strike out”;nothing “to replace.” What more could be said of any one?“Got up!”—Think of the fullness of meaning! The possibilities oflife, its achievements—physical, intellectual, spiritual. Got upto the top!—the climax of human aspiration on earth!“Washed”—Every whit clean; purified—body, soul, thoughts,purposes.“Went to bed”—Work all done—to rest, to sleep. The culmination ofthe day well spent!God looks after the awakening.Mrs. S. A. OREN-HAYNES.Mark Twain was the only man who ever lived, so far as we know, whoselies were so innocent, and withal so helpful, as to make them worthmore than a whole lot of fossilized priests' eternal truths.D. H. KENNER.
Clemens made fewer speeches during the Riverdale period. He was as frequently demanded, but he had a better excuse for refusing, especially the evening functions. He attended a good many luncheons with friendly spirits like Howells, Matthews, James L. Ford, and Hamlin Garland. At the end of February he came down to the Mayor's dinner given to Prince Henry of Prussia, but he did not speak. Clemens used to say afterward that he had not been asked to speak, and that it was probably because of his supposed breach of etiquette at the Kaiser's dinner in Berlin; but the fact that Prince Henry sought him out, and was most cordially and humanly attentive during a considerable portion of the evening, is against the supposition.
Clemens attended a Yale alumni dinner that winter and incidentally visited Twichell in Hartford. The old question of moral responsibility came up and Twichell lent his visitor a copy of Jonathan Edwards's 'Freedom of the Will' for train perusal. Clemens found it absorbing. Later he wrote Twichell his views.
DEAR JOE,—(After compliments.)—[Meaning “What a good time you gaveme; what a happiness it was to be under your roof again,” etc. Seeopening sentence of all translations of letters passing between LordRoberts and Indian princes and rulers.]—From Bridgeport to NewYork, thence to home, & continuously until near midnight I wallowed& reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immenselyrefreshed & fine at ten this morning, but with a strange & hauntingsense of having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic.It is years since I have known these sensations. All through thebook is the glare of a resplendent intellect gone mad—a marvelousspectacle. No, not all through the book—the drunk does not comeon till the last third, where what I take to be Calvinism & its Godbegins to show up & shine red & hideous in the glow from the firesof hell, their only right and proper adornment.Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Armenian position) that theman (or his soul or his will) never creates an impulse itself, butis moved to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound!Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly choosesthe one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectlycorrect! An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane.Up to that point he could have written Chapters III & IV of mysuppressed Gospel. But there we seem to separate. He seems toconcede the indisputable & unshaken dominion of Motive & Necessity(call them what he may, these are exterior forces & not under theman's authority, guidance, or even suggestion); then he suddenlyflies the logical track & (to all seeming) makes the man & not thoseexterior forces responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words, &acts. It is frank insanity.I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive andNecessity he grants a third position of mine—that a man's mind is amere machine—an automatic machine—which is handled entirely fromthe outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing; notan ounce of its fuel, & not so much as a bare suggestion to thatexterior engineer as to what the machine shall do nor how it shalldo it nor when.After that concession it was time for him to get alarmed & shirk—for he was pointed straight for the only rational & possible nextstation on that piece of road—the irresponsibility of man to God.And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result:Man is commanded to do so & so.It has been ordained from the beginning of time that some mensha'n't & others can't.These are to blame: let them be damned.I enjoy the Colonel very much, & shall enjoy the rest of him with anobscene delight.Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you & yours!MARK.
Clemens was moved to set down some theology of his own, and did so in a manuscript which he entitled, “If I Could Be There.” It is in the dialogue form he often adopted for polemic writing. It is a colloquy between the Master of the Universe and a Stranger. It begins: I. If I could be there, hidden under the steps of the throne, I should hear conversations like this:
A STRANGER. Lord, there is one who needs to be punished, and has been overlooked. It is in the record. I have found it.
LORD. By searching?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Who is it? What is it?
S. A man.
L. Proceed.
S. He died in sin. Sin committed by his great-grandfather.
L. When was this?
S. Eleven million years ago.
L. Do you know what a microbe is?
S. Yes, Lord. It is a creature too small to be detected by my eye.
L. He commits depredations upon your blood?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. I give you leave to subject him to a billion years of misery for this offense. Go! Work your will upon him.
S. But, Lord, I have nothing against him; I am indifferent to him.
L. Why?
S. He is so infinitely small and contemptible. I am to him as is a mountain-range to a grain of sand.
L. What am I to man?
S. (Silent.)
L. Am I not, to a man, as is a billion solar systems to a grain of sand?
S. It is true, Lord.
L. Some microbes are larger than others. Does man regard the difference?
S. No, Lord. To him there is no difference of consequence. To him they are all microbes, all infinitely little and equally inconsequential.
L. To me there is no difference of consequence between a man & a microbe. Man looks down upon the speck at his feet called a microbe from an altitude of a thousand miles, so to speak, and regards him with indifference; I look down upon the specks called a man and a microbe from an altitude of a billion leagues, so to speak, and to me they are of a size. To me both are inconsequential. Man kills the microbes when he can?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Then what? Does he keep him in mind years and years and go on contriving miseries for him?
S. No, Lord.
L. Does he forget him?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Why?
S. He cares nothing more about him.
L. Employs himself with more important matters?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. Apparently man is quite a rational and dignified person, and can divorce his mind from uninteresting trivialities. Why does he affront me with the fancy that I interest Myself in trivialities—like men and microbes? II. L. Is it true the human race thinks the universe was created for its convenience?
S. Yes, Lord.
L. The human race is modest. Speaking as a member of it, what do you think the other animals are for?
S. To furnish food and labor for man.
L. What is the sea for?
S. To furnish food for man. Fishes.
L. And the air?
S. To furnish sustenance for man. Birds and breath.
L. How many men are there?
S. Fifteen hundred millions.
L. (Referring to notes.) Take your pencil and set down some statistics. In a healthy man's lower intestine 28,000,000 microbes are born daily and die daily. In the rest of a man's body 122,000,000 microbes are born daily and die daily. The two sums aggregate-what?
S. About 150,000,000.
L. In ten days the aggregate reaches what?
S. Fifteen hundred millions.
L. It is for one person. What would it be for the whole human population?
S. Alas, Lord, it is beyond the power of figures to set down that multitude. It is billions of billions multiplied by billions of billions, and these multiplied again and again by billions of billions. The figures would stretch across the universe and hang over into space on both sides.
L. To what intent are these uncountable microbes introduced into the human race?
S. That they may eat.
L. Now then, according to man's own reasoning, what is man for?
S. Alas-alas!
L. What is he for?
S. To-to-furnish food for microbes.
L. Manifestly. A child could see it. Now then, with this common-sense light to aid your perceptions, what are the air, the land, and the ocean for?
S. To furnish food for man so that he may nourish, support, and multiply and replenish the microbes.
L. Manifestly. Does one build a boarding-house for the sake of the boarding-house itself or for the sake of the boarders?
S. Certainly for the sake of the boarders.
L. Man's a boarding-house.
S. I perceive it, Lord.
L. He is a boarding-house. He was never intended for anything else. If he had had less vanity and a clearer insight into the great truths that lie embedded in statistics he would have found it out early. As concerns the man who has gone unpunished eleven million years, is it your belief that in life he did his duty by his microbes?
S. Undoubtedly, Lord. He could not help it.
L. Then why punish him? He had no other duty to perform.
Whatever else may be said of this kind of doctrine, it is at least original and has a conclusive sound. Mark Twain had very little use for orthodoxy and conservatism. When it was announced that Dr. Jacques Loeb, of the University of California, had demonstrated the creation of life by chemical agencies he was deeply interested. When a newspaper writer commented that a “consensus of opinion among biologists” would probably rate Dr. Loeb as a man of lively imagination rather than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena, he felt called to chaff the consensus idea.
I wish I could be as young as that again. Although I seem so oldnow I was once as young as that. I remember, as if it were butthirty or forty years ago, how a paralyzing consensus of opinionaccumulated from experts a-setting around about brother experts whohad patiently and laboriously cold-chiseled their way into one oranother of nature's safe-deposit vaults and were reporting that theyhad found something valuable was plenty for me. It settled it.But it isn't so now-no. Because in the drift of the years I by andby found out that a Consensus examines a new thing with its feelingsrather oftener than with its mind.There was that primitive steam-engine-ages back, in Greek times: aConsensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester'ssteam-engine 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There wasFulton's steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, includingthe great Napoleon, made fun of it. There was Priestley, with hisoxygen: a Consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out,banished him. While a Consensus was proving, by statistics andthings, that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamshipdid it.
And so on through a dozen pages or more of lively satire, ending with an extract from Adam's Diary.
Then there was a Consensus about it. It was the very first one. Itsat six days and nights. It was then delivered of the verdict thata world could not be made out of nothing; that such small things assun and moon and stars might, maybe, but it would take years andyears if there was considerable many of them. Then the Consensusgot up and looked out of the window, and there was the whole outfit,spinning and sparkling in space! You never saw such a disappointedlot.ADAM.
He was writing much at this time, mainly for his own amusement, though now and then he offered one of his reflections for print. That beautiful fairy tale, “The Five Boons of Life,” of which the most precious is “Death,” was written at this period. Maeterlinck's lovely story of the bee interested him; he wrote about that. Somebody proposed a Martyrs' Day; he wrote a paper ridiculing the suggestion. In his note-book, too, there is a memorandum for a love-story of the Quarternary Epoch which would begin, “On a soft October afternoon 2,000,000 years ago.” John Fiske's Discovery of America, Volume I, he said, was to furnish the animals and scenery, civilization and conversation to be the same as to-day; but apparently this idea was carried no further. He ranged through every subject from protoplasm to infinity, exalting, condemning, ridiculing, explaining; his brain was always busy—a dynamo that rested neither night nor day.
In April Clemens received notice of another yachting trip on the Kanawha, which this time would sail for the Bahama and West India islands. The guests were to be about the same.—[The invited ones of the party were Hon. T. B. Reed, A. G. Paine, Laurence Hutton, Dr. C. C. Rice, W. T. Foote, and S. L. Clemens. “Owners of the yacht,” Mr. Rogers called them, signing himself as “Their Guest.”]
He sent this telegram:
H. H. ROGERS, Fairhaven, Mass.
Can't get away this week. I have company here from tonight till middle of next week. Will Kanawha be sailing after that & can I go as Sunday-school superintendent at half rate? Answer and prepay.
DR. CLEMENS.
The sailing date was conveniently arranged and there followed a happy cruise among those balmy islands. Mark Twain was particularly fond of “Tom” Reed, who had been known as “Czar” Reed in Congress, but was delightfully human in his personal life. They argued politics a good deal, and Reed, with all his training and intimate practical knowledge of the subject, confessed that he “couldn't argue with a man like that.”
“Do you believe the things you say?” he asked once, in his thin, falsetto voice.
“Yes,” said Clemens. “Some of them.”
“Well, you want to look out. If you go on this way, by and by you'll get to believing nearly everything you say.”
Draw poker appears to have been their favorite diversion. Clemens in his notes reports that off the coast of Florida Reed won twenty-three pots in succession. It was said afterward that they made no stops at any harbor; that when the chief officer approached the poker-table and told them they were about to enter some important port he received peremptory orders to “sail on and not interrupt the game.” This, however, may be regarded as more or less founded on fiction.
Among the completed manuscripts of the early part of 1902 was a North American Review article (published in April)—“Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?”—a most interesting treatise on snobbery as a universal weakness. There were also some papers on the Philippine situation. In one of these Clemens wrote:
We have bought some islands from a party who did not own them; withreal smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendlinesswe coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it uponthem; we went back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes whenwe had no further use for him and chased him to the mountains; weare as indisputably in possession of a wide-spreading archipelago asif it were our property; we have pacified some thousands of theislanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned theirvillages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors;furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeablepatriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by BenevolentAssimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we haveacquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slavesof our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted ourprotecting flag over that swag.And so, by these Providences of God—the phrase is the government's,not mine—we are a World Power; and are glad and proud, and have aback seat in the family. With tacks in it. At least we are lettingon to be glad and proud; it is the best way. Indeed, it is the onlyway. We must maintain our dignity, for people are looking. We area World Power; we cannot get out of it now, and we must make thebest of it.
And again he wrote:
I am not finding fault with this use of our flag, for in order notto seem eccentric I have swung around now and joined the nation inthe conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properlyreared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must besacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts lest itsuffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines tofloat over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it waspolluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I standcorrected. I concede and acknowledge that it was only thegovernment that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let uscompromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flagcould not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but itis different with the administration.
But a much more conspicuous comment on the Philippine policy was the so-called “Defense of General Funston” for what Funston himself referred to as a “dirty Irish trick”; that is to say, deception in the capture of Aguinaldo. Clemens, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself to-any form of warfare, was especially bitter concerning this particular campaign. The article appeared in the North American Review for May, 1902, and stirred up a good deal of a storm. He wrote much more on the subject—very much more—but it is still unpublished.
One day in April, 1902, Samuel Clemens received the following letter from the president of the University of Missouri:
MY DEAR MR. CLEMENS, Although you received the degree of doctor of literature last fall from Yale, and have had other honors conferred upon you by other great universities, we want to adopt you here as a son of the University of Missouri. In asking your permission to confer upon you the degree of LL.D. the University of Missouri does not aim to confer an honor upon you so much as to show her appreciation of you. The rules of the University forbid us to confer the degree upon any one in absentia. I hope very much that you can so arrange your plans as to be with us on the fourth day of next June, when we shall hold our Annual Commencement.
Very truly yours,R. H. JESSE.
Clemens had not expected to make another trip to the West, but a proffered honor such as this from one's native State was not a thing to be declined.
It was at the end of May when he arrived in St. Louis, and he was met at the train there by his old river instructor and friend, Horace Bixby—as fresh, wiry, and capable as he had been forty-five years before.
“I have become an old man. You are still thirty-five,” Clemens said.
They went to the Planters Hotel, and the news presently got around that Mark Twain was there. There followed a sort of reception in the hotel lobby, after which Bixby took him across to the rooms of the Pilots Association, where the rivermen gathered in force to celebrate his return. A few of his old comrades were still alive, among them Beck Jolly. The same afternoon he took the train for Hannibal.
It was a busy five days that he had in Hannibal. High-school commencement day came first. He attended, and willingly, or at least patiently, sat through the various recitals and orations and orchestrations, dreaming and remembering, no doubt, other high-school commencements of more than half a century before, seeing in some of those young people the boys and girls he had known in that vanished time. A few friends of his youth were still there, but they were among the audience now, and no longer fresh and looking into the future. Their heads were white, and, like him, they were looking down the recorded years. Laura Hawkins was there and Helen Kercheval (Mrs. Frazer and Mrs. Garth now), and there were others, but they were few and scattering.
He was added to the program, and he made himself as one of the graduates, and told them some things of the young people of that earlier time that brought their laughter and their tears.
He was asked to distribute the diplomas, and he undertook the work in his own way. He took an armful of them and said to the graduates:
“Take one. Pick out a good one. Don't take two, but be sure you get a good one.”
So each took one “unsight and unseen” aid made the more exact distributions among themselves later.
Next morning it was Saturday—he visited the old home on Hill Street, and stood in the doorway all dressed in white while a battalion of photographers made pictures of “this return of the native” to the threshold of his youth.
“It all seems so small to me,” he said, as he looked through the house; “a boy's home is a big place to him. I suppose if I should come back again ten years from now it would be the size of a birdhouse.”
He went through the rooms and up-stairs where he had slept and looked out the window down in the back yard where, nearly sixty years before, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Joe Harper, and the rest—that is to say, Tom Blankenship, John Briggs, Will Pitts, and the Bowen boys—set out on their nightly escapades. Of that lightsome band Will Pitts and John Briggs still remained, with half a dozen others—schoolmates of the less adventurous sort. Buck Brown, who had been his rival in the spelling contests, was still there, and John Robards, who had worn golden curls and the medal for good conduct, and Ed Pierce. And while these were assembled in a little group on the pavement outside the home a small old man came up and put out his hand, and it was Jimmy MacDaniel, to whom so long before, sitting on the river-bank and eating gingerbread, he had first told the story of Jim Wolfe and the cats.
They put him into a carriage, drove him far and wide, and showed the hills and resorts and rendezvous of Tom Sawyer and his marauding band.
He was entertained that evening by the Labinnah Club (whose name was achieved by a backward spelling of Hannibal), where he found most of the survivors of his youth. The news report of that occasion states that he was introduced by Father McLoughlin, and that he “responded in a very humorous and touchingly pathetic way, breaking down in tears at the conclusion. Commenting on his boyhood days and referring to his mother was too much for the great humorist. Before him as he spoke were sitting seven of his boyhood friends.”
On Sunday morning Col. John Robards escorted him to the various churches and Sunday-schools. They were all new churches to Samuel Clemens, but he pretended not to recognize this fact. In each one he was asked to speak a few words, and he began by saying how good it was to be back in the old home Sunday-school again, which as a boy he had always so loved, and he would go on and point out the very place he had sat, and his escort hardly knew whether or not to enjoy the proceedings. At one place he told a moral story. He said:
Little boys and girls, I want to tell you a story which illustrates the value of perseverance—of sticking to your work, as it were. It is a story very proper for a Sunday-school. When I was a little boy in Hannibal I used to play a good deal up here on Holliday's Hill, which of course you all know. John Briggs and I played up there. I don't suppose there are any little boys as good as we were then, but of course that is not to be expected. Little boys in those days were 'most always good little boys, because those were the good old times when everything was better than it is now, but never mind that. Well, once upon a time, on Holliday's Hill, they were blasting out rock, and a man was drilling for a blast. He sat there and drilled and drilled and drilled perseveringly until he had a hole down deep enough for the blast. Then he put in the powder and tamped and tamped it down, but maybe he tamped it a little too hard, for the blast went off and he went up into the air, and we watched him. He went up higher and higher and got smaller and smaller. First he looked as big as a child, then as big as a dog, then as big as a kitten, then as big as a bird, and finally he went out of sight. John Briggs was with me, and we watched the place where he went out of sight, and by and by we saw him coming down first as big as a bird, then as big as a kitten, then as big as a dog, then as big as a child, and then he was a man again, and landed right in his seat and went to drilling just persevering, you see, and sticking to his work. Little boys and girls, that's the secret of success, just like that poor but honest workman on Holliday's Hill. Of course you won't always be appreciated. He wasn't. His employer was a hard man, and on Saturday night when he paid him he docked him fifteen minutes for the time he was up in the air—but never mind, he had his reward.
He told all this in his solemn, grave way, though the Sunday-school was in a storm of enjoyment when he finished. There still remains a doubt in Hannibal as to its perfect suitability, but there is no doubt as to its acceptability.
That Sunday afternoon, with John Briggs, he walked over Holliday's Hill—the Cardiff Hill of Tom Sawyer. It was jest such a Sunday as that one when they had so nearly demolished the negro driver and had damaged a cooper-shop. They calculated that nearly three thousand Sundays had passed since then, and now here they were once more, two old men with the hills still fresh and green, the river still sweeping by and rippling in the sun. Standing there together and looking across to the low-lying Illinois shore, and to the green islands where they had played, and to Lover's Leap on the south, the man who had been Sam Clemens said:
“John, that is one of the loveliest sights I ever saw. Down there by the island is the place we used to swim, and yonder is where a man was drowned, and there's where the steamboat sank. Down there on Lover's Leap is where the Millerites put on their robes one night to go to heaven. None of them went that night, but I suppose most of them have gone now.”
John Briggs said:
“Sam, do you remember the day we stole the peaches from old man Price and one of his bow-legged niggers came after us with the dogs, and how we made up our minds that we'd catch that nigger and drown him?”
They came to the place where they had pried out the great rock that had so nearly brought them to grief. Sam Clemens said:
“John, if we had killed that man we'd have had a dead nigger on our hands without a cent to pay for him.”
And so they talked on of this thing and that, and by and by they drove along the river, and Sam Clemens pointed out the place where he swam it and was taken with a cramp on the return swim, and believed for a while that his career was about to close.
“Once, near the shore, I thought I would let down,” he said, “but was afraid to, knowing that if the water was deep I was a goner, but finally my knees struck the sand and I crawled out. That was the closest call I ever had.”
They drove by the place where the haunted house had stood. They drank from a well they had always known, and from the bucket as they had always drunk, talking and always talking, fondling lovingly and lingeringly that most beautiful of all our possessions, the past.
“Sam,” said John, when they parted, “this is probably the last time we shall meet on this earth. God bless you. Perhaps somewhere we shall renew our friendship.”
“John,” was the answer, “this day has been worth thousands of dollars to me. We were like brothers once, and I feel that we are the same now. Good-by, John. I'll try to meet you—somewhere.”