Produced by David Widger
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
by Mark Twain
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
THE STORY OF A SPEECH
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES
BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS
DEDICATION SPEECH
DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE.
THE HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE
GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS
A NEW GERMAN WORD
UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM
THE WEATHER
THE BABIES
OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES
EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS
THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE
POETS AS POLICEMEN
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED
DALY THEATRE
THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN
DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT
COLLEGE GIRLS
GIRLS
THE LADIES
WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB
VOTES FOR WOMEN
WOMAN-AN OPINION
ADVICE TO GIRLS
TAXES AND MORALS
TAMMANY AND CROKER
MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES
THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL MORALS
LAYMAN'S SERMON
UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY
PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP
COURAGE
THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE
ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE
HENRY M. STANLEY
DINNER TO MR. JEROME
HENRY IRVING
DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE
INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY
DINNER TO WHITELAW REID
ROGERS AND RAILROADS
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
READING-ROOM OPENING
LITERATURE
DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE
THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
SPELLING AND PICTURES
BOOKS AND BURGLARS
AUTHORS' CLUB
BOOKSELLERS
"MARK TWAIN's FIRST APPEARANCE"
MORALS AND MEMORY
QUEEN VICTORIA
JOAN OF ARC
ACCIDENT INSURANCE - ETC.
OSTEOPATHY
WATER-SUPPLY
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
CATS AND CANDY
OBITUARY POETRY
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
BILLIARDS
THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG?
AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS
STATISTICS
GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE
CHARITY AND ACTORS
RUSSIAN REPUBLIC
RUSSIAN SUFFERERS
WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS
ROBERT FULTON FUND
FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN
COPYRIGHT
IN AID OF THE BLIND
DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH
MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH
BUSINESS
CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR
ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE
WELCOME HOME
AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH
SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
TO THE WHITEFRIARS
THE ASCOT GOLD CUP
THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
INDEPENDENCE DAY
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ABOUT LONDON
PRINCETON
THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN"
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
INTRODUCTION
These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those
who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard
them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have
noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of
the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author.
He was a most consummate actor, with this difference from other actors,
that he was the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies to
which his voice and action gave the color of life. Representation is the
art of other actors; his art was creative as well as representative; it
was nothing at second hand.
I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he quite failed; some burst
or spurt redeemed him when he seemed flagging short of the goal, and,
whoever else was in the running, he came in ahead. His near-failures
were the error of a rare trust to the spontaneity in which other speakers
confide, or are believed to confide, when they are on their feet. He
knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's spontaneity was for
the silence and solitude of the closet where he mused his words to an
imagined audience; that this was the use of orators from Demosthenes and
Cicero up and down. He studied every word and syllable, and memorized
them by a system of mnemonics peculiar to himself, consisting of an
arbitrary arrangement of things on a table - knives, forks, salt-cellars;
inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever was at hand - which stood for points
and clauses and climaxes, and were at once indelible diction and constant
suggestion. He studied every tone and every gesture, and he forecast the
result with the real audience from its result with that imagined
audience. Therefore, it was beautiful to see him and to hear him; he
rejoiced in the pleasure he gave and the blows of surprise which he
dealt; and because he had his end in mind, he knew when to stop.
I have been talking of his method and manner; the matter the reader has
here before him; and it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just.
W. D. HOWELLS.
PREFACE
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF "MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES"
If I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of
sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals,
should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for making
him sick, I would say that he deserved to be made sick for not knowing
any better how to utilize the blessings this world affords. And if I
sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and he, instead of seasoning
his graver reading with a chapter of it now and then, when his mind
demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several chapters
of it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and he will
have nobody to blame but himself if he is. There is no more sin in
publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a
candy-store with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the customer
whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive from
them the benefits which they will afford him if he uses their
possibilities judiciously.
Respectfully submitted,
THE AUTHOR.
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
THE STORY OF A SPEECH
An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine
years later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner
given by the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the
seventieth anniversary o f the birth of John Greenleaf
Whittier, at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877.
This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant
reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly
into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and
contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded of a
thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just succeeded
in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose
spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly Californiaward. I started an
inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow
and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'.
I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin
in the foot-hills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at
the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door
to me. When he heard my 'nom de guerre' he looked more dejected than
before. He let me in - pretty reluctantly, I thought - and after the
customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, I took a pipe.
This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he
spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, "You're
the fourth - I'm going to move." "The fourth what?" said I. "The fourth
littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours - I'm going to move."
"You don't tell me!" said I; "who were the others?" "Mr. Longfellow,
Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes - consound the lot!"
You can, easily believe I was interested. I supplicated - three hot
whiskeys did the rest - and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he:
"They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in of
course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot,
but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot.
Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was
as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double
chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a
prizefighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig
made of hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down, his face, like a
finger with the end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see
that. And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin,
then he took me by the buttonhole, and says he:
"'Through the deep caves of thought
I hear a voice that sings,
Build thee more stately mansions,
O my soul!'
"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want to.'
Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that
way. However, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when Mr. Emerson
came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole
and says:
"'Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.'
"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel.'
You see it sort of riled me - I warn't used to the ways of littery swells.
But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Longfellow and
buttonholes me, and interrupts me. Says he:
"'Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis - '
"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you'll
be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get
this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir, after they'd filled up
I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it, and then he fires up all of a
sudden and yells:
"Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
For I would drink to other days.'
"By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I don't deny it, I was
getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I, 'Looky
here, my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the court knows
herself, you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.' Them's the very
words I said to him. Now I don't want to sass such famous littery
people, but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't nothing
onreasonable 'bout me; I don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on my
tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it's
different, 'and if the court knows herself,' I says, 'you'll take whiskey
straight or you'll go dry.' Well, between drinks they'd swell around the
cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they got out a
greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a corner - on
trust. I began to notice some pretty suspicious things. Mr. Emerson
dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says:
"'I am the doubter and the doubt - '
and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout.
Says he:
"'They reckon ill who leave me out;
They know not well the subtle ways I keep.
I pass and deal again!'
Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one!
Well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a
sudden I see by Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. He had already
corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. So now he kind of
lifts a little in his chair and says:
"'I tire of globes and aces!
Too long the game is played!'
- and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as
pie and says:
"'Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught,'
- and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! Emerson claps
his hand on his bowie, Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went
under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes
rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the
first man that draws, I'll lay down on him and smother him!' All quiet
on the Potomac, you bet!
"They were pretty how-come-you-so' by now, and they begun to blow.
Emerson says, 'The nobbiest thing I ever wrote was "Barbara Frietchie."'
Says Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my "Biglow Papers."' Says Holmes,
'My "Thanatopsis" lays over 'em both.' They mighty near ended in a fight.
Then they wished they had some more company - and Mr. Emerson pointed to
me and says:
"'Is yonder squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed?'
He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot - so I let it pass. Well, sir,
next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so
they made me stand up and sing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" till I
dropped-at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That's what I've
been through, my friend. When I woke at seven, they were leaving, thank
goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on, and his'n under his
arm. Says I, 'Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with
them?' He says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em; because:
"'Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.'
"As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours - and I'm
going to move; I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere."
I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious
singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these
were impostors."
The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he, "Ah!
impostors, were they? Are you?"
I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not travelled on my
'nom de guerre' enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved to
contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the
details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I
believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular
fact on an occasion like this.
.........................
From Mark Twain's Autobiography.
January 11, 1906.
Answer to a letter received this morning:
DEAR MRS. H., - I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that
curious passage in my life. During the first year or, two after it
happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were
so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled,
established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my
mind - and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have
lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse,
vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and
your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to
look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to
delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy
of it.
It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am
not able to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C., of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing but
death terminates. The C.'s were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice
and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break of
mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those
people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it
almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C.'s were indignant about
the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They poured out
their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty attitude of the
people who were present at that performance, and about the Boston
newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the matter.
That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond
imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year or two,
and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of it
- which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought of it
I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy a thing.
Well, the C.'s comforted me, but they did not persuade me to continue to
think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to get it out
of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H.'s letter
came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought of that
matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if possibly
she might be right. At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and I wrote
to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth.
I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering - dimly I can see
a hundred people - no, perhaps fifty - shadowy figures sitting at tables
feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. I don't know who
they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and
facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling;
Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his
face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face;
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all
good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being
turned toward the light first one way and then another - a charming man,
and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting
still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion to
other people). I can see those figures with entire distinctness across
this abyss of time.
One other feature is clear - Willie Winter (for these past thousand years
dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying that high
post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then than he is now,
and he showed 'it. It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter
at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet
where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did not read a
charming poem written for the occasion. He did it this time, and it was
up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen to
as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of
heart and brain.
Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday - because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening - the gay oration above quoted from the
Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had perfectly
memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and
self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic guests;
that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened; as did
everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered
myself of - we'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. I was
expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the
case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the dialogue: "The
old miner said, 'You are the fourth, I'm going to move.' 'The fourth
what?' said I. He answered, 'The fourth littery man that has been here
in twenty-four hours. I am going to move.' 'Why, you don't tell me;'
said I. 'Who were the others?' 'Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, consound the lot - '"
Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered what
the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty
- I struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description of
the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always hoping
- but with a gradually perishing hope that somebody - would laugh, or that
somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't know enough to
give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and so I went
on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to the end,
in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with horror.
It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if I had been
making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the Trinity; there
is no milder way, in which to describe the petrified condition and the
ghastly expression of those people.
When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat.
I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what
the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I shall
never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near me,
tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp. There
was no use - he understood the whole size of the disaster. He had good
intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. It was an
atmosphere that would freeze anything. If Benvenuto Cellini's salamander
had been in that place he would not have survived to be put into
Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful pause. There was an
awful silence, a desolating silence. Then the next man on the list had
to get up - there was no help for it. That was Bishop - Bishop had just
burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had
appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a place which would make any novel
respectable and any author noteworthy. In this case the novel itself was
recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was
away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest,
consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may
say our American millions were standing, from Maine to Texas and from
Alaska to Florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands
ready to applaud, when Bishop should get up on that occasion, and for the
first time in his life speak in public. It was under these damaging
conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. I had
spoken several times before, and that is the reason why I was able to go
on without dying in my tracks, as I ought to have done - but Bishop had
had no experience. He was up facing those awful deities - facing those
other people, those strangers - facing human beings for the first time in
his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away in
his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard
from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that
dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head like
the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there wasn't any
fog left. He didn't go on - he didn't last long. It was not many
sentence's after his first before he began to hesitate, and break, and
lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down in a
limp and mushy pile.
Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than
one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man
hadn't strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so
stupefied, paralyzed; it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or
even try. Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells
mournfully, and without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and
supported us out of the room. It was very kind - he was most generous.
He towed us tottering away into same room in that building, and we sat
down there. I don't know what my remark was now, but I know the nature
of it. It was the kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in
the world can help your case. But Howells was honest - he had to say the
heart-breaking things he did say: that there was no help for this
calamity, this shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most
disastrous thing that had ever happened in anybody's history - and then he
added, "That is, for you - and consider what you have done for Bishop. It
is bad enough in your case, you deserve, to suffer. You have committed
this crime, and you deserve to have all you are going to get. But here
is an innocent man. Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you
have done to him. He can never hold his head up again. The world can
never look upon Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse."
That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which
pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two whenever
it forced its way into my mind.
Now then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived
this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an
idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last.
It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with
humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it
anywhere. What could have been the matter with that house? It is
amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and
those deities the loudest of them all. Could the fault have been with
me? Did I lose courage when I saw those great men up there whom I was
going to describe in such a strange fashion? If that happened, if I
showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can't be successfully
funny if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I can't account for
it, but if I had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back
here now on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same old
speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they'd run all over
that stage. Oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in the
speech at all.
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY,
PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881
On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response,
President Rollins said:
"This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly
born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors.
He is not technically, therefore, of New England descent.
Under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself,
however, he has done the best he could - he has had all his
children born there, and has made of himself a New England
ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this, and better
even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New
England ascent. To ascend there in any thing that's reasonable
is difficult; for - confidentially, with the door shut - we all
know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly
land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that
Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent - become
a man of mark."
I rise to protest. I have kept still for years; but really I think there
is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want
to celebrate those people for? - those ancestors of yours of 1620 - the
Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to celebrate them for? Your
pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating
the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock
on the 22d of December. So you are celebrating their landing. Why, the
other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever; the other
was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf. Celebrating
their lauding! What was there remarkable about it, I would like to know?
What can you be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had been at sea three
or four months. It was the very middle of winter: it was as cold as
death off Cape Cod there. Why shouldn't they come ashore? If they
hadn't landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact: It
would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world
would not willingly let die. If it had been you, gentlemen, you probably
wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be celebrating,
in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but only
transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the Pilgrims
- to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and
customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance - a circumstance to
be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like this
for two hundred and sixty years - hang it, a horse would have known enough
to land; a horse - Pardon again; the gentleman on my right assures me that
it was not merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating,
but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an inconsistency here
- one says it was the landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims. It
is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious
tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston. Well, then, what
do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They were a mighty hard
lot - you know it. I grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that
they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were the people
of Europe of that day; I grant you that they are better than their
predecessors. But what of that? - that is nothing. People always
progress. You are better than your fathers and grandfathers were
(this is the first time I have ever aimed a measureless slander at the
departed, for I consider such things improper). Yes, those among you who
have not been in the penitentiary, if such there be, are better than your
fathers and grandfathers were; but is that any sufficient reason, for
getting up annual dinners and celebrating you? No, by no means - by no
means. Well, I repeat, those Pilgrims were a hard lot. They took good
care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else's ancestors. I am
a border-ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee
by adoption. In me, you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this,
gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man. But where are
my ancestors? Whom shall I celebrate? Where shall I find the raw
material?
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian - an early Indian.
Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. Not one drop of my
blood flows in that Indian's veins today. I stand here, lone and
forlorn, without an ancestor. They skinned him! I do not object to
that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemen-alive! They skinned
him alive - and before company! That is what rankles. Think how he must
have felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed. If he
had been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to
his feelings, because he would have been considered "dressed." But he
was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most
undressed men that ever was. I ask you to put yourselves in his place.
I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it in the
interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; I ask it that
the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising
swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true New England
Society ought to present. Cease to come to these annual orgies in this
hollow modern mockery - the surplusage of raiment. Come in character;
come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity, come in the
free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors provided for mine.
Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marmaduke
Stevenson, et al. Your tribe chased them put of the country for their
religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your
ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of the
sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire that
highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on this broad
continent to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience - and
they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous Quakers to interfere
with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains of political slavery,
and gave the vote to every man in this wide land, excluding none! - none
except those who did not belong to the orthodox church. Your ancestors
- yes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless, they gave us religious
liberty to worship as they required us to worship, and political liberty
to vote as the church required; and so I the bereft one, I the forlorn
one, am here to do my best to help you celebrate them right.
The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an ancestress of mine. Your people
were pretty severe with her you will confess that. But, poor thing!
I believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took her into
their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that when she died she
went to the same place which your ancestors went to. It is a great pity,
for she was a good woman. Roger Williams was an ancestor of mine.
I don't really remember what your people did with him. But they banished
him to Rhode Island, anyway. And then, I believe, recognizing that this
was really carrying harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity
on him and burned him. They were a hard lot! All those Salem witches
were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them. Yes,
they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with
them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our family
from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine years.
The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your
progenitors was an ancestor of mine - for I am of a mixed breed, an
infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel. I'm not one of your sham
meerschaums that you can color in a week. No, my complexion is the
patient art of eight generations. Well, in my own time, I had acquired a
lot of my kin - by purchase, and swapping around, and one way and another
- and was getting along very well. Then, with the inborn perversity of
your lineage, you got up a war, and took them all away from me. And so,
again am I bereft, again am I forlorn; no drop of my blood flows in the
veins of any living being who is marketable.
O my friends, hear me and reform! I seek your good, not mine. You have
heard the speeches. Disband these New England societies - nurseries of a
system of steadily augmenting laudation and hosannaing, which; if
persisted in uncurbed, may some day in the remote future beguile you into
prevaricating and bragging. Oh, stop, stop, while you are still
temperate in your appreciation of your ancestors! Hear me, I beseech
you; get up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock! The Pilgrims were a
simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or
at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for
hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this
one. But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know
that in the rich land of your nativity, opulent New England, overflowing
with rocks, this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five
cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure, or at least
throw it open to the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its
taxes:
Yes, hear your true friend-your only true friend - list to his voice.
Disband these societies, hotbeds of vice, of moral decay - perpetuators of
ancestral superstition. Here on this board I see water, I see milk, I
see the wild and deadly lemonade. These are but steps upon the downward
path. Next we shall see tea, then chocolate, then coffee - hotel coffee.
A few more years - all too few, I fear - mark my words, we shall have
cider! Gentlemen, pause ere it be too late. You are on the broad road
which leads to dissipation, physical ruin, moral decay, gory crime and
the gallows! I beseech you, I implore you, in the name of your anxious
friends, in the name of your suffering families, in the name of your
impending widows and orphans, stop ere it be too late. Disband these New
England societies, renounce these soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from
varnishing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished ancestors - the
super-high-moral old iron-clads of Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of
Plymouth Rock - go home, and try to learn to behave!
However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I honor and appreciate your
Pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and I endorse and
adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine once - a man of sturdy
opinions, of sincere make of mind, and not given to flattery. He said:
"People may talk as they like about that Pilgrim stock, but, after all's
said and done, it would be pretty hard to improve on those people; and,
as for me, I don't mind coming out flatfooted and saying there ain't any
way to improve on them - except having them born in, Missouri!"
COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES
DELIVERED AT THE LOTOS CLUB, JANUARY 11, 1908
In introducing Mr. Clemens, Frank R. Lawrence, the President
of the Lotos Club, recalled the fact that the first club dinner
in the present club-house, some fourteen years ago, was in
honor of Mark Twain.
I wish to begin this time at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether;
that is to say, I wish to thank you for this welcome that you are giving,
and the welcome which you gave me seven years ago, and which I forgot to
thank you for at that time. I also wish to thank you for the welcome you
gave me fourteen years ago, which I also forgot to thank you for at the
time.
I hope you will continue this custom to give me a dinner every seven
years before I join the hosts in the other world - I do not know which
world.
Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Porter have paid me many compliments. It is very
difficult to take compliments. I do not care whether you deserve the
compliments or not, it is just as difficult to take them. The other
night I was at the Engineers' Club, and enjoyed the sufferings of
Mr. Carnegie. They were complimenting him there; there it was all
compliments, and none of them deserved. They say that you cannot live
by bread alone, but I can live on compliments.