TWAIN 
 
 His LIFE AND WORK 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 BY 
 
 WILL M. CLEMENS 
 
 1892 
 
 THE CLElMENS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 San Francisco 
 
Copyright, 1891, 
 
 BY WILL M. CLEMENS. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 LOAN STACK 
 
 PRESS OF W. L. MITCHELL, 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 i. PREFACE 7 
 
 2: SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS 13 
 
 . 3. IN NEVADA AND CALIFORNIA 37 
 
 4. ONE OF THE INNOCENTS 67 
 
 5. His FIRST LITERARY SUCCESS 80 
 
 6. MARRIAGE 101 
 
 7. IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY 114 
 
 8. His LATER WORKS 129 
 
 9. THE LECTURE PLATFORM 146 
 
 10. MARK TWAIN AT HOME 165 
 
 11. As A BUSINESS MAN 189 
 
 12. GEMS FROM MARK TWAIN 198 
 
I. 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 From the days of "Yankee Doodle" 
 and the Frogs of Windham," two gems 
 of early American humor written in the 
 Revolutionary period, until near the close 
 of the war of the Rebellion, the recog 
 nized American humorist, the wit who 
 could cause a laugh to go Tippling, bub 
 bling around the world, was a creation 
 unknown to American literature. How 
 ever, out of respect and admiration for 
 their genius, their wit and humor, we 
 must not fail in giving proper credit to 
 Francis Hopkinson, Samuel Peters, John 
 
8 Mark Twain 
 
 Trumbull, George F. Hopkins, William 
 T. Thompson, Seba Smith, Joseph C. 
 Neal, Orpheus C. Kerr, George H. 
 Derby and a host of others, for bringing 
 out in the American prints, those native 
 characteristics, thedrollness of the yankee 
 and the wit of the early days, but not 
 until after the Rebellion did America 
 produce a humorist of world- wide reputa 
 tion. When civil strife was ended, and 
 the American began a new career, almost a 
 new existence, there came to the surface 
 a new school of native humor. The 
 names of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, 
 Josh Billings and one or two others, be 
 came household words. Their funny 
 sayings caused the Englishman to smile 
 between his bites of beef. Their droll 
 humor forced our German cousin to shake 
 his sides with laughter. Their witty 
 bon mots occasioned prolonged mirth from 
 our friends in France. Not until then 
 did we become known as a nation of 
 humorists, and from that day the fame 
 of our wits has extended throughout the 
 entire world. To-day a ripple of mirth 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 starting on the banks of Mud Flat Creek, 
 will end in a hurricane of laughter on the 
 Thames or the Seine. 
 
 There was something so purely Amer 
 ican in the humor of Mark Twain, that 
 his work soon made for him a place in na 
 tive literature. As a representative of 
 American life and character his name 
 extended even beyond the confines of the 
 continent of Europe, into all lands and 
 among all peoples. In Paris one cannot 
 purchase a Bible at the book stall, but 
 one may find " Roughing It" at every cor 
 ner. In Rome, "The Innocents Abroad" 
 is one of the staples in the book marts. 
 In Hongkong you will find Mark Twain. 
 Everywhere they read him. 
 
 The career of Mark Twain is a ro 
 mance. His life is a curious medley of 
 pathos and poverty, with an occasional 
 laugh to help along over the rough places. 
 He w"as a wild, reckless boy, a poor 
 printer, not even a good journalist, an 
 adventurer, a wanderer. He was a sort 
 of human kaleidoscope . He then became 
 a wit, a scholar, a public speaker, a man of 
 
xo Mark Twain 
 
 family and a millionaire. All this is but 
 typical of America, of American life and 
 American character. 
 
 Mark Twain is more than a mere Punch 
 
 and Judy show. With his droll humor 
 
 there comes information. He gives the 
 
 reader a full dinner, not merely dessert. 
 
 He tells you more about the Mississippi 
 
 river than an old steamboatman. He 
 
 gives you a world of information about 
 
 Germany and Switzerland. He is better 
 
 than a guide book for the Holy Land. 
 
 What that greater genius Charles Dickens 
 
 has done for fiction, Mark Twain does for 
 
 humor. He is an ideal reporter. He 
 
 minutely tells us all about a thing, tells 
 
 us what he sees and hears, describes a 
 
 man, a mule or a monarchy in excellent 
 
 form, and makes one laugh at the same 
 
 time. 
 
 Some years ago I was prompted to 
 write the genial Mr. Clemens for an 
 introduction or preface to a little volume 
 of mine, long since buried by the sands 
 of time. His reply was this: 
 
His Ltfe and Work* ix 
 
 Hartford, Conn.. Nov. 18. 
 "WILL M. CLEMENS. 
 
 * My Dear Friend : Your 
 
 letter received. God bless your heart. I 
 would like ever so much to comply with your 
 request, but I am thrashing away at my new 
 book, and am afraid that I should not find time 
 to write my own epitaph, in case I was suddenly 
 called for. 
 
 " Wishing you and your book well, believe me, 
 "Yours truly, 
 
 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS." 
 
 Not long ago the gifted humorist sent 
 me a printed slip of his career, taken 
 from "Men of the Time." Upon the 
 margin of this, he wrote the following: 
 
 "Mv DEAR CLEMENS: 
 
 "I haven t any humor 
 ous biography the facts don t admit of it. I 
 had this sketch from "Men of the Time" printed 
 on slips to enable me to study my history at my 
 leisure. 
 
 S. L. CLEMENS." 
 
 By nature, a serious, thoughtful man, 
 he is deeply in earnest at times, yet sel 
 dom has he ventured to deal with the 
 pathetic in his writings. Occasionally 
 he pens a careful, serious communication, 
 like the following, for instance, which he 
 addressed to a young friend of mine; 
 
12 Mark Twain 
 
 Hartford, Jan. 16, 1881. 
 "MY DEAR BOY: 
 
 How can I advise another 
 man wisely, out of such a capital as a life filled 
 with mistakes? Advise him how to avoid the 
 like? No for opportunities to make the same 
 mistakes do not happen to any two men. Your 
 own experiences may possibly teach you, but 
 another man s can t. I do not know anything 
 for a person to do but just peg along, doing the 
 things that offer, and regretting them the next 
 day. It is my way and everybody s. 
 Truly yours, 
 
 S. L. CLEMENS. * 
 
 In this modest volume I do not attempt 
 to analyze the humor of Mark Twain. 
 As Howells says: " Analyses of humor 
 are apt to leave one rather serious, and to 
 result in an entire volatilization of the 
 humor." There is romance, and adven 
 ture, and thrilling interest surrounding 
 the life of the prince of humorists, and I 
 have endeavored to gather together some 
 of these interesting facts. His satire and 
 wit speak for themselves. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 II. 
 SAMUEL LANQHORNE CLEMENS. 
 
 There is more or less obscurity sur 
 rounding the ancestry and birth of Mark 
 Twain. His ancestors were of Dutch and 
 English extraction. The Clemens family 
 extended back to Nicholas Clemens, who 
 lived in Holland, early in the last century. 
 Upon the maternal side, the Langhornes 
 were of English birth. 
 
 In the days of the Revolution there 
 came to America three sturdy pioneers- 
 bearing the Clemens name. One of these 
 settled in Virginia, another in Pennsyl 
 vania. The former prospered in the 
 southern colony and the name became 
 well known in the South, more especially 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 in the political history of that section 
 early in the present century. Jeremiah 
 Clemens was a United States senator from 
 Alabama, and a congressman, a judge, 
 and other dignitaries bore the name. 
 
 John Marshall Clemens, the father of 
 Mark Twain, was one of a fine Virginia 
 family, a man of brain and force of char 
 acter. He migrated to Kentucky and 
 soon thereafter to Adair county, in Ten 
 nessee. He was married there in Fen tress 
 county to Miss Langhorne, a warm 
 hearted, domestic woman, with great 
 emotional depths. The family fled from 
 those vast landed possessions in Ten 
 nessee, so graphically described in "The 
 Gilded Age," and crossed the river into 
 Missouri in 1829, locating in the town of 
 Florida, in Monroe count)^. A few months 
 after their arrival, Samuel Langhorne 
 Clemens first saw the light of day on the 
 30th of November, 1835. Three years 
 later the family removed to Hannibal, a 
 river town in Marion county. 
 
 In 1840 the elder Clemens filled the 
 ancient and honorable office of Justice of 
 
His Life and Work. 15 
 
 the Peace. He wa^ a stern, unbending 
 man of sterling, common sense, and was, 
 indeed, the autocrat of the little dingy 
 room on Bird street, where he held his 
 court and preserved order in the village. 
 The court room fairly indicated the rustic 
 simplicity of the people, and the frugal 
 manner in which Judge Clemens lived 
 and transacted business. The furniture 
 consisted of a dry goods box, which 
 served the double purpose of a desk for 
 the judge and a table for the lawyers, 
 three or four rude stools and a puncheon 
 bench for the jury. Here on court days 
 when the judge climbed upon his three 
 legged stool, rapped upon the box with 
 his knuckles, and demanded silence in 
 the court, it was fully expected that 
 silence would reign supreme. As a 
 general thing the rough characters who 
 lounged about to see the wheels of 
 justice" move, bowed submissively to the 
 mandates of the judge. An overbearing, 
 turbulent and quarrelsome man, named 
 Allen B. McDonald, was an exception, 
 and many a time he had violated the rules 
 
16 Mark Twain 
 
 and been rebuked by the court. Upon 
 one occasion McDonald was plaintiff in 
 a case against one Jacob Smith. Judge 
 Clemens was presiding with his usual 
 dignity, and the court room was filled 
 with witnesses and friends of the parties 
 to the suit. One Frank Snyder, a peac- 
 able citizen, had given his testimony in 
 favor of defendant Smith and resumed his 
 seat, when McDonald with an exasperat 
 ing air made a face at him. As quick as 
 a flash Snyder whipped out an old pepper 
 box revolver and emptied every barrel at 
 McDonald, hurting no one, but filling 
 the room with smoke and consternation. 
 In the confusion that followed Judge 
 Clemens, doubtless remembering Mc 
 Donald s turbulent spirit, instantly con 
 cluded that he was the aggressor, and 
 seizing a hammer that lay near by, he 
 dealt him a blow that sent him senseless 
 and quivering to the floor. The court 
 was completely master of the situation. 
 Being a kind-hearted man, he was greatly 
 mortified when he learned that he had 
 struck the wrong fellow, but the oldest 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 inhabitant never heard him admit that it 
 was "a lick amiss." His death occurred 
 in 1843. His grave in Mount Olivet 
 cemetery, near Hannibal, is marked by 
 a tasteful monument erected by his son. 
 Hannibal was a sleepy river town 
 characteristic of that day. William Dean 
 Howells, in a brief sketch of Mark Twain s 
 career, says: "Hannibal as a name is 
 hopelessly confused and ineffective; but 
 if we know nothing of Mr. Clemens from 
 Hannibal, we can know much of Han 
 nibal from Mr. Clemens, who, in fact, 
 has studied a loafing, out-at -elbows, 
 down-at-the-heels, slave-holding, Missis 
 sippi river town of thirty years ago, with 
 such strong reality in his boy s romance 
 of Tom Sawyer/ that we need inquire 
 nothing further concerning the type. 
 The original perhaps no longer exists 
 anywhere, certainly not in Hannibal, 
 which has grown into a flourishing little 
 city. The morality of the place was the 
 morality of a slave-holding community, 
 fierce, arrogant, onesided; the religion 
 W as Galvanism in various phases, with 
 
1 8 Mark Twain 
 
 its predestinate aristocracy of saints and 
 its rabble of hopeless sinners. Doubt 
 less young Clemens escaped neither of 
 the opposing influences wholly. His 
 people, like the rest, were slave-holders; 
 but his father like so many other slave 
 holders, abhorred slavery silently, as 
 he must in such a time and place. " 
 
 Mark Twain s childhood home was 
 that of an ordinary backwood s infant. 
 His boyhood was a series of mischievous 
 adventures. He was sent to school at 
 an early age, where he says he "excelled 
 only in spelling. " He delighted to spend 
 much of his time upon the river, and so 
 successfully was he in getting into the 
 turbid waters, that he was dragged out 
 of the river six times before he was twelve 
 years of age. His mother said of him ; 
 "Sam was always a good-hearted boy, 
 but he was a very wild and mischievous 
 one, and do what we could, we could 
 never make him go to school. This used 
 to trouble his father and me dreadfully, 
 and w$ were convinced that he would 
 never amount to as much in the world as 
 
His Life and Work- 
 
 his brothers, because he was not near so 
 steady and sober-minded as they were. 
 Often his father would start him off to 
 school, and in a little while would follow 
 him to ascertain his whereabouts. There 
 was a large stump on the way to the 
 school-house, and Sam would take his 
 position behind that, and as his father 
 went past would gradually circle around 
 it in such a way as to keep out of sight. 
 Finally, his father and the teacher both 
 said it was of no use to try to teach Sam 
 anything, because he was determined not 
 to learn. But I never gave up, He was 
 always a great boy for history, and could 
 never get tired of that kind of reading; 
 but he hadn t any use tor school-houses 
 and text books." 
 
 A friend who lived amid the scenes of his 
 boyhood, writes: "The old home of the 
 Clemens family was a two story brick, with 
 a large tree in front. A little way down 
 the river is the cave by which 4 Tom 
 Sawyer made his wonderful escape, and 
 by means of an underground passage 
 the city of Hannibal is easily regained. 
 
2O Mark Twain 
 
 We used to play about the old village 
 blacksmith shop, and were always in 
 mischief. The old blacksmith became 
 so provoked one day, that he caught Sam 
 and with a shingle made him so sore, 
 that he did not sit down for a week. As 
 soon as Sam recovered we went up on 
 the hill immediately above the blacksmith 
 shop, and every day for about a week we 
 worked at digging up a big boulder. 
 Finally we got all the earth from around 
 it, and all we had to do was to give it a 
 shove, and down the hill it would go with 
 terrible velocity. Saturday afternoon was 
 always a holiday in Hannibal in those 
 days. This particular afternoon was a 
 beautiful June day, and the blacksmith 
 shop was closed. About three o clock in 
 the afternoon we started the boulder down 
 the hill. It struck the blacksmith shop 
 and the building was almost demolished.* 
 
 In a humorous sketch written in 1870, 
 Mark Twain tells the following of his 
 father and his boyhood: 
 
 When I say that I never knew my 
 austere parent to be enamored of but 
 
His Life and Work. 21 
 
 one poem in all the long half-century 
 that he lived, persons who knew him will 
 easily believe me; when I say that I have 
 never composed but one poem in all the 
 long third of a century that I have lived, 
 persons who know me will be sincerely 
 grateful: and finally, when I say that the 
 poem which I composed was not the one 
 which my father was enamored of, per 
 sons who may have known us both will 
 not need to have this truth shot into 
 them with a mountain howitzer before 
 they can receive it. My father and I 
 were always on the most distant terms 
 when I was a boy a sort of armed neu 
 trality , so to speak . At irregular in tervals 
 this neutrality was broken and suffering 
 ensued; but I will be candid enough to 
 say that the breaking and the suffering 
 were always divided up with strict im 
 partiality between us which is to say 
 my father did the breaking, and I did the 
 suffering. As a general thing I was a 
 backward, cautious unadventurous boy. 
 But once I jumped off a two-story stable; 
 another time I gave an elephant a plug 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 of tobacco, and retired without waiting 
 for aa answer; and still another time I 
 pretended to be talking in ray sleep, and 
 got off a portion of every original conun 
 drum in heanng of my father. Let us 
 not pry into the result; it was of no con 
 sequence to any one but me. 
 
 "But the poem I have referred to as 
 attracting my father s attention, and 
 achieving his favor was Hiawatha. 
 Some man who courted a sudden and 
 awful death presented him an early copy, 
 and I never lost faith in my own senses 
 until I saw him sit down and go to read 
 ing it in cold blood saw him open the 
 book, and heard him read these following 
 lines, with the same inflectionless judicial 
 frigidity with which he always read his 
 charge to the jury, or administered an 
 oath to a witness 
 
 "Take your bow, O Hiawatha, 
 Take your arrows, jasper-headed, 
 Take your war-club, Puggawaugun, 
 And your mittens, Minjekahwan, 
 And your birch canoe for sailing, 
 And the oil of Mishe-Nama." 
 
Hts Life and Work. 23 
 
 From all accounts Mark was an incor 
 rigible boy, filled with roving imaginations 
 from his very earliest age. Many of the 
 scenes in his books are taken from the 
 real occurrences of his boyhood. The 
 steamboat scene in "The Gilded Age" 
 was witnessed by him while out on his 
 aimless wanderings. His adventure with 
 a dead man in his father s office was also 
 literally true. He had played " hookey * 
 from school all day and far into the night 
 was absent, and rather than go home and 
 be greeted with a flogging, raised the 
 window and climbed into the office with 
 the intention of resting all night upon a 
 lounge. His description of the horror 
 creeping over him as he saw a ghastly 
 hand lying in the moonlight; how he 
 shut his eyes and tried to count, and 
 opened them in time to see the dead man 
 lying on the floor, stiff and stark, with a 
 ghastly wound in his side, and at last, 
 how he beat a terrified retreat through 
 the window, carrying the sash with him 
 for convenience" is vividly remembered 
 by every reader of his works. Mrs. 
 
24 Mark Twain 
 
 Clemens asserts that the whole affair 
 transpired as Mark recorded it the man 
 was killed in a street fight almost in front * 
 of the office door, and was taken in there 
 while & post mortem examination was held, 
 and there left until next morning. Dur 
 ing the night Mark came in, and the 
 scene he has so ludicrously but graphically 
 depicted was enacted. 
 
 His books abound in stories of his 
 boyhood. "Tom Sawyer" tells of his 
 youthful adventures, although his coun 
 terpart is more correctly depicted in 
 "Huckleberry Finn". In his "Old Times 
 on the Mississippi" he says: "When I was 
 a boy, there was but one permanent am 
 bition among my comrades in our village 
 on the west bank of the Mississippi 
 river. That was to be a steamboatman. 
 We had transient ambitions of other 
 sorts, but they were only transient. 
 When a circus came and went it left us 
 all burning to become clowns; the first 
 negro minstrel show that came to our 
 section left us all suffering to try that 
 kind of life; now and then we had a hope 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 that if we lived and were good, God 
 would permit us to become pirates. 
 These ambitions faded out, each in its 
 turn, but the ambition to be a steamboat- 
 man always remained." 
 
 When the father died, the mother was 
 left with four children, Sam being twelve 
 years of age. The sons realized that 
 they must do their part in the struggle 
 for the support of the family. In those 
 early years he tried various methods of 
 earning a livelihood, and finally entered 
 the office of the Hannibal Weekly Courier, 
 as a printer s apprentice. At a printers 
 banquet in New York, some years ago, 
 he told the story of his apprenticeship, in 
 which he said: "It may be that the 
 printer of to-day is not the printer of 
 thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger 
 to him. I knew him well. I built the 
 fire for him in the winter mornings; I 
 brought his water from the village pump; 
 I swept out his office; I picked up his 
 type from under his stand; and, if he was 
 there to see, I put the good type in his 
 case and the broken ones among the 
 
26 Mark Twain 
 
 hell matter; and if he wasn t there to see, 
 I dumped it all with the pi on the im 
 posing stone for that was the furtive 
 fashion of the cub, and I was the cub. 
 I wetted down the paper Saturdays, I 
 turned it Sundays for this was a country 
 weekly; I rolled, I washed the rollers, 
 I washed the forms, I folded the papers, 
 I carried them around in the disagree 
 able dawn Thursday mornings. The 
 carrier was then an object of interest to 
 all the dogs in town. If I had saved up 
 all the bites I ever received, I could keep 
 M. Pasteur busy for a year. I enveloped 
 the papers that were for the mail we 
 had 100 town subscribers and 350 country 
 ones; the town subscribers paid in gro 
 ceries and the country ones in cabbage 
 and cord wood when they paid at all, 
 which was merely sometimes, and then 
 we always stated the fact in the paper, 
 and gave them a puff; and if we forgot 
 to they stopped the paper. Every man 
 in the town list helped to edit the thing; 
 that is, he gave orders as to how it was 
 to be edited; dictated its opinions, marked 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 out its course for it, and every time the 
 boss failed to connect, he stopped his 
 paper. 
 
 "Life was easy with us; if we pied a 
 form we suspended till next week, and 
 we always suspended every now and then 
 when the fishing was good, and explained 
 it by the illness of the editor, a paltry 
 excuse, because that kind of a paper was 
 just as well off with a sick editor as a 
 well one, and better off with a dead one 
 than with either of them. 
 
 "I can see that printing office of pre 
 historic times yet, with its horse bills on 
 the walls, its *d boxes clogged with 
 tallow, because we always stood the 
 candle in the *k* box nights, its towel, 
 which was not considered soiled until it 
 could stand alone, and other signs and 
 symbols that marked the establishment 
 of that kind in Mississippi valley." 
 
 For three years he worked faithfully in 
 the office of the Courier , and at the age 
 of fifteen considered himself a full-fledged 
 journeyman printer. He had been earn 
 ing fifty cents a week, and had saved his 
 
28 Mark Twain 
 
 money. One evening upon coming home 
 he asked his mother for five dollars. On 
 being questioned as to what he wanted 
 with it, he said he wanted it to start out 
 traveling with. He failed to obtain the 
 five dollars, but he assured his mother 
 that he would go all the same, and he 
 really went, nor did the old lady ever 
 set eyes on him again until he had be 
 come a man. He had made up his mind 
 to run away and see the exposition in 
 New York. He worked his way east 
 ward as a tramp printer, stopping for 
 several weeks in Sandusky and other 
 towns in Ohio. 
 
 Arriving in New York his worldly 
 possessions amounted to twelve dollars, 
 a ten dollar bill of which sum he had 
 sewed into his coat sleeve. After he 
 had visited and carefully examined the 
 long coveted exposition, he found em 
 ployment in the printing office of John 
 N. Green. Some two or three months 
 after this the boy met a man from his 
 own town of Hannibal, and fearing that 
 his whereabouts would be reported, he 
 
His Life and Work. 29 
 
 suddenly took his departure for Philadel 
 phia. He secured work in the office of 
 the Ledger and other newspapers, and 
 remained in the Quaker city for several 
 months. While here, as a result of 
 taking the part of a poor boy who was 
 imposed upon by a fireman, he was 
 severely beaten by the latter, so that "he 
 resembled Lisbon after the earthquake, " 
 to quote his own language. One day he 
 made up his mind that he had seen 
 enough of the world in the Eastern States, 
 and, with his ten dollars still sewed in 
 his coat sleeve, he started westward, 
 having in view his Missouri home. He 
 tarried awhile in Cincinnati, Louisville 
 and other river towns, and finally arrived 
 in St. Louis. He was at this time seven 
 teen years of age, and his longings and 
 ambitions for river life returned. I first 
 wanted to be a cabin boy," he says, "and 
 then a deck hand who stood on the end 
 of the stage plank with a coil of rope in 
 his hand, because he was particularly 
 conspicuous. But these were only day 
 dreams they were too heavenly to be 
 
jo Mark Twain 
 
 contemplated as real possibilities. * * 
 I said I never would come home again 
 till I was a pilot and could come in glory. 
 But somehow I could not manage it. I 
 went meekly aboard a few boats that lay 
 packed together like sardines at the long 
 St. Louis wharf, and very humbly in 
 quired for the pilots, but got only a cold 
 shoulder and short words from mates and 
 clerks. But I was ashamed to go home. 
 * * * I was in Cincinnati and I set to 
 work to map out a new career. I had 
 been reading about the recent explora 
 tions of the River Amazon by an expedi 
 tion sent out by our government. It 
 was said that the expedition, owing to 
 difficulties, had not thoroughly explored 
 a part of the country lying about the 
 head-waters, some four thousand miles 
 from the mouth of the river. It was 
 only about fifteen hundred miles from 
 Cincinnati to New Orleans where I 
 could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty 
 dollars left. I would go on and complete 
 the exploration of the Amazon. I packed 
 my valise, and took passage on an ancient 
 
His Life and Work. 31 
 
 tub, called the Paul Jones, for New 
 Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars 
 I had the scarred and tarnished splendors 
 of her main saloon principally to my 
 self, for she was not a creature to attract 
 the eye of wiser travelers. When we 
 presently got under way, and went pok 
 ing down the broad Ohio, I became a 
 new being, and the subject of my own 
 admiration, I was a traveler. A word 
 had never tasted so good in my mouth 
 before. * * I kept my hat off all the 
 time, and stayed where the wind and the 
 sun could strike me, because I wanted to 
 get a bronzed and weather-beaten look of 
 an old traveler. Before the second day 
 was half gone, I experienced a joy which 
 filled me with the purest gratitude; for I 
 saw that the skin had begun to blister 
 and peel off my neck and face. I wished 
 that the boys and girls at home could see 
 me now. 
 
 4 After two weeks the Paul Jones 
 reached New Orleans, and the young 
 traveler discovered two things. One was 
 that a vessel would not be likely to sail 
 
32 Mark Twain 
 
 for the mouth of the Amazon under ten 
 or twelve years; and the other was that 
 the nine or ten dollars still left in my 
 pocket would not suffice for so imposing 
 an exploration as I had planned, even if 
 I could afford to wait for a ship. There 
 fore it followed that I must contrive a 
 new career. The Paul Jones was now 
 bound for St. Louis. I planned a siege 
 against my pilot, and at the end of three 
 hard days he surrendered. He agreed to 
 teach me the Mississippi from New 
 Orleans to St. lyouis for five hundred 
 dollars, payable out of the first wages I 
 should receive after graduating. I 
 entered upon the small enterprise of 
 learning* twelve or thirteen hundred 
 miles of the great Mississippi river with 
 the easy confidence of my time of life. 
 If I had really known what I was about 
 to require of my faculties, I should not 
 have had the courage to begin. " 
 
 "The work proved hard and discourag 
 ing for the youth, but he finally reached 
 the desired position of pilot; and had ttve 
 proud satisfaction of receiving two bun- 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 clred and fifty dollars per month. Here 
 he remained for five years, till he was 
 twenty-six, when the growth of railroads 
 and the Civil War made piloting un 
 profitable. " 
 
 An old steamboatman, Captain H. E. 
 Bixby, furnishes the following interesting 
 reminiscences of Mark Twain s experi 
 ence of a pilot: "In 1852 I was chief 
 pilot on the Paul Jones, a boat that made 
 occasional trips from Pittsburg to New 
 Orleans. One day a tall, angular, 
 hoosier-like young fellow, whose limbs 
 appeared to be fastened with leather 
 hinges, entered the pilot house, and in a 
 peculiar, drawling voice said: 
 
 " Good mawnin, sir. Don t you want 
 to take er piert young fellow and teach 
 iin how to be er pilot? 
 
 " No sir; there is more bother about it 
 than it s worth/ 
 
 " I wish you would, mister. I m er 
 printer by trade, but it don t pear to 
 gree with me, and I m on my way to 
 Central America for my health. I believe 
 
34 Mark Twain 
 
 I ll make a tolerable good pilot, cause I 
 like the river/ 
 
 What makes you pull your words 
 that way? 
 
 " I don t know, mister; you ll have to 
 ask my ma. She pulls hern too. Ain t 
 there some way that we can fix it, so 
 that you ll teach me how to be er pilot? 
 " The only way is for money. 
 " How much are you going to charge? 
 " Well, I ll teach you the river for 
 $500. 
 
 " Gee whillikens! he! he! I ain t got 
 $500, but I ve got five lots in Keokuk, 
 Iowa, and 2,000 acres of land in Ten 
 nessee that is worth two bits an acre any 
 time. You can have that if you want it. 
 "I toll him I did not care for his land, 
 and after talking awhile he agreed to pay 
 $100 in cash, $150 in twelve months and 
 the balance when he became a pilot. 
 He was with me for a long time, but 
 sometimes took occasional trips with 
 other pilots. He was always drawling 
 out dry jokes, but then we did not pay 
 any attention to him." 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 Upon the western rivers the occurrence 
 of sand bars, together with snags and 
 other obstructions, require constant 
 watchfulness on the part of those who run 
 the boats, and frequent soundings in 
 shallow places. Upon approaching a 
 sand bar or shallow, the captain takes 
 his stand upon the edge of the hurricane 
 deck, in front of the pilot house, while 
 one of the crew stands at the bow to cast 
 the lead and give the soundings to the 
 captain, who repeats them to the pilot. 
 When the line man draws up the lead 
 and finds the water down two feet, he 
 sings out "by the mark twain," or-as is 
 more frequently the case, simply mark 
 twain." The captain repeats to the 
 pilot, and it becomes the latter to mind 
 his helm; but as the length of the line 
 below the water increases, he gives out 
 the soundings in a constantly increasing 
 joyous tone, singing out, "three feet" or 
 "four feet" in a sing-song cadence, until 
 all danger is passed and the line is laid 
 away. This specimen of Mississippi 
 river vernacular " Mark Twain" was in 
 
36 Mark Twain 
 
 his later years adopted by Samuel L. 
 Clemens as a nom de plume. 
 
Bis Life and Work. 
 
 III. 
 
 IN NEVADA AND CALIPOENIA. 
 
 At the outbreak of the Civil War, 
 Mark Twain was a regularly employed 
 pilot on the river steamboat Alonzo 
 Childs. He remained at the wheel until 
 the craft was converted into a Confederate 
 ram, the opening of the war having put 
 an end to profitable piloting. 
 
 Young Clemens at the age of twenty- 
 four years, returned to Hannibal, and 
 enlisted as a three months volunteer in 
 the Confederate army under General 
 Price. 
 
 In a magazine article printed some 
 years since he related his experiences as 
 a soldier, in a paper entitled "The Pri- 
 
38 Mark Twain 
 
 vate History of a Campaign that Failed." 
 The following is his account of the or 
 ganization of the company : 
 
 "I was visiting in the small town 
 where my boyhood had been spent 
 Hannibal, Marion County. Several of 
 us got together in a secret place by night 
 and formed ourselves into a military 
 company. One Tom Lyman, a young 
 fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no 
 military experience, was made captain; 
 I was made second lieutenant. We had 
 no first lieutenant; I do not know why; 
 it was long ago. There were fifteen of 
 us. By the advice of an innocent con 
 nected with the organization, we called 
 ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not 
 remember that any one found fault with 
 the name. I did not ; I thought it sounded 
 quite well. The young fellow who pro 
 posed this title was perhaps a fair sample 
 of the kind of stuff we were made of. 
 He was young, ignorant, good-natured, 
 well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, 
 and given to reading chivalric novels and 
 singing forlorn love-ditties. He had 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 some pathetic little nickel-plated aristo 
 cratic instincts, and detested his name, 
 which was Dunlap; detested it, partly 
 because it was nearly as common in that 
 region as Smith, but mainly because it 
 had a plebeian sound to his ear. So he 
 tried to ennoble it by writing it in this 
 way: d* Unlap. That contented his eye, 
 but left his ear unsatisfied, for people 
 gave the new name the same old pro 
 nunciation emphasis on the front end of 
 it. He proved useful to us in his way; 
 he named our camps for us, and he gen 
 erally struck a name that was no slouch/ 
 as the boys said. 
 
 Having been a pilot, and therefore 
 knowing the channel and being familiar 
 with the points where steamboats would 
 have to hug the shore, Lieutenant 
 Clemens was detailed to special duty on 
 the river. He was captured and paroled. 
 Being captured a second time, he was 
 sent to St. I,ouis, and imprisoned in a 
 tobacco warehouse. He got to thinking 
 the matter over the possibility of being 
 sent to Grant s army, by which he was 
 
4O Mark Twain 
 
 first captured, to be exchanged, and by 
 which, if recognized, he would certainly 
 be shot for a violation of his parole. He 
 finally succeeded in making his escape 
 and started westward. 
 
 President Lincoln had appointed 
 James W. Nye as Governor of Nevada, 
 and Orion Clemens, an older brother of 
 Samuel, was selected as Territorial Sec 
 retary by the President. Sam joined his 
 brother at Carson City in the capacity of 
 private secretary, but fearing that the 
 influence of his brother would not be 
 sufficient to save him if he should be 
 recognized by passing officers or soldiers 
 of the Union army, he did not remain 
 long in Carson, but pushed on to an out 
 of the way mining camp, called Aurora, 
 where he remained until he fancied the 
 storm had blown over. While in Aurora 
 he wrote a series of letters to the Vir 
 ginia City Enterprise, which subsequently 
 resulted in his obtaining an editorial 
 position upon that journal. 
 
 Nevada, at that time, was swarming 
 with adventurers. Bankrupt tradesmen 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 were flocking there from other territories. 
 College graduates, tired of grubbing for 
 Greek roots, went there to grub for gold 
 and silver. Murderers and thieves, es 
 caped from justice, gamblers and the 
 outcasts from the cities joined the throng 
 and society became very lively in the 
 mining towns of the territory. The 
 fashionable ornaments of the day con 
 sisted of an eight inch revolver, an 
 Arkansas toothpick and jack boots. 
 
 In the mining regions Mark Twain 
 passed through divers experiences. He 
 worked at day s wages in a quartz mill, 
 and was explorer and prospector. Many of 
 his sketches, afterward incorporated, in 
 "The Jumping Krog" and "Roughing It," 
 were published at that time in local or 
 Eastern journals. Once for the space of 
 a few moments, he owned the famous 
 Comstock lode, and was worth millions. 
 He found out all this after he had sold 
 the claim. 
 
 During the winter of 1861-2 he returned 
 to Carson City for a time. There was 
 little doing at the territorial capital, and 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 in the rear of Governor Nye s private 
 office was a comfortable room, where 
 Clemens and the other attaches of the 
 offices wiled away the winter days at 
 cards and story telling. 
 
 In the spring of 1862 he accepted the 
 local editorship of the Virginia City 
 Enterprise, and upon that paper utilized 
 for the first time his pseudonym of 4 Mark 
 Twain." He perpetrated many broad 
 and practical jokes through his paper. 
 His sharp pen caused a man named 
 Willis, then city editor of the Virginia 
 Union to hunting up his record. This 
 resulted in Clemens sending Willis a 
 challenge to mortal combat. Willis 
 would not accept, for he said he would 
 not meet any one on the field of honor 
 except a man of honor. His best man 
 then challenged Clemens, but he too 
 declined on the same ground given by 
 Willis. At that time dueling had just 
 been made popular by a meeting between 
 Tom Fitch, the silver-tongued orator, 
 and Joseph T. Goodman, editor of the 
 Enterprise. But the matter was dropped, 
 
His Life and Work. 43 
 
 and Mark Twain and Willis never met 
 upon the field of honor. 
 
 "About the year 1863," says Robert 
 Fulford, "I was a printer on the Virginia 
 City Enterprise, and Mark was on the 
 local staff. Mark and I roomed together 
 across the divide in a place known as 
 Gold Hill, about a mile from Virginia 
 City. He was a droll, dry sort of a 
 fellow, delighted in practical jokes, and 
 the boys had to be constantly on the alert 
 for fear of some new scheme he would 
 spring upon them." 
 
 A club of good fellows was organized 
 in Virginia City by Mark Twain, Dan 
 De Quille, Frank May, Louis Aldrich 
 and others, under the name of the " Vis 
 igoths," and they carried their practical 
 jokes to such an extent that they gained 
 a somewhat unfavorable reputation. 
 
 While in Virginia City, some miners 
 came down from Calaveras, and told 
 Mark Twain about the miners there 
 loading a frog up with shot. And it was 
 a fact. In those days the men in the 
 camps would bet about anything, and 
 
44 Mark Twain 
 
 one day they got to betting about how far 
 some frogs could jump. They conceived 
 the idea of filling one of the rival frogs 
 with shot, and did it, and the frog couldn t 
 jump. Mark wrote out the story for the 
 Enterprise, and in this way "The Jump 
 ing Frog of Calaveras" first saw the light 
 oi day. 
 
 Many interesting anecdotes are told of 
 the humorist s life in Virginia City, and 
 he tells one himself of how the funniest 
 thing he ever wrote came to an untimely 
 end and was lost to the world through 
 the interferance of an "editorial" com 
 positor. In Nevada, at that time, it was 
 the custom of the proprietor of every new 
 saloon, to send a basket of his choicest 
 wines to the newspaper office, and for 
 the editor to return the compliment by 
 giving a glowing account of the brilliancy 
 of the affair. A basket of unusually 
 choice wine had been sent to the office 
 one day, from a saloon of a very aristo 
 cratic order that was to be opened. 
 Mark was to "write up" the opening. 
 He wrote a few lines in the best of 
 
His Life and Work. 45 
 
 English and then it began to be badly 
 mixed, and as he represented bottle after 
 bottle as having been sampled, approved 
 and emptied, he drifted into worse and 
 worse confusion, until finally the article 
 was all tangled up, as might be supposed 
 of a man who had drank a basket of 
 mixed wines. When the paper came 
 out Mark could not find his cherished 
 article, but instead found a short para 
 graph setting forth in the most common 
 place way, that a basket of wines had 
 
 been received from Mr. , and that 
 
 they were very fine, etc. Mark was 
 mad and found that one of the printers 
 was responsible. The fellow said he 
 could not make head or tail of the copy, 
 and thought Mr. Clemens must have 
 been drunk when he wrote it, so he tore 
 it up and substituted the paragraph. 
 The humorist mourned long for the loss 
 of the article which he could not re 
 produce, and to this day believes that it 
 was the most brilliant of any of his pro 
 ductions, even before or since. 
 
 During this period in his career > Mark 
 
46 Mark Twain 
 
 gave to the world many of the short 
 humorous sketches that made him famous. 
 He had already acquired a name on the 
 Pacific Coast, and his newspaper articles 
 were beginning to attract attention east 
 of the Rocky Mountains. Among these 
 sketches were "The Undertaker s Chat," 
 "The Petrified Man," and "The Mar 
 velous Bloody Massacre. " Some of the 
 quaintest and brightest things which 
 have appeared under his name originally 
 enlivened the pages of the Enterprise 
 with its crimson catalogue of murders, 
 duels and Judge lyynch executions. 
 
 In 1863 the Gould and Curry mine on 
 the Comstock paid dividends amounting 
 to $100 to $150 a share. Whenever a 
 dividend was declared, the San Francisco 
 Bulletin, after announcing the fact, would 
 add: "Wonder if this dividend was 
 cooked?" A certain San Francisco 
 capitalist, being in Virginia City one day 
 after one of these monthly queries, told 
 the cause of them. It is a fact that one 
 mining company had hired money and 
 declared a dividend. This was the Dana 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 mine, which never had a foot of ore, but 
 the dividend raised the price of the stock 
 to a respectable figure, at which the 
 owners thereof disposed of their stock. 
 This San Francisco capitalist stated that 
 this swindle had caught the proprietors 
 of that journal somewhat heavily. "But," 
 he added, "if the Bulletin wants to find 
 a company nearer home which is borrow 
 ing money to pay dividends, I can give 
 you an instance in point. The Spring 
 Valley Water Company has hired money 
 to pay its two last dividends, and all the 
 big fish are getting out and letting the 
 little fish in. Perhaps that might attract 
 that journal s indignation also." 
 
 Twain and another writer employed on 
 the Enterprise counseled together on the 
 improbability of a plain notice of the fact 
 of the Spring Valley Water Company s 
 hiring money to pay dividends made, as 
 it must be, in a country journal would 
 attract any notice whatever in the metro 
 politan press. Accordingly, in order to 
 overcome the difficulty surrounding the 
 "country" location, the matter was held 
 
48 Mark Twain 
 
 under advisement for one day, much to 
 the disgust of the San Francisco capitalist. 
 
 On the second day Mark announced 
 that he had surmounted the * country" 
 difficulty, and, sure enough, he had. 
 Accordingly, in the local columns of the 
 Enterprise the next morning appeared an 
 account of a terrible tragedy that had 
 been committed in "the great pine forest 
 between Empire City and Dutch Nick s" 
 the day before. The story went on to 
 state that a man named Hopkins, who 
 resided there, and who had owned mil 
 lions in the Comstock, had been induced 
 to sell out his entire mining interests by 
 a relative of his, who was one of the editors 
 of the Bulletin. By the same advise he had 
 invested every dollar in the Spring Valley 
 Water Company, and, on learning that 
 its two last dividends had been paid with 
 borrowed money, he became so violently 
 nsane, that he murdered his wife and 
 thirteen children, under the impression 
 that they would come to immediate want. 
 
 The next day Mark published a card 
 in which he took it all back except the 
 
His Life and Work. 49 
 
 way the money had been procured to pay 
 the dividends, and adding that it took a 
 fearful tragedy to get any truth into a 
 San Francisco newspaper anyhow." 
 
 J. H. Stebbins, an old time printer, 
 relates the following incident of Twain s 
 life in Virginia City: "Clemens was 
 local reporter on The Enterprise, and I 
 was a printer on the same paper. 
 Clemens was writing humorous sketches, 
 but his fame as a humorist was young 
 yet. He was an inveterate smoker, and 
 smoked the foulest-smelling pipe in Vir 
 ginia City by au odds. Clemens office 
 was just off the composing-room, and 
 although printers, as a rule, are not 
 squeamish about pipes and things, this 
 pipe was breeding a revolution. It 
 smelled so infernally bad that we always 
 spoke of it as The Remains. There 
 were numerous plots suggested to get 
 The Remains out of the way, but we 
 hesitated about putting them into execu 
 tion when we learned that it was a pipe 
 of considerable value, and one that he 
 cherished on account of its associations or 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 something. It was clear, however, that 
 something had to be done, and we finally 
 concluded to present Clemens with a new 
 pipe. \Ve had suffered so much from the 
 old pipe of a thousand smells that we 
 felt justified in making him the victim of 
 a joke, if we could, and so we scoured 
 the town and bought the cheapest pipe 
 we could find that would pass after night 
 for a good one. I think it cost thirty 
 cents. One night, after we had the 
 paper up, we all filed solemnly out into 
 the local -room and presented Clemens 
 with the pipe. We threw as much cere 
 mony into the presentation as possible. 
 One of the boys made an address that 
 was really affecting. He talked about 
 the toilers in the profession of journalism, 
 their long nights of labor when all the 
 rest of the world was wrapped in peace 
 ful slumber. Then he worked in some 
 of the poetry about tobacco and the solace 
 it afforded the tired brain. He spoke of 
 the warm friendship that existed between 
 the local department and the composing- 
 room, and hoped nothing would ever 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 occur to sever these silken ties. Then 
 he handed him the twenty -five-cent frand, 
 wiped his fingers through his eyes and 
 sat down. 
 
 1 Clemens was knocked completely out 
 for a time, but he pulled himself together 
 and returned his thanks in a very feeling 
 manner. He said the pretty gift from 
 his co-workers on the paper touched him 
 deeply, and he would retain it long as a 
 souvenir of pleasant days. The old pipe 
 had long been a friend and companion. 
 It had been a comforter in lonely hours; 
 but this handsome gift from friends he 
 loved made the parting easy, and as a 
 climax to his remarks he threw the ill- 
 smelling old-timer out of the window. 
 We accepted his invitation to go down 
 stairs with him, and knowing the mis 
 erable swindle we had perpetrated, every 
 dollar he spent gave us a pang. 
 
 4 The very next night, while Clemens 
 was smoking his new pipe, the bowl of 
 the cussed thing split open from stem to 
 stern. We heard him growling to him 
 self, and looking out of a hole in the wall 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 through which he shoved copy, we saw 
 him brushing the ashes off his desk and 
 clothes and swearing softly in a very 
 picturesque manner. He didn t say a 
 word to us about the pipe or its fate, and 
 you bet we said nothing to him. It was 
 evident, however, that he had done some 
 thinking, for he appeared at the office 
 next night complacently smoking The 
 Remains/ He had gone down into the 
 back yard and hunted it up." 
 
 From Virginia City, Mark Twain 
 drifted as a matter of course to San 
 Francisco the harbor of all adventurers 
 on the coast. He was in a chronic state 
 of impecuniosity when he arrived at the 
 Golden Gate. He had furnished some 
 correspondence to the Morning Call from 
 Nevada, and to the office of that news 
 paper he immediately betook himself. 
 He wanted work and money. He wore 
 a ragged felt hat, a soldier s blue over 
 coat, and pantaloons which had formed a 
 passing acquaintance with the tops of his 
 boots. George Barnes, who was at that 
 time editor of the Call, told him to go 
 
His Life and Work 
 
 to work the next day, and gave him an 
 order on the business office for money 
 enough to make himself look respectable. 
 The next day Twain took possession of 
 his chair, and for six weary months 
 Barnes tried to get some work cut of 
 him. 
 
 At the end of that time, in his good- 
 natured way, he tried to let Mark down 
 and out easily and politely, by saying to 
 him, "Mark, don t you think you are 
 wasting your time and talents in doing 
 local work?" 
 
 "V/hat do you mean?" said Mark. 
 
 "Why, I think with your style and 
 talent you could make more money 
 writing for first-class magazines than in 
 such work as you are doing now." 
 
 "That means that you don t want me 
 any more, I suppose?" and he put his feet 
 on the desk and smiled blandly at Barnes. 
 
 "Well, I think you are better fitted 
 for that class of work." 
 
 "The fact is you have come to the 
 conclusion that I am not the kind of a 
 man you want." 
 
54 Mark Twain 
 
 "Well, if you will have it," said 
 Barnes. "You are not. You are the 
 laziest, most shiftless, good-for-nothing 
 specimen I ever saw around a newspaper 
 office. I have tried for six months to 
 get some work out of you and failed, and 
 I have come to the conclusion that it is 
 useless to keep you any longer." 
 
 "Barnes," replied Twain, in his most 
 placid manner, "you are not as smart a 
 man as I thought you were. You have 
 been six months in finding that out, 
 and I knew it the day I came to work. 
 Give us an order on the office for three 
 days pay and I git." 
 
 One of the printers employed upon 
 the Call at the time, furnishes the follow 
 ing reminiscence: 
 
 "One evening Clemens came into our 
 room where we were shining our boots. 
 
 "What s up, boys?" he asked. 
 
 "We re going to the theatre." 
 
 "But it s not seven yet, you ve plenty 
 of time, "said Clemens, sitting down on 
 the corner of the bed. "I want to tell 
 you a good story," and he proceeded to 
 
His Life and Work. 55 
 
 entertain us with an account of his latest 
 practical joke. This reminded him of a 
 personal experience on a steamboat, which 
 in turn led to a graphic description of 
 his life on the Mississippi. He talked on 
 without pause, holding our closest inter 
 est, by his artful blending of humor, 
 pathos, vivid description and thrilling 
 incident, until at length, breaking off 
 suddenly, he said with a laugh: 
 
 /Well, boys, if you re going to the 
 theater, it s time you were off." 
 
 We drew our watches. It was eleven 
 o clock." 
 
 His love for practical joking while 
 living in California, called forth the fol 
 lowing from a San Francisco paper some 
 years ago: 
 
 There have been moments in the lives 
 of various kind-hearted and respectable 
 citizens of California and Nevada, when, 
 if Mark Txvain were before them as 
 members of a vigilance committee for any 
 mild crime, such as mule-stealing or 
 arson, it is to be feared his shrift would 
 have been short. What a dramatic 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 picture the idea conjures up, to be sure! 
 Mark, before those honest men, infuriated 
 by his practical jokes, trying to show 
 them what an innocent creature he was 
 when it came to mules, or how the only 
 policy of fire insurance he held had 
 lapsed, how void of guile he was in any 
 direction, and all -with that inimitable 
 drawl, that perplexed countenance, and 
 the peculiar scraping back of the left foot, 
 like a boy speaking his first piece at 
 school. It is but fair to say that the fun 
 that Mark mixed up for citizens in those 
 days was not altogether appreciated in 
 the midst of it, for some one, touched too 
 sharply, surge bat amarialiquid, and Mark 
 had another denouncer joined to the 
 wounded throng." 
 
 "I think I may justly claim to having 
 kept Mark Twain in the realms of liter 
 ature," said General John McComb to 
 the writer not long ago. "In 1864 Mark 
 Twain was city editor of the Morning 
 Call. In those days the city editor of a 
 San Francisco newspaper had something 
 else to do than sit at his desk, make out 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 details and read copy. Mark used gen 
 erally to look out for the late police news, 
 would report a lecture or anything that 
 came to hand. I think the local staff 
 then consisted of himself and one reporter. 
 Things did not go exactly to Mark s 
 liking; he detested police reporting, and 
 would not go to the City Hall any oftener 
 than he was obliged to. He was out of 
 his sphere, he thought, and, as a conse 
 quence, used to be disatisned with the 
 world in general and newspaper work in 
 particular. One morning I met him at 
 the corner of Clay and Montgomery 
 Streets. We stopped, shook hands, and 
 he said: 
 
 " Mac, I ve done my last newspaper 
 work; I m going back East. 7 
 
 " What do you mean? I asked. 
 
 " Well," he replied, "I ve been trying 
 to get out of this work a long while. 
 Sometime since I made application 
 through some friends at Washington, for 
 an appointment as Government pilot on 
 the Mississippi River. I have just re 
 ceived notification that my application 
 
58 Mark Twain 
 
 was successful. The salary is $300 per 
 month, and it is not hard work." 
 
 I was a great deal surprised and dis 
 appointed. Clemens and I had become 
 warm friends, and I had conceived a high 
 regard for his literary ability, although I 
 could see he was more or less hampered 
 by his surroundings. I determined to 
 do what I could to cause him to recon 
 sider his determination. With this object 
 in view I said to him: ( Sam, you are 
 making the mistake of your life. There 
 is a better place for you than a Mississippi 
 steamboat. You have a style of writing 
 that is fresh and original and is bound to 
 be popular. If you don t like the tread 
 mill work of a newspaper man, strike up 
 higher; write sketches, write a book; 
 you ll find a market for your stuff, and 
 in time you ll be appreciated and get 
 more money than you can standing 
 alongside the wheel of a steamboat. 
 There s nothing in this pilot business 
 either. You say } T OU are to get $300 a 
 month that s ia greenbacks you re 
 member. Now $300 in greenbacks won t 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 go a great way as you know. Then 
 again, the war will be over in a little 
 while and where 11 you be? You will be 
 thrown out of Government employ and 
 you ll have to fight for work with a lot of 
 older and more experienced men. If you 
 succeed, what will happen? You ll be a 
 river pilot all the rest of your days; and 
 you know what that is. No, Sam, don t 
 you drop your pen now, stick to it, and 
 it will make your fortune." 
 
 "He listened very attentively to what I 
 had said, and I saw that I had made an 
 impression. He said he would think it 
 over, shook my hand and passed on down 
 Clay Street. The next day he came into 
 my office and the first thing he said was: 
 Now, Mac, I ve taken your advice. I 
 thought it all over last night, and finally 
 I wrote to Washington declining the ap 
 pointment, and so I ll stick to the news 
 paper work a while longer." 
 
 On one occasion Clemens was standing 
 at the corner of Clay and Montgomery 
 Streets, leaning against a lamp post and 
 holding a cigar box under his arm. Mrs. 
 
60 Mark Twain 
 
 Captain Edward Poole, a very beautiful 
 woman, and as bright and witty as beau 
 tiful, carne along and stopped and held 
 out her hand, saying: "Why, Mark, 
 where are you going in such a hurry?" 
 
 "I m m-o-o-v-ing," drawled Mark, at 
 the sams time opening the cigar box 
 disclosing a pair cf blue socks, a pipe and 
 two paper collars. 
 
 He never cared for the ladies, was in 
 fact a fish out of water when he happened 
 to be near them. While employed on 
 the daily Alta, he called at a dressmaker s 
 establishment, and for ten minutes 
 addressed a wax figure of a lady, before 
 discovering his mistake. 
 
 In the spring of 1865 he became in 
 terested with Bret Harte in the conduct 
 of the Calif ornian. While sub-editor of 
 that magazine he produced many sketches 
 of merit which were widely copied in the 
 Eastern press. 
 
 In a series of articles entitled Answers 
 to Correspondents," contributed to the 
 Calif ornian^ appeared the following: 
 
 SiMON WH^KivKR/ Sonora. The fol- 
 
His Life and Work. 61 
 
 lowing simple and touching remarks and 
 accompanying poem have just come to 
 hand from the rich gold-mining region of 
 Sonora: 
 
 " l To Mr. Mark Twain: The within 
 parson, which I have sot to poetry under 
 the name and style of c He Done His 
 I^evel Best, was one among the whitest 
 men I ever see, and it ain t every man 
 that knowed him that can find it in his 
 heart to say he s glad the poor cuss is 
 busted and gone home to the States. 
 He was here in an early day, and he 
 was the handyest man about takin holt 
 of anything that come along you most 
 ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful, 
 stirrin cretur, always doin something, 
 and no man can say he ever see him do 
 anything by halvers. Preachin was his 
 natural gait, but he warn t a man to lay 
 back and twidle his thums because there 
 didn t happen to be nothin doin 1 in his 
 own especial line no, sir, he was a man 
 who would meander forth and stir up 
 something for hisself. His last acts was 
 to go to his pile o kings-tf^ (calklatin 
 
62 Mark Twain 
 
 to fill but which he didn t fill) when 
 there was a flush out agin him, and 
 naturally, you see, he went under. And 
 so he was cleaned out, as you may say, 
 and he struck the home-trail, cheerful 
 but flat broke. I knowed this talented 
 man in Arkansaw, and if you would 
 print this humbly tribute to his gorgis 
 abilities, you would greatly obleege his 
 onhappy friend/ 
 
 "HE DONE His LEVEL BEST. 
 
 "Was he mining on the flat 
 
 He done it with a zest; 
 Was he a leading of the choir 
 
 He done his level best. 
 
 If he d a reg lar task to do, 
 
 He never took no rest; 
 Or if twas off-and-on the same 
 
 He done his level best. 
 
 If he was preachin* on his beat, 
 He d tramp from east to west, 
 
 And north to south in cold and heat 
 He done his level best. 
 
 He d yank a sinner outen (Hades),* 
 
 And land him with the blest; 
 Then snatch a prayer n waltz in again, 
 
 And do his level best. 
 
His Life and Work. 63 
 
 He d cuss and sing and howl and pray, 
 And dance and drink and jest, 
 
 And lie and steal all one to him 
 He done his level best. 
 
 Whatever this man was sot to do, 
 
 He done it with a zest; 
 No matter what his contract was, 
 
 He d do his level best. 
 
 October, 1865, 
 
 Verily this man was gifted with gorgis 
 abilities/ and it is a happiness to me to 
 embalm the memory of their lustre in 
 these columns. If it were not that the 
 poet crop is unusually large and rank in 
 California this year, I would encourage 
 you to continue writing, Simon; but as it 
 is, perhaps it might be too risky in you 
 to enter against so much opposition." 
 
 The nomadic taint ran riot in the blood 
 of both Mark Twain and Bret Harte, and 
 they one day deserted the California^ and 
 started inland for another delusive exper 
 iment in mining for gold. On returning 
 to San Francisco, Clemens found his 
 health failing and made arrangements to 
 go to the Sandwich Islands as a news 
 paper correspondent. Before his departure 
 
64 Mark Twain 
 
 he held his first interview with Artemus 
 Ward, the published report of which was 
 widely quoted. 
 
 He sailed in 1866 for Honolulu. 
 There was a wedding on board the 
 vessel, and Mark gave away the bride. 
 The groom was greatly vexed over the 
 absence of a wedding ring, when 
 Mark reached up and pulled off one of 
 the huge curtain rings large enough to 
 go around the girl s two arms. He held 
 it in position on her finger at the proper 
 time, and as she was a remarkably pretty 
 girl he took good care to exercise his 
 privilege of kissing her at the close. 
 
 Arriving in Honolulu, he proceeded to 
 write up the sugar plantations, and 
 descriptions of life and character on the 
 islands. His letters were very readable. 
 
 They were mostly published in the 
 Sacramento Union. He wrote, among 
 other things, a most thrilling description 
 of a burning crater some miles around, 
 full of white and red heated crystal fire 
 caverns and crimson lava. 
 
 There is a touch of wondrous beauty 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 in his picture of the Sandwich Islands 
 written some years after: 
 
 No alien land in all the world has any 
 deep, strong, charm for ine but that one, 
 no other land could so longingly and so 
 beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and 
 waking, through half a lifetime as that 
 one has done. Other things leave me, 
 but it abides; other things change, but it 
 remains the same. For me its balmy 
 airs are always blowing, its summer seas 
 flashing in the sun, the pulsing of its surf 
 beat is in my ear; I can see its garlanded 
 crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy 
 palms drowsing by its shore, its remote 
 summits floating like islands above the 
 cloud rack; I can feel the spirit of its 
 woodland solitudes. I can hear the plash 
 of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the 
 breath of flowers that perished twenty 
 years ago. And these world wanderers 
 who sit before us here have lately looked 
 upon these things! and with eyes of flesh, 
 not the unsatisfying vision of the spirit. 
 I envy them that!" 
 
 The climate of Hawaii soon restored 
 
66 Mark Twain 
 
 him to perfect health, and after an ab 
 sence of two months, he returned to San 
 Francisco, with renewed spirits, and with 
 his world-wide fame still before him. 
 
His Life and Work. 67 
 
 IV. 
 
 ONE OF THE "INNOCENTS." 
 
 During the winter months of 1866-7, 
 a coterie of bright journalists eked out a 
 miserable existence in San Francisco. 
 Prominent among the Bohemians who 
 lunched together at the Miners Restau 
 rant were Charles Warren Stoddard, F. 
 Bret Harte, Charles H. Webb, Prentice 
 Mulford and Mark Twain. None of these 
 gentlemen were quite so poor and needy 
 as Sam Clemens, who on several occa 
 sions ventured upon the dangerous 
 border land of starvation. One day a 
 comedian from a local theatre approached 
 Mark on the street; 
 
68 Mark Twain 
 
 "See here, Clemens," said he, "I need 
 a half-dozen good jokes. Get em up and 
 I ll give you five dollars." 
 
 Sorry, old man," answered Mark, 
 thoughtfully, "but I m afraid the scheme 
 won t work." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Well, the fact is, I m so d d poor, 
 
 if I was found with $5 on my person 
 people would say I stole them; on the 
 other hand, if you got off any decent 
 jokes people would say you stole them, 
 too." 
 
 In January 1867, Stoddard and Mul- 
 ford gave several successful public enter 
 tainments in San Francisco, and fired 
 with ambition, Mark Twain started forth 
 upon a lecture tour through the smaller 
 cities of California and Nevada. In 
 those days most any sort of an enter 
 tainment brought out a crowd, and when 
 it was announced one day in Carson City 
 that Mark was to deliver a lecture for 
 the benefit of something or other, at the 
 Episcopal Church, it was generally un- 
 
His Life and Work. 69 
 
 derstood that the house would be 
 crowded. 
 
 "Well, the night arrived," writes a 
 friend who was present. "Mark as 
 cended the steps into the pulpit about 
 8 o clock, there being a whole lot of the 
 boys and young women, friends of his, 
 as well as a good many old people in 
 front. Mark made a very polite bow, 
 and then unfolded a gigantic roll of brown 
 paper. People thought at first it was a 
 map, but it turned out to be his lecture 
 written on great sheets of grocers brown 
 paper, with an ordinary grocers marking 
 brush. After his bow he turned his 
 back around to the audience and craned 
 his head up to the lamp and thus read 
 from the big sheets as though it would 
 be impossible for him to see any other 
 way. 
 
 "The lecture was on The Future of 
 Nevada, and was the funniest thing I 
 ever heard. He prophesied the great era 
 of prosperity that was before us and 
 sought to encourage us residents of the 
 sagebrush region by foretelling what 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 appeared to be Golconda-like tales of 
 impossible mineral discoveries. Right 
 on the heels of it, however, came the 
 remarkable discoveries of Virginia City, 
 and then we thought he wasn t so far off 
 in his humorous productions. Many a 
 time have I thought of that lecture of 
 Mark Twain. It ought to have been 
 published. I have read all his books, and 
 I never saw anything in any of them 
 better than this." 
 
 For several months Mr. Clemens con 
 tinued this platform experience with 
 profit, the while writing interesting 
 letters to the Eastern newspapers and 
 contributing sketches to the periodicals. 
 In March 1867, he published his first 
 book, "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras," 
 a collection of his best fugitive sketches, 
 and this immediately aroused public at 
 tention, not only in America but also in 
 England. 
 
 Soon after he sailed for New York by 
 way of Panama, and upon arriving there, 
 having found that his little volume was 
 well received, arranged for an English 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 edition, which was published by Messrs. 
 Routiedge & Sons of London. 
 
 From New York Mark proceeded to 
 Washington, where he endeavored to 
 earn his living by writing letters to the 
 San Francisco Alta, and delivering a 
 lecture or two. His lecture experience 
 in Washington was brief but interesting, 
 and he tells all about it in his inimical 
 way, as follows: 
 
 "Well, now, I ll have to tell you some 
 thing about that lecture. It was a little 
 the hardest and roughest experience I 
 ever underwent in my whole career as a 
 lecturer. Now, I had not been in 
 Washington more than a day or two 
 before a friend of mine came to my room 
 at the hotel early one moining, wakened 
 me out of a sound sleep, and nearly 
 stunned me by asking if I was aware of 
 the tact that I was to deliver a lecture at 
 Lincoln hall that evening. I told him 
 no, and that he must be crazy to get out 
 of bed at such an unseemly hour to ask 
 such a foolish question. But he soon 
 assured me that he was perfectly sane by 
 
7 2 Mark Twain 
 
 showing me the morning papers, which 
 all announced that Mark Twain was to 
 lecture that evening and that his subject 
 would be The Sandwich Islands. To 
 say that I was surprised would be putting 
 it mildly. I was mad, for I thought 
 some one had put up a game on me. 
 
 "Well, on careful inquiry, I learned 
 that an old theatrical friend of mine 
 thought he would do me a favor. So he 
 made all the necessary arrangements for 
 me to lecture, with the exception of the 
 slight circumstance that he neglected to 
 inform me of any of his intentions. He 
 rented Lincoln hall, billed the town, and 
 sent the newspapers advertisements and 
 notices about the coming lecture. And 
 the worst of it was he had done all his 
 \vork thoroughly. After learning this I 
 \vas in a dilemma. I had never prepared 
 any lecture on the Sandwich Islands. 
 \Vhat was I to do? I could not back out 
 by telling the people that I was unpre 
 pared. No, that was out of the question, 
 because the people wouldn t believe it. 
 The billing of the town had been too well 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 done for that. So there was only one 
 thing left for me to do, and that was to 
 lock myself in my room and write that 
 lecture between the breakfast hour and 
 half-past seven that evening. Well, I 
 did it, and was on hand at the advertised 
 hour, facing one of the biggest audiences 
 I ever addressed. 
 
 (< I did not use my manuscript, but in 
 those days I always had my lecture in 
 writing, and kept it on a reading stand 
 at one end of the place where I stood on 
 the platform. I was very good at mem 
 orizing, and rarely had any trouble in 
 speaking without notes; but the very fact 
 that I had my manuscript near at hand 
 where I could readily turn to it without 
 having to undergo the mortification of 
 pulling it from my pocket, gave me 
 courage and kept me from making awk 
 ward pauses. But the writing of that 
 Sandwich Island lecture in one day was 
 the toughest job ever put on me." 
 
 One afternoon while sitting in his 
 dingy little room, smoking his cob pipe, 
 Mark became deeply interested in reading 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 about the contemplated trip of the steam 
 ship Quaker City" to Europe and the 
 Holy L,and, and saw the chance of his 
 life. He wrote to General John Mc- 
 Cornb, one of the proprietors of the San 
 Francisco Daily Alta California, asking 
 for an advance of $1,200 in gold, propos 
 ing to pay it in letters at $15 apiece. It 
 was no small request to make of a San 
 Francisco newspaper in the 6o s, but 
 McComb induced his partners to grant 
 the request. 
 
 That was how Mark Twain formed one 
 of the party who sailed in the steamship 
 " Quaker City," Captain Duncan, for an 
 extended excursion to Palestine and the 
 Holy Land. This voyage to the different 
 seaports of Southern Europe and the 
 Orient gave him an opportunity of which 
 he made abundant use. The excursion 
 was a very exclusive sort of affair, and 
 Captain Duncan is authority for the 
 statement that Clemens had represented 
 himself when he applied for passage on 
 the "Quaker City," as a Baptist minister 
 in ill health, from San Francisco. 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 Clemens had accompanied the excur 
 sion party solely as a newspaper corres 
 pondent. He fell in with a crowd of 
 good, respectable Bourgeois and Bour 
 geoises, and if the exaggerated narrative 
 of the "Innocents Abroad," published 
 two years later, is to be relied upon, he 
 certainly must have kept his pious- 
 minded fellow voyagers in a constant 
 state of nervous excitement. 
 
 The story of that eventful tour has 
 been well told in "Innocents Abroad." 
 He set out to explore the Holy L,and and 
 Egypt, stopping, by the way, at Athens. 
 His description of the city at night is one 
 of the most vivid vignettes on record. 
 
 "The full moon was riding high in the 
 heavens now. We sauntered carelessly 
 and unthinkingly to the edge of the 
 lofty battlements of the citadel, and 
 looked down. A vision! and such a 
 vision! Athens by moonlight! It lay 
 in the level plain, right under our feet 
 all spread abroad like a picture, and we 
 looked upon it as we might be looking at 
 it from a balloon. We saw no semblance 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 of a street, but every house, every window, 
 every clinging vine, every projection 
 were marked as clearly as it were at 
 noonday; and yet there was no glare, no 
 glitter, nothing harsh or repulsive. The 
 harshest city was flooded with the 
 yellowest light that ever streamed from 
 the moon, and seemed like some living 
 creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. 
 On its further side was a little temple, 
 whose delicate pillars and ornate front 
 glowed with a rich lustre that chained 
 the eye like a spell; and nearer by, the 
 palace of the king reared its creamy 
 walls out of the mist of a great garden of 
 shrubbery, that was flecked all over with 
 a random shower of amber lights a 
 spray of golden sparks that lost their 
 brightness in the glory of the moon, and 
 glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage 
 like the pallid star of the milky way. 
 Overhead the stately columns, majestic 
 still in their ruin; underfoot, the dream 
 ing city; in the distance, the silver sea. 
 The picture needed nothing. It was 
 perfect." 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 Equally realistic, vivid and interesting 
 were his sketches of scenes and incidents 
 in Palestine and Egypt. Of his experi 
 ence with a camel in Syria, he wrote as 
 folio ws, in a vein of the richest humor: 
 
 "In Syria, at the headwaters of the 
 Jordan, a camel took charge of my over 
 coat while the tents were being pitched, 
 and examined it with a critical eye, all 
 over, with as much interest as if he had 
 an idea of getting one made like it; and 
 then, after he was done figuring on it as 
 an article of apparel, he began to con 
 template it as an article of diet. He 
 put his foot on it, and lifted one of the 
 sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed 
 and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, 
 and all the while opening and closing 
 his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as 
 if he had never tasted anything so good 
 as an overcoat before in his life. Then 
 he smacked his lips once or twice, and 
 reached after the other sleeve. Next he 
 tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile 
 of such contentment that it was plain to 
 see that he regarded that as the daintiest 
 
J8 Mark Twain 
 
 thing about an overcoat. The tails went 
 next, along with some percussion caps 
 and cough candy, and some figpaste from 
 Constantinople. And then my news 
 paper correspondence dropped out, and 
 he took a chance in that manuscript 
 letters written for the home papers. But 
 he was treading on dangerous ground 
 now. He began to come across solid 
 wisdom in those documents that was 
 weighty on his stomach; and occasionally 
 he would take a joke that would shake 
 him up till it loosened his teeth; it was 
 getting to be perilous times with him, 
 but he held his grip with good courage 
 and hopefully, till at last he began to 
 stumble on statements that not even a 
 camel could swallow with impunity. He 
 began to gag and gasp, and his eyes to 
 stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and 
 in about a quarter of a minute he fell 
 over as stiff as a carpenters workbench, 
 and died a death of indescribable agony. 
 I went and pulled the manuscript out of 
 his mouth, and found that the sensitive 
 creature had choked to death on one of 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 the mildest and gentlest statements of 
 fact that I ever laid before a trusting 
 public." 
 
 The trip of the "Quaker City" was 
 not designed as a lengthy tour of Europe, 
 but merely a midsummer excursion of a 
 few months. Brief as was the voyage, 
 however, Mark Twain made the most of 
 it, and gathered material not only enough 
 in quantity to produce a large volume, 
 but enough in quality to give him ever 
 lasting fame. 
 
 Returning to New York, he proceeded 
 to Washington, where he commenced a 
 new career, as the special correspondent 
 ol newspapers in San Francisco, Chicago, 
 and elsewhere. 
 
8o Mark Twain 
 
 V, 
 EIS riE-ST LITEEABY SUCCESS, 
 
 During the following winter Mark 
 Twain sojourned at the National capital, 
 working at odd moments upon the initial 
 chapter of his "Innocents Abroad." His 
 Bohemian habits were retained in every 
 particular, at least the statement is war 
 ranted by a friend who writes of Mark s 
 life at this time: 
 
 4 His room was a perfect chaos, his 
 table a curiosity in its wa}\ On it could 
 be seen any thing from soiled manuscript 
 to old boots. He never laid his paper 
 on the table when writing, partly because 
 there was no available space and partly 
 because the position so necessitated was 
 
His Life and Work. 81 
 
 too much for his lazy bones. With both feet 
 plunged in manuscript, chair tilted back 
 and note-book and pencil in hand he did 
 all the writing I ever saw him do. An 
 ordinary atmosphere would not suffice to 
 set in motion the stream of Mark s ideas. 
 It must first be thoroughly saturated with 
 the vilest tobacco smoke, which he puffed 
 from a villainous pipe said pipe having 
 never received a cleaning as many 
 newspaper friends of those days can 
 testify. He regarded this pipe as his 
 salvation from bores, taking a ghastly 
 delight in puffing away like a locomotive 
 when an undesirable visitor dropped in, 
 and eagerly watching the paleness which 
 gradually crept over the face of the enemy 
 as the poisonous stuff got in its work." 
 
 One day while Mark was busily en 
 gaged with his work, in his dingy little 
 room, a tall, sallow-faced man, with a 
 miserable expression of countenance, and 
 a deep, consumptive cough, entered the 
 room and without an invitation sat down. 
 Turning to the visitor, Clemens said: 
 
 "Well-. 11 
 
82 Mark Twain 
 
 The visitor said "Well." 
 
 "What can I do for you?" asked the 
 humorist. 
 
 "Well, nothin in particular. I heard 
 em say that you are the man that 
 writes funny things, and as I have several 
 hours to loaf around before the train 
 leaves, I thought I would come around 
 and get you to make me laugh a little. I 
 ain t had a good laugh in many a day, 
 and I didn t know but what you mout 
 accommodate me." 
 
 Clemens scowled at the man, who, 
 thinking that the humorist was present 
 ing him with a specimen of facial fun, 
 began to titter. 
 
 "That ll do fust rate, cap n, but I d 
 ruther hear you talk. I can make a 
 mouth at a man about as easy as any 
 fellow you ever saw, an w at I want is a 
 few words from you that ll jolt me like a 
 wagin had backed agin me." 
 
 "My friend, I am very busy to-day, 
 and" 
 
 "Yes, I know all that. I am very 
 busy myself, except that I ve got about 
 
His Life and Work. 83 
 
 two hours to loaf, an as I said jest now, 
 I d like for you to get oft something that 
 I can take home. Wy, I can go around 
 an git the drinks on it for a week." 
 
 4 Won t you have a cigar?" asked 
 Clemens, desirous of learning whether the 
 man was a smoker. 
 
 u No, I never could stand a seeggah." 
 
 The humorist smiled, and taking up 
 his pipe, filled it up with strong tobacco, 
 and began to puff. Til keep him in 
 here, now," mused the smoker, "until he 
 is as sick as a dog. I wouldn t consent 
 to his departure, if he was to get down 
 on his knees and pray for deliverance." 
 
 " No thing does a man more good than 
 a hearty laugh," the visitor said, cough 
 ing as a cloud of smoke surrounded his 
 head. "Wah, hoo, wah, hoo! Don t 
 you think it is a leetle close in here?" 
 
 "Oh, no," replied Mark, arising and 
 locking the door. 
 
 "I like a little fresh a r, specially when 
 thar s so much smoke in a room." 
 
 "Oh, there s air enough here. How 
 did you leave all the folks?" 
 
84 Mark Twain 
 
 "Well, Gabe, my youngest wah, hoo, 
 wall, lioo ain t as peart as he niout be, 
 but all the others air stirrin . You ain t 
 got 110 chillun, I reckon? " 
 
 "No," the humorist replied, as he vig 
 orously puffed his pipe. 
 
 "Well, I m sorry for you. Thar 
 ain t iiothin that adds to a man s nachul 
 enjoyment like chillun. That boy Gabe, 
 what I was talkin about jest now, w y, I 
 wouldn t give him up fur the finest yoke 
 of steers you ever seen." 
 
 "You wouldn t?" 
 
 "No sir, wouldn t tech em with a ten- 
 foot pole would refuse em pine blank. 
 Podner, don t you wah, hoo, wah, hoo 
 think it s a gettin a little too clost in 
 here now?" 
 
 "No, not a bit, just right." 
 
 "Well, I don t know the style in this 
 place, but I ll try an put up with it. 
 
 After a moment s silence the visitor 
 continued: 
 
 "When I left home, Mur that s my 
 wife said to me, saj S she, Now, say, 
 while you are thar, don t smoke that cob 
 
His Life and Work. 85 
 
 pipe/ I wanted to follow her advice, 
 but I put my wah, hoo, wah, hoc, old 
 fuzee in my jeans, an now I bl cve I ll 
 take a smoke." 
 
 He took out a cob pipe, and a twist of 
 new tobacco, known in his neighborhood 
 as "Tough Sam," whittled off a handful, 
 filled his pipe, lighted it, placed his feet 
 on the stove and went to work. Mark 
 soon began to snuff the foul air, but he 
 was determined to stand it. The visitor 
 blew smoke like a tar kiln. Mark grew 
 restless. Beads of cold perspiration began 
 to gather on his brow. Throwing down 
 his pipe, he hastily unlocked the door, 
 and fled. On the sidewalk he met a 
 friend. 
 
 "Hello, Clemens, what s the matter?" 
 
 Twain related what had occurred. 
 
 "Oh, you mean that fellow in brown 
 jeans?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 l You ought to have had better sense 
 than to light your pipe in his presence." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
86 Mark Twain 
 
 " Because he s a member of the Ar 
 kansas Legislature. " 
 
 William M. S lev/art, United States 
 Senator from Nevada, was an acquaint 
 ance of the humorist at this time, and 
 some years since, while in a reminiscent 
 mood, related the following: "I knew 
 Mark Twain in Washington, at a time 
 when he was without money. He told 
 me his condition and said he was very 
 anxious to get out his book. He showed 
 me his notes and I saw that they would 
 make a great book and probabl} r bring 
 him in a fortune. I promised that I 
 would stake him until he had the book 
 written. I made him a clerk to my com 
 mittee in the senate, which paid him $6 
 per day; then I hired a man for $100 per 
 month to do the work. 
 
 <4 I then had rooms on F street in a 
 house which was kept by an ancient lady. 
 She belonged to an old Southern family 
 whose property was lost during the war 
 of the rebellion. I had three large rooms 
 on the second floor and there was also a 
 hall room. I was very anxious that Sam 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 should stick to his work until he finished 
 it, as I was almost as much interested as 
 he. I took him to live with me, and 
 gave him the hall room to sleep in. He 
 did his work in the room which I had 
 fixed up as a study. He would work 
 during the day, and in the evening he 
 would read me what he had written, after 
 which he would stroll out about the city 
 for recreation. He usually returned to 
 his *hall bedroom about midnight and 
 would sit up until nearly morning, read 
 ing, smoking, whistling and singing. 
 
 "His noise used to be a source of great 
 annoyance to the landlady. She was 
 very nervous and unable to sleep when 
 any gas was burning in the house. She 
 regarded Sam as a very careless fellow 
 and I don t think she liked him very 
 well. She came to me one morning with 
 her eyes swollen and her appearance alto 
 gether betokening a very dilapidated 
 condition. She said she had been unable 
 to sleep all night and that in fact for a 
 week she had been losing sleep. Sam 
 was the cause of all her trouble, and she 
 
88 Mark Twain 
 
 told me how he remained up all the night 
 burning gas and creating a rumpus. I 
 informed Sarn of the landlady s complaint 
 and told him he ought to go to bed at a 
 reasonable hour and not frighten the old 
 lady. Sam replied that that was all the 
 fun he had, but he promised to rnend his 
 ways and I thought no more of the mat 
 ter. 
 
 "In a week the landlady came to me 
 again, and this time with tears in her 
 eyes. She said she knew she was re 
 ceiving a very handsome rent from me 
 for the rooms, and that she also was 
 aware she could not rent them again dur 
 ing the season, but she was compelled to 
 ask me to give them up on account of the 
 way Mr. Clemens was wearing her life 
 out. I felt truly sorry for the old lady. 
 I called Sam in and repeated to him what 
 the landlady had said. I told him I 
 would thrash him if I ever heard another 
 complaint. I said I did not want to turn 
 him out because I wanted him to finish 
 his book. He made one of his smart re 
 plies at the expense of the landlady, and 
 
His Life and Work. 89 
 
 I told him I would thrash him then and 
 there. He begged in a most pitiful way 
 for rne not to do so, and I could not help 
 laughing. 
 
 "Seeing that he had gotten me into a 
 good humor again he said that he would 
 not annoy the old woman again, but that 
 he would certainly get even with me for 
 having threatened to thrash him if it 
 took him ten years to do so." 
 
 During the winter spent in Washing 
 ton Mark wrote many newspaper letters 
 and a large number of short, humorous 
 articles. These include "Facts in the 
 Case of the Great Beef Contract, " and the 
 account of his resignation as clerk of the 
 senate committee on conchology. He 
 also wrote "Riley Newspaper Corres 
 pondent" which attracted a vast amount 
 of attention and was liberally quoted. 
 
 In March, 1868, he sailed for San Fran 
 cisco, for the purpose of arranging some 
 trivial business matter on the Pacific 
 Coast. He was absent about five months 
 returning to New York about August. 
 While in California and on board the 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 steamship en route, he completed the 
 manuscript of his Innocents Abroad, or 
 the New Pilgrim Progress." 
 
 Meanwhile the San Francisco Alta had 
 secured copyright upon Mr. Clemens 
 letters from the Holy Land. General 
 John McComb, always the friend of the 
 struggling author, finally persuaded his 
 partners in the Alta office to surrender 
 the copyright, and Mark Twain became 
 the owner of The Innocents Abroad." 
 
 Jn New York, upon his return from 
 San Francisco, he resumed his newspaper 
 correspondence, and in a letter to the 
 Chicago Republican^ dated New York, 
 August 17, 1868, he devoted three columns 
 to an account of his return voyage from 
 California. He carefully reviewed the 
 matter of California immigration, and the 
 changes that had taken place in San Fran 
 cisco since his previous visit. He de 
 scribed the Panama Canal, and vividly 
 portrayed life and character in Central 
 America. Here is an amusing extract 
 from his letter: 
 
 "Possibly you know that they have a 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 revolution in Central America every 
 time the moon changes. All you have 
 to do is to get out in the street, in Pan 
 ama or Aspinwall, and give a whoop, 
 and the thing is done. Shout, down 
 with the Administration! and up with 
 somebody else, and revolution follows. 
 Nine- tenths of the people break for home, 
 slam the doors behind them, and get 
 under the bed. The other tenth go and 
 overturn the Government and banish the 
 officials, from president down to notary 
 public. Then for the next thirty days 
 they inquire anxiously of all comers what 
 sort of a stir their little shivaree made in 
 Europe and America! By that time the 
 next revolution is ready to be touched 
 off, and out they go." 
 
 From this letter it appears that be had 
 visited Hartford, where in the golden 
 future, he was to take up his permanent 
 residence. In closing the letter to the 
 Chicago Republican he wrote: 
 
 <( I have been about ten days in Hart 
 ford, and shall return there before very 
 long. I think it must be the handsomest 
 
$2 Mark Twain 
 
 city in the Union in summer. It is the 
 moneyed center of the State; and one of 
 its capitals, also, for Connecticut is so 
 law-abiding, and so addicted to law, that 
 there is not room enough in one city to 
 manufacture all of the articles they need. 
 Hartford is the place where the insurance 
 companies all live. They use some of the 
 houses for dwellings. The others are for 
 insurance offices. So it is easy to see 
 that there is quite a spirit of speculative 
 enterprise there. Many of the inhabi 
 tants have retired from business, but the 
 others labor along in the old customary 
 way, as presidents of insurance com 
 panies." 
 
 In 1868-9 Clemens was living at the Ev 
 erett House in New York city. Having 
 completed his Innocents Abroad, " he 
 looked about for a publisher. His visit 
 to Hartford early in August, was for the 
 purpose of confering with a publisher 
 there, but he had met with but little en 
 couragement. He next tried a dozen 
 publishing houses in New York, but in 
 vain. He sent his manuscript to other 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 publishers in Boston and Philadelphia 
 with like success. Somewhat disheart 
 ened he laid the book away in his room. 
 
 One day he was entertaining the late 
 Albert D. Richardson in his apartment. 
 In a self-disgusted mood he handed 
 Richardson his manuscript, to see if his 
 friend thought it so irredeemably bad. 
 Richardson read it, pronounced it very 
 clever; full of the extravagant drollery 
 which the American people relish, and 
 expressed his astonishment that any pub 
 lisher of intelligence and experience 
 should have declined it. 
 
 "You can t be any more astonished 
 than I am," remarked Clemens, dryly. 
 "These publishers have astonished as 
 much conceit out of me as a long seige of 
 sea-sickness." 
 
 Richardson, who had published several 
 books through the American Publishing 
 Company, said that he was going to 
 Hartford, that he would take the manu 
 script with him, and that he was sure 
 the company would be glad to publish it. 
 He kept his promise and placed the man- 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 uscript in the hands of Mr. Bliss, then 
 secretary of the company, who was 
 pleased with it. But some of the other 
 officers and directors were averse, and 
 made so many objections that Bliss finally 
 declared that he would publish the vol 
 ume on his own account. This caused 
 some of the others to yield, and <( Inno 
 cents Abroad" was issued, but under pro 
 test, and many misgivings as to its finan 
 cial success. 
 
 The result is well known. The book 
 made Mark Twain famous. The sale, 
 including pirated editions, reached 200,- 
 ooo copies. The American Company 
 cleared in the neighborhood of $75,000 
 by the publication. Mark was crazed 
 with joy. He wrote to his old friend, 
 Captain Bixby, of the steamboat Paul 
 Jones: 
 
 "Thirty tons of paper have been used 
 in publishing my book Innocents 
 Abroad. It has met with a greater sale 
 than any book ever published, except 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin/ The volumes sell 
 from $3 to $5 according to finish, and I 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 get one-half the profit. Not so bad, for 
 a scrub pilot, is it? How do you run 
 Plutn Point a son-of-gun of a place? I 
 would rather be a pilot than anything I 
 ever tried." 
 
 The London Saturday Review of Octo 
 ber 8, 1869, reviewed " Innocents Abroad" 
 at great length, along with other volumes, 
 as a book of travel. The review was 
 written most seriously, and one could 
 imagine the delight of the humorist in 
 reading this tribute to his power. In 
 fact the review so amused Mark Twain 
 that he himself wrote a long burlesque 
 on the Saturday Review criticism, in which 
 he said: 
 
 "To say that Innocents Abroad is a 
 curious book would be to use the faintest 
 language would be to speak of the Mat- 
 terhorn as a neat elevation, or of Niagara 
 as being nice or pretty. Curious is 
 too tame a word wherewith to describe 
 the imposing insanity of this work. 
 There is no word that is large enough or 
 long enough. Let us, therefore, photo 
 graph a passing ^glimpse of book and 
 
$6 t Mark Twain 
 
 author, and trust the rest to the reader. 
 Let the cultivated English student of 
 human nature picture to himself this 
 Mark Twain as a person capable of doing 
 the following-described things and not 
 only doing them, but with incredible in 
 nocence printing them calmly and tran 
 quilly in a book. For instance 
 
 "He states that he entered a hair 
 dresser s in Paris to get shaved, and the 
 first rake the barber gave with his razor, 
 it loosened his hide and lifted him out 
 of the chair. 
 
 "This is unquestionably exaggerated. 
 In Florence he was so annoyed by beg 
 gars that he pretends to have seized and 
 eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge. 
 There is, of course, no truth in this. He 
 gives at full length a theatrical programme 
 seventeen or eighteen hundred years old, 
 which he professes to have found in the 
 ruins of the Coliseum among the dirt, 
 and mould and rubbish. It is a sufficient 
 comment upon this statement to remark 
 that even a cast-iron programme would 
 not have lasted so long under the cireum- 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 stances. In Greece he plainly betrays 
 both fright and flight upon one occasion, 
 but with frozen effrontery puts the latter 
 in this falsely tame form: We sidled 
 towards the Piraeus. Sidled/ indeed! 
 He did iiot hesitate to intimate that at 
 Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the 
 proper course, he got down, took him 
 under his arm, carried him to the road 
 again, pointed him right, remounted, and 
 went to sleep contentedly till it was time 
 to restore the beast to the path once 
 more. He states that a growing youth 
 among his ship s passengers was in the 
 constant habit of appeasing his hunger 
 with soap and oakum between meals. 
 In Palestine he tells of ants that came 
 eleven miles to spend the summer in the 
 desert and brought their provisions with 
 them; yet he shows by his description of 
 the country that the feat was an impossi 
 bility. He mentions, as if it were the 
 most common-place matter, that he cut a 
 Moslem in two in broad daylight in Jer 
 usalem with Godfrey de Bouillon s sword, 
 and would have shed more blood if he 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 had had a grave-yard of his own. These 
 statements are unworthy a moment s at 
 tention. Mr. Twain or any other 
 foreigner who did such a thing in Jerusa 
 lem would be mobbed, and would infalli 
 bly lose his life. But why go on? Why 
 repeat more of his audacious and exasper 
 ating falsehoods? Iet us close fittingly 
 with this one: he affirms that in the 
 mosque of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, 
 I got my feet so stuck up with a compli 
 cation of gurns, slime, and general im 
 punity that I wore out more than two 
 thousand pair of bootjacks getting my 
 boots off that night, and even then some 
 Christian hide peeled off with them/ It 
 is monstrous. Such statements are simply 
 lies there is no other name for them. 
 Will the reader longer marvel at the 
 brutal ignorance that pervades the Amer 
 ican nation. 
 
 "In another place he commits the bald 
 absurdity of putting the phrase tare an 
 ouns into an Italian mouth. In Rome 
 he unhesitatingly believes the legend 
 that St. Philip Neri s heart was so in-. 
 
His Lije and Work. 
 
 flamed with divine love that it burst his 
 ribs believes it wholly, because an 
 author with a learned list of university 
 degrees strung after his name endorses it 
 otherwise, says the gentle idiot, I 
 should have felt a curiosity to know what 
 Philip had for dinner. Our author 
 makes a long, fatiguing journey to the 
 Grotto del Cane, on purpose to test its 
 poisoning powers on a dog got elabor 
 ately ready for the experiment, and then 
 discovered that he had no dog. A wiser 
 person would have kept such a thing dis 
 creetly to himself, but with this harmless 
 creature everything comes out. He hurts 
 his foot in a rut two thousand years old 
 in exhumed Pompeii, and presently, 
 when staring at one of the cinder- like 
 corpses unearthed in the next square, 
 conceives the idea that maybe it is the 
 remains of the ancient Street Commis 
 sioner, and straightway his horror softens 
 down to a sort of chirpy contentment 
 with the condition of things. 
 
 "We have thus spoken freely of this 
 man s stupefying simplicity and inno- 
 
200 Mark Twain 
 
 cence, but we cannot deal similarly with 
 his colossal ignorance. We do not know 
 where to begin. And if we knew where 
 to begin, we certainly should not know 
 where to leave off. We will give one 
 specimen, and one only. He did not 
 know until he got to Rome that Michael 
 Angelo was dead! And then, instead of 
 crawling away and hiding his shameful 
 ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to ex 
 press his pious, grateful sort of satisfaction 
 that he is gone and out of his troubles ! 
 
 "No, the reader may seek out the 
 author s exhibitions of his uncultivation 
 of himself. The book is absolutely dan 
 gerous, considering the magnitude and 
 variety of its misstatements. And yet it 
 is a text- book in the schools of America! " 
 
 Even in our own country * Innocents 
 Abroad" had its curious adventures. In 
 Pennsylvania, a rural clergyman sadly 
 returned the volume to the book agent, 
 with the remark that "the man who could 
 shed tears over the tomb of Adam, must 
 be an idiot." 
 
His Life and Work. 101 
 
 VI 
 
 MAEEIAGE 
 
 Among those cultivated people who 
 were passengers on the steamer Quaker 
 City, in the now memoiable excursion 
 to the Holy Land in 1867, were Judge J. 
 L. Langdon and family of Elmira, New 
 York. A son of Judge Langdon figures 
 as "Dan" in "Innocents Abroad." Miss 
 Lizzie, a handsome and accomplished 
 sister of Dan, was introduced to Mark 
 Twain during the voyage outward, and 
 when the Quaker City sailed homeward 
 Mr. Clemens was paying deep attention 
 to the young lady. She was somewhat 
 of an invalid, and upon the return of the 
 family to Elmira, her illness took a more 
 serious form. 
 
102 Mark Twain 
 
 Perhaps the proximity of Buffalo to 
 Eltnira, the home of his sweetheart, oc 
 casioned Mark s removal to the former 
 city in the latter part of 1869, for at all 
 events we find him there, occupying an 
 editorial position on the Buffalo Express. 
 Subsequently we find him making peri 
 odical visits to the neighboring city of 
 Elmira. 
 
 Miss L,angdon was a young lady of 
 position and fortune. Mark knew that 
 her father did not look upon him with 
 favor, but nevertheless he acquired suffi 
 cient courage to propose, and was re 
 jected, much to his sorrow. 
 
 "Well," he said to the lady, "I didn t 
 much believe you d have me, but I 
 thought I d try." 
 
 After awhile he tried" again with the 
 same result, and then he remarked, with 
 his celebrated drawl, "I think a great 
 deal more of you than if you d said Yes ; 
 but its hard to bear." A third time be 
 met with better fortune, and then came 
 to the most difficult part of his task, to 
 address the old gentleman. 
 
His Life and Work. 10$ 
 
 "Judge," he said to the dignified mil 
 lionaire, "have you seen anything going 
 on between Miss lizzie and me ? " 
 
 1 What ? What ? " exclaimed the judge 
 rather sharply, apparently not under 
 standing the situation, yet doubtless get 
 ting a glimpse of it from the inquiry. 
 
 "Have you seen anything going on 
 between Miss Lizzie and me ? " 
 
 "No, no, indeed ! " replied the mag 
 nate sternly. "No, sir; I have not." 
 
 "Well! Look sharp and you will." 
 
 The judge did "look sharp" after that 
 and one day he called the ardent and de 
 voted young man into his study, and 
 said, after some preamble: 
 
 "Mr. Clemens, I have something to 
 say to you which bears upon a subject of 
 great importance, at least to me and 
 mine. You have been coming here for 
 some time and your manners leave no 
 doubt in my mind as to your object. 
 Now, rny daughter s welfare is very dear 
 to me,., and before I can admit you to her 
 society on the footing of a suitor to her 
 hand. I. would like, to know something 
 
104 Mark Twain 
 
 more than I do about you, your antece 
 dents, etc. Stop a minute ! You must 
 remember that a man may be a good 
 fellow and a pleasant companion on a 
 voyage and all that, but when it is a 
 question as grave as this a wise father 
 tries to take every precaution before al 
 lowing his daughter s affections to be 
 come engaged, and I ask of you, as a 
 gentleman, that you shall give me the 
 names of some of your friends in Califor 
 nia to whom I may write and make such 
 inquiries as I deem necessary, that is, if 
 you still desire our friendship." 
 
 Mark put on a bold front. 
 
 "Sir," said he, bowing profoundly, as 
 became a young man who respects his 
 hoped-for father-in-law, "your sentiments 
 are in every way correct. I approve of 
 them myself, and hasten to add that you 
 have not been mistaken in my senti 
 ments towards your daughter, whom I 
 may tell you candidly seems to me to be 
 the most perfect of her sex, and I honor 
 your solicitation for her welfare. I am 
 not only perfectly willing to ^give you 
 
His Life and Work. 105 
 
 reference, but am only too glad to have 
 an opportunity to do so, which iny 
 natural modesty would have prevented 
 me from offering. Therefore, permit me 
 to give you the names of a few of my 
 friends. I will write them down. First 
 is Lieutenant General John McComb, 
 Alexander Badlam, General L,ander and 
 Col. W. H. L. Barnes. They will all He 
 for me just as I would for them under 
 like circumstances." 
 
 The prospective father-in-law wrote 
 letters of inquiry to several residents of 
 San Francisco, to whom Clemens referred 
 him, and with one exception, the letters 
 denounced him bitterly, especially derid 
 ing his capacity for becoming a good 
 husband. Mark sat beside his fiancee 
 when the letters were read aloud by the 
 old gentleman. There was a dreadful 
 silence for a moment, and then Mark 
 stammered: " Well, that s pretty rough 
 on a fellow, anyhow? " 
 
 His betrothed came to the rescue how 
 ever, and overturned the mass of testi- 
 
io6 Mark Twain 
 
 mony against him by saying, Til risk 
 you, anyhow." 
 
 So they were married, the wedding oc 
 curring in the parlor of the L,angdon 
 residence in Elmira. Mark had in 
 structed his friends in the newspaper 
 office at Buffalo to select him a suite of 
 rooms in a first-class boarding house in 
 the city, and to have a carriage at the 
 depot to meet the bride and groom. Ke 
 knew that they would comply with his 
 request and gave himself no more anxiety 
 about it. 
 
 When the happy couple alighted from 
 the train at the Buffalo depot, they found 
 a handsome carriage, a beautiful span of 
 horses and a driver in livery. They 
 were driven to a handsome house, on an 
 aristocratic street, and as the door was 
 opened there were the parents of the 
 bride to welcome them home. The old 
 folks had quietly arrived by a special 
 train. 
 
 After Mark had gone through the 
 house, and admired its elegant furnish 
 ings, he was informed officially that he 
 
His Life and Work. 107 
 
 had been driven by his own coachman, 
 in his own carriage, to his own house. 
 They say that the tears came to his won 
 derfully dark and piercing eyes, and that 
 all he could say was, Well, this is a 
 first-class swindle." 
 
 For nearly a year Mr Clemens was 
 editorally connected with the Buffalo 
 Express. For this journal he wrote many 
 excellent sketches, among them "An 
 Unburlesqueable Thing," "A Memory," 
 "The Widow s Protest," "Running for 
 Governor" and others. 
 
 The Reverend J. Hyatt Smith relates 
 an amusing anecdote of Mark s life in 
 Buffalo: "When I was living in Buffalo," 
 says Mr. Smith, "Mark Twain occupied 
 a cottage across the street. We did not 
 see very much of him, but one morning 
 as we were enjoying our cigars on the 
 veranda after breakfast, we saw Mark 
 come to his door in his dressing-gown 
 and slippers, and look over at us. He 
 stood at his own door and smoked for a 
 minute, as if making up his mind about 
 something, and, at last, opened his gate 
 
Xo8 Mark Twain 
 
 and came lounging across the street. 
 There was an unoccupied rocking-chair 
 on the veranda, and when my brother 
 offered it to him he dropped into it with 
 a sigh of relief. He smoked for a few 
 moments and said: 
 
 "Nice morning." 
 
 "Yes, very pleasant." 
 
 4 Shouldn t wonder if we had rain by 
 and by." 
 
 "Well, we could stand a little." 
 
 "This is a nice house you have here? " 
 
 "Yes, we rather like it." 
 
 "How s your family ? " 
 
 "Quite well and yours ? " 
 
 "Oh, we re all comfortable." 
 
 "There was another impressive silence, 
 and finally Mark crossed his legs, blew a 
 puff of smoke in the air, and in his lazy 
 drawl, remarked: 
 
 *I suppose you re a little surprised to 
 see me over here so early. Fact is, I 
 haven t been so neighborly, perhaps, as I 
 ought to be. We must mend that state 
 of things. But this morning I came over 
 because I thought you might be inter- 
 
His Life and Work. lop 
 
 ested in knowing that your roof is on 
 fire. It struck rne that it would be a 
 good idea if "But at the mention of 
 fire the whole family hurried upstairs. 
 When we had put the fire out, and had 
 returned to the veranda, Mark wasn t 
 there." 
 
 Some years later when Mr. Clemens 
 was lecturing in Buffalo, after being in 
 troduced to the audience, he spoke as 
 follows in his low, drawling, character 
 istic manner: 
 
 4 I notice many changes since I was a 
 citizen of Buffalo, fourteen or fifteen 
 years ago. I miss the faces of many old 
 friends. They have gone to the tomb 
 to the gallows to the White House, 
 Thus far the rest of us have escaped, but 
 be sure our own time is coming. Over 
 us, with awful certainty, hangs one or 
 the other of these fates. Therefore, that 
 we be secure against error, the wise 
 among us will prepare for them all. This 
 word of admonition may be sufficient; let 
 us pass to cheerfuller things. I remem 
 ber one circumstance of by-gone times 
 
no Mark Twain 
 
 with great vividness. I arrived here 
 after dark on a February evening in 
 1870, with my wile and a large company 
 of friends, when I had been a husband 
 twenty -four hours, and they put us two 
 in a carriage and drove us up and down, 
 and every which way, through all the 
 back streets in Buffalo, until at last I got 
 ashamed and said: I asked Mr. Slee to 
 get me a cheap boarding house, but I 
 didn t mean he should stretch economy 
 to the going outside the state to find it. 
 The fact was there was a practical joke 
 to the fore, which- I didn t know any 
 thing about, and all this fooling around 
 was to give it time to mature. My 
 father-in-law, the late Jervis L,angdon, 
 whom many of you will remember, had 
 been clandestinely spending a fair fortune 
 upon a house and furniture in Delaware 
 Avenue for us, and had kept his secret 
 so well, that I was the only person this 
 side of the Niagara Falls, that hadn t 
 found it out. We reached the house at 
 last about ten o clock and were intro 
 duced to a Mrs. Johnson, the ostensible 
 
Plis Life and Work. in 
 
 landlady. I took a glance around and 
 then iny opinion of Mr. Slee s judgment 
 as a provider of cheap boarding houses 
 for men who had to work for their living 
 dropped to zero. I told Mrs. Johnson 
 there had been an unfortunate mistake, 
 that Mr. Slee had evidently supposed I 
 had money, whereas I only had talent; 
 and so, by her leave, we would abide 
 with her a week, and then she could 
 keep my trunk and we would hunt 
 another place. Then the battalion of 
 ambushed friends and relatives burst in 
 on us, out of closets and from behind 
 curtains; the property was delivered over 
 to us and the joke revealed. Such jokes 
 as these are all too scarce in a person s 
 life. That house was so completely 
 equipped in every detail even to ser 
 vants and a coachman that there was 
 nothing to do but just sit down and live 
 in it." 
 
 In the fall of 1870, Mr. Clemens re 
 signed his position on the Buffalo Express 
 and took up his residence in Hartford, 
 Connecticut. He had received several 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 large sums of money, as royalty on his 
 "Innocents Abroad," and this, together 
 with his wife s funds were invested in 
 local corporations, mostly insurance com 
 panies. During the winter following he 
 wrote "Roughing It," and early in 1871, 
 the book was published. The volume 
 awakened fully as much interest as "In 
 nocents Abroad." It is a humorous 
 record of his life in the mining regions 
 and is replete with adventure, tragedy 
 and comedy. * 
 
 The writing of "Roughing It," was 
 inspired according to Mark s confession, 
 by the stimulating use of tobacco, a 
 luxury which he never denied himself 
 even in his days of poverty. In speaking 
 upon this point, he once said: "I began 
 smoking immoderately when I was eight 
 years old; that is, I began with one hun 
 dred cigars a month, and by the time I 
 was twenty I had increased my allow 
 ance to two hundred a month. Before I 
 was thirty I had increased it to three 
 hundred a month. Once, when I was 
 fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 months, but I do not remember whether 
 the effect resulting was good or evil. I 
 repeated this experiment when I was 
 twenty -two; again I do not remember 
 what the result was. I repeated the ex 
 periment once more, when I was thirty- 
 four, and ceased from smoking for a year 
 and a half. My health did not improve, 
 because it was not possible tc improve 
 health that was already perfect. As I 
 never permitted myself to regret this ab 
 stinence, I experienced no inconvenience 
 from it. I wrote nothing but occasional 
 magazine articles during pastime, and as 
 I never wrote one except under strong 
 impulse, I observed no lapse of facility. 
 But by and by I sat down with a con 
 tract behind me to write a book of five 
 or six hundred pages the book called 
 Roughing It" and then I found myself 
 seriously obstructed. I was three weeks 
 writing six chapters. Then I gave up 
 the fight, resumed my three hundred 
 cigars, burned the six chapters, and 
 wrote the book in three months without 
 difficulty." 
 
H4 Mark Twain 
 
 VII, 
 ENGLAND AND GEEMAHY. 
 
 In 1872, Mark Twain sailed for Eng 
 land to arrange for the European publi 
 cation of his works and successfully se 
 curing Chatto and Windus, as his Eng 
 lish representatives, and the publishing 
 house of Tauchnitz at Leipzig, as his 
 continental agent. Already he was 
 widely known and quoted in England, 
 and was a welcome guest. 
 
 In speaking of his experience in Lon 
 don he says : 
 
 "During my sojourn in smoky, dirty, 
 grand old London, I received an invita 
 tion to attend a banquet there and I 
 went. It was one of those tremendous 
 dinners where there are eight hundred to 
 nine hundred invited guests. I hadn t 
 
His Life and Work. 115 
 
 been used to that sort of thing, and I 
 didn t feel quite at home. When we 
 took our seats at the table, I noticed that 
 at each plate was a little plan of the hall, 
 with the position of each guest numbered 
 so that one could see at a glance where a 
 friend was seated by learning the num 
 ber. Just before we fell to, some one 
 the lord mayor, or whoever was bossing 
 the occasion arose and began to read a 
 list of those present No. i, Lord So-and- 
 so; No. 2, the Duke of Something or 
 other, and so on. When this individual 
 read the name of some prominent politi 
 cal character or literary celebrity, it 
 would be greeted with more or less ap 
 plause. The individual who was reading 
 the names did so in so monotonous a 
 manner that I became tired, and began 
 looking about for something to engage 
 my attention. I found the gentleman 
 next to me on the right a well-informed 
 personage, and I entered into conversa 
 tion with him. I had never seen him be 
 fore, but he was a good talker and en 
 joyed it. Suddenly, just as he was 
 
Xi6 Mark Twain 
 
 giving 1m views upon the future religious 
 aspect of Great Britain, our ears were as 
 sailed by a deafening storm of applause. 
 Such a clapping of hands I never heard 
 before. It sent the blood into my head 
 with a rush, and I got terribly excited. 
 I straightened up and commenced clap 
 ping my hands with all my might. I 
 moved about in my chair and clapped 
 harder and harder. Who is it ? I asked 
 the gentleman on my right. Whose 
 name did he read ? Samuel L,. Clemens, 
 he answered. I stopped applauding. I 
 didn t clap any more. It kind of took 
 the life out of me, and I sat there like a 
 mummy, and didn t even get up and 
 bow. It was one of the most distressing 
 fixes I ever got into, and it will be many 
 a day before I forget it." 
 
 Mark lectured on various occasions in 
 England with striking success. Rev. H. 
 R. Haweis, who heard him at this time, 
 writes: 
 
 "I heard hin once at the Hanover 
 Square rooms. The audience was not 
 large nor very enthusiastic. I believe he 
 
His Life and Work. 117 
 
 would have been an increasing success 
 had he stayed longer. We had not time 
 to get accustomed to his peculiar way, 
 and there was nothing to take us by 
 storm. He came on the platform and 
 stood quite alone. A little table, with 
 the traditional water-bottle and tumbler, 
 was by his side. His appearance was 
 not impressive, not very unlike the rep 
 resentation of him in the various pictures 
 in his Tramp Abroad. He spoke more 
 slowly than any other man I ever heard, 
 and did not look at his audience quite 
 enough. I do not think that he felt al 
 together at home with us, nor we with 
 him. We never laughed loud or long. 
 We sat throughout expectant and on the 
 qui vive, very well interested and gently 
 simmering with amusement. With the 
 exception of one exquisite description of 
 the old Magdalen ivy-covered collegiate 
 buildings at Oxford University, I do not 
 think there was one thing worth setting 
 down in print. I got no information out 
 of the lecture, and hardly a joke that 
 would wear, or a story that would bear 
 
IT 8 Mark Twain 
 
 repeating. There was a deal about the 
 dismal, lone silver-land, the story of the 
 Mexican plug that bucked, and a duel 
 which never came off and another duel in 
 which no one was injured; and we sat 
 patiently enough through it, fancying 
 that by and by the introduction would be 
 over, and the lecture would begin, when 
 Twain suddenly made his bow and went 
 off! It was over. I looked at my watch 
 I was never more taken back. I had 
 been sitting there exactly an hour and 
 twenty minutes! It seemed ten minutes 
 at the outside. If you have ever tried to 
 address a public meeting, you will know 
 what this means. It means that Mark 
 Twain is a consummate public speaker. 
 If ever he chose to say anything, he would 
 say it marvelously well; but in the art of 
 saying nothing in an hour, he surpasses 
 our most accomplished parliamentary 
 speakers." 
 
 Mr. Clemens relates, as one of the 
 most harrowing experiences of his life, a 
 six hours ride across England, his fellow 
 traveler an Englishman, who, shortly 
 
His Life and Work. 119 
 
 after they started, drew forth the nrst 
 volume of the English edition of "Inno 
 cents Abroad from his pocket, and 
 calmly perused it from beginning to end 
 without a smile. Then he drew forth 
 the second volume and read it as solemnly 
 as the first. Mark says he thought he 
 should die, yet John Bull was probably 
 enjoying it alter his own undemonstra 
 tive style. 
 
 Upon his return from England in 1873, 
 in conjunction with Charles Dudley 
 Warner, Mark Twain issued his fourth 
 book, "The Gilded Age," which met 
 with remarkable sale in this country and 
 in Europe. 
 
 In 1876, there appeared in the Atlantic 
 Monthly, that famous fragment, Punch 
 Brothers, Punch with care." It had a 
 curious origin. Early in April, 1875, the 
 city line of the New York and Harlem 
 railroad company having adoped the 
 punch system, posted in the panels of 
 their cars a card of information and in 
 struction to conductors and passengers, 
 both of whom were indirectly requested 
 
I2O Mark Twain 
 
 to watch the other. It read as follows: 
 The CONDUCTOR, when he receives a 
 Fare, must immediately PUNCH in the 
 presence of the passenger, 
 A BLUE Trip Slip for an 8 Cents Fare, 
 A BUFF Trip Slip for a 6 Cents Fare, 
 A PINK Trip Slip for a 3 Cents Fare, 
 FOR COUPON AND TRANSFER TICKETS, 
 
 PUNCH THE TICKETS. 
 The poesy of the thing was discovered 
 almost as "immediately" as the conduc 
 tor "immediately" punched and all sorts 
 of jingles were accommodated to the 
 measure. In September the first poem 
 appeared in print and various versions 
 appeared in the New York and Boston 
 newspapers. 
 
 In the January, 1876, Atlantic, Mark 
 Twain s "Literary Nightmare" appeared 
 with the following version: 
 Conductor, when you receive a fare, 
 Punch in the presence of the passenjare ! 
 A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, 
 A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, 
 A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; 
 Punch in the presence of the passenjare ! 
 
His Life and Work. 121 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Punch, brothers, punch with care! 
 Punch in the presence of the passenjare ! 
 Said Mark: "I came across these jing 
 ling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while 
 ago, and read them a couple of times. 
 They took instant and entire possession 
 of me. All through breakfast they went 
 waltzing through my brain, and when, at 
 last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not 
 tell whether I had eaten anything or not. 
 I had carefully laid out my day s work 
 the day before a thrilling tragedy in the 
 novel which I am writing. I went to 
 my den to begin my deed of blood. I 
 took up my pen, but all I coulcl get it to 
 say was, "Punch in the presence of the 
 passenjare." I fought hard for an hour, 
 but it was useless. My head kept hum 
 ming, "A blue trip slip for an eight-cent 
 fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare," 
 and so on and so on, without peace or 
 respite. The day s work was ruined I 
 could see that plainly enough. I gave 
 up and drifted down town, and presently 
 discovered that my feet were keeping 
 
122 Mark Twain 
 
 time to that relentless jingle. When I 
 could stand it no longer I altered my 
 step. But it did no good; those rhymes 
 accommodated themselves to the new 
 step and went on harassing me just as 
 before. I returned home and suffered all 
 the afternoon; suffered all through an 
 unconscious and unrefreshing dinner; 
 suffered, and cried, and jingled all 
 through the evening; went to bed and 
 rolled, tossed and jingled right along the 
 same as ever; got up at midnight frantic, 
 and tried to read; but there was nothing 
 visible upon the whirling page except 
 "Punch! punch in the presence of the 
 passanjare." By sunrise I was out of my 
 mind, and everybody marvelled and was 
 distressed at the idiotic burden of my 
 ravings. " 
 
 Tlie Literary Nightmare awakened 
 horse car-poets throughout the world. 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne in La Revue 
 des Duex Mondes, had a brief copy of 
 French verses, written with all his well- 
 known warmth and melody. 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 LK CHANT DU CONDUCTKUR. 
 
 Ayant ete paye le conducteur 
 Percera en pleine vue du voyageur, 
 Quand il rocoit trois sous un coupon 
 
 vert, 
 Un coupon jatme pour six sous c est 
 
 1 affaire, 
 Et pour huit sous c est un coupon 
 
 couleur, 
 De-rose, en pleine vue du voyageur. 
 
 Done, percezsoigneusement, mes freres, 
 Tout en pleine vue des voyageurs, etc. 
 The Western, an enterprising St. Louis 
 magazine, had a terrible attack, and ad 
 dressing "Marco Twain" it came out in a 
 Latin anthem, with the following chorus: 
 Pungite, fratres, pungite, 
 Pungite cum arnore 
 Pungite pro vectore 
 Diligentissime pungite. 
 A man who had just been reading the 
 "Literary Nightmare," said The Austin 
 (Nev.) Reveille, stepped in to a Main street 
 saloon muttering, "Punch, brothers ! 
 punch with care ! punch in the presence 
 
124 Mark Twain 
 
 of the passenjare ! " when a retired prize 
 fighter who was snoozing in a corner got 
 up, and accosting the nightmare fellow, 
 demanded, " Whose ears are you going 
 to punch, you bloody duffer? " The 
 other fellow tried to explain, but the 
 fighter insisted that he (the other fellow) 
 had said " Punch, brothers ! punch with 
 care! punch that big feller square in the 
 earl" 
 
 The Bridgeport Standard man said: 
 "Mark Twain will sail for Europe on 
 business in the spring; but 
 If he plays any jokes on the captain there, 
 And don t come down with the reg ler 
 
 fare, 
 
 The captain ll probably rip and tear, 
 And punch him in the presence of the 
 passenjare." 
 
 When "The Adventures of Tom 
 Sawyer" appeared in 1876, the fame of 
 Mark Twain was universal. In this vol 
 ume he revealed the story of his boyhood 
 days on the Mississippi, and his pranks 
 and adventures in the town of Hannibal. 
 It was published as a book for boys, and 
 
His r Life~dnd Work. 125 
 
 commanded an enormous sale, edition 
 alter edition being exhausted. In fact, 
 "Tom Sawyer" sold better than any of 
 his books, excepting "Innocents Abroad." 
 In the meanwhile, "The Gilded Age" 
 had been dramatized and the production 
 of the comedy on the American stage 
 netted the author large sums of money. 
 "Injin Jo" one of the principal charac 
 ters in "Tom Sawyer" still lives at Han 
 nibal, Mo. , and is one of the noted indi 
 viduals of the town. He drives an old 
 white horse and a red express wagon, 
 borne down on one side from long and 
 hard service. Jo hauls trunks from the 
 depot and chores around with his horse 
 and wagon. He loves a dollar more than 
 anybody else in the town, and out of his 
 meagre earnings he has accumulated quite 
 a fortune. He owns twelve tenement 
 houses in Hannibal, ranging in value from 
 $500 to $ 1,000 each yet from the clothes 
 that he wears one would naturally think 
 that he would be constantly in dread of 
 the ragman coming along and casting him 
 into a sack of old iron and rags. 
 
126 Mark Twain 
 
 A well-known literary critic in review 
 ing "Tom Sawyer/ said: "This literary 
 wag has performed some services which 
 entitle him to the gratitude of his genera 
 tion. , He has run the traditional Sunday- 
 school boy through his literary mangle 
 and turned him out washed and ironed 
 into a proper state of flatness and col 
 lapse. That whining, canting, early- 
 dying, anaemic creature was the nau 
 seating model held up to the full-blooded 
 mischievous lads of by-gone years as 
 worthy of their imitation. He poured 
 his religious hypocrisy over every honest 
 pleasure a boy had. He whined his 
 lachrymose warnings on every play 
 ground. He vexed their lives. So, 
 when Mark grew old enough, he went 
 gunning for him, and lo, wherever his 
 soul may be, the skin of the strumous 
 young pietist is now neatly tacked up to 
 view on the Sunday-school door of to-day 
 as a warning, and the lads of to-day see 
 no particular charm in a priggish, hy- 
 dropathical existence. 
 
 In 1877 appeared a volume of his com- 
 
His Life and Work. 12? 
 
 plete sketches, which included most of 
 his fugitive newspaper articles. 
 
 In the following year, April n, 1878, 
 he sailed for Europe in the steamship 
 Holsatia. He was accompanied by his 
 family, and after traveling in England, 
 France and Switzerland, settled down to 
 spend the summer in Germany. Here 
 he obtained the materials for his famous 
 book, "A Tramp Abroad." In this 
 volume " Harris" guide and courier, is 
 introduced to the reader. Harris is not 
 only invited to bow promiscuously but is 
 set on to talk to doubtful people, to en 
 tertain bores, and generally to be the 
 butt of einbarassing situations. Mr. 
 Clemens made a minute study of the 
 Germans, their manners, habits, tastes 
 and amusements. We all remember his 
 treatment of the cases and gender in the 
 German grammar: 
 
 guten Freunak, Mein^ gut<?# 
 Mein^z guien Freund^w, and 
 den and dem until one feels one might 
 better go without friends in Germany 
 than take all this trouble about them. 
 
128 Mark Twain 
 
 What a bother, he cries, it is to decline 
 a good male ! But that is nothing to 
 the trouble we are landed in by the 
 female ! Every man has a gender and 
 there is no sense or system in the distri 
 bution. In German a young lady has no 
 sex, while a turnip has. Thus you say: 
 "Wilhelm, where is the turnip ? 
 " She has gone to the kitchen/ 
 " Where is the accomplished young 
 lady ? 
 
 " It has gone to the opera ! " 
 Still better were his illustrations of the 
 German fish wife. His argument with a 
 raven, his adventures with a blue jay and 
 his perilous journey on the river rail, 
 were afterward exquisitely described in 
 "A Tramp Abroad," published in 1880. 
 While on his return from Germany, he 
 tarried in London and Glasgow, and 
 while in the latter city was elected a 
 member of the Scottish Society of Litera 
 ture and Art. 
 
His Life and Work. 129 
 
 VIII, 
 HIS LATER WOKKS, 
 
 On September 3, 1879, Mr. Clemens 
 and his family arrived in New York on 
 the steamship Galbier, having been 
 abroad for a period ot sixteen months. 
 
 "There," said Mark, to a friend, as the 
 ship left quarantine and began her 
 journey up the bay, "the danger is finally 
 passed. When the ship begins to roll 
 sideways and kick up behind at the satne 
 time, I always know I am expected to 
 perform a certain duty. I learned it 
 years ago on the Quaker City. You might 
 suppose that I would have forgotten my 
 part after so long a residence on shore. 
 But there it is again. It s habit; every 
 thing connected with the sea comes down 
 to a matter of habit. You might confine 
 me for forty years in a Rhode Island corn 
 
JJO Mark Twain 
 
 patch, and at the end of that time I d 
 know just as well what to do when a ship 
 begins to kick as I do at this moment. 
 The darkest night never confuses me in 
 the least. It s a little singular when you 
 look at it, isn t it? But I presume it s 
 attributable to the solemn steadfastness 
 of the great deep." 
 
 As a conscientious Republican in his 
 political preferences, Mr. Clemens took 
 an active interest in the Presidential 
 campaign of 1880. While visiting in 
 Elmira, New York, in the fall of that 
 year, he made a short speech one Satur 
 day night, introducing to a Republican 
 meeting General Ilawley of Connecticut. 
 In the course of his remarks Mr. Clemens 
 said: 
 
 "General Hawley is a member of my 
 church at Hartford, and the author of 
 Beautiful Snow. May be he will deny 
 that. But I am only here to give him a 
 character from his last place. As a pure 
 citizen, I respect him; as a personal 
 friend of years, I have the warmest re 
 gard for him; as a neighbor, whose vege- 
 
His Life and Work. 131 
 
 table garden adjoins mine, why why, I 
 watch him. As the author of Beautiful 
 Snow/ he has added a new pang to 
 winter. He is a square, true man in 
 honest politics, and I must say he occu" 
 pies a mighty lonesome position. So 
 broad, so bountiful is his character that 
 he never turned a tramp empty-handed 
 from his door, but always gave him a 
 letter of introduction to me. Pure, 
 honest, incorruptible, that is Joe Hawley. 
 Such a man in politics is like a bottle of 
 perfumery in a glue factory it may mod 
 ify the stench but it doesn t destroy it. 
 I haven t said any more of him than I 
 would say of myself. Ladies and gentle 
 men, this is General Hawley." 
 
 In November, 1880, a Charity Fair was 
 in progress in Buffalo, and during its 
 course a small journal, called the Bazaar 
 Bulletin , was published. In one number 
 of this paper appeared a contribution from 
 the pen of Mark Twain, entitled: 
 
 "A TALK FOR STRUGGLING YOUNG 
 POETS." 
 
 "Well, sir, there was a young fellow 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 who believed that he was a poet; but the 
 main difficulty with him was to get any 
 body else to believe it. Many and many 
 a poet has split on that rock if it is a 
 rock. Many and many a poet will split 
 on it, thank God. The young fellow I 
 speak of, used all the customary devices 
 and with the customary results to wit: 
 he competed for prizes, and didn t take 
 any; he sent specimens of poetry to 
 famous people, and asked for a candid 
 opinion/ meaning a puff, and didn t get 
 it; he took advantage of dead persons 
 and obituaried them in ostensible poetry, 
 but it made him no friends certainly 
 none among the dead. But at last he 
 heard of another chance; there was going 
 to be a fair in Buffalo, accompanied by 
 the usual inoffensive paper, and the editor 
 of that paper offered a prize of $10 for the 
 best original poem on the usual topic of 
 Spring, no poem to be considered unless 
 it should possess positive value. 
 
 "Well, sir, he shook up his muse, he 
 introduced into her a rousing charge of 
 information from his jug, and then sat 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 down and dashed off the following rnad- 
 rigal just as easy as lying: 
 
 HAIL! BEAUTIOUS, GLADSOME SPRING. 
 
 A POEM BY S. L. CLEMENS. 
 
 No. 1163. Hartford, Conn., Nov. 17. 
 GEO. P. BIS3ELL & CO., 
 
 BANKERS, 
 
 Pay to Mrs. David Gray, or Order, for F 
 TEN ........................ DOLLARS. 
 
 Household Account. 
 
 S. L. CLEMENS. 
 
 4 Did he take the prize? Yes, he took 
 the prize. The poem and its title didn t 
 seem to go together very well; but, no 
 matter, that sort of thing has happened 
 before; it didn t rhyme, neither was it 
 blank verse, for the blanks were all filled, 
 yet it took the prize for this reason, no 
 other poem offered was really worth more 
 than $4.50, whereas there was no getting 
 around the petrified fact that this one was 
 worth $10. In truth there was not a 
 banker in the whole town who was will 
 ing to invest a cent in those other poems, 
 but every one of them said this one was 
 good, sound, seaworthy poetry, and worth 
 its face. Such is the way in which that 
 struggling young poet achieved recogni- 
 
134 Mark Twain 
 
 tion at last, and got a start along the 
 road that leads to lyric eminence what 
 ever that may mean. Therefore, let 
 other struggling young poets be encour 
 aged by this to go striving. 
 
 "MARK TWAIN." 
 
 Not long after this, Mr. Clemens acted 
 as auctioneer at the last sale at a bazaar 
 or fair held in Hartford. In opening the 
 sale he said: "Well, now, after a week 
 of work by these ladies, who have 
 handled an immense amount of money 
 without putting a penny into their private 
 pockets, I, their mere clerk, propose, as 
 clerks will sometimes, to knock dow \ 
 something." 
 
 It was at this time that the humorist 
 wrote a letter to a friend in Tennessee, 
 expressing his admiration for Artemus 
 Ward, as follows: 
 
 "DEAR SIR: One of the first questions 
 which Londoners ask me is whether I knew 
 Artemus Ward; the answer yes/ makes 
 them my friends on the spot. Arte 
 mus seems to have been on the warmest 
 terms with thousands of those people. 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 Well, he seems never to have written a 
 harsh thing against anybody neither 
 have I, for that matter, at least nothing 
 harsh enough for a body to fret about 
 and I think he never felt bitter toward 
 people. There may have been three or 
 four other people like that in the world 
 at one time or another, but they probably 
 died a good while ago. I think his lec 
 ture on the Babes in the Woods/ was 
 the funniest thing I ever listened to. 
 Arternus once said to me gravely, almost 
 sadly : 
 
 " Clemens, I have done too much 
 fooling, too much trifling; I am going to 
 write something that will live/ 
 
 " Well, what for instance? 
 
 <( In the same grave way he said: 
 
 (< A lie/ 
 
 It was an admirable surprise. I was 
 just getting ready to cry; he was becom 
 ing pathetic. * * * " 
 
 Yours truly, 
 S. L. CI^MKNS. 
 
 In 1882, Mr. Clemens wrote "The 
 Stolen White Elephant," and the same 
 
Ij6 Mark Twain 
 
 year visited Bermuda. The following 
 winter James R. Osgood and Company, of 
 Boston, issued "The Stolen White Ele 
 phant," with which were incorporated 
 "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Ex 
 cursion," "Punch, Brother, Punch," and 
 other sketches. 
 
 About this time the humorist was 
 asked to contribute to the Bartholdi Ped 
 estal Fund. Here was his response: 
 
 "You know my weakness for Adam, 
 and you know how I have struggled to 
 get him a monument and failed. Now, 
 it seems to me, here is my chance. 
 What do we care for a statue of liberty 
 when we ve got the thing itself in its 
 wildest sublimity? What you want of a 
 monument is to keep you in mind of 
 something you haven t got something 
 you ve lost. Very well, we haven t lost 
 liberty; we ve lost Adam. * * * 
 Look at Adam, what have we done for 
 Adam? What has Adam done for us? 
 He gave us life, he gave us death, he 
 gave us heaven, he gave us hell. * * * 
 With trifling alteration, this present 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 statue will answer very well for Adam. 
 You can turn that blanket into an ulster; 
 part the hair on one side, or conceal the 
 sex of his head with a fire-helmet, and at 
 once he s a man; put a harp and a halo 
 and a palm branch in the left hand to 
 symbolize a part of what Adam did for 
 us, and leave the fire basket just where 
 it is to symbolize the rust. My friends, 
 the father of life and death and taxes has 
 been neglected long enough. Is it but a 
 question of finance? Behold the enclosed 
 (paid bank) checks. Use them as freely 
 as they are freely contributed. Heavens 
 knows I would there were a ton of them. 
 I would send them all to you, for my 
 heart is in this sublime work. 
 
 "S. I,. C." 
 
 In 1882, while Mark Twain was col 
 lecting retrospective material for his "L/ife 
 on the Mississippi," he stopped, one day, 
 at Arkansaw City. He had, years be 
 fore, known the place as Campbeirs 
 Bend, and naturally, had a desire to poke 
 about unattended by persons who would 
 be likely to break in upon his musings; 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 so, avoiding the committee that had been 
 appointed to receive him, he wandered 
 off into the woods. He thought nothing 
 of the distance he was traversing. There 
 was music among the tree tops, and 
 flowers, rich in deep coloring, perfumed 
 the air. After a long walk he came to a 
 cabin, and, upon entering, found an old 
 and tangle-bearded man sitting near the 
 empty fireplace. The old fellow glanced 
 at Twain, and then, springing between 
 the visitor and the door, snatched down 
 a gun, cocked it and said: 
 
 "So I ve got you, have I?" 
 
 "I don t understand you!" Twain 
 gasped. 
 
 "Oh, no, I reckon not. Er man never 
 understands a thing when he don t 
 want er. Didn t stop your steamboat 
 down yander below the bend the other 
 day an steal sixty sheep that belonged 
 to me, did you?" 
 
 1< I will swear upon the honor of a 
 gentleman that I did not. I haven t been 
 in this neighborhood before in twenty 
 years." 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 "Set down tkar." Twain obeyed. 
 The old man continued: "It mout have 
 been have been a good while sense you 
 was here before the other day, but you 
 got here just in time ter steal them sheep 
 an I m goin ter have your skelp. Hear 
 me?" 
 
 "My dear sir, you are laboring under 
 a frightful mistake. I never owned a 
 sheep in my life - " 
 
 "No, I don t reckon you ever did own 
 one an mo n that, nobody else ain t apt 
 to own nary one whar you hang out. 
 Yas, sah, come right here an tuck my 
 sheep an ermong em wuz cr pet lamb 
 that my little gran daughter loves better n 
 she does her life an she hain t slep er 
 wink sense fur cryin about it. Oh, you 
 needn t blink, fur I am goin ter hold you 
 here till my little gal comes an then I m 
 goin to blow yo head off. It won t be 
 long fo she comes an ef you ve got any 
 pra rs that you reckon oughter be said, 
 why you better say em, that s all." 
 
 "My dear sir " 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 "Don t dear sir me. I ve got you, an 
 I m going ter use you." 
 
 1 But how do you know that I stole 
 your sheep?" 
 
 "You know how I know it. You 
 know that jest ez soon ez you seed me er 
 comin you shoved off, an 1 mo n that, you 
 know that when I jumped in a canoe an 
 started to paddle out ter you, w y, you 
 shot at me. You know all that well 
 enough." 
 
 * Merciful heavens !" Twain exclaimed. 
 
 "Yas, sah, yas; that s erbout whut I 
 lowed, but the boat puffed on away." 
 
 A stick snapped outside. "Great 
 heavens!" Twain thought, "is the girl 
 coming?" No, it was only a calf. The 
 expression on the old fellow s face grew 
 harder. There was a cruel twitching 
 about the corners of his mouth. 
 
 "Oh, don t you fret, she ll be here 
 d reckly." 
 
 "My friend, "said Twain, with an effort 
 to be calm, "if you will go with me over 
 to Arkansaw City I will prove to you 
 that I would not steal a sheep." 
 
His Life and Work. 141 
 
 "I don t want no proof that comes 
 frum that place. You d tell a lie, an 
 them fellers over thar would sw ar ter it. 
 I see my little gal comin through yander. 
 Ez I said jest now, ef you ve got any 
 pra rs you want said, w y, I reckon you 
 better say em." 
 
 4 Would you commit murder?" 
 
 " Would you steal sheep?" 
 
 4 Surely not." 
 
 c< Ah, hah, an* sholy I wouldn t be com- 
 mittin murder by killin sich er feller ez 
 you air. Don t move now, fur ef you do 
 I ll drap you. Come, quick, now, befo 
 the gal comes, tell me ef you know who 
 did steal them sheep, that is, if you didn t." 
 
 * I think I do," Twain quickly rejoined, 
 and then, remembering the name of a 
 steamboat engineer whom he had known 
 before the war, he added: "Jo Billings 
 stole your sheep." 
 
 The old fellow looked sharply at him, 
 and replied: 
 
 "Air you shore?" 
 
 "I am certain." 
 
 "Was you on his boat at the time?" 
 
142 Mark Twain 
 
 "Yes, and tried to keep him from 
 stealing them, but could not." 
 
 "Will you help me find him?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Wall, then, scoot. Quick, befo the 
 gal comes." 
 
 When Twain reached Arkansaw City, 
 he found the perplexed and disappointed 
 committee. He was nervous and de 
 pressed. While he was standing in the 
 office of the hotel, some one said: 
 
 "Mr. Clemens, you used to know Jo 
 Billings, didn t you?" 
 
 Twain felt an uneasiness crawling over 
 him. "Yes," he replied. 
 
 "There he is." 
 
 Twain looked around and started. 
 The old fellow who had held him in the 
 cabin came forward, snorted, and then said : 
 
 "Sam, I oughter shot you fur not 
 knowin me, but I reckon I ve changed 
 some. Sheep, w y, I never had one in 
 my life. Haw, haw! Come, fellers, 
 here s to Sam an his erbility ter still 
 hedge on the truth." 
 
 "Life on the Mississippi," appeared in 
 
His Ltfe and Work. 143 
 
 1883. It was a volume of reminiscences 
 of his youthful days as a steamboat pilot 
 on the father of waters. This volume 
 was followed in 1885 by "The Prince and 
 the Pauper," which was a remarkable 
 performance and a surprise even to the 
 friends of Mr. Clemens. For many years 
 he had been a conscientious and untiring 
 student of language, literature, history, 
 not merely making up for deficiencies of 
 early education, but laying solid founda 
 tions and building on them a broad and 
 liberal culture, which made him a man 
 of letters in the true sense of the term. 
 His thorough knowledge of English and 
 American literature is supplemented by 
 a knowledge of that of various other lan 
 guages, of which he has acquired a 
 thorough command. The story of The 
 Prince and the Pauper," for instance, re 
 veals somewhat the extent and fidelity of 
 his study of early England, and is a story 
 that, at the beginning of his career, he 
 could neither have thought out or appre 
 ciated, and yet it is very distinctively 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 marked with his peculiar native genius 
 and humor. 
 
 "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 
 were published in 1886. The manu 
 script was completed many months 
 before the book appeared, owing to com 
 plications and differences with the pub 
 lishers, and was finally published by Mr. 
 Clemens himself. In this book Mark 
 Twain was at his best. The London 
 Athenaum in reviewing the work, said: 
 "It is such a book as he, and he only, 
 could have written. It is meant for boys; 
 but there are few men (we should hope) 
 who, once they take it up, will not delight 
 in it. It forms a companion or sequel to 
 Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry Finn, as 
 everybody knows, is one of Tom s closest 
 friends; and the present volume is a 
 record of the adventures which befell him 
 soon after the event which made him a 
 parson of property and brought Tom 
 Sawyer s story to a becoming conclusion. 
 They are of the most surprising and de 
 lightful kind imaginable, and in the course 
 of them we fall in with a number of types 
 
His Life and Work. 145 
 
 of character of singular freshness and 
 novelty, besides being schooled in half a 
 dozen extraordinary dialects. . . . We 
 shall content ourselves with repeating 
 that the book is Mark Twain at his best, 
 and remarking that Jim and Huckleberry 
 are real creations, and the worthy peers 
 of the illustrious Torn Sawyer." 
 
 I,ater appeared U A Connecticut Yankee 
 in King Authur s Court," and other 
 volumes. In all of his books there is 
 common sense, and love of justice, and 
 hatred of cant, and a vein of serious 
 earnestness, even in his most comical 
 writings, that will for all time make him 
 near to the people. As the lyondon 
 Daily News once said of him: 
 
 "His gravity in narrating the most pre 
 posterous tale, his sympathy with every 
 one of his absurdest characters, his mi 
 croscopic imagination, his vein of serious 
 ness, his contrasts of pathos, his bursts 
 of indignant plain speaking about certain 
 national errors, make Mark Twain an 
 author of the highest merit, and far re 
 mote from the mere buffoon." 
 
146 Mark Twain 
 
 IX, 
 THE LECTUEE PLATFOEM, 
 
 In 1884, Mark Twain and George W. 
 Cable made a general tour of the country, 
 each giving readings from his own works. 
 Cordial receptions and crowded houses 
 greeted them everywhere. The platform 
 was not a novelty to Mark Twain. He 
 had delivered lectures in California and 
 Nevada in 1866 and 1867, had appeared 
 in public upon several occasions in Eng 
 land, and had spoken a number of times 
 at dinners and banquets in New York 
 and Boston. He became known as a man 
 possessing remarkable powers of elocu 
 tion, and his parlor readings of Shake 
 speare were said to be masterly perform 
 ances. Strong inducements had been 
 offered him to lecture abroad, even so far 
 away as Australia. In 1 884 he consented 
 
His Life and Work. 147 
 
 to lecture in America for a period not ex 
 ceeding five months. 
 
 In December, 1884, Mark Twain and 
 George W. Cable appeared in Cleveland. 
 They arrived one afternoon and regis 
 tered at the Forest City House. I called 
 to pay my respects. Was Mr. Clemens 
 in ? Yes, but he had just eaten dinner, 
 it then being three o clock, and had gone 
 to bed, not to be disturbed until seven 
 o clock, excepting in case Mr. John Hay, 
 the author of "Little Breeches/ 1 called. 
 Mr. Clemens would see Mr. Hay, but no 
 other human being could entice him from 
 his bed. In the evening occurred the 
 entertainment. Mr. Cable read passages 
 from his novel "Dr. Sevier." Mark 
 Twain came upon the stage walking 
 slowly, apparently in deep meditation. 
 Those present saw a rather small man, 
 with a big head, with bushy gray hair, 
 heavy dark eyebrows, a receding c un, a 
 long face, toothless gums visible between 
 the lips, an iron-gray mustache, closely 
 cut and stiff. The right hand involun 
 tarily stroked the receding chin, and a 
 
14.8 Mark Twain 
 
 merry twinkle came into his eyes, as he 
 advanced to the front of the stage and 
 began to recite, in his peculiar, drawling 
 and deliberate way, "King Sollermun," 
 taken from advance sheets of (< Huckle 
 berry Finn." When he had finished, he 
 turned and boyishly ran off the stage, 
 with a sort of dog trot. Then I remem 
 ber that Mr. Cable came on, told us all 
 about "Kate Riley" and "Ristofolo," and 
 then, in imitation of Mark Twain, tried 
 to run off the stage in the same playful 
 manner. I remember also what a deplor 
 able failure Mr. Cable made of the at 
 tempt, how his gentle trot reminded me 
 of a duck going down hill, and how 
 eventually he collided with one of the 
 scenes, and lastly how the audience 
 roared with laughter. Then Mark came 
 forward again with his Tragic Tale of 
 the Fishwife," followed by Cable, who 
 walked soberly now, like a Baptist dea 
 con. Twain told us of "A Trying Situa 
 tion," and finally concluded the enter 
 tainment with one of his inimitable ghost 
 stories. 
 
His Life and Work. 149 
 
 He is a good talker, and invariably 
 prepares himself, though he skillfully 
 hides his preparation by his method of 
 delivery, which denotes that he is getting 
 his ideas and phrases as he proceeds. He 
 is an accomplished artist in his way. 
 His peculiar mode of expression always 
 seems contagious with an audience, and a 
 laugh would follow the most sober re 
 mark. It is a singular fact that an audi 
 ence will be in a laughing mood, when 
 they first enter the lecture room; they 
 are ready to burst out at anything and 
 everything. In the town of Colchester, 
 Connecticut, there was a good illustration 
 of this, the Hon. Demshain Hornet having 
 a most unpleasant experience at the ex 
 pense of Mark Twain. Mr. Clemens 
 was advertised to lecture in the town of 
 Colchester, but for some reason failed to 
 arrive. In the emergency the lecture 
 committee decided to employ Mr. Hor 
 net to deliver his celebrated lecture on 
 temperance, but so late in the day was 
 this arrangement made that no bills an 
 nouncing it could be circulated, and the 
 
150 Mark Twain 
 
 audience assembled, expecting to hear 
 Mark Twain. No one in the town knew 
 Mr. Clemens, or had ever heard him lec 
 ture, and they entertained the idea that 
 he was funny, and went to the lecture 
 prepared to laugh. Even those upon the 
 platform, excepting the chairman, did 
 not know Mr. Hornet from Mark Twain, 
 and so, when he was introduced, thought 
 nothing of the name, as they knew 
 "Mark Twain" was a nom de plume, and 
 supposed his real name was Hornet. 
 
 Mr. Hornet bowed politely, looked 
 about him, and remarked: "Intemper 
 ance is the curse of the country." The 
 audience burst into a merry laugh. He 
 knew it could not be at his remark, and 
 thought his clothes must be awry, and 
 he asked the chairman, in a whisper, if 
 he was all right, and received "yes" for 
 an answer. Then he said: "Rum slays 
 more than disease ! " Another, but louder 
 laugh followed. He could not under 
 stand it, but proceeded: "It breaks up 
 happy homes ! " Still louder mirth. It 
 is carrying young men down to death and 
 
His Life and Werk. 151 
 
 hell ! " Then came a perfect roar of ap 
 plause. Mr. Hornet began to get ex 
 cited. He thought they were poking 
 fun at him, but went on: "We must 
 crush the serpent ! " A tremendous howl 
 of laughter. The men on the platform, 
 except the chairman, squirmed as they 
 laughed. Then Hornet got mad. "What 
 I say is Gospel truth, "he cried. The audi 
 ence fairly bellowed with mirth. Hornet 
 turned to a man on the stage, and said: 
 "Do you see anything very ridiculous in 
 my remarks or behavior?" "Yes, ha, 
 ha ! It s intensely funny ha, ha, ha ! 
 Go on ! " replied the roaring man. This 
 is an insult," cried Hornet, wildly danc 
 ing about. More laughter, and cries of 
 "Go on, Twain!" Then the chairman 
 began to see through a glass darkly, and 
 arose and quelled the merriment, and ex 
 plained the situation, and the men on the 
 stage suddenly ceased laughing, and the 
 folks in the audience looked sheepish, 
 and they quit laughing too, and then the 
 excited Mr. Hornet, being thoroughly 
 mad, told them he had never before got 
 
152 Mark Twain 
 
 into a town so entirely populated with 
 asses and idiots, and having said that he 
 left the hall in disgust, followed by the 
 audience in deep gloom. 
 
 When Mr. Clemens and Mr. Cable ap 
 peared in Albany, New York, they paid 
 their respects to the Governor, and visited 
 the State capitol. They entered the Ad 
 jutant-General s office, and finding the 
 official out, they sat down to await his 
 return. There were a considerable num 
 ber of gentlemen in the party, and the 
 chairs were soon occupied. Mr. Clemens 
 sat down carelessly on one of the Adjut 
 ant-General s official tables. The party 
 were chatting cheerfully and conducting 
 themselves peacefully, when a dozen 
 clerks and deputies of the department- 
 came rushing into the office, and with 
 unusual vehemence, asked what was 
 wanted. None of the visiting party 
 seemed to understand the situation. An 
 investigation, however, disclosed the fact 
 that Mark Twain, by accident or design, 
 had planted himself squarely on a long 
 
His Life and Work. 153 
 
 row of electric buttons, and thus set ring, 
 ing a score or more of call bells. 
 
 In Montreal, upon the occasion of 
 Mark Twain s appearance, there were a 
 large number of Frenchmen in the audi 
 ence. This caused him to introduce into 
 his lecture the following: 
 
 4 Where so many of the guests are 
 French, the propriety will be recognized 
 of my making a portion of my speech in 
 the beautiful language, in order that I 
 may be partly understood. I speak 
 French with timidity, and not flowingly, 
 except when excited. When using that 
 language, I have noticed that I have 
 hardly ever been mistaken for a French 
 man, except, perhaps, by horses; never, 
 I believe, by people. I had hoped that 
 mere French construction, with English 
 words, would answer; but this is not the 
 case. I tried it at a gentleman s house 
 in Quebec, and it would not work. The 
 maid- servant asked, "What would mon 
 sieur?" I said, "Monsieur So-and-So, 
 is he with himself? " She did not under 
 stand. I said, " Is it that he is still not 
 
154 Mark Twain 
 
 returned to his house of merchandise ? " 
 She did not understand that either. I 
 said, "He will desolate himself when he 
 learns that his friend American was ar 
 rived, and he not with himself to shake 
 him at the hand." She did not even un 
 derstand that; I don t know why, but 
 she didn t, and she lost her temper be 
 sides. Somebody in the rear called out, 
 "Qui est done la?" or words to that 
 effect. She said, "C est un fou," and 
 shut the door on me. Perhaps she was 
 right; but how did she ever find that out? 
 For she had never seen me before till 
 that moment. But, as I have already 
 intimated, I will close this oration with a 
 few sentiments in the French language. 
 I have not ornamented them. I have not 
 burdened them with flowers of rhetoric, 
 for, to my mind, that literature is best 
 and most enduring which is characterized 
 by a noble simplicity: JPai belle bouton 
 d or de mon oncle, mais je n ai pas celui 
 du charpentier. Si vous avez le fromage 
 du brave menuisier, c est bon; mais si 
 vous ne Tavez pas, ne vous desolez pas, 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 prenez le chapeau de drap noir de son 
 beaufrere malade. Tout a 1 heure ! Sa- 
 voir faire ! Qu est ce que vous dites ! 
 Pate de fois gras ! Revenons a nos mou- 
 tons ! Pardon, messieurs, pardonnez 
 moi; essayant a parler la belle langue 
 d Ollendorf strains me more than you can 
 possibly imagine. But I mean well, and 
 I ve done the best I could." 
 
 Mr. Clemens met with an amusing ad 
 venture when he and Mr. Cable were 
 making their tour in the South. A mis 
 guided but enthusiastic young man man 
 aged, after some difficulty, to secure an 
 introduction to the humorist on a river 
 steamer, just before the latter s departure 
 from New Orleans for St. L,ouis. The 
 young man said: " I ve read ail of your 
 writings, Mr. Twain, but I think I like 
 The Heathen Chinee the best of them 
 all." Mr. Clemens shook the young 
 man s hand with tremendous enthusiasm. 
 "My dear sir," he remarked, "I am 
 pretty well used to complements, but I 
 must say I never received one which gave 
 me equal satisfaction, and showed so 
 
156 Mark Twain 
 
 kindly an appreciation of efforts to please 
 the public. A thousand thanks." And 
 the young man replied, "You are per 
 fectly welcome, Mr. Twain. I am sure 
 you deserve it." 
 
 Shortly after his return from his lecture 
 tour, the representative of a leading pub 
 lishing house called upon Mr. Clemens 
 at his Hartford residence, offering him 
 his own price for a certain contribution 
 which was specially desired. "Well, I 
 tell you," said Mark, with his inimitable 
 drawl, "I have just got a thundering big 
 book through me, and an awful lecture 
 course through the people of this unfor 
 tunate country, and I feel like an ana 
 conda that had swallowed a goat. I 
 don t want to turn over or wiggle again 
 for six months." This was his way of 
 declining the offer. 
 
 After dinner speaking became as natu 
 ral to Mr. Clemens, as his appearance 
 upon the lecture platform, and he has won 
 the title of being the most entertaining 
 table talker in America. Not many 
 years since he was present at a monthly 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 meeting of the Military Service Institute, 
 on Governor s Island. General W. T. 
 Sherman and General Schofield were 
 present. Mr. Clemens said that that 
 which he was about to read was part of a 
 still uncompleted book, of which he 
 would give the first chapter by way of 
 explanation, and follow it with selected 
 fragments, * or outline the rest of it in 
 bulk, so to speak; do as the dying cow 
 boy admonished his : p ritual adviser to 
 do, just leave out the details and heave 
 in the bottom facts. " 
 
 Once upon a time a military regiment 
 from Worcester, Massachusetts, visited 
 Hartford, and the humorist was put for 
 ward, as the spokesman, to welcome, 
 officially, the soldier guests of the city. 
 Among other things he said: "When 
 asked to respond, I said I would be glad 
 to, but there were reasons why I could 
 not make a speech. But I said I would 
 talk. I never made a speech without 
 getting together a lot of statistics and be 
 ing instructive. The man who starts in 
 upon a speech without preparation enters 
 
158 Mark Twain 
 
 upon a sea of infelicities and troubles. I 
 had thought of a great many things I 
 had intended to say. In fact nearly all 
 of these things I have heard here to-night 
 I had thought of. Get a man away 
 down here on the list, and he starts out 
 empty. One reason I didn t like to come 
 here to make a prepared speech was be 
 cause I have sworn off. I have reformed, 
 I would not make a prepared speech 
 without statistics and philosophy. The 
 advantage of a prepared speech is that 
 3^ou start when you are ready and stop 
 when you get through. If unprepared, 
 you are all at sea, you don t know where 
 you are. I thought to achieve brevity, 
 but I was mistaken. A man never hangs 
 on so long on his hind legs as when he 
 don t know when to stop. I once heard 
 a man who tried to be reformed. He 
 tried to be brief. A number of strangers 
 sat in a hotel parlor. One sat off to one 
 side and said nothing. Finally all went 
 out except one man and this dummy. 
 The dummy touched this man on the 
 shoulder and said: "I think I have s-s-s-e 
 
His Life and Work. 159 
 
 (whistles) een you before." * What makes 
 you whistle?" asked the other man. "I 
 used to stammer, and the d-d-d-d- (whis 
 tles) octor told me when I w-w-w-w-w- 
 (whistles) anted to speak and s-s-s-s-tam- 
 mered to whistle. I d-d-d-d- (whistle) id 
 whistle and it c-c-c-c-ured me." So it is 
 with a man who makes an unprepared 
 speech. He tries to be brief and it takes 
 him longer. I won t detain you. We 
 welcome you with cordial hospitality, 
 and if you will remain we will try and 
 furnish better weather to-morrow." 
 
 ; One of his famous after dinner speeches 
 was in response to the toast, The Babies, " 
 and another was his speech on * Woman," 
 at the annual dinner of the New England 
 Society, some years ago. He spoke im 
 mediately after General Grant. Among 
 the good things he said were the follow 
 ing: "The daughter of modern civiliza 
 tion is a marvel of exquisite and beautiful 
 art and expense. All the lands, all the 
 climes, all the arts are laid under tribute 
 to furnish her forth. Her linen is from 
 Belfast; her robe is from Paris; her fan 
 
160 Mark Twain 
 
 from Japan; her card case is from China; 
 her watch is from Geneva; *.* * her 
 hair from from I don t know where 
 her hair is from I never could find out. 
 That is her other hair her public hair 
 her Sunday hair. I don t mean the hair 
 she goes to bed with. Why you ought 
 to know the hair I mean; it s that thing 
 which she calls a switch, and which re 
 sembles a switch as much as it does a 
 brickbat or a shotgun. It s that thing 
 that she twists and then coils round and 
 round her head, beehive fashion, and 
 then tucks the end in under the hive and 
 harpoons it with a hairpin." 
 
 In 1885, at the Academy of Music, in 
 Philadelphia, occurred a benefit perform 
 ance for the Actors Fund. The house 
 was crowded. Joseph Murphy had just 
 given the graveyard scene from "Shaun 
 Rhue." The widower and his little son 
 visit the grave of the wife and mother 
 and go through some very pathetic in 
 cidents. A delay occurred after the 
 "Shaun Rhue" had sorrowfully led his off 
 spring from the hallowed spot. The 
 
His Life and Work. 161 
 
 audience was in the usual sympathetic 
 condition after the scene, and noses were 
 blown generously in the commendable 
 effort to brace up for the appearance of 
 Mark Twain, who was to come on next 
 and read his ridiculous Tale of a Fish 
 wife." The dozen mounds, with their 
 crosses and head pieces that had been 
 used to make up the scene of the ceme 
 tery, had not been removed, and the idea 
 that the humorist would have to read his 
 nonsense in such surroundings caused 
 anxiety. Twain was standing at the 
 wing ready to go on, and many saw him. 
 The uneasiness of the people became 
 more universal, as it now seemed inevit 
 able that a most grotesque picture would 
 be thrust upon them. An appalling 
 blunder in stage management seemed 
 about to be committed. The gentlemen 
 who had charge of the entertainment 
 were sitting in a box at the right of the 
 stage, and could plainly see Twain s em 
 barrassment. Both made a rush for be 
 hind the scenes to order the removal of 
 the graves. But they were too late. As 
 
162 Mark Twain 
 
 they flew through the box door, Mark 
 Twain stepped cautiously on the stage. 
 He took a couple of steps forward, 
 glanced up at the picture before him and 
 stopped short. He turned his head to 
 ward whence he had come, as though 
 looking for the manager, gave an agon 
 izing glance of appeal, muttered some 
 thing that had the tone of vigor, but at 
 last went ahead. He made his way down 
 to the footlights with halting, uncertain 
 steps, fumbling his notes between his 
 fingers and casting nervous looks at the 
 solemn signs of death that half sur 
 rounded him. At last he got squarely 
 before the audience. By this time every 
 person in the house was thoroughly un 
 comfortable. A weak effort at applause 
 had been made by some of the bravest 
 hearted on the appearance of the humor 
 ist, but Mark s indifference to the recep 
 tion and the overwhelming incongruity 
 of the scene had a saddening effect. The 
 house became so still that the rolling of 
 a ball of cotton could have been heard. 
 He stood before the leader of the.or- 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 chestra like a schoolboy about to speak 
 his first piece. Never a model of the 
 aesthetic in action, he was now painfully 
 awkward and confused. He twisted his 
 notes and wiggled his fingers, every now 
 and then looking over his shoulder at the 
 scene of death with gazes of suspicion 
 and apprehension. He remained looking 
 foolish for many seconds, two cr three 
 times making an ineffectual attempt to 
 say something. At length he found 
 voice, and in his drawling tones, even 
 longer drawn out than usual, the embar 
 rassed reader said: 
 
 <( Indies and gentlemen, er this er 
 melancholy occasion gives me an er 
 opportunity to make an er explanation 
 that I have long desired to deliver myself 
 of. I rise to a question of the highest 
 privilege before a Philadelphia audience." 
 
 The audience, without the remotest 
 idea of what was coming still sat quiet 
 and expectant. Mr. Clemens continued; 
 
 "In the course of my checkered career 
 I have, on diverse occasions, been 
 charged, always maliciously, of course, 
 
164 Mark Twain 
 
 with more or less serious offenses. It is 
 in reply to one of the more er impor 
 tant of these that I wish to speak. More 
 than once I have been accused of writing 
 the obituary poetry in the Philadelphia 
 Ledger." 
 
 A gentle smile was seen to pass over 
 the faces of the multitude, and pleasant 
 feeling began to assert itself. 
 
 "I wish right here," went on Mr. 
 Clemens, with gathered self-possession, 
 <% to deny that terrible assertion." The 
 audience now laughed outright, and com 
 fort was pretty well restored. "I will 
 admit, that once, when a compositor in 
 the Ledger establishment, I did set up 
 some of that poetry, but for a worse 
 offence than that no indictment can be 
 found against me." And then, in an out 
 raged manner, the humorist exclaimed: 
 "I did not write that poetry," and then, 
 after a pause, "at least, not all of it." 
 
 The reader had his hearers with him 
 after that, and he never read his "Tale of 
 a Fishwife" to a more appreciative audi 
 ence. 
 
His Life and Work. 16$ 
 
 X. 
 
 MAKE TWAIN AT HOME, 
 
 When, in 1868, Samuel L. Clemens 
 visited the city of Hartford, Connecticut, 
 to arrange for the publication of his first 
 book, <l Innocents Abroad," he was capti 
 vated by the old town and its beautiful 
 suburbs. Later, in 1871, when he deter 
 mined upon leaving Buffalo and taking 
 up his residence in an eastern city, it 
 was not strange that he should select 
 Hartford as the site for his permanent 
 home. In a corner of the Nook Farm, 
 on Farmington avenue, about a mile and 
 a quarter from the business center of the 
 city, he built a large, unique house of 
 brick and stone. The building was of 
 the Queen Anne style of architecture, 
 which, just at that time, was the most 
 
166 Mark Twain 
 
 popular, as well as the most aristocratic 
 mode of residence in vogue. There were 
 gables and arches and quaint windows, 
 and in many of these, boxes of flowers 
 were placed. The house was built in 
 the center of a park-like grove of old 
 trees, and the hand of a Scotch landscape 
 artist soon molded hedges, flower beds 
 and a well-kept lawn. To-day it stands 
 a home of homes. A porte cochere, cov 
 ered with vines, extends from the en 
 trance, under which the carriages drive. 
 The exterior of the house has the air of a 
 luxurious, old, English home. 
 
 From the day that Mark Twain and 
 his young wife took up their abode in 
 their Hart lord home, money was ex 
 pended with lavish hands, and the result 
 has been a rich, charming, artistic and 
 home-like interior. One is ushered into 
 an immense square hall, the floor of 
 which is in marble tiles of peculiar pat 
 tern. A winding staircase, very wide 
 and massive, of heavily carved English 
 oak extends above. Opposite the front 
 door are double doors leading into the 
 
His Life and Work. 167 
 
 library. Near these doors in the hall, 
 stands upon a marble pedestal, the bust 
 of Mr. Clemens, executed by young Carl 
 Gerhardt. There are also paintings on 
 the carved oaken walls of the hall and a 
 heavily carved table. To the right are 
 double doors leading into the large draw 
 ing-room. All the doors and windows 
 are draped at the top by handsome lam 
 brequins; the doors and woodwork are 
 of dark polished w T ood, covered with 
 stencil designs in metallic paint, so that 
 at a short distance they look as if inlaid 
 with mother-of-pearl. The drawing- 
 room is furnished with light-colored 
 satin furniture. Leading from this apart 
 ment is the dining-room, which is finished 
 in heavy carved woods of the most elab 
 orate workmanship; high carved dado, 
 old tapestry portieres, a massive buffet 
 covered with cut glass and silverware. 
 An odd idea is a window directly over 
 the fireplace; it is of one solid piece of 
 plate glass, surrounded by a frame of 
 dark blue glass, and inside that, like the 
 mat of a picture, opal glass, as one looks 
 
i68 Mark Twain 
 
 out at the beautiful landscape, he can 
 hardly realize at first that it is nature s 
 handiwork thus framed in, instead of a 
 painting actually hanging upon the wall. 
 The flue of the fireplace extends each 
 side of this picturesque window. Con 
 nected with the dining- room is the library, 
 which is the general living room. It has 
 large double doors leading into the front 
 hall opposite the entrance. It is a sunny, 
 cheerful room, with a huge, heavily 
 carved fireplace which Mr. Clemens 
 brought from Europe, where it had once 
 held place in an ancient castle; it seems 
 to have brought with it to this American 
 home some of the dignity, pomp and 
 vsplendor of which it once formed an im 
 portant part. The room looks as if it 
 belonged to a baronial castle, but in 
 winter it is less sombre, and a blazing 
 fire of logs burns behind the brass fender, 
 bringing into greater prominence the 
 motto cut in brass above the fire: "The 
 ornament of a house is the friends that 
 frequent it." Oa either side are low 
 book shelves built against the wall; they 
 
His Life and Work. 169 
 
 form a part of the massive chimney-piece 
 and look like wings of a great bat. The 
 floor is covered with rugs and luxurious 
 seats are fitted into the windows; a large 
 carved table stands in the center covered 
 with magazines and papers. 
 
 The whole house has rather the ap 
 pearance of an old castle, with the carv 
 ings grotesque and ponderous, Instead of 
 the old mahogany of colonial days. A 
 wide oaken staircase leads to the apart 
 ments above, the most conspicuous of 
 which is a large room fitted up most com 
 fortably with cozy nooks filled in with 
 cushioned seats. Beyond is a room in 
 which a large rocking horse and scattered 
 toys make one acquainted with the reason 
 Mr. Clemens ceased writing in this at 
 tractive apartment and moved still further 
 up-stairs to a corner of the billiard room. 
 Each suite of apartments has its separate 
 bathroom. One guest chamber is fur 
 nished in pink silk; even the bedstead is 
 of pink silk tufted all over with tiny 
 satin buttons. 
 
Ifo Mark Twain 
 
 The study or work room of the humor 
 ist is the billiard room, upon the upper 
 floor, the windows of which look out 
 upon the broad acres of beautiful land 
 scape. In the distance is heard the ripple 
 of Park river. In the corner of the room 
 is his writing-table, covered usually with 
 books, manuscripts, letters and other 
 literary litter; and in the middle of the 
 room stands the billiard- table. Mr. 
 Clemens is an expert billiard player, and 
 when he tires of writing at his little desk 
 in the corner, he rises and makes some 
 scientific strokes with the cue. A resi 
 dent of Hartford says that he called upon 
 Mark once in the billiard room, when 
 the fire in the grate threw some sparks 
 out upon the floor. These caught some 
 loose paper and the room for a moment 
 promised to break out in flames. Twain 
 was playing billiards at the time," says 
 the man, "and he did not stop his game. 
 He immediately rung for the servants, 
 and lazily told them that they had better 
 extinguish the fire, and with that he 
 leaned over the table and made a stroke 
 
His Life and Work. 171 
 
 with his billiard cue which would have 
 done honor to the world s champion. 
 Twain never gets excited." 
 
 The study is a long room with sloping 
 sides formed by the roof. There are 
 three balconies adjacent, two large ones 
 on either side, and one at the end. One 
 may step out into these through regular 
 doors. His mode of work in this study 
 is systematic. He makes it an invariable 
 rule to perform a certain amount of literary 
 work every day, and his working hours 
 are made continuous by his not taking 
 any midday meal. He is mercilous 
 toward his own productions, and has 
 often destroyed an entire day s labor as 
 soon as it was written. He found by ex 
 perience that the final result was more 
 satisfactory by taking this course, than 
 by trying to remodel what he considered 
 a faulty manuscript. In this way he has 
 destroyed hundreds of pages of manu 
 script, and from one of his larger books he 
 culled out no less than five hundred pages. 
 
 Since his advent in the city of Hart 
 ford, Mark Twain has won for himself 
 
172 Mark Twain 
 
 the name of "prince of entertainers." 
 Seated in his richly furnished library, to 
 whose beauty and artistic completeness 
 half the lands of Europe have contributed, 
 he will tell an anecdote or discuss a 
 literary or social question with a calm 
 directness and earnestness, revealing to 
 you an entirely new side of his character, 
 that has nothing in common with that 
 which he is wont to display to the public 
 who throng to his lectures. Even his 
 drollest stories he relates with this same 
 earnest impressiveness, and with a face 
 as serious as a sexton s. His brilliancy 
 has a certain delightful quality which is 
 almost too evanescent to be imprisoned 
 in any one phrase. You have no oppres 
 sive consciousness that you are expected 
 to laugh; you rather feel as if the talker 
 had unexpectedly taken you into his con 
 fidence, and you feel your heart going 
 out toward him in return. He is a 
 reader of the finest discriminating faculty, 
 high dramatic power, and remarkable 
 sympathetic interpretation, and his read 
 ing of Browning, whom he greatly ad- 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 mires, is a rare entertainment. He is a 
 leading member of the Monday Evening 
 Club of Hartford, the Authors Club, the 
 Century Club, the Actors Club of New 
 York, and other social and literary or 
 ganizations. 
 
 During the summer months, Mr. 
 Clemens and his family sojourn at Quarry 
 Farm, near Elrnira, New York, at the 
 home of Mr. T. W. Crane, whose wife is 
 a sister of Mrs. Clemens. Here among 
 the historic hills of the Chemung valley, 
 the humorist works with the same sys 
 tematic rule as in the study of his Hart 
 ford house. A friend who visited Mr. 
 Clemens in his summer retreat, writes as 
 follows: 
 
 * A summer house has been built for 
 Mr. Clemens within the Crane grounds, 
 on a high peak, which stands six hun 
 dred feet above the valley that lies spread 
 out before it. The house is built almost 
 entirely of glass, and is modelled ex 
 actly on the plan of a Mississippi steam 
 boat s pilot-house. Here, shut off from 
 all outside communication, Mr. Clemens 
 
if 4 . Mark Twain 
 
 does the hard work of the year, or rather 
 the confining and engrossing work of 
 writing, which demands continuous ap 
 plication, day after day. The lofty 
 work-room is some distance from the 
 house. He goes to it every morning 
 about half-past eight and stays there un 
 til called to dinner by the blowing of a 
 horn about five o clock. He takes no 
 lunch or noon meal of any sort, and 
 works without eating, while the rules are 
 imperative not to disturb him during this 
 working period. His only recreation is 
 his cigar." 
 
 Another correspondent wrote as follows: 
 
 To keep away the large number of 
 
 visitors and sight-seers who come to view 
 
 the sanctum, Twain posted upon his door 
 
 the following notice: 
 
 i Step Softly! Keep Away! Do not Dis- 
 | turb the Remains ! 
 
 "In spite of this characteristic warning 
 we open the door and enter. The floor 
 is bare. There is a table in the center 
 of the room covered with books, news- 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 papers, manuscripts and all the para 
 phernalia of authorship. Over the fire 
 place is a shelf, on which rests a few 
 books and a couple of boxes of choice 
 cigars/ 
 
 An intimate acquaintance writing of 
 Mr. Clemens and the tobacco habit says: 
 
 "He is an inveterate smoker, and 
 smokes constantly while at his work, 
 and, indeed, all the time, from half-past 
 eight in the morning to half-past ten at 
 night, stopping only when at his meals. 
 A cigar lasts him about forty minutes, 
 now that he has reduced to an exact 
 science the act of reducing the weed to 
 ashes. So he smokes from fifteen to 
 twenty cigars every day. Some time 
 ago he was persuaded to stop the prac 
 tice, and actually went a year and more 
 without tobacco; but he found himself 
 unable to carry along important work 
 which he undertook, and it was not until 
 he resumed smoking that he could do it. 
 Since then his faith in his cigar has not 
 wavered . L,ike other American smokers, 
 Mr. Clemens is unceasing in his search 
 
176 Mark Twain 
 
 for the really satisfactory cigar at a really 
 satisfactory price, and, first and last, has 
 gathered a good deal of experience in the 
 pursuit. It is related that, having enter 
 tained a party of gentlemen one winter 
 evening in Hartford, he gave to each, just 
 before they left the house, one of a new 
 sort of cigar that he was trying to believe 
 was the object of his search. He made 
 each guest light it before starting. The 
 next morning he found all that he had 
 given away lying on the snow beside the 
 pathway across his lawn. Each smoker 
 had been polite enough to smoke until 
 he got out of the house, but every one 
 on gaining his liberty had yielded to the 
 instinct of self-preservation and tossed 
 the cigar away, forgetting that it would 
 be found there by daylight. The testi 
 mony of the next morning was over 
 whelming, and the verdict against the 
 new brand was accepted." 
 
 Some years ago in making a phrenolo 
 gical examination of Mark Twain, Pro 
 fessor Beall of Cincinnati, made report as 
 follows: 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 "Wit and humor are very familiar 
 words, and yet, from the difficulty in de 
 fining them, or from not distinguishing 
 the particular mental mechanism upon 
 which they depend, the relative merits 
 of many authors are often but vaguely 
 understood. Wit is primarily an intel 
 lectual perception of incongruity or un 
 expected relations, but the idea that any 
 thing thus apprehended is ludicrous is 
 suggested by the affective faculty of 
 mirthfulness, in the same manner that 
 the understanding may perceive a" dan 
 gerous object and thus arouse the emotion 
 of fear. The relation between the intel 
 lectual faculties and the feelings is recipro 
 cal, so that the sentiment of the ludi 
 crous, when strong, may prompt the in 
 tellect to create imaginary senses or 
 associated ideas adapted to gratify It, or 
 become active as the result of real per 
 ceptions. Talent for wit, then, depends 
 upon certain intellectual activities com 
 bined with the sentiment of mirth. But 
 humor introduces another element 
 namely secretiveness* This propensity 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 not only creates the desire to conceal 
 . one s own thoughts, but gives almost 
 equal pleasure in penetrating the dis 
 guises of others. It enables a joker to 
 "keep a straight face" while telling a 
 story, and the secretiveness of the listener 
 . is gratified by detecting the absurdity in 
 . the narrative beneath the assumed gravity 
 of the speaker. That is, to the amusing 
 incongruity of the events in the story is 
 added the further incongruity between 
 the character of the story and the serious 
 countenance of the narrator. The -Eng 
 lish and Italians are more humorous than 
 witty, the reverse of which is true of the 
 French. Mark Twain is excellent in 
 wit, but super-excellent in humor. Se 
 cretiveness is very marked in the diame 
 ter of his head just above the ears, and is 
 indicated also by the width of his nostrils, 
 the nearly closed eyes, compressed lips, 
 slow, guarded manner of speech, etc. 
 His nose is of the apprehensive" type 
 in its great length and somewhat hooked 
 -point, but it is not thick enough above 
 -the nostrils to indicate taste for com- 
 
His Life and Work. 179 
 
 merce. This * apprehensive" or cautious 
 nasal organ, so prominent in Dante, Cal 
 vin and other men celebrated for earnest 
 ness and gravity, might seem an anomaly 
 in this case but for the explanation that 
 cautiousness and secretiveness are essen 
 tial ingredients in genuine humor. On 
 this principle we can account for the 
 temperament of our great humorist, 
 which is not the laughing, fat, rotund 
 vital, but rather the spare, angular men 
 tal, or mental-motive, which is favorable 
 to hard sense, logic, general intelligence 
 and insight into human nature. His in 
 tellect is well balanced, having a strong 
 foundation of perceptive faculties which 
 gather details with the fidelity of a 
 camera. He has also a large upper fore 
 head, giving philosophical power, ability 
 to generalize, reason, plan, and see a 
 long way ahead. The middle centers, 
 or memory of events, criticism and com 
 parison, are also well developed. His 
 eyes are rather deeply set, and his lan 
 guage is subordinate to his thought. - 
 The hollow temples indicate but little- 
 
180 Mark Twain 
 
 music, and mirthfulness, at the upper 
 corners of the forehead, is by no means 
 remarkable. Ideality, or love of beauty, 
 is only fair. The head measures 22^2 
 inches, which is half an inch less than 
 the average intellectual giant, but the 
 fiber of the whole man is fine, close and 
 strong, and the cerebral combination is 
 of a very available sort. He has very 
 ardent affections, strong love of approba 
 tion, sense of justice, firmness, kindness 
 and ability to read character; with small 
 self-esteem, love of gain, or inclination to 
 the supernatural. Knowledge of the 
 world and interest in humanity are his 
 leading traits, and, altogether, he is a 
 phenomenal man of whom Americans 
 may well be proud." 
 
 Being extremely domestic in his tastes 
 Mark Twain is fond of his home life, and 
 of his beautiful children. His eldest 
 daughter, Susie, was born in 1872, Clara 
 I^anghorne was born in 1874, and Jean 
 in 1880. Another child, a son, died in 
 infancy. Mrs. Clemens is described as 
 gentle, quiet and motherly, ten years 
 
His Lift and Work. i#z 
 
 younger than her husband. Mr. Clemens 
 is reported to have said that when his 
 mother died there would be no one left 
 in the family to appreciate his jokes. It 
 is said Mrs. Clemens is particularly slow 
 in these matters. She dresses very 
 plainly, wearing her dark hair smoothly 
 brushed from the parting in the center, 
 with no crimps or attempt at dressing. 
 She appears still more sedate by usually 
 wearing eye-glasses. She is, however, 
 noted for her goodness and for being a 
 fond mother. 
 
 For many years the near neighbors of 
 the family have been the families of Mr. 
 Charles Dudley Warner, Mr. George 
 Warner, Rev. Mr. Twitchell and Mrs. 
 Harriet Eeecher Stowe. It is said that 
 once when Mr. Clemens, at the solicita 
 tion of his wife, called on Mrs. Stowe, he 
 was so absent-minded as to put on neither 
 collar nor necktie. On Mrs. Clemens 
 remonstrating on his return, he said he 
 would make it all right, and accordingly 
 sent a collar and tie of his over to Mrs. 
 Stowe in a box. 
 
iS2 Mark Twain 
 
 Miss Susie has always been Mark s 
 favorite child. She inherits much of her 
 father s brightness. She kept a diary at 
 one time, in which she noted the occur 
 rences in the family, and, among other 
 things, the sayings of her parents. On 
 one page she wrote that father sometimes 
 used stronger words when mother wasn t 
 by and he thought "we" didn t hear. 
 Mrs. Clemens found the diary and showed 
 it to her husband, probably thinking the 
 particular page worth his notice. After 
 this Clemens did and said several things 
 that were intended to attract the child s 
 attention, and found them duly noted 
 afterward. But one day the following 
 entry occurred: 
 
 "I don t think I ll put down anything 
 more about father, for I think he does 
 things to have me rot ice him, and I be 
 lieve he reads this diary." 
 
 Of the Clemens children, a correspond 
 ent of a Chicago newspaper, tells of their 
 adventures with their father, while on a 
 visit to that city, as follows; 
 
His Life and Work. 183 
 
 " We came in last night," said Mark, 
 pulling at the left side of his mustache. 
 "Mrs. Clemens is not very well, neither 
 am I. I have been amusing the children. 
 I have taken them to a panorama. I 
 understand there are three others near 
 here. I will take them there too. I 
 want to satiate them with battles it 
 may amuse them." Three little girls 
 composed of three red gowns, three red 
 parasols and six blue stockings stood on 
 the steps and laughed. 
 
 " ( Run up and tell mamma what a 
 jolly time you ve had and I ll think of 
 something else to amuse you." 
 
 1 When the three little girls had dis 
 appeared Mr. Clemens sighed. Did you 
 ever try to amuse three little girls at the 
 same time? he asked, after a pause; it 
 requires genius. I wonder whether they 
 would like to bathe in the lake? he con 
 tinued, with sudden animation, hardly 
 pausing- five minutes between each word, 
 it might amuse them. 
 
 " Are you on your vacation trip, Mr. 
 Clemens?" 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 " No; I have just returned from a 
 visit to my mother in Keokuk, Iowa. 
 We came from Buffalo to Duluth by a 
 lake steamer and then from St. Paul 
 down the river to Keokuk. Neither in 
 this country nor in any other have I seen 
 such interesting scenery as that along 
 the upper Mississippi. One finds all that 
 the Hudson affords bluffs and w coded 
 highlands and a great deal in addition. 
 Between St. Paul and the mouth of the 
 Illinois river there are over four hundred 
 islands, strung out in every possible 
 shape. A river without islands is like a 
 woman without hair. She may be good 
 and pure, but one doesn t fall in love 
 with her very often. Did you ever fall 
 in love with a bald-headed woman? 
 The reporter admitted that he had drawn 
 the line there. 
 
 " I never did, either/ continued Mr. 
 Clemens, meditatively; at least I think 
 I never did. There is no place for loaf 
 ing more satisfactory than the pilot house 
 of a Mississippi steamboat. It amuses 
 the children to see the pilot monkey with 
 
His Life and Work. 183 
 
 the wheel. Traveling by boat is the 
 best way to travel unless one can stay at 
 home. On a lake or river boat one is as 
 thoroughly cut off from letters and 
 papers and the tax collector as though 
 he were amid sea. Moreover, one doesn t 
 have the discomforts of seafaring. It is 
 very unpleasant to look at sea sick 
 people at least so my friends said the 
 last time I crossed. 
 
 " It might amuse the children, 
 though, suggested the reporter. 
 
 " I hadn t thought of that/ replied 
 Mr. Clemens; but perhaps it might. 
 The lake seems rather rough to-day I 
 wonder whether one could get a boat, a 
 little boat that would bob considerably. 
 Yes, it might amuse the children. 
 
 " But at such a sacrifice. 
 
 " You are not a parent? replied the 
 humorist. 
 
 " It is strange, continued Mr. Clem 
 ens, ia momentary forgetfulness of the 
 children, how little has been written 
 about the upper Mississippi. The river 
 below St. L,ouis has been described time 
 
i86 Mark Twain 
 
 and again, and it is the least interesting 
 part. One can sit in the pilot house for 
 a few hours and watch the low shores, 
 the ungainly trees and the democratic 
 buzzards, and then one might as well go 
 to bed. One has seen everything there 
 is to see. Along the upper Mississippi 
 every hour brings something new. There 
 are crowds cf odd islands, bluffs, prairies, 
 hills, woods and villages everything one 
 could desire to amuse the children. 
 Few people ever think of going there, 
 however. Dickens, Corbett, Mother 
 Trollope and the other discriminating 
 Knglish people who wrote up the 
 country before 1842 had hardly any idea 
 that such a stretch of river scenery ex 
 isted. Their successors have followed in 
 their footsteps, and as we form our 
 opinions of our country from what other 
 people say of us, of course we ignore the 
 finest part of the Mississippi. 
 
 4 At this moment the three little girls in 
 the three red gowns and six blue stockings 
 appeared, and Mr. Clemens assumed the 
 shape- of an crrmseraent bureau." 
 
His Life and Work. 187 
 
 An instance of his home life is the 
 following anecdote: Having been asked 
 to contribute to a newspaper issued at 
 the Fair in aid of the abused children in 
 Boston, he wrote: "Why should I want 
 a society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Children, to prosper, when I have a baby 
 downstairs that kept me awake several 
 hours last night, with no pretext for it 
 but to make trouble? This occurs every 
 night, and it embitters me, because I see 
 how needless it was to put in the other 
 burglar alarm, a costly and complicated 
 contrivance, which cannot be depended 
 upon, because it s always getting out of 
 order; whereas, although the baby is al 
 ways getting out of order, too, it can 
 nevertheless be depended on. Yes, I am 
 bitter against your society, for I think 
 the idea of it is all wrong; but, if you 
 will start a society for the prevention of 
 cruelty to fathers, I will write you a 
 whole book." 
 
 At a Hartford dinner party one day, 
 the subject of eternal life and future 
 punishment came up for a lengthy dis- 
 
l88 Mark Twain 
 
 cussion, in which Mark Twain, who was 
 present took no part. A lady near him, 
 turned suddenly toward him and ex 
 claimed : 
 
 "Why do you not say anything? I 
 want your opinion." 
 
 Mr. Clemens replied gravely: Mad 
 am, you must. excuse me, I am silent of 
 necessity. I have friends in both places." 
 
His Life and Work. 189 
 
 IX 
 
 A3 A BUSINESS MAE. 
 
 A million copies cf Mark Twain s 
 books have been sold in this country. 
 England and her colonies have taken 
 half as many more, and the larger works 
 have been translated into German, 
 French, Italian, Norwegian and Danish. 
 "Innocents Abroad," "Roughing It," 
 "The Gilded Age," and "A Tramp 
 Abroad," were published by the American 
 Publishing Company of Hartford. "The 
 Stolen White Elephant" appeared from 
 the presses of Osgood of Boston. 
 
 The humorist has often said that if he 
 were to live his life over again, he would 
 publish his own books, and act as his 
 own business manager, thus securing a 
 larger share of the profits arising from 
 
I go Mark Twain 
 
 the sale of his works. The manuscript 
 of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 
 was completed in March, 1884, but owing 
 to complications and differences with the 
 publishers, it did not appear until the 
 following year, although a prospectus of 
 the story was sent out, and the opening 
 chapter published in the Century maga 
 zine. When the book was completed 
 ,Mr. Clemens made a proposition in re 
 gard to its publication to the American 
 Publishing Company. From the sale of 
 his earlier works this firm had made for 
 itself reputation and wealth. Mark 
 Twain, on his side, received royalties 
 amounting in all to over four hundred 
 thousand dollars. When "Huckleberry 
 Finn," the sequel to "Tom Sawyer," was 
 completed, he again made them a propo 
 sition. Negotiations were commenced 
 but never completed. The parties could 
 not agree upon terms. He was offered 
 liberal royalties but refused to accept 
 them. The final offer was that the 
 profits should be equally divided, each of 
 the parties to receive fifty per cent, of 
 
His Life and Work. 291 
 
 the proceeds from the sale of the new 
 book. This proposition was not satisfac 
 tory to the author, who wanted sixty per 
 cent, of the profits. The Company re 
 fused to accept the offer, and Mr. Clemens 
 determined to at once combine the 
 business of publisher with that of author. 
 He had great confidence in the business 
 ability of his nephew, Charles I,. Web 
 ster of Fredonia,New York. With him he 
 formed a partnership, and Huckleberry 
 Finn" appeared bearing the imprint of 
 Charles I,. Webster and Company. The 
 result was watched with interest by 
 literary men and publishers all over the 
 world. Huckleberry Finn" netted the 
 author a profit of nearly $100,000. Mr. 
 Webster died a few years since but the 
 firm name remains unchanged. 
 
 Upon his earlier books, Mark received 
 upwards of $30,000 per year, for a num 
 ber of years. "Tom Sawyer" sold better 
 than any of his books excepting "Inno 
 cents Abroad." When the Gilded Age" 
 was dramatized and placed on the stage by 
 John T. Raymond, it proved a gold mine 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 for the fortunate author. In one year 
 Raymond paid Mark over $70,000 in 
 royalties. 
 
 He never dabbled in Wall street 
 stocks, although he knew whether 
 Union Pacific or Western Union, were 
 up or down and why. His most unfortu 
 nate investment was in the stock of an 
 accident insurance company, where he 
 had invested $50,000, but luckily he 
 saved his money from the wreck. His 
 wife had a large fortune in her own right, 
 but so far as Mark Twain was concerned 
 she might have been penniless, for he in 
 sisted that her property be settled upon 
 herself and managed for her interest ex 
 clusively. He has made his own fortune 
 in his own way, and has never had to 
 borrow a cent from any one in his 
 business investments since the " Inno 
 cents" began to coin money for him. 
 
 The firm of Charles I,. Webster and 
 Company have published many books in 
 addition to those written by Mark Twain. 
 The profits in the " Memoirs of General 
 Grant" and those of the Pope were enor- 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 mous. In 1884, when he read from his 
 own works with George W. Cable, his 
 share of the net profits was $30,000 
 He invented Mark Twain s Scrap Book 
 which made a fortune for the publishers. 
 Nearly a million copies have been sold, 
 and his profits amount to $100,000. He 
 also invented a note book. All note 
 books that he could buy had the vicious 
 habit of opening at the wrong place and 
 distracting attention in that way. So, 
 by a simple contrivance, he arranged one 
 that always opens at the right place; that 
 is, of course, at the page last written up 
 on. Other simple inventions of Mark 
 Twain s include: A vest, which enables 
 the wearer to dispense with suspenders; 
 a shirt, with collars and cuffs attached, 
 which requires neither buttons nor studs; 
 a perpetual-calendar watch-charm, which 
 gives the day of the week and of the 
 month; and a game whereby people may 
 play historical dates and events upon a 
 board, somewhat after the manner of 
 cribbage, being a game whose office is 
 twofold to furnish the dates and events, 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 and to impress them permanently upon 
 the memory. 
 
 He is a literary Midas. Everything 
 he has touched has turned to gold, not 
 from luck, but from hard work and with 
 an eye to business. In order to obtain 
 the "Grant Memoirs" for publication, he 
 made terms with the Grant family, which 
 other publishers did not dare to make. 
 As Twain said: "They did not appreci 
 ate the magnitude of the occasion." 
 
 After he had become a business man 
 and a millionaire he was elected an 
 honorary member of the Concord, Mass., 
 Free-Trade Club, and in acknowledging 
 the compliment wrote to the secretary as 
 follows: 
 
 It does look as if Massachusetts were 
 in a fair way to embarrass me with kind 
 nesses this year. In the first place* a 
 Massachusetts judge has just decided in 
 open Court that a Boston publisher may 
 sell, not only his own property in a free 
 and unfettered way, but also may as 
 freely sell property which does not belong 
 to him, but to me property which he 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 lias not bought, and which I have not 
 sold. Under this ruling I am now ad 
 vertising that judge s homestead for sale, 
 and if I make as good a sum out of it as 
 I expect, I shall go on and sell out the 
 rest of his property. In the next place, 
 a committee of the public library of your 
 town have condemned and excommuni 
 cated my last book and doubled its 
 sale. . . And finally, the Free-Trade 
 Club of Concord comes forward and adds 
 to the splendid burden of obligations al 
 ready conferred upon me by the Common 
 wealth of Massachusetts an honorary 
 membership, which is worth more than 
 all the rest just at this juncture, since it 
 endorses me as worthy to associate with 
 certain gentlemen whom even the moral 
 icebergs of the Concord Library Com 
 mittee are bound to respect. May the 
 great Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
 endure forever, is the heartfelt prayer of 
 one who, long a recipient of her mere 
 general good -will, is proud to realize that 
 he is t last become her pet." 
 
ig6 Mark Twain 
 
 Mr. Clemens has been so busily en 
 gaged during the later years of his life, 
 that necessarily his book work and his 
 personal correspondence have suffered. 
 He failed to answer a letter written by 
 Sergeant Ballantine, the English author. 
 After waiting a reasonable time the latter 
 was so exasperated, at not receiving an 
 answer, that he mailed Mark a sheet of 
 paper and a postage stamp, as a gentle 
 reminder. Mr. Clemens wrote back on 
 a postal card: 
 
 "Paper and stamp received. Please 
 send an envelope." 
 
 To-day in healthful middle age, 
 Samuel I,. Clemens is reaping the fruits 
 of a long and varied career. He has been 
 a printer, steamboat pilot, private secre 
 tary, miner, reporter, lecturer, inventor, 
 author, publisher and capitalist. He is 
 one of the few living persons with a 
 truly world-wide reputation. As Miss 
 Gilder has truthfully and wittily re 
 marked: "Unless the excellent gentle 
 men, engaged in revising the Scriptures, 
 should claim the authorship of their 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 work, there is no other living writer, 
 whose books are now so widely read as 
 Mark Twain s; and it may not be out of 
 the way to add that in more than onar 
 pious household, the "Innocents Abroad/* 
 is laid beside the family Bible, and re* 
 ferred to as a hand book of Holy 
 description and narrative." 
 
Mark Twain 
 
 GEMS PEOM MAEK TWAIN. 
 
 COLLECTED FROM HIS PUBLISHED WORKS, FUGI 
 TIVE SKETCHES, LECTURES, SPEECHES 
 AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 "Be virtuous and you will be eccen 
 tric." 
 
 "The train is profusely decorated with 
 tunnels." 
 
 "A tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a 
 platter of tomatoes." 
 
 "Figures stew out of me just as natural 
 as the otter of roses out of the otter." 
 
 "There is no bird, or cow, or anything 
 that uses as good grammar as a blue-jay." 
 
 "I wouldn t give a cent to hear Inger- 
 soll on Moses, but I d give ten dollars to 
 hear Moses on Ingersoll." 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 "One could see the dress creeping 
 along the floor some time after the woman 
 was gone." 
 
 "When the musing spider steps on to 
 the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits 
 wild surprise, then he shrivels. n 
 
 * I left my rheumatism there. Baden- 
 Baden is welcome to it. It was little,; 
 but it was all I had to give. I should 
 have liked to leave something more 
 catching, but it was not in my power/ 1 , 
 
 * I tried him with mild jokes, then 
 with severe ones; I dosed him with bad 
 jokes, and riddled him with good ones; 1 
 fired old stale jokes into him, and pep 
 pered him fore and aft with red-hot ones. 1 
 I warmed up to my work, and assaulted 
 him on the right and left, in front and 
 behind; I fumed, and charged, and ranted, 
 till I was sick, and frantic and furious; 
 but I never moved him once I never 
 started a smile or a tear! Never a ghost 
 of a smile, and never a suspicion of 
 moisture! He was deaf, and dumb, and 
 blind as a badger." 
 
200 Mark Twain 
 
 "He was deeply and sincerely pious, 
 and swore like a fish woman." 
 
 "He was frescoed from head to heel 
 with pictures and mottoes tatooed in red 
 and blue India ink. " 
 
 There were no hackmen, hacks or 
 omnibuses on the pier. I said it was 
 like being in heaven." 
 " Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. 
 Over it broods the spell of a curse that 
 has withered its fields and fettered its 
 energies." 
 
 i * Formerly, to be a Californian was to 
 be a speculator. A man could not help 
 it. One man tried to be otherwise, but 
 be was only kicking against fate. While 
 everybody was wild with a spirit of spec 
 ulation, and full of plans for making sud 
 den fortunes, he said he would farm 
 along quietly, and slowly gain a modest 
 competence, and so be happy. But his 
 first crop of onions happened to be about 
 the only onions produced that year. He 
 3old it for a hundred thousand dollars 
 and retired." 
 
His Life and Work. 2OT 
 
 "A small company, but small com 
 panies are pleasantest. " 
 
 "He was full of blessed egotism and 
 placid self-importance, but he didn t 
 know as much as a 3-em quad." 
 
 "A cat that eat up an entire box of 
 Seidlitz powders, and then hadn t any 
 more judgment than to go and take a 
 drink." 
 
 "It is the nature of woman to ask 
 trivial, irrelevant and pursuing ques 
 tions, questions that pursue you from a 
 beginning in nothing to a run-to-cover in 
 nowhere." 
 
 "We walked out into the grass grown, 
 fragment-strewn court beyond the Parthe 
 non. It startled us every now and then, 
 to see a stony white face stare suddenly 
 up at us out of the grass with its dead. 
 The place seemed alive with ghosts. I 
 half expected to see the Athenian heroes 
 of twenty centuries ago glide out of the 
 shadows, and steal into the old temple 
 they knew so well and regarded with 
 such boundless pride." 
 
202 Mark Twain 
 
 " At sea. Now came the resurrection 
 hour, the berths gave up their dead. 
 These pale spectres in plug hats file up 
 the companion way." 
 
 Age enlarges and enriches the powers 
 of some musical instruments, notably 
 those of the violin, but it seems to set a 
 piano s teeth on edge." 
 
 "I am a Yankee of the Yankees, a 
 practical man, nearly barren of sentiment 
 or poetry in other words, my father was 
 a, blacksmith, my uncle was a horse 
 doctor, and I was both." 
 
 "He found that the education of the 
 nineteenth century is plenty good enough 
 capital to go into business in the sixth 
 century with/ and the next year he was 
 running the kingdom all by himself on a 
 moderate royalty of forty per cent." 
 
 There didn t seem to be brains enough 
 in the entire nursery to bait a fish-hook, 
 but you didn t mind that after a little 
 while, for you saw that brains were not 
 Deeded in a society like that, and would 
 have marred its symmetry and spoiled it." 
 
His Life and Work. 2OJ 
 
 This vile bit of human rubbish." 
 
 4 Chambermaids are dead to every 
 human instinct." 
 
 "A forlorn dog, with bowed head, and 
 tail withdrawn from service." 
 
 "When a man has been fifty years at 
 sea, he is only a gray and bearded child." 
 
 "He was a man with a hair lip, and a 
 pure heart, and everybody said he was 
 true as steel." 
 
 "To the Indian, soap and education 
 are not as sudden as a massacre, but they 
 are more deadly in the long run. * 
 
 "They appointed me clerk of the com 
 mittee on conchology, and then allowed 
 me no amanuensis to play billiards with." 
 
 "If there was a horse-race, you d find 
 him flush or you d find him busted at the 
 end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he d 
 bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he d 
 bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, 
 he d bet on it; why, if there were two 
 birds sitting on a fence, he would bet 
 you which one would fly first." 
 
2O4 Mark Twain 
 
 "If I had another cold in the head, and 
 there was no course left me but to take 
 either an earthquake or a quart of warm 
 salt water, I would take my chances on 
 the earthquake." 
 
 "Ah, to think of it, only to think of it! 
 the poor old faithful creature. For she 
 was so faithful. Would you believe it, 
 she had been a servant in that self-same 
 house and that self-same family for 
 twenty-seven years come Christmas, and 
 never a cross word and never a lick! 
 And, oh, to think she should meet such 
 a death at last! a sitting over the red- 
 hot stove at three o clock in the morning, 
 and went to sleep and fell on it and was 
 actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a 
 bit, but literally roasted to a crisp! Poor 
 faithful creature, how she was cooked ! 
 I am but a poor woman, but even if I 
 have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a 
 tombstone over that lone sufferer s grave 
 and Mr. Riley, if you would have the 
 goodness to think up a little epitaph to 
 put on it which would sort of describe 
 the awful way in which she met her " 
 
Ills Life and Work. 2OJ 
 
 "Put it, Well done, good and faithful 
 servant! said Riley, and never smiled. 1 " 
 
 4 The less a man knows the bigger 
 noise he makes and the higher salary he 
 commands." 
 
 "Who can join in the heartless libel 
 that says woman is extravagant in dress 
 when he can look back and call to mind 
 our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed 
 in her modification of the Highland 
 costume. " 
 
 "He buys the original pig for a dollar 
 and a half, and feeds him forty dollars 
 worth of corn, and then sells him for 
 about nine dollars. This is the only crop 
 he ever makes any money on. He loses 
 on the corn, but he makes seven and a 
 half on the hog." 
 
 "He stood bewildered a moment, with 
 a sense of goneness on him like one who 
 finds himself suddenly overboard upon a 
 midnight sea, and beholds the ship pass 
 into shrouding gloom, while the dreadful 
 conviction falls upon his soul that he has 
 not been missed." 
 
206 Mark Twain 
 
 "Just a hunk of brains, that s what he 
 was." 
 
 "He will eat a man, he will eat a 
 Bible, he will eat anything between a 
 man and a Bible." 
 
 "He wrote with impressive flatulence 
 and soaring confidence upon the vastest 
 subjects; but puffing alms-gifts of wed 
 ding cake, salty ice cream, abnormal 
 watermelons, and sweet potatoes the size 
 of your leg was his best hold." 
 
 "Tom appeared on the sidewalk with 
 a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled 
 brush. He surveyed the fence, and all 
 gladness left him, and a deep melancholy 
 settled down upon his spirit. Thirty 
 yards of board fence nine feet high. Life 
 to him seemed hollow, and existence but 
 a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush 
 and passed it along the topmost plank; 
 repeated the operation ; did it again; com 
 pared the insignificant whitewashed 
 streak with the far-reaching continent of 
 tmwhitewashed fence, and sat down on 
 the tree-box discouraged." 
 
His Life and Work. 
 
 "It was just like a new author, s. They 
 always think that they know more than 
 anybody else when they are getting out 
 their first book." 
 
 "For weeks she nursed her grief in 
 silence, while the roses faded from her 
 cheeks. And through it all she clung to 
 the hope that some day the old love 
 would bloom again in Reginald s heart, 
 and he would write to her; but the long 
 summer days dragged wearily along, and 
 still no letter came. The newspapers 
 teemed with stories of battle and carnage, 
 e and eagerly she read them, but always 
 with the same result: the tears welled up 
 and blurred the closing lines the name 
 she sought was looked for in vain, and 
 the dull aching returned to her sinking 
 heart. Letters to the other girls some 
 times contained brief mention ot him, 
 and presented always the same picture of 
 him a morose, unsmiling, desperate 
 man, always in the thickest of the fight, 
 begrimed with powder, and moving calm 
 and unscathed through tempests of shot 
 and shell, as if he bore a charmed life." 
 
208 Mark Twain 
 
 "A cross between a tired mud turtle 
 and a crippled hearse horse." 
 
 "He means well, but art is folly to 
 him; he only understands groceries." 
 
 "His strawberries would be a comfort 
 able success if the robins would eat tur 
 nips, but they won t, and hence the 
 difficulty." 
 
 * Having forgotten to mention it sooner, 
 I will remark, in conclusion, that the 
 ages of the Siamese Twins " are respec 
 tively fifty-one and fifty-three years." 
 
 1 I found the brave fellow in a pro 
 found French calm. I say French cairn, 
 because French calmness and English 
 calmness have points of difference. He 
 was moving swiftly back and forth 
 among the debris of his furniture, now 
 and then staving chance fragments of it 
 across the room with his foot; grinding a 
 constant prist of curses through his set 
 teeth; anl halting every little while to 
 deposit another handful of his hair on 
 the pile which he had been building of it 
 on the table." 
 
His Life and Work. 20? 
 
 "The place is as dark as the inside of 
 an infidel." 
 
 "She was a perfect polyglot once, but 
 somehow her palate got down." 
 
 "And so saying, he turned his face to 
 the wall and gave up the ghost." 
 
 "We write frankly and fearlessly, but 
 then we modify before we print." 
 
 "Oh, I know him. A sallow-faced,, 
 red-headed fellow, with a little scar on 
 the side of his throat like a splinter under 
 the flesh." 
 
 "A woman who could face the aevil 
 himself or a mouse loses her grip and 
 goes all to pieces in front of a flash of 
 lightning." 
 
 "He was a man of middle size and 
 compact frame, and when he was think 
 ing deeply, he had a way of knitting his 
 brows and tapping his forehead reflec 
 tively with his finger, which impressed 
 you at once with the conviction that you 
 stood in the presence of a person of no 
 common order." 
 
2IO Mark Twain 
 
 "The poem is smooth and blubbery; it 
 reads like buttermilk gurgling from a 
 jug." 
 
 "A sincere compliment is always grate 
 ful to a young lady, so long as you don t 
 try to knock her down with it." 
 
 "Cain is branded a murderer so heart 
 lessly and unanimously in America, only 
 because he was neither a Democrat nor a 
 Republican." 
 
 "A long cadaverous creature, with 
 lanky locks hanging down to his 
 shoulders, and a week s stubble bristling 
 from the hills and valleys of his face." 
 
 Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a 
 poor chap a world of good after he is dead, 
 especially if he had hard luck while he 
 was alive. I wish they were used more." 
 
 "I do not know how it came about ex 
 actly, but gradually we appeared to melt 
 down and run together, conversationally 
 speaking, and then everything went 
 along as comfortably as clockwork." 
 
His Life and Work. 211 
 
 " Your conscience is a nuisance. A 
 conscience is like a child. If you pet it 
 and play with it and let it have every 
 thing it wants, it becomes spoiled and 
 intrudes on all of your amusements and 
 most of your griefs. Treat your con 
 science as you would treat anything else. 
 When it is rebellious, spank it be se 
 vere with it, airgue with it, prevent it from 
 coming to play with you at all hours 
 and you will secure a good conscience. 
 That is to say, a properly trained one. 
 A spoiled conscience simply destroys all 
 the pleasure in life. I think I have re 
 duced min to order. At least I haven t 
 heard from it for some time. Perhaps 
 I ve killed it through over-severity. It s 
 wrong to kill a child, but in spite of all I 
 have said, a conscience differs from a 
 child in many ways. Perhaps it is best 
 when it is dead." 
 
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