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232 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled from his natural home
beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have touched these idle strangers
that thronged about him; but did it? Apparently not. Men calling themselves
the superior race, the race of culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint
Chinese hat, with peaked roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling
down his back; his short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like
the rest of his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue
cotton, tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy blunt-
toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from head to foot,
cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or his melancholy face,
and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless Mongol. I wondered what
was passing behind his sad face, and what distant scene his vacant eye was
dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his heart, ten thousand miles away,
beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific? among the rice-fields and the plumy
palms of China? under the shadows of remembered mountain-peaks, or in
groves of bloomy shrubs and strange forest-trees unknown to climes like ours?
And now and then, rippling among his visions and his dreams, did he hear
familiar laughter and half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the
friendly faces of a bygone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen this
bronzed wanderer. In order that the group of idlers might be touched at least
by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his pauper dress and his
dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on the shoulder and said—
“Cheer up—don’t be down-hearted. It is not America that treats you in
this way, it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the humanity
out of hisheart. America has a broader hospitality for the exiled and oppressed.
America and Americans are always ready to help the unfortunate. Money
shall be raised—you shall go back to China—you shall see your friends again.
What wages do they pay you here?”
“Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it’s aisy, barrin the
troublesome furrin clothes that’s so expinsive.”
The exile remains at his post. The New York tea-merchants who need
picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.
a
SS ee
H
f
H
i
|
CROONS
oe
WE
.
SSS
HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER.
DID not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings.
Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I
was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the
paper was going off for a holiday, and I accepted the terms he offered, and took his
place.
The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the week
with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with some
solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice. As I left the
233
234 MARK TWAIN'S SRETCHES.
office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot of the stairs dispersed
with one impulse, and gave me passage-way, and I heard one or two of them say:
“That’s him!” Iwas naturally pleased by this incident. The next morning I
found a similar group at the foot of the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals
standing here and there in the street, and over the way, watching me with interest.
The group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say, “ Look
at his eye!” I pretended not to observe the notice I was attracting, but secretly
I was pleased with it, and was purposing to write an account of it tomy aunt. I
went up the short flight of stairs, and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I
drew near the door, which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-
looking men, whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then
they both plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised.
In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine but
rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He seemed to have
something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on the floor, and got out af
it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our paper.
He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with his
handkerchief, he said, “ Are you the new editor?”
I said I was.
“Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?”
“No,” I said; “this is my first attempt.”
“Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?”
“No; I believe I have not.”
“ Some instinct told me so,” said the old gentleman, putting on his spectacles, and
looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded his paper into a convenient
shape. “I wish to read you what must have made me have that instinct. It was
this editorial. Listen, and see if it was you that wrote it:—
‘Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them, It is much better to send a boy up and let him
shake the tree.”
“Now, what do. you think of that >—for I really suppose you wrote it?”
“Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no doubt
that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are spoiled in this
HOW 1 EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER. 235:
township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition, when, if they had sent a
boy up to shake the tree”
“Shake your grandmother! Turnips don’t grow on trees!”
“Oh, they don’t, don’t they? Well, who said they did? The language was
intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows anything will
know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine.”
Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and stamped
on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did not know as much
as a cow; and then went out and banged the door after him, and, in short, acted
in such a way that I fancied he was displeased about something. But not knowing
what the trouble was, I could not be any help to him.
Pretty soon after this 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,
darted within the door, and halted, motionless, with finger on lip, and head and
body bent in listeriing attitude. Nosound was heard. Stillhelistened. Nosound.
Then he turned the key in the door, and came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till
‘he was within long reaching distance of me, when he stopped, and after scanning
my face with intense interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his
bosom, and said—
“There, you wrote that. Read it to me—quick? Relieve me. I suffer.”
I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the relief
come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out of the face, and
rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful moonlight over a desolate
landscape:
“The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it. It should not be imported
earlier than June or later than September. In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where
it can hatch out its young. : =
“It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain. Therefore it will be well for the
farmer to begin setting out his cornstalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of
c= the pumpkin.—This berry is a feyavite with the natives of the interior of New
England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it
the preference over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully as satisfying,
The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange family that will thrive in the North, except the
gourd and one or two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the front yard with
the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is now generally conceded that the pumpkin as a
shade tree is a failure.
“Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to spawn”
236 MARK TWAIN’S SKETCHES.
The excited listener sprang toward
me to shake hands, and said—
“There, there—that will do. I
know I am all right now, because
you have read it just as I did, word
for word. But, stranger, when I first
read it this morning, I said to myself,
I never, never believed it before, not-
withstanding my friends kept me
under watch so strict, but now I
believe I am crazy; and with that I
fetched a howl that you might have
heard two miles, and started out to
kill somebody—because, you know,
I knew it would come to that sooner
or later, and so I might as well begin.
I read one of them paragraphs over
again, so.as to be certain, and then I
burned my house down and started.
I have crippled several people, and
have got one fellow up a tree, where
where I can get him if I want him.
But I thought I would call in here
as I passed along and make the
thing perfectly certain; and now it
zs certain, and I tell you it’ is lucky
for the chap that is in the tree. I
should have killed him, sure, as I
went back. Good-bye, sir, good-bye;
you have. taken a great load off my
mind. My reason has stood the
= === =~ strain of one of your agricultural
articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-bye, sir.”
‘HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER. 237
I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person had been
entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely accessory to them.
But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the regular editor walked in! [I
thought to myself, Now if you had gone to Egypt as I recommended you to, I
might have had a chance to get my hand in; but you wouldn’t do it, and here you
are. I sort of expected you.]
The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.
He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and these two young farmers had
made, and then said, “ This is a sad business—a very sad business. There is the
mucilage bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a spittoon and two candlesticks.
But that is not the worst. The reputation of the paper is injured—and permanently,
I fear. True, there never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold
such a large edition or soared to such celebrity ;—but does one want to be famous
for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as I am an
honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are roosting on the
fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they think you are crazy. And
well they might after reading your editorials. They are a disgrace to journalism.
Why, what put it into your head that you could edit a paper of this nature? You
do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and
a harrow as being the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and
you recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness and,
its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played
to them was superfluous—entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams. Clams
always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever about music. Ah, heavens and
earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you
could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day. I never saw
anything like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of
commerce is steadily gaining in favor, is simply calculated to destroy this journal.
I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no more holiday—lI could
not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you in my chair. I would always
stand in dread of what you might be going to recommend next. It makes me lose
all patience every time I think of your discussing oyster-beds under the head of
“Landscape Gardening.” I want you to go. Nothingon earth could persuade me
238 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES,
to take another holiday. Oh! why didn’t you ¢e// me you didn’t know anything
about agriculture?”
“ Tell you, you cornstalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It’s the first
time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell youI have been in the editorial
business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man’s
having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write
the dramatic critiques for the second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted
shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting
as I do about good farming and no more. Who review the books? People who
never wrote one. Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had
the largest opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticise the Indian
campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who
never have had torun a foot race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of the several
members of their families to build the evening camp-fire with. Who write the
temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never
draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave. Who edit the agricultural
papers, you—yam? Men, as general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-
colored novel line, sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on
agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell me
anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha
to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes
and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been
ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diffident, I could have made
a name for myself in this cold selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have
been treated as you have treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. ButI have done
my duty. I have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to doit. I said I
could make your paper of interest to all classes—and I have. I.said I could run
yourcirculation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had two more weeks I'd
have done it. And I'd have given you the best class of readers that ever an
agricultural paper had—not a farmer in it, nor a solitary individual who could tell
a water-melon tree trom a peach-vine to save his life. You are the loser by this
rupture, not me, Pie-plant. Adios.”
I then left.
!
i
a
The PEIUFTER WAN,
OW, to show how really hard it
is to foist a moral or a truth
upon an unsuspecting public
through a burlesque without entirely
and absurdly missing one’s mark, I
will here set down two experiences of
my own in this thing. In the fall of
1862, in Nevada and California, the
people got to running wild about ex-
traordinary petrifications and other
natural marvels. One could scarcely
pick up a paper without finding in it
one or two glorified discoveries of this
kind. The mania was becoming a little ridiculous. I was a bran-new local editor
in Virginia City, and I felt called upon to destroy this growing evil; we all have
239
240 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
our benignant fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the
petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire. But maybe it was alto-
gether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of it at all. I put my
scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkably petrified man.
I had had a temporary falling out with Mr. , the new coroner and justice
of the peace of Humboldt, and thought I might as well touch him up a little at the
same time and make him ridiculous, and thus combine pleasure with business. So
I told, in patient
detail, all about
petrified man at
(exactly a hundred
over a breakneck
from where
savants of the im-
hood had been to
notorious that
living creature
of there, except a
dians, some crip-
and four or five
meat and too fee-
how those savants
petrified man to
belief - compelling
the finding of a
Gravelly Ford
and twenty miles,
mountain trail,
lived) ; how all the
mediate neighbor-
examine it (it was
there was not a
within fitty miles
few starving In-
pled grasshoppers,
buzzards out of
ble to get away);
all pronounced the
have beenin astate
of complete petrifaction for over ten generations; = then, with a seriousness that -
I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that as soon as Mr. heard
the news he summoned a jury, mounted his mule, and posted off, with noble rever-
ence for official duty, on that awful five days’ journey, through alkali, sage-brush,
peril of body, and imminent starvation, to Aold an inquest on this man that had
been dead and turned to ee stone for more than three hundred years!
And then, my hand being “in,” so to speak, I went on, with the same unflinching
gravity, to state that the jury pied a verdict that deceased came to his death
from protracted exposure. This only moved me to higher flights of imagination,
THE PETRIFIED MAN. 241
and I said that the jury, with that charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a
grave, and were about to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found
that for ages a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone
against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and cemented him
fast to the “bed-rock;” that the jury (they were all silver-miners) canvassed the
difficulty a moment, and then got out their powder and fuse, and proceeded to
drill a hole under him, in order to Alast him from his posttion, when Mr. , ‘with
that delicacy so characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would.be
little less than sacrilege to do such a thing.”
From beginning to end the “ Petrified Man” squib was a string of roaring
absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretence of truth that even imposed
upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of believing in my own fraud.
-But I really had no desire to deceive anybody, and no expectation of doing it. I
depended on the way the petrified man was siéting to explain to the public that he
-was aswindle. Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make
it obscure—and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then say his
right thumb was against the side of his nose; then talk about his other foot, and
presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand were spread apart; then
talk about the back of his head a little, and return and say the left thumb was
hooked into the right little finger; then ramble off about something else, and by
and by drift back again and remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread
like those of the right. But I was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much;
and so all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the
article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered asd comprehended
the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man’s hands.
As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my Petrified Man was a
disheartening failure ; for everybody received him in innocent good faith, and I
was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down the wonder-business
with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to the grand chief place in thelist .
of the genuine marvels our Nevada had produced. I was so disappointed at the
curious miscarriage of my scheme, that at first I was angry, and did not like to
think about it; but by and by, when the exchanges began to come in with the
16
242 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
Petrified Man copied and guilelessly glorified, I began to feel a soothing secret satis-
faction; and as my gentleman's field of travels broadened, and by the exchanges I
saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory, State after
State, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and culminated in sublime
and unimpeached legitimacy in the august London Lancet, my cup was full, and I
said I was glad I had done it. I think that for about eleven months, as nearly as
I can remember, Mr. ’s daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition
of half a bushel of newspapers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in
them, marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did it
for spite, not for fun. He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse. And
every day during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never
quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if he could
tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the Petrified Man in it. He
could have accommodated a continent with them. I hated in those days,
and these things pacified me and pleased me. I could not have gotten more real
comfort out of him without killing him.
Tah
ange
‘
Hf
HLH}
vit
|
lier other burlesque I have referred to was my fine
satire upon the financial expedients of “cooking
dividends,” a thing which became shamefully fre-
quent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in my
self-complacent simplicity, I felt that the time had arrived
for me to rise up and be a reformer: _ I put this reformatory
satire in the shape of a fearful “ Massacre at Empire City.”
The San Francisco papers were making a great outcry
about the iniquity cf the Daney Silver-Mining Company,
whose directors had decldred a “cooked ” or false dividend,
for the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so
that they could sell out at a comfortable figure, and then
scramble from under the tumbling concern. And while abusing the Daney,
those papers did not forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver
: 243
Vs
Ko y
3
244 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
stocks and invest in sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring
Valley Water Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold
the Spring Valley cooked a dividend too! And so, under the insidious mask
of an invented “bloody massacre,” I stole upon the public unawares with my
scathing satire upon the dividend-cooking system. In about half a column of
imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen had murdered his wife and nine
children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at the bottom, that the
sudden madness of which the this melancholy massacre was the result, had been
brought about by his having allowed himself to be persuaded by the
California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada silver stocks, and buy
into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked along with:that company’s fancy
dividend, and sink every cent he had in the world.
Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived. But I made
the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting that the public
devoured ¢tem greedily, and wholly overlooked the following distinctly-stated
facts, to wit:—The murderer was perfectly well known to every creature in the
land as a dachelor, and consequently he could not murder his wife and nine
children ; he murdered them “in his splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the
edge of the great pine forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick’s,” when
even the very pickled oysters that came on our tables knew that there was not
a “ dressed-stone mansion” in all Nevada Territory; also that, so far from there
being a “great pine forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick’s,” there
wasn’t a solitary tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was
patent and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick’s were one and the
same place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there
could be no forest Jetween them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated
that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that ‘the
reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of an eye,
jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife’s reeking scalp in the
air, and thus performing entered Carson City with tremendous ¢/a?, and dropped
dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy and admiration of all beholders.
Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little satire
MY BLOODY MASSACRE. 245
created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the Territory. Most of
the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and they never finished their
meal. There was something about those minutely faithful details that was a
sufficing substitute for food. Few people that were able to read took food that
morning. Dan and I (Dan was my reportorial associate) took our seats on
either side of our customary table in the “ Eagle Restaurant,” and, as I unfolded
the shred they used to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next
table two stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled
about their cloth. — ing which was the
sign and evidence ae — that they were in
from the Truckee | - ’ AN with a load of hay.
had the morning
The one facing me
paper folded to a long narrow strip,
and I knew, with- out any telling,
that that strip rep- resented the col-
umn that con- tained my pleasant
financial satire. From the way he
was excitedly
that the heedless
was skipping with
mumbling, I saw
son of a hay-mow
all his might, in
bloody details as
ble; and so he was
boards I had set
that the whole
thing was a fraud. Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung
asunder to take in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the
face lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then he
broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars—his potato cooling in
mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it occasionally, but always
bringing up suddenly against a new and still more direful performance of my
hero. At last he looked his stunned and rigid comrade impressively in the face,
and said, with an expression of concentrated awe—
order to get to the
quickly as possi-
missing the guide-
up to warn him |
246 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
“ Jim, he b’iled his baby, and he took the old ’oman’s skelp. Cuss’d if 7 want
any breakfast !”
And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend
departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied.
He never got down to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did.
They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poor little
moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre, was to follow the expiring
sun with a candle, and hope to attract the world’s attention to it.
The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine occurrence
never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by all those tell-tale
absurdities and impossibilities concerning the “ great pine forest,” the “ dressed-
stone mansion,” etc. But I found out then, and never have forgotton since, that
we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvellously exciting things
when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is try-
ing to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling
particulars and be happy.
THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT.
= OW, that corpse,” said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of
N deceased approvingly, “was a brick—every way you took him he was
a brick. He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and
simple in his last moments. Friends wanted metallic burial case—nothing else
would do. J couldn’t get it. There warn’t going to be time—anybody could
see that.
“Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch
out in comfortable, fe warn’t particular ’bout the general style of it. Said he
went more on room than style, any way in a last final container.
“Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin; signifying who he was and
wher’ he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn’t roust out such a gaily
thing as that in a little country town like this. What did corpse say?
“ Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general des-
tination onto it with a blacking brush and a stencil plate, ‘long with a verse from
some likely hymn or other, and p’int him for the tomb, and mark him C. O.D.,
and just let him flicker. Me warn’t distressed any more than you be—on the
contrary just as ca’m and collected as a hearse-horse; said he judged that wher’
he was going to a body would find it considerable better to attract attention by
a picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with a swell door-plate
on it.
“Splendid man, he was. I’d druther do for a corpse like that ’n any I’ve
tackled in seven year. There’s some satisfaction in buryin’ a man like that.
You feel that what you’re doing is appreciated. Lord bless you, so’s he got
planted before he sp’iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said his relations meant
well, perfectly well, but all them preparations was bound to delay the thing
247
248 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
more or less, and he didn’t wish to be kept layin’ around. You never see such
a clear head as what he had—and so ca’m and so cool. Just a hunk of brains—
that is what ke was. Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end
of that man’s head to t’other. Often and over again he’s had brain fever a-
raging in one place, and the rest of the pile didn’t know anything about it—
didn’t affect it any more than an Injun insurrection in Arizona affects the
Atlantic States.
“ Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was down on
flummery—didn’t want any procession—fill the hearse full of mourners, and get
out a stern line and tow Azm behind. He was the most down on style of any
remains I ever struck. A beautiful simple-minded creature—it was what he
was, you can depend on that. He was just set on having things the way he
wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in laying his little plans. He had me
measure him and take a whole raft of directions; then he had the minister stand
up behind a long box with a table-cloth over it, to represent the coffin, and
read his funeral sermon, saying ‘Angcore, angcore!’ at the good places, and
making him scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and
then he made them trot out the choir so’s he could help them pick out the tunes
for the occasion, and he got them to sing ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ because he’d’
always liked that tune when he was down-hearted, and solemn music made him
sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all loved!
him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid there as happy as a bug,
and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he enjoyed it; and’
presently he got worked up and excited, and tried to join in, for mind you he’
was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing line; but the first time he opened:
his mouth and was just going to spread himself his breath took a walk.
“T never see a man snuffed out so sudden. Ah, it was a great loss—it was a’
powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I hain’t got
time to be palavering along here—got to nail on the lid and mosey along’
with him; and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him into the hearse and
meander along. Relations bound to have it so—don’t pay no attention to dying
injunctions, minute a corpse’s gone; but, if I had my way, if JT didn’t respect his
THE UNDERTAKER’S CHAT. 249
last wishes and tow him behind the hearse 71] be cuss’d. I consider that what-
ever a corpse wants done for his comfort is little enough matter, and a man
hain’t got no right to deceive him or take advantage of him; and whatever a
corpse trusts me to do I’m a-going to de, you know, even if it’s to stuff him and
paint him yaller and keep him for a keepsake—you hear me me/”
He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a
hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned—that a healthy
and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to amy occupation,
The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many months to obliterate the
memory of the remarks and circumstances that impressed it.
GS
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’ CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS.,
GAINST all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the
A curse of bachelordom! Because:
They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the
gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the ancient
and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book aloft, in an
uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your eyes.
When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the morn-
ing, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but, glorying in their
250
CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS. 251
absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness, they make the bed just
as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the pang their tyranny will cause
you.
Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they undo
your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has given you.
If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way, they
move the bed.
If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will stay
up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They do it on
purpose.
If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they don’t,
and so they move it.
They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly
enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It is
because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and make wild
sweeps for them in the dark with the boot-jack, and swear.
They always put the match-box in some other place. They hunt up a new
place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass thing, where
the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that glass thing, groping in
the dark, and get yourself into trouble.
They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in, in the
night, you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in the
morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the slop-bucket
by. the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in at midnight,
or thereabouts, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you will proceed:
toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will disgust you.
They like that.
No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay there.
They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is their nature. And,
besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and ee this way. They would
die if they couldn’t be villians.
They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on the
‘
252 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire with your
valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap that you are
more down on than any other, and which you are gradually wearing your life
out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains you possibly can in that
direction, but it won’t be of any use, because they will always fetch that old
scrap back and put it in the same old place again every time. It does them
good,
And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with purloining
the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a hereafter? Absolutely
nothing.
If you leave the key in the door for convenience sake, they will carry it down
to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the vile pretence of
trying to protect your property from thieves; but actually they do it because
they want to make you tramp back down-stairs after it when you come home
tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a waiter for it, which waiter will
expect you to pay him something. In which case I suppose the degraded
creatures divide.
They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus destroying
your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up, they don’t come
any more till next day.
They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out of
pure cussedness, and nothing else.
Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.
If I can get a bill through the Legislature abolishing chambermaids, I mean
to do it.
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AURELIA’S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN.
ce facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady who
lives in the beautiful ‘city of San José; she is perfectly unknown to me, and
simply signs herself “ Aurelia Maria,” which may possibly be a fictitious
name. But no matter, the poor girl is almost heart-broken by the misfortunes she
has undergone, and so confused by the conflicting counsels of misguided friends
and insidious enemies, that she does not know what course to pursue in order to
extricate herself from the web of difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly
involved. In this dilemma she turns to me for help, and supplicates for my
guidance and instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a
statue. Hear her sad story:
253 ‘
254 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all the
devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named Williamson
Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior. They were engaged,
with the free consent.of their friends and relatives, and for a time it seemed as if
their career was destined to be characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond
the usual lot of humanity, But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers
became infected with small-pox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered
from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mould, and his comeliness gone for
ever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at first, but pity for her
unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the marriage-day for a season, and give
him another trial.
The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge, while
absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well and fractured one
of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee. Again Aurelia was moved
to break the engagement, but again love triumphed, and she set the day forward
and gave him another chance to reform.
And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the
premature discharge of a Fourth-of-July cannon, and within three months he got
the other pulled out by a carding-machine, Aurelia’s heart was almost crushed by
these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply grieved to see her lover pass-
ing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she did, that he could not last for ever under
this disastrous process of reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadftl
career, and in her tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on
and lose, that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an
alarming depreciation. Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she resolved to bear
with her friend’s unnatural disposition yet a little longer.
Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed
it: Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one his eyes entirely.
The friends and relatives of the bride, considering that she had already put up with
more than could reasonably be expected of her, now came forward and insisted that
the match should be broken off, but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous
spirit which did her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could
not discover that Breckinridge was to blame._
AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN. 255
So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg.
It was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverently bearing,
away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience, and her heart
told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was gone. She felt that the
field of her affections was growing more and more circumscribed every day, but
once more she frowned down her relatives and renewed her betrothal.
Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred. There
was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That man was
Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, of New Jersey. He was hurrying home with
happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair for ever, and in that hour of bitterness
he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had spared his head.
At last Aurelia isin serious perplexity as to what she oughttodo. Shestill loves
her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling—she still loves what is left
of him—but her parents are bitterly opposed to the match, because he has no
property and is disabled from working, and she has not sufficient means to support
both comfortably. ‘‘ Now, what should she do?” she asks with painful and anxious
solicitude.
It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong happiness of a
woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel that it would be assuming
too great a responsiblity to do more than make a mere suggestion in the case. How
would it do to build to him? If Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish
her mutilated lover with wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig,
and give him another show; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not
break his neck in the meantime, marry him and take the chances. It does not seem
to me that there is much risk, any way, Aurelia, because if he sticks to his singular
propensity for damaging himself every time he sees a good opportunity, his next
experiment is bound to finish him, and then you are safe, married or single. If
married, the wooden legs and such other valuables as he may possess revert to the
widow, and you see you sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a
noble but most unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose
extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought the
matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for you. It would
256 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he had started with his neck
and broken that first; but since he has seen fit to choose a different policy and
string himself out as long as possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it
if he has enjoyed it. We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and
try not to feel exasperated at him.
“AFTER” JENKINS.
GRAND affair of a ball—the Pioneers’—came off at the Occidental some
A time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the
occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jenkins may
get an idea therefrom—
Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant pd/é de foie gras, made expressly for her,
and was greatly admired. Miss S. had her hair done up. She was the centre of
attraction for the gentlemen and the envy of all the ladies. Mrs. G. W. was taste-
fully dressed in a ‘out ensemble, and was greeted with deafening applause wherever
she went. Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid gloves. Her modest and
engaging manner accorded well with the unpretending simplicity of her costume
and caused her to be regarded with absorbing interest by every one.
The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared ina thrilling waterfall, whose exceeding
grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants alike. How
beautiful she was!
The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful false
teeth, and the Jon jour effect they naturally produced was heightened by her
enchanting and well sustained smile.
Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress, which is so peculiar to
her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with a neat pearl-button
solitaire. The fine contrast between the sparkling vivacity of her natural optic, and
the steadfast attentiveness of her placid glass eye, was the subject of general and
enthusiastic remark.
Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enamelled, and the easy grace with
which she blew it from time to time, marked her as a cultivated and accomplished
woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited the admiration of all
who had the happiness to hear it.
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ABOUT BARBERS.
A LL things change except bar-
bers, the ways of barbers, and
the surroundings of barbers.
These never change. What one ex-
periences in a barber’s shop the first
time he enters one is what he always
experiences in barbers’ shops after-
wards till the end of his days. I got
shaved this morning as usual. A man
approached the door from Jones Street
as I approached it from Main—a thing
that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use; he entered the door one
little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only
17
257
258 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I
sat down, hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the
remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man’s hair, while His
comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his customer’s locks. I
watched the probabilities with strong interest. When I saw that No. 2 was gaining
on No. 1 my interest grew to solicitude. When No. x stopped a moment to make
change on a bath ticket for a new comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude
rose to anxiety, When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were
pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customer’s cheeks,
and it was about an even thing which one would say “ Next!” first, my very breath
stood still with the suspense. But when at the culminating moment No. 1 stopped
to pass a comb a couple of times through his customer’s eyebrows, I saw that he
had lost the race by a single instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to
keep from falling into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness
that enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell him he
will wait for his fellow-barber’s chair.
I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck. Of
course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting, silent, unsocia-
ble, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who are awaiting their turn
in a barber’s shop. I sat down in one of the iron-armed compartments of an old
sofa, and put in the time for a while reading the framed advertisements of all sorts
of quack nostrums for dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names
on the private bay rum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the
private shaving cups in the pigeon-holes; studied the stained and damaged cheap
prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous recumbent sultanas,
and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting her grandfather’s spectacles
on; execrated in my heart the cheerful canary and the distracting parrot that few
barbers’ shops are without. Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last
year’s illustrated papers that littered the foul centre-table, and conned their
unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events.
At last my turn came. A voice said ‘‘Next!” and I surrendered to—No. 2, of
course. It always happensso. I said meekly that I was in a hurry, and it affected
ABOUT BARBERS. 259
him as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved up my head, and put a
napkin under it. He ploughed his fingers into my collar and fixed a towel there.
He explored my hair with his claws and suggested that it needed trimming. I said
I did not want it trimmed. He explored again and said it was pretty long for the
present style—better have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said
I had had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment,
and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it? I came back at him
promptly with a “You did!” I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up his
lather and re- garding himself
in the glass, stop- ping now and
then to get close and examine his
2
aa
Va
chin critically or inspect a
pimple. Then he lathered one
thoroughly, and
lather the other,
side of my face
was about to
when a dog fight attracted his at-
tention, and he ran to the win-
dow and stayed and saw it out,
losing two shill- ings on the result
in bets with the
thing which gave
tion. He finished
then began to
with his hand.
to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was delayed a good deal on account
of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he had figured at the night before,
in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some kind of a king. He was so gratified
with being chaffed about some damsel whom he had smitten with his charms that
he used every means to continue the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at
other barbers, a
me great satisfac-
lathering,and
rub in the suds
He now began
the chaffings of his fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the
‘glass, and he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care, plaster-
ing an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an accurate “ part ”
260 MARK TIWAIN'S SKETCHES.
behind, and brushing the two wings forward overt his ears with nice exactness. In
the meantime the lather was drying on my face, and apparently eating into my
vitals.
Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch the
skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as convenience in
shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of my face I did not
suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at my chin, the tears came.
He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him in shaving the corners of my
was by this bit of
dence that I dis-
of his duties in the
the kerosene
upper lip, and it
Ss
:
as
‘s
cy
wy
circumstantial evi-
iM
Mes
ny
my
a
aN
ae
oe
covered that a part
SSosy
Sy
shop was to clean
wondered in an
whether the bar-
whether it was the
About this time
self trying to guess
lamps. Ihadoften ‘/
===
=
indolent way
bers did that, or
boss.
RAAF
Cait:
HTH
I was amusing my-
where he would be most likely to cut
me this time, but he got ahead of
me, and sliced me on the end of the
chin before I had
up. He immedi-
got my mind made
ately sharpened
his razor—-he might
fore. I do not like a close shave, and
would not let him 3B o overmea
have done it be-
second time. I tried to get him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make
for the side of my chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch
twice without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one
little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the forbidden
ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose, up smarting and
answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum, and’slapped it all over
my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human being ever yet washed his face in
ABOUT BARBERS. 261
that way. Then he dried it by slapping with the dry part of the towel, as if a
human being ever dried his face in such a fashion; but a barber.seldom rubs you
like a Christian. Next he poked bay rum into the cut place with his towel, then
chcked the wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and
would have gone on soaking and powdering it for evermore, no doubt, if I had not
rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me up,
and began to plough my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he suggested a
shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly. I observed that I sham-
pooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath yesterday. I “had him” again. He
next recommended some of “Smith’s Hair Glorifier,’ and offered to sell me a
bottle. I declined. He praised the new perfume, “ Jones’ Delight of the Toilet,”
and proposed to sell me some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-
wash atrocity of his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives
with me.
He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise, sprinkled
me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my protest against it,
tubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed
the rest, parting it behind, and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down
on my forehead, and then, while combing my scant cyebrows and defiling them
with pomade, strung out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black and
tan terrier of his till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five min-
utes too late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly
about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily sang
out “ Next!” ;
This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting over
a day for my revenge—I am going to attend his funeral.
UU
A week ago a
About one half of the
Each party does all
ELFAST is a peculiarly relig-
ious community. This may be
said of the whole of the north
people are Protestants and the other
it can to make its own doctrines pop-
ular and draw the affections of the
constantly of the most touching in-
“PARTY CRIES” IN IRELAND,
half: Catholics.
stances of this zeal.
of Ireland.
-irreligious toward them. One hears
i]
Mh
vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to dedicate a new Cathedral ;
262
and when they started home again the roadways were lined with groups of
“PARTY CRIES” IN IRELAND. 263
meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till all the region round about
was marked with blood. I thought that only Catholics argued in that way, but
it seems to be a mistake.
Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to admon-
ish the erring with, The law has tried to break this up, but not with perfect
success. It has decreed that irritating “party cries” shall not be indulged in,
and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty shillings and costs. And so,
in the police court reports, every day, one sees these fines recorded. Last week
a girl twelve years old was fined the usual forty shillings and costs for pro-
claiming in the public streets that she was “a Protestant.” The usual cry is,
“To hell with the Pope!” or “To hell with the Protestants!” according to the
utterer’s system of salvation.
One of Belfast’s local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniform and
inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party cry—and it is no
economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way. They say that a policeman
found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a dark alley, entertaining him-
self with shouting, “To Ae// with!” “To #e/ with!” The officer smelt a fine
—informers get half:
“What's that you say?”
“To hell with!”
“To hell with who? To hell with what?”
. “ Ah, bedad ye can finish it yourself—it’s too expinsive for me!”
I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct is
finely put, in that.
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 1867.
I HAVE resigned. The Government appears to go on much the same, but there
is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the Senate Committee
on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position. I could see the plainest
disposition on the part of the other members of the Government to debar me
from having any voice in the counsels of the nation, and soI could no longer
hold office and retain my self-respect. If I were to detail all the outrages that
were heaped upon me during the six days that I was connected with the Govern-
ment in an official capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me
clerk of that Committee on Conchology, and then allowed me no amanuensis to play
billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had met with that
courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my due. But I did not.
Whenever I observed that the head of a department was pursuing a wrong course,
I laid down everything and went and tried to set him right, as it was my duty to
do; and J never was thanked for it in a single instance. I went, with the best
intentions in the world, to the Secretary of the Navy, and said—
“Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but skirmishing around’
there in Europe, having a sort of pic-nic. Now, that may be all very well, but it
does not exhibit itself to me in that light. If there is no fighting for him to do, let
him come home. There is no use ina man having a whole fleet for a pleasure
excursion. It is too expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for
the naval officers—pleasure excursions that are in reason—pleasure excursions that
are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi on a raft ”
You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I had commit-
ted a crime of some kind. But I didn’t mind. I said it was cheap, and full of
264
FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION, 265
republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for a tranquil pleasure
excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.
Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I
was connected with the Government, he wanted to know in what capacity, I said
that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question, coming, as it did,
from a member of that same Government, I would inform him that I was clerk
of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there was a fine storm! He
finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and give my attention strictly to my
own business in future. My first impulse was to get him removed. However, that
would harm others beside himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.
I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at all until
he learned that I was connected with the Government. If I had not been on
important business, I suppose I could not have got in. I asked him for a light (he
was smoking at the time), and then I told him I had no fault to find with his
defending the parole stipulations of General Lee and his comrades in arms, but
that I could not approve of his method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I
said he fought too scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together—get
them together in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough
for both parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so
convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the
massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap
and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the
long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him
and wash him, it is bound to finish him sometime or other. It undermines his
constitution; it strikes at the foundation of his being. “Sir,” I said, “the time has
come when blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and a
” spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!”
The Secretary.of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I said I
was. He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of the Senate
Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest for contempt of court,
and restrained of my liberty for the best part of the day.
I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get along
266 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called on the Secretary
of the Treasury. He said—
“What will you have?”
The question threw me off my guard. I said, “ Rum punch.”
He said, “If you have got any business here, sir, state it—and in as few words as
possible.”
I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so abruptly,
because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the circumstances I
would overlook the matter and come to the point. I now. went into an earnest
expostulation with him upon the extravagant length of his report. I said it was
expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly constructed; there were no descriptive
passages in it, no poetry, no sentiment—no heroes, no plot, no pictures—not even
woodcuts, Nobody would read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin
his reputation by getting out a thing like that. If he ever hoped to succeed in
literature, he must throw more variety into his writings. He must beware of dry
detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac was derived from its poetry
and conundrums, and that a few conundrums distributed around through his
Treasury report would help the sale of it more than all the internal revenue he
could put into it. I said these things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary
of the Treasury fell into a violent passion. He even said I was anass. He abused
me in the most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling
with his business, he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take my
hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office, and I did
go. It was just like a new author. They always think they know more than
anybody else when they are getting out their first book. Nobody can tell them
anything.
During the whole time that I was connected with the Government it seemed as
if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting myself into trouble.
And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what I conceived to be for the good
of my country. The sting of my wrongs may have driven me to unjust and harmful
conclusions, but it surely seemed to me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary
of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others of my confréres, had conspired
FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION. 267.
from the very beginning to drive me from the Administration. I never attended
but one Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the Government. That was
sufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seem disposed to
make way for me until I asked if the other members of the Cabinet had arrived.
He said they had, and I entered. They were all there; but nobody offered me a
seat. They stared at me as if I had been an intruder. The President said—
“Well, sir, who are you?”
I handed him my card, and he read—' The Hon, Mark Twain, Clerk of the
Senate Committee on Conchology.” Then he looked at me from head to foot, as
if he had never heard of me before. The Secretary of the Treasury said—
oe This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and
conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac.”
The Secretary of War said—“ It is the same visionary that came to me yesterday
with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death, and massacre the
balance.”
The Secretary of the Navy said—“I recognize this youth as the person who has
béén interfering with my business time and again during the week. He is distressed
about Admiral Farragut’s using a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion, as he terms
it. His proposition about some insane pleasure excursion on a raft is too absurd
‘to repeat.”
I said—“ Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit upon every
act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition to debar me from all voice
in the counsels of the nation. No notice whatever was sent to me to-day. It was
only by the merest chance that I learned that there was going to be a Cabinet
meeting. But let these things pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet
meeting, or is it not?”
The President said it was.
“Then,” I said, “let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away
valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings with each other’s official conduct.”
The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said, “ Young
man, you are laboring under a mistake. The clerks of the Congressional commit-
tees are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are the doorkeepers of the Capitol,
268 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
strange as it may seem. Therefore, much as we could desire your more than
human wisdom in our deliberations, we cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it. The
counsels of the nation must proceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full
well it may, be it balm to your sorrowing spirit, that by deed and voice you did
what in you lay to avert it. You have my blessing. Farewell.”
These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the
servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in the
capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative, when one of the
Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a passion and said—
“Where have you been all day?”
I observed that, if that was anybody’s affair but my own, I had been to a Cabinet
meeting.
“To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at a
Cabinet meeting?”
I said I went there to consult—allowing for the sake of argument, that he was in
anywise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and ended by saying he
had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on bomb-shells, egg-shells,
clam-shells, and I don’t know what all, connected with conchology, and nobody had
been able to find me.
This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel’s back.
I said, “ Sir, do you suppose that [ am going to wor for six dollars a day? If that
is the idea, let me recommend the Senate Committee on Conchology to hire some-
body else. JI am the slave of wo faction! Take back your degrading commission.
Give me liberty, or give me death!”
From that hour I was no longer connected with the Government. Snubbed by
the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman of a
committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast far from me
the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my bleeding country in
the hour of her peril.
But I had done the State some service, and I sent in my bill:—
The United States of America in account with the Hon. sa ei the Senate Committee on Conchology, Dr.
To consultation with Secretary of War, : 3 : $50
To consultation with Secretary of Navy, . : . F A : : . 50
FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION. , 269
To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury, ‘ ‘ , 2 ‘ 50
Cabinet consultation, : . No charge.
To mileage to and from Jerusalem, * vid Egypt, Algiers, Gibraltar, and ibs: 14,000
miles, at 20c. a mile, . ' , 2800
To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee on Conchology, s six days, at $6 per day, . 36
Total, : . . - 5 . z : . $2986
Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of 36 dollars for clerkship
salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me to the last, drew his pen
through all the other items, and simply marked in the margin “ Not allowed.” So,
the dread alternative is embraced at last. Repudiation has begun! The nation is
lost.
Iam done with official life for the present. Let those clerks who are willing to
be imposed on remain. I know numbers of them, in the Departments, who are
never informed when there is to he a Cabinet meeting, whose advice is never asked
about war, or finance, or commerce,.by the heads of the nation, any more than if
they were not-connected with the Government, and who actually stay in their
offices day after day and work! They know their importance to the nation, and
they unconsciously show it in their bearing, and the way they order their suste-
nance at the restaurant—but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts of
little scraps from the newspaper into a scrap-book—sometimes as many as eight or
ten scraps a day. He doesn’t do it well, but he does it as well ashe can. It is
very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect. Yet he only gets 1800 dollars a
year. With a brain like his, that young man could amass thousands and thousands
of dollars in some other pursuit, if he chose to do it. But no—his heart is with his
country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrap-book left. And I
know clerks that don’t know how to write very well, but such knowledge as they
possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country, and toil on and suffer for 2500
dollarsa year. What they write has to be written over again by other clerks, some-
times; but when a man has done his best for his country, should his country complain ?
Then there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting, and
waiting, for a vacancy—waiting patiently for a chance to help their country out—
* Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go back when they get here
once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I can understand.
270 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
and while they are waiting, they only get barely, 2000 dollars a yearforit. Itis sad—
itis very, very sad. When a member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no
employment wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon
his country, and gives him a clerkship in a Department. And there that man has
to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nation that never thinks
of him, never sympathizes with him—and all for 2000 or 3000 dollars a year.
When I shall have completed my list of all the clerks in the several departments,
with my statement of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see
that there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half
enough pay.
Lg + VEL pr Zn
HE following I find in a
fi pores Island paper which
some friend has sent me from
that tranquil far-off retreat. The
coincidence between my own ex-
perience and that here set down
by the late Mr. Benton is so re-
markable that I cannot forbear
publishing and commenting upon
the paragraph. The Sandwich
Island paper says :—
i
“ How touching is this tribute of the late
Hon. T. H. Benton to his mother’s in-
fluence :—‘ My mother asked me never to
use tobacco; I have never touched it from
i that time to the present day. She asked
if Mey me not to gamble, and I have never gam-
HH bled. I cannot tell who is losing in games
ip that are being played. She admonished
me, too, against liquor-drinking, and what-
ever capacity for endurence I have at
present, and whatever usefulness I may
have attained through life, I attribute to
having complied with her pious and cor-
rect wishes. When I was seven years of
age she asked me not to drink, and then
I made a resolution of total abstinence ;
and that I have adhered to it through all
time I owe to my mother.’”
I never saw anything so curious. It is almost an exact epitome of my own
moral career—after simply substituting a grandmother for a mother. How
well I remember my grandmother’s asking me not to use tobacco, good
old soul! She said, “ You’re at it again, are you, you whelp? Now, don’t
ever let me catch you chewing tobacco before breakfast again, or I lay I'll black-
snake you within an inch of your life!” I have never touched it at that hour
of the morning from that time to the present day.
271
272 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES,
She asked me not to gamble. She whispered and said, “ Put up those wicked
cards this minute!—two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other fellow’s
got a flush!”
I never have gambled from that day to this—never once—without a “cold
deck” in my pocket. I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games that are
being played unless I dealt myself.
When I was two years of age she asked me not to-drink, and then I made a
resolution of total abstinence. That I have adhered to it and enjoyed the benefi-
cent effects of it through all time, I owe to my grandmother. I have never
drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water.
OM Mi |
= = ee =
fl q
HONQURED AS A GURIDSITY,
F you get into conversation with
I a stranger in Honolulu, and ex-
perience that natural desire to
know what sort of ground you are
treading on by finding out what
manner of man your stranger is,
strike out boldly and address him
as “ Captain.” Watch him narrow-
ly, and if you see by his counte-
nance that you are on the wrong
track, ask him where he preaches,
It isasafe bet that he is either a
missionary or captain of a whaler.
I became personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and ninety-six
missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the population ;
18 273
274 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES...
the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile foreigners
and their families; and the final fourth is made up of high officers of the
Hawaiian Government. And there are just about cats enough for three apiece
all around.
A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs one day, and said:
“Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no
doubt !” 7
““No, I don’t. I’m not a preacher.”
“Really, I beg your pardon, captain. I trust you had a good season. How
much oil ” ——
“Oil! Why what do you take me for? I’m not a whaler.”
“Oh! I beg a thousands pardons, your Excellency. Major-General in the
household troops, no doubt? Minister of the Interior, likely? Secretary of
War? First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? Commissioner of the Royal’
“Stuff! man, I’m not connected in any way with the Government.”
“Bless my life!’ Then who the mischief are you? what the mischief are you?
and how the mischief did you get here? and where in thunder did you come
from?” :
“I’m only a private personage—an unassuming stranger—lately arrived from
America.” ;
“No! Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his’ Majesty’s
Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah! heaven! it is too blissful
to be true; alas! I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest countenance—
those oblique, ingenuous eyes—that massive head, incapable of—of anything;
your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these tears. For sixteen
weary years I have yearned for a moment like this, and’
Here his feeling were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied this.
poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I shed a few
tears on him, and kissed him for his mother. I then took what small change:
he had. and “shoved.”
. THE LATE BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN.
[Never put off till to-morrow what you
can do day after to-morrow just as well.”—B.
HIS party was one of those
ar persons whom they call Phi-
losophers. He was twins,
being born simultaneously in two
different houses in the city of Boston.
These houses remain unto this day,
and have signs upon them worded
in accordance with the facts. The
signs are considered well enough to
have, though not necessary, because
the inhabitants point out the two
birth-places to the stranger anyhow,
and sometimes as often as several
times in the same day. The subject of this memoir was of a vicious disposi-
tion, and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms
276 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages.
His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for
the emulation of boys for ever—boys who might otherwise have been happy.
It was in this spirit that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for
no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything
might be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers.
With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day,
and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a
smouldering fire, so that all other
boys might have to do that also, or
else have Benjamin Franklinthrown
up to them. Not
proceedings, he
living wholly on
and studying
time—a thing
affliction to mil-
whose fathers had
pernicious biogra-
His maxims
mosity towards
a boy cannot fol-
natural instinct
over some of those
risms and hearing
satisfied with these
had a fashion of
bread and water,
astronomy at meal
‘which has brought
lions of boys since,
read Franklin’s
phy.
were full of ani-
boys. Nowadays
low out a single
without tumbling
everlasting apho-
from Franklin on
the spot. ‘If he buys two cents’ worth of peanuts, his father says, “ Remember
what Franklin’ has said, my son—‘ A -groat a day’s a penny a year ;’” and the
comfort is all gone out of those peanuts. If he wants to spin his top when he
has done work, his father quotes, “ Procrastination is the thief of time.” If
he does a virtuous action, he never gets any thing for it, because “ Virtue is
its own reward.” And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural
rest, because Franklin said once, in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
THE LATE BENFAMIN FRANKLIN. 277
‘Early to bed and early to rise »
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.”
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such
terms. The sorrow that that maxim has cost me through my parents’ experi-
menting on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result is my present state
of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration. My parents used to have
me up before nine o'clock in the morning, sometimes, when I wasa boy. If
they had let me take my natural rest, where would I have been now? Keeping
store, no doubt, and respected by all.
And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of this memoir was! In
order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key on the
string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guileless public would go
home chirping about the “wisdom” and the “genius” of the hoary Sabbath-
breaker. If anybody caught him playing “ mumble-peg ” by himself, after the
age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be ciphering out how the grass
grew—as if it was any of his business. My grandfather knew him well, and he
says Franklin was always fixed—always ready. If a body, during his old age,
happened on him unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud
pies, or sliding on a cellar-door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a
maxim, and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side
before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric. He was a hard lot.
He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the
clock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his giving
it his name.
He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first time,
with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of
bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine it critically, it
was nothing. Anybody could have done it.
To the subject of this memoir belongs the honor of recommending the army
to go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets. He observed,
with his customary force, that the bayonet was very well under some circum-
stances, but that he doubted whether it could be used with accuracy at a long
range.
278 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and
made her young name to be honored 1n many lands as the mother of such a son,
It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple
idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with
a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes
as early as the dispersion from Babel; and also to snub his stove, and his mili-
tary inspirations, his unseemly endeavor to make himself conspicuous when he
entered Philadel-
his kite and fool-
= phia, and his flying
“ALY iio Ct
gi CLE ing away his time
7
Eg LE
in all sorts of such MA ways when he
ought to have been foraging for soap-
fat, or constructing candles. I merely
desired to do away with somewhat of
the prevalent calamituus idea
among heads of families that
Franklin acquired his great genius by
working for noth- ing, studying by
moonlight, and getting up in the
night instead of waiting till morn.
tian; and that this
ly inflicted, will
ing like a Chris-
programme, rizid-
make a Franklin of every father’s
fool. It istime AMM I these gentlemen
were finding out that these execrable eccentricities of instinct and conduct are
only the evidences of genius, not the creators of it. I wish I had been the father
of my parents long enough to make them comprehend this truth, and thus
prepare them to let their son have an easier time of it. When I was a child I
had to boil soap, notwithstanding my father was wealthy, and I had to get up
early and study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and do every-
thing just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be a Franklin some
day. And here I am.
Ty whan we ave Surrounded.
way of deciphering atrocious penmanship.
that .s done with a pen.
BOUT the
A most curious
feature of the
London post-office
. isthe “Blind-Letter”
Department. Only
one clerk is em-
ployed in it and
sometimes his place
is a sinecure for a
day at a time, and
then again it is just
=| the reverse. His
specialty is a won-
derful knack in the
279
THE “BLIND LETTER” DEPARTMENT, LONDON P. O.
That man can read anything
All superscriptions are carried to him which the
mighty army of his fellow clerks cannot make out, and he spells them off
like print and sends them on their way. He keeps in a book, fac-similes of
280 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
the most astonishing specimens he comes across, Te also keeps fac-similes of
many of the envelopes that pass through the office with queer pictures drawn
7 |
.
Sy
wy
Swot
fs
i
Sos
STE
upon them. He was kind enough to have some of the picture-envelopes and
[TO THE MAJESTY THE QUEEN,
AND THE PRINCESS OF WALES.]
execrable superscriptions copied for me, (the latter with “translations ” added,)
and I here offer them for the inspection of the curious reader.
281
“BLIND LETTER” DEPARTMENT, LONDON P. O.
[Rev’p E. W. EDGELL,
4o ¥
ORK S'., GLOUCESTER PLACE, Lonvon.]
y
FROM DR, LIVINGSTONE 10 HIS DAUGH
MINISTERS,
INTELLIGENGE OFFICE FOR
WATE
WY
< AJ
jy
SENT BY ONE CLERGYMAN TO ANOTHER.
282 “BLIND LETTER” DEPARTMENT, LONDON P, O.
=<
2S SN
SSS
SOS
SS
SETAD TEs
SSS
nes
=
eg
LLL,
WHEE
OE Ger,
FIRST INTERVIEW WITH ARTEMUS WARD.
HAD never seen him before. He brought letters of introduction from mutual
friends in San Francisco, and by invitation I breakfasted with him. It was
almost religion, there in the silver mines, to precede such a meal with whiskey
cocktails. Artemus, with the true cosmopolitan instinct, always deferred to the
customs of the country he was in, and so he ordered three of those abominations.
Hingston was present. I said I would rather not drink a whiskey cocktail. I
said it would go right to my head, and confuse me so that I would be in a helpless
tangle in ten minutes. I did not want to act like a lunatic before strangers. But
283
284 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
Artemus gently insisted, and I drank the treasonable mixture under protest, and
felt all the time that I was doing a thing I might be sorry for. In a minute or two
I began to imagine that my ideas were clouded. I waited in great anxiety for the
conversation to open, with a sort of vague hope that my understanding would prove
clear, after all, and my misgivings groundless.
Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look of
superhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech. He said :—
“ Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it. You have
been here in Silverland—here in Nevada—two or three years, and, of course, your
position on the daily press has made it necessary for you to go down in the mines
and examine them carefully in detail, and therefore you know all about the silver-
mining business. Now, what I want to get at is—is, well, the way the deposits of
ore are made, you know. For instance. Now, as I understand it, the vein which
contains the silver is sandwiched in between casings of granite, and runs along the
ground, and sticks up like a curb-stone. Well, take a vein forty feet thick, for
example, or eighty, for that matter, or even a hundred—say you go down on it with
a shaft, straight down, you know, or with what you call ‘incline,’ maybe you go
down five hundred feet, or maybe you don’t go down but two hundred—any way
you go down, and all the time this vein grows narrower, when the casings come
nearer or approach each other, you may say—that is, when they do approach, which
of course they do not always do, particularly in cases where the nature of the
formation is such that they stand apart wider than they otherwise would, and which
geology has failed to account for, although everything in that science goes to prove
that, all things being equal, it would if it did not, or would not certainly if it did,
and then of course they are. Do not you think it is?”
I said to myself :—
“Now I just knew how it would be—that whiskey cocktail has done the business
for me; I don’t understand any more than a clam.”
And then I said aloud—
“]—I—that is—if you don’t mind, would you—would you say that over again?
I ought’
“Oh, certainly, certainly! You see I am very unfamiliar with the subject, ard
perhaps I don’t present my case clearly, but I”
FIRST INTERVIEW WITH ARTEMUS WARD, 285
“No, no—no, no—you state it plain enough, but that cocktail has muddled me
alittle. But I will—no,I do understand for that matter; but I would get the
hang of it all the better if you went over it again—and I'll pay better attention this
time.”
He said, “ Why, what I was after was this.” -
[Here he became even more fearfully impressive than ever, and emphasized each
particular point by checking it off on his finger ends. ]
“This vein, or lode, or ledge, or whatever you call it, runs along between two
layers of granite, just the same as if it were a sandwich. Very well. Now, suppose
you go down on that, say a thousand feet, or maybe twelve hundred (it don’t really
matter), before you drift, and then you start your drifts, some of them across the
ledge, and others along the length of it, where the sulphurets—I believe they call
them sulphurets, though why they should, considering that, so far as I can see, the
main dependence of a miner does not so lie, as some suppose, but in which it can-
not be successfully maintained, wherein the same should not continue, while part
and parcel of the same ore not committed to either in the sense referred to, whereas,
under different circumstances, the most inexperienced among us could not detect
it if it were, or might overlook it if it did, or scorn the very idea of such a thing,
even though it were palpably demonstrated as such. Am I not right?”
I said, sorrowfully—‘ I feel ashamed of myself, Mr. Ward. I know I ought to
understand you perfectly well, but you see that treacherous whiskey cocktail has
got into my head, and now I cannot understand even the simplest proposition. I
told you how it would be.”
“Oh, don’t mind it, don’t mind it; the fault was my own, no doubt—though I
did think it clear enough for’
“Don’t say a word. Clear! Why, you stated, it as clear as the sun to anybody
but an abject idiot; but it’s that confounded cocktail that has played the mischief.”
“No; now don’t say that. I'll begin it all over again, and”
“Don’t now—for goodness sake, don’t do anything of the kind, because I tell
you my head is in such a condition that I don’t believe I could understand the
most trifling question a man could ask me.”
“Now, don’t you be afraid. I'll put it so plain this time that you can’t help but
get the hang of it. We will begin at the very beginning.” [Leaning far across the
286 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
table, with determined impressiveness wrought upon his every feature, and fingers
prepared to keep tally of each point as enumerated; and I, leaning forward with
painful interest, resolved to comprehend or perish.] ‘You know the vein, the
ledge, the thing that contains the metal, whereby it constitutes the medium between
all other forces, whether of present or remote agencies, so brought to bear in favor
of the former against the latter, or the latter against the former or all, or both, or
compromising the relative differences existing within the radius whence culminate
,
the several degrees of similarity to which’
I said—* Oh, hang my wooden head, it ain't any use !—it ain’t any use to try—
I can’t understand anything. The plainer you get it the more I can’t get the hang
of it.”
I heard a suspicious noise behind me, and turned in time to see Hingston
dodging behind a newspaper, and quaking with a gentle ecstasy of laughter. I
looked at Ward again, and he had thrown off his dread solemnity and was laughing
also. Then I saw that I had been sold—that I had been made the victim of a
swindle in the way of a string of plausibly worded sentences that didn’t mean any-
thing under the sun. Artemus Ward was one of the best fellows in the world, and
one of the most companionable. It has been said that he was not fluent in conver-
sation, but, with the above experience in my mind, I differ.
i)
VISITED St Louis lately, and on my
I way west, after changing cars at Terre
Haute,. Indiana, a mild, benevolent-
looking gentleman of about forty-five, or
may be fifty, came in at one of the way-
stations and sat down beside me. We
talked together pleasantly on various sub-
jects for an hour, perhaps, and I found
him exceedingly intelligent and entertain-
ing. When he learned that I was from
Washington, he immediately began to ask
questions about various public men, and
about Congressional affairs; and I saw
very shortly that I was conversing with a man who was perfectly familiar
with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to the ways and
287
288 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and Representatives in the
Chambers of the National Legislature. Presently two men halted near us for a
single moment, and one said to the other:
“ Harris, if you'll do that for me, I'll never forget you, my boy.”
My new comrade’s eyes lighted pleasantly. The words had touched upon a
happy memory, I thought. Then his face settled into thoughtfulness—almost into
gloom. Heturned to me and said, “Let me tell you a story; let me give you a:
secret chapter of my life—a chapter that has never been referred to by me since its
events transpired. Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt me.”
I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure, speaking
sometimes with animation, sometimes with melancholy, but always with feeling
and earnestness.
THE STRANGER’S NARRATIVE.
“On the r9th of December, 1853, I started from St. Louis on the evening train
bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all told. There
were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent spirits, and pleasant
acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey bade fair to be a happy one;
and no individual in the party, I think, had even the vaguest presentiment of the
horrors we were soon to undergo.
“At ir P.M. it began to snow hard. Shortly after leaving the small village of
Welden, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that stretches its leagues
on leagues of houseless dreariness far away towards the Jubilee Settlements. The
winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across
the level desert, driving the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves
of a stormy sea. The snow was deepening fast; and we knew, by the diminished
speed of the train, that the engine was ploughing through it with steadily increasing
difficulty. Indeed, it almost came to a dead halt sometimes, in the midst of great
drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves across the track. Conversation
began to flag. Cheerfulness gave place to grave concern. The possibility of being
imprisoned in the snow, on the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented :
itself to every mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit.
“ At two o’clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by the
CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS. 289
ceasing of all motion about me. The appalling truth flashed upon me instantly—
we were captives in a snow-drift! ‘All hands to the rescue!’ Every man sprang
to obey. Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness, the billowy snow, the
driving storm, every soul leaped, with the consciousness that a moment lost now
might bring destruction to us all. Shovels, hands, boards—anything, everything
that could displace snow, was brought into instant requisition. It was a weird
picture, that small company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the
-blackest shadow and half in the angry light of the locomotive’s reflector.
“ One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts. The storm
“barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away. And worse than
this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the engine had made upon the
-enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the driving-wheel! With a free track
‘before us we should still have been helpless. We entered the car wearied with
‘labor, and very sorrowful. We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed
our situation. We had no provisions whatever—in this lay our chief distress. We
‘could not freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender. This was our
-only comfort. The discussion ended at last in accepting the disheartening decision
of the conductor, viz., that it would be death for any man to attempt to travel fifty
miles on foot through snow like that. We could not send for help; and even
if we could, it could not come. We must submit, and await, as patiently as we
might, succor or starvation! I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary
-chill when those words were uttered.
“Within the hour conversation subsided to a low murmur here and there about
“the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the blast; the Jamps grew
dim; and the majority of the castaways settled themselves among the flickering
shadows to think—to forget the present, if they could—to sleep, if they might.
“The eternal night—it surely seemed eternal to us—wore its lagging hours away
at last, and the cold grey dawn broke in the east. As the light grew stronger the
passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one after another, and each in turn
pushed his slouched hat up from his forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and
- glanced out at. the windows upon the cheerless prospect. It was cheerless indeed!
—not a living thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast
19
290 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
white desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the wind—
a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above.
“All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much. Another linger-
ing dreary night—and hunger.
“Another dawning—another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger, hopeless
watching for succor that could not come. A night of restless slumber, filled with
dreams of feasting—wakings distressed with the gnawings of hunger.
“The fourth day came and went—and the fifth! Five days of dreadful imprison-
ment! A savage hunger looked out at every eye. There was in it a sign of awful
import—the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely shaping itself in every
heart—a something which no tongue dared yet to frame into words.
“The sixth day passed—the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and
hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death. It must out now!
That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready to leap from every
lip at last! Nature had been taxed to the utmost—she must yield. Ricuarp H.
Gaston, of Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale, rose up. All knew what was
coming. All prepared—every emotion, every semblance of excitement was
smothered—only a calm, thoughtful. seriousness appeared in the eyes that were
lately so wild.
“«Gentlemen,—It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand! We must
determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest!’
“Mr, Joun J. WiLiiaMs, of Illinois, rose and said: ‘Gentlemen,—I nominate
the Rev. James Sawyer, of Tennessee.’
“Mr.Wm. R. Apams, of Indiana, said: ‘I nominate Mr. Daniel Slote, of New York.”
“Mr. Cartes J. Lancpon: ‘I nominate Mr. Samuel A. Bowen, of St. Louis.’
“Mr. SLOTE: ‘Gentlemen,—I desire to decline in favor of Mr. John A. Van
Nostrand, Jun., of New Jersey.’
“Mr. Gaston: ‘If there be no objection, the gentleman’s desire will be acceded
to.” .
“Mr. VAN Nostranp objecting, the resignation of Mr. Slote was rejected. The
resignations of Messrs. Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and refused upon the
“game grounds. oak 2 ” -:
CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS. 2g!
“Mr. A. L. Bascom, of Ohio: ‘I move that the nominations now close, and that
the House proceed to an election by ballot.’
“Mr, Sawyer: ‘Gentlemen,—I protest earnestly against these proceedings,
They are, in every way, irregular and unbecoming. I must beg to move that they
be dropped at once, and that we elect a chairman of the meeting and proper.officers
to assist him, and then we can go on with the business before us understandingly.’
“Mr. BELL, of Iowa: ‘Gentlemen,—I object. This is no time to stand upon
forms and ceremonious observances. For more than seven days we have been
without food. Every moment we lose in idle discussion increases our distress. 1'
am satisfied with the nominations that have been made—every gentleman present
is, I believe—and I, for one, do not see why we should not proceed at once to elect
one or more of them. I wish to offer a resolution
“Mr. Gaston: ‘It would be objected to, and have to lie over one day under
the rules, thus bringing about the very delay you wish to avoid. The gentleman
from New Jersey——’
“Mr. Van Nostranp: ‘Gentlemen,—I am a stranger among you; I have not
sought the distinction that has been conferred upon me, and I feel a delicacy :
“Mr. Morcan, of Alabama (interrupting): ‘I move the previous question.’
“The motion was carried, and further debate shut off, of course. The motion
to elect officers was passed, and under it Mr. Gaston was chosen chairman, Mr.
Blake secretary, Messrs. Holcomb, Dyer, and Baldwin, a committee on nominations,
and Mr. R. M. Howland, purveyor, to assist the committee in making selections.
“ A recess of half an hour was then taken, and some little caucussing followed.
At the sound of the gavel the meeting reassembled, and the committee reported in
favor of Messrs. George Ferguson, of Kentucky, Lucien Herrman, of Louisiana,
and W. Messick, of Colorado, as candidates. The report was accepted.
“Mr. Rocers, of Missouri: ‘Mr. President,—The report being properly before
the House now, I move to amend it by substituting for the name of Mr. Herrman
that of Mr. Lucius Harris, of St. Louis, who is well and honorably known to-us all.
I do not wish to be understood as casting the least reflection upon the high char-
acter and standing of the gentleman from Louisiana—far from it. I respect and
esteem him as much as any gentleman here present possibly can; but none of us
292 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
can be blind to the fact that he has lost more flesh during the week that we have
lain here than any among us—none of us can be blind to the fact that the com-
mittee has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver fault, in
thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, however pure his own motives may
be, has really less nutriment in him:
“Tue Cuair: ‘The gentleman from Missouri will take his seat. The Chair
cannot allow the integrity of the Committee to be questioned save by the regular
course, under the rules. What action will the House take upon the gentleman’s
motion?’
“Mr, Ha.uipay, of Virginia: ‘I move to further amend the report by substi-
tuting Mr. Harvey Davis, of Oregon, for Mr. Messick. It may be urged by
gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have rendered Mr.
Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at toughness? is this a time to
be fastidious concerning trifles? is this a time to dispute about matters of paltry
significance? No, gentlemen, bulk is what we desire—substance, weight, bulk—
these are the supreme requisites now—not talent, not genius, not education. I
insist upon my motion.’
“Mr. Morcan (excitedly): ‘Mr. Chairman,—I do most strenuously object to
this amendment. The gentleman from Oregon is old, and furthermore is bulky
only in bone—not in flesh. Iask the gentleman from Virginia if it is soup we
want instead. of solid sustenance? if he would delude us with shadows? if he would
mock our suffering with an Oregonian spectre? I ask him if he can look upon the
anxious faces around him, if he can gaze into our sad eyes, if he can listen to the
beating of our expectant hearts, and still thrust this famine-stricken fraud upon us?
I ask him if he can think of our desolate state, of our past sorrows, of our dark
future, and still unpityingly foist upon us this wreck, this ruin, this tottering swindle,
this gnarled and blighted and sapless vagabond from Oregon’s inhospitable shores?
Never!’ (Applause.)
“The amendment was put to vote, after a fiery debate, and lost. Mr. Harris was
substituted on the first amendment. The balloting then began. Five ballots were
held without a choice. On the sixth, Mr. Harris was elected, all voting for him
but himself. It was then moved that his election should be ratified by acclamation,
which was lost, in consequence of his again voting against himself.
CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS, 293
“Mr. Rapway moved that the House now take up the remaining candidates, and
go into an election for breakfast. This was carried.
“On the first ballot there was a tie, half the members favoring one candidate on
account of his youth, and -half favoring the other on account of his superior size.
The President gave the casting vote for the latter, Mr. Messick. This decision
created considerable dissatisfaction among the friends of Mr. Ferguson, the defeated
candidate, and there was some talk of demanding a new ballot; but in the midst
of it, a motion to adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up at once.
“The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson faction from.
‘the discussion of their grievance for a long time, and then, when they would have
taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr. Harris was ready, drove all
thought of it to the winds.
“We improvised tables by propping up the backs of car-seats, and sat down with
hearts full of gratitude to, the finest supper that had blessed our vision for seven
torturing days. How changed we were from what we had been a few short hours
before! Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger, feverish anxiety, desperation, then—,
thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep for utterance now. That I know was the
cheeriest hour of my eventful life. The wind howled, and blew the snow wildly
about our prison-house, but they were powerless to distress us any more. I liked.
Harris. He might have been better. done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no,
man ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree of,
satisfaction. Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored, but for genuine
nutritiousness and delicacy of fibre, give me Harris. Messick had his good points
+I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish to do it—but he was no more fitted.
for breakfast than a mummy would. be, sir—not a bit. Lean ?—why, bless me !—
and tough? Ah, he was very tough! You could not imagine it,—you could never
imagine anything like it.”
”
“Do you mean to tell me tha
“Do not interrupt me, please. After breakfast we elected a man by the name of
Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his wife so after-
wards. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember Walker. He was
a little rare, but very, good. And then the next morning we had Morgan, of Ala-.
bama, for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever'sat down to,—handsome
294 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES.
educated, refined, spoke several languages fluently—a perfect gentleman—he was
a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy. For supper we had that Oregon patri-
arch, and he was a fraud, there is no question about it—old, scraggy, tough, nobody
can picture the reality. I finally said, gentlemen, you can do as you like, but 7
will wait, for another election. And Grimes, of Illinois, said, ‘Gentlemen, 7 will
wait also. When you elect a man that has something to recommend him, I shall be
glad to join you again.’ It soon became evident that there was general dissatisfac-
tion with Davis, of Oregon, and so, to preserve the good-will that had prevailed so
pleasantly since we had had Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was
that Baker, of Georgia, was chosen. He was splendid! Well, well—after that we
had Doolittle and Hawkins, and McElroy (there was some complaint about McEl-
roy, because he was uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two Smiths, and
Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he was otherwise good),
and an Indian boy, and an organ grinder, and a gentleman by the name of Buck-
minster—a poor stick of a vagabond that wasn’t any good for company and no
account for breakfast. We were glad we got him elected before relief came.”
“ And so the blessed relief ad@ come at last ?”
“Yes, it came one bright, sunny morning, just after election. John Murphy was
the choice, and there never was a better, I am willing to testify; but John Murphy
came home with us, in the train that came to succor us, and lived to marry the
widow Harris
“ Relict of- v
“Relict of our first choice. He married her, and is happy and respected and
prosperous yet. Ah, it was like a novel, sir—it was like a romance. This is my
stopping-place, sir; I must bid you good-by. Any time that you can make it con-
venient to tarry a day or two with me, I shall be glad to have you. I like you, sir;
I have conceived an affection for you. I could like you as well as I liked Harris
himself, sir. Good day, sir, and a pleasant journey.”
He was gone. I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my life.
But in my soul I was glad he was gone. With all his gentleness of manner and his
soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye upon me; and when I
heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and that I stood almost with the
late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly stood still!
CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS, 295
‘I was bewildered beyond description, I did not doubt his word; I could not
question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness of truth as
his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my thoughts into hopeless
confusion. I saw the conductor looking at me. I said, “ Who is that man?” .
“He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in a
snowdrift in the cars, and like to been starved to death. He got so frost-bitten
and frozen up generally, and used up for want of something to eat, that he was sick
and out of his head two or three months afterwards. He is all right now, only he
is a monomaniac, and when he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has
eat up that whole car-load of people he talks about. He would have finished the
crowd by this time, only he had to get out here. He has got their names as pat as
A; B, C. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says :-——‘ Then the
hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived, and there being no oppo-
sition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no objections offered, I resigned.
Thus I am here.’”’
I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to the harm-
less vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a bloodthirsty
cannibal,
be Devigurdl Fxnomniat.
ne Deviplural fanoeummtsl.
= HERE was a fellow traveling
T around in that country,” said
Mr. Nickerson, “with a moral-
religious show—a sort of scriptural
panorama—and he hired a wooden-
headed old slab to play the piano for
him. After the first night’s per-
formance the showman says—
“«My friend, you seem to know
pretty much all the tunes there are,
and you worry along first-rate. But
then, don’t you notice that some-
times last night the piece you hap-
pened to be playing was a little rough on the proprieties, so to speak—didn’t
seem to jibe with the general gait of the picture that was passing at the time,
296
THE SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST. 297°
as it were—was a little foreign to the subject, you know—as if you didn’t either
trump or follow suit, you understand ? ’ : -
“s Well, no,’ the fellow said; “he hadn’t noticed, but it might be;. he had
played along just as it came handy.’ . ,
. “So they put it up that the simple old dummy was to keep his eye on the pario-
rama after that, and as soon as a stunning: picture was reeled out he was to fit
it to a dot with a piece of music that would help the audience to get the idea of-
the subject, and warm them up like a camp-meeting revival. That sort of thing
would corral their'sympathies, the showman said. - 3 eS
“ There was a big audience that night—mostly middle-aged and old peoplé
who belong to the church, and took a strong interest in Bible matters, and the
balance were pretty much young bucks and heifers—they always-come out
strong on panoramas, you know, because it gives them a chance to taste one
another’s complexions in the dark.
“ Well, the showman began to swell himself up for his lecture,.and the old
mud-dobber tackled the piano and ran his fingers up and down once, or twice
to see that she was all right, and the fellows behind the curtain. commenced ta
grind out the panorama. The showman balanced his weight on his right foot;
and propped his hands over his hips, and flung his: eyes over his ‘shoulder: at
the scenery, and said— : « Se. 6-8
«“‘Ladies and.gentlemen, the painting now before you illustrates the beautiful
and touching parable of the Prodigal Son. -Observe the happy. expression just
breaking over the, features of the, poor, -suffering -youth—so worn and weary
with his long march; note also the ecstasy beaming from the uplifted counte; .
nance of the aged father, and, the joy that sparkles in the eyes of ‘the excited,
group of youths and maidens, and seems ready to burst into the welcoming.
chorus from their lips. The lesson, my friends, is as solemn and. instructive as
the story is tender and beautiful.’ :
“The mud-dobber was all ready, and when the second speech was finished, .
struck up—
“