Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch

TWAIN

His LIFE AND WORK

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BY

WILL M. CLEMENS

1892

THE CLElMENS PUBLISHING COMPANY
San Francisco

Copyright, 1891,

BY WILL M. CLEMENS.

All Rights Reserved.

LOAN STACK

PRESS OF W. L. MITCHELL,
SAN FRANCISCO.

CONTENTS.

i. PREFACE 7

2: SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS 13

. 3. IN NEVADA AND CALIFORNIA 37

4. ONE OF THE INNOCENTS 67

5. His FIRST LITERARY SUCCESS 80

6. MARRIAGE 101

7. IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY 114

8. His LATER WORKS 129

9. THE LECTURE PLATFORM 146

10. MARK TWAIN AT HOME 165

11. As A BUSINESS MAN 189

12. GEMS FROM MARK TWAIN 198

I.

PREFACE,

From the days of "Yankee Doodle"
and the ' 'Frogs of Windham," two gems
of early American humor written in the
Revolutionary period, until near the close
of the war of the Rebellion, the recog
nized American humorist, the wit who
could cause a laugh to go Tippling, bub
bling around the world, was a creation
unknown to American literature. How
ever, out of respect and admiration for
their genius, their wit and humor, we
must not fail in giving proper credit to
Francis Hopkinson, Samuel Peters, John

8 Mark Twain

Trumbull, George F. Hopkins, William
T. Thompson, Seba Smith, Joseph C.
Neal, Orpheus C. Kerr, George H.
Derby and a host of others, for bringing
out in the American prints, those native
characteristics, thedrollness of the yankee
and the wit of the early days, but not
until after the Rebellion did America
produce a humorist of world- wide reputa
tion. When civil strife was ended, and
the American began a new career, almost a
new existence, there came to the surface
a new school of native humor. The
names of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward,
Josh Billings and one or two others, be
came household words. Their funny
sayings caused the Englishman to smile
between his bites of beef. Their droll
humor forced our German cousin to shake
his sides with laughter. Their witty
bon mots occasioned prolonged mirth from
our friends in France. Not until then
did we become known as a nation of
humorists, and from that day the fame
of our wits has extended throughout the
entire world. To-day a ripple of mirth

His Life and Work.

starting on the banks of Mud Flat Creek,
will end in a hurricane of laughter on the
Thames or the Seine.

There was something so purely Amer
ican in the humor of Mark Twain, that
his work soon made for him a place in na
tive literature. As a representative of
American life and character his name
extended even beyond the confines of the
continent of Europe, into all lands and
among all peoples. In Paris one cannot
purchase a Bible at the book stall, but
one may find " Roughing It" at every cor
ner. In Rome, "The Innocents Abroad"
is one of the staples in the book marts.
In Hongkong you will find Mark Twain.
Everywhere they read him.

The career of Mark Twain is a ro
mance. His life is a curious medley of
pathos and poverty, with an occasional
laugh to help along over the rough places.
He w"as a wild, reckless boy, a poor
printer, not even a good journalist, an
adventurer, a wanderer. He was a sort
of human kaleidoscope . He then became
a wit, a scholar, a public speaker, a man of

xo Mark Twain

family and a millionaire. All this is but
typical of America, of American life and
American character.

Mark Twain is more than a mere Punch

and Judy show. With his droll humor

there comes information. He gives the

reader a full dinner, not merely dessert.

He tells you more about the Mississippi

river than an old steamboatman. He

gives you a world of information about

Germany and Switzerland. He is better

than a guide book for the Holy Land.

What that greater genius Charles Dickens

has done for fiction, Mark Twain does for

humor. He is an ideal reporter. He

minutely tells us all about a thing, tells

us what he sees and hears, describes a

man, a mule or a monarchy in excellent

form, and makes one laugh at the same

time.

Some years ago I was prompted to
write the genial Mr. Clemens for an
introduction or preface to a little volume
of mine, long since buried by the sands
of time. His reply was this:

His Ltfe and Work* ix

Hartford, Conn.. Nov. 18.
"WILL M. CLEMENS.

* 'My Dear Friend : Your

letter received. God bless your heart. I
would like ever so much to comply with your
request, but I am thrashing away at my new
book, and am afraid that I should not find time
to write my own epitaph, in case I was suddenly
called for.

" Wishing you and your book well, believe me,
"Yours truly,

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS."

Not long ago the gifted humorist sent
me a printed slip of his career, taken
from "Men of the Time." Upon the
margin of this, he wrote the following:

"Mv DEAR CLEMENS:

"I haven't any humor
ous biography — the facts don't admit of it. I
had this sketch from "Men of the Time" printed
on slips to enable me to study my history at my
leisure.

S. L. CLEMENS."

By nature, a serious, thoughtful man,
he is deeply in earnest at times, yet sel
dom has he ventured to deal with the
pathetic in his writings. Occasionally
he pens a careful, serious communication,
like the following, for instance, which he
addressed to a young friend of mine;

12 Mark Twain

Hartford, Jan. 16, 1881.
"MY DEAR BOY:

How can I advise another
man wisely, out of such a capital as a life filled
with mistakes? Advise him how to avoid the
like? No — for opportunities to make the same
mistakes do not happen to any two men. Your
own experiences may possibly teach you, but
another man's can't. I do not know anything
for a person to do but just peg along, doing the
things that offer, and regretting them the next
day. It is my way and everybody's.
' 'Truly yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.'*

In this modest volume I do not attempt
to analyze the humor of Mark Twain.
As Howells says: " Analyses of humor
are apt to leave one rather serious, and to
result in an entire volatilization of the
humor." There is romance, and adven
ture, and thrilling interest surrounding
the life of the prince of humorists, and I
have endeavored to gather together some
of these interesting facts. His satire and
wit speak for themselves.

THE AUTHOR.

His Life and Work.

II.
SAMUEL LANQHORNE CLEMENS.

There is more or less obscurity sur
rounding the ancestry and birth of Mark
Twain. His ancestors were of Dutch and
English extraction. The Clemens family
extended back to Nicholas Clemens, who
lived in Holland, early in the last century.
Upon the maternal side, the Langhornes
were of English birth.

In the days of the Revolution there
came to America three sturdy pioneers-
bearing the Clemens name. One of these
settled in Virginia, another in Pennsyl
vania. The former prospered in the
southern colony and the name became
well known in the South, more especially

Mark Twain

in the political history of that section
early in the present century. Jeremiah
Clemens was a United States senator from
Alabama, and a congressman, a judge,
and other dignitaries bore the name.

John Marshall Clemens, the father of
Mark Twain, was one of a fine Virginia
family, a man of brain and force of char
acter. He migrated to Kentucky and
soon thereafter to Adair county, in Ten
nessee. He was married there in Fen tress
county to Miss Langhorne, a warm
hearted, domestic woman, with great
emotional depths. The family fled from
those vast landed possessions in Ten
nessee, so graphically described in "The
Gilded Age," and crossed the river into
Missouri in 1829, locating in the town of
Florida, in Monroe count)^. A few months
after their arrival, Samuel Langhorne
Clemens first saw the light of day on the
30th of November, 1835. Three years
later the family removed to Hannibal, a
river town in Marion county.

In 1840 the elder Clemens filled the
ancient and honorable office of Justice of

His Life and Work. 15

the Peace. He wa^ a stern, unbending
man of sterling, common sense, and was,
indeed, the autocrat of the little dingy
room on Bird street, where he held his
court and preserved order in the village.
The court room fairly indicated the rustic
simplicity of the people, and the frugal
manner in which Judge Clemens lived
and transacted business. The furniture
consisted of a dry goods box, which
served the double purpose of a desk for
the judge and a table for the lawyers,
three or four rude stools and a puncheon
bench for the jury. Here on court days
when the judge climbed upon his three
legged stool, rapped upon the box with
his knuckles, and demanded silence in
the court, it was fully expected that
silence would reign supreme. As a
general thing the rough characters who
lounged about to see the ' 'wheels of
justice" move, bowed submissively to the
mandates of the judge. An overbearing,
turbulent and quarrelsome man, named
Allen B. McDonald, was an exception,
and many a time he had violated the rules

16 Mark Twain

and been rebuked by the court. Upon
one occasion McDonald was plaintiff in
a case against one Jacob Smith. Judge
Clemens was presiding with his usual
dignity, and the court room was filled
with witnesses and friends of the parties
to the suit. One Frank Snyder, a peac-
able citizen, had given his testimony in
favor of defendant Smith and resumed his
seat, when McDonald with an exasperat
ing air made a face at him. As quick as
a flash Snyder whipped out an old pepper
box revolver and emptied every barrel at
McDonald, hurting no one, but filling
the room with smoke and consternation.
In the confusion that followed Judge
Clemens, doubtless remembering Mc
Donald's turbulent spirit, instantly con
cluded that he was the aggressor, and
seizing a hammer that lay near by, he
dealt him a blow that sent him senseless
and quivering to the floor. The court
was completely master of the situation.
Being a kind-hearted man, he was greatly
mortified when he learned that he had
struck the wrong fellow, but the oldest

His Life and Work.

inhabitant never heard him admit that it
was "a lick amiss." His death occurred
in 1843. His grave in Mount Olivet
cemetery, near Hannibal, is marked by
a tasteful monument erected by his son.
Hannibal was a sleepy river town
characteristic of that day. William Dean
Howells, in a brief sketch of Mark Twain's
career, says: "Hannibal as a name is
hopelessly confused and ineffective; but
if we know nothing of Mr. Clemens from
Hannibal, we can know much of Han
nibal from Mr. Clemens, who, in fact,
has studied a loafing, out-at -elbows,
down-at-the-heels, slave-holding, Missis
sippi river town of thirty years ago, with
such strong reality in his boy's romance
of 'Tom Sawyer/ that we need inquire
nothing further concerning the type.
The original perhaps no longer exists
anywhere, certainly not in Hannibal,
which has grown into a flourishing little
city. The morality of the place was the
morality of a slave-holding community,
fierce, arrogant, onesided; the religion
Was Galvanism in various phases, with

1 8 Mark Twain

its predestinate aristocracy of saints and
its rabble of hopeless sinners. Doubt
less young Clemens escaped neither of
the opposing influences wholly. His
people, like the rest, were slave-holders;
but his father like so many other slave
holders, abhorred slavery — silently, as
he must in such a time and place. "

Mark Twain's childhood home was
that of an ordinary backwood's infant.
His boyhood was a series of mischievous
adventures. He was sent to school at
an early age, where he says he "excelled
only in spelling. " He delighted to spend
much of his time upon the river, and so
successfully was he in getting into the
turbid waters, that he was dragged out
of the river six times before he was twelve
years of age. His mother said of him ;
"Sam was always a good-hearted boy,
but he was a very wild and mischievous
one, and do what we could, we could
never make him go to school. This used
to trouble his father and me dreadfully,
and w$ were convinced that he would
never amount to as much in the world as

His Life and Work-

his brothers, because he was not near so
steady and sober-minded as they were.
Often his father would start him off to
school, and in a little while would follow
him to ascertain his whereabouts. There
was a large stump on the way to the
school-house, and Sam would take his
position behind that, and as his father
went past would gradually circle around
it in such a way as to keep out of sight.
Finally, his father and the teacher both
said it was of no use to try to teach Sam
anything, because he was determined not
to learn. But I never gave up, He was
always a great boy for history, and could
never get tired of that kind of reading;
but he hadn't any use tor school-houses
and text books."

A friend who lived amid the scenes of his
boyhood, writes: "The old home of the
Clemens family was a two story brick, with
a large tree in front. A little way down
the river is the cave by which 4Tom
Sawyer' made his wonderful escape, and
by means of an underground passage
the city of Hannibal is easily regained.

2O Mark Twain

We used to play about the old village
blacksmith shop, and were always in
mischief. The old blacksmith became
so provoked one day, that he caught Sam
and with a shingle made him so sore,
that he did not sit down for a week. As
soon as Sam recovered we went up on
the hill immediately above the blacksmith
shop, and every day for about a week we
worked at digging up a big boulder.
Finally we got all the earth from around
it, and all we had to do was to give it a
shove, and down the hill it would go with
terrible velocity. Saturday afternoon was
always a holiday in Hannibal in those
days. This particular afternoon was a
beautiful June day, and the blacksmith
shop was closed. About three o'clock in
the afternoon we started the boulder down
the hill. It struck the blacksmith shop
and the building was almost demolished.*'

In a humorous sketch written in 1870,
Mark Twain tells the following of his
father and his boyhood:

''When I say that I never knew my
austere parent to be enamored of but

His Life and Work. 21

one poem in all the long half-century
that he lived, persons who knew him will
easily believe me; when I say that I have
never composed but one poem in all the
long third of a century that I have lived,
persons who know me will be sincerely
grateful: and finally, when I say that the
poem which I composed was not the one
which my father was enamored of, per
sons who may have known us both will
not need to have this truth shot into
them with a mountain howitzer before
they can receive it. My father and I
were always on the most distant terms
when I was a boy — a sort of armed neu
trality , so to speak . At irregular in tervals
this neutrality was broken and suffering
ensued; but I will be candid enough to
say that the breaking and the suffering
were always divided up with strict im
partiality between us — which is to say
my father did the breaking, and I did the
suffering. As a general thing I was a
backward, cautious unadventurous boy.
But once I jumped off a two-story stable;
another time I gave an elephant a plug

Mark Twain

of tobacco, and retired without waiting
for aa answer; and still another time I
pretended to be talking in ray sleep, and
got off a portion of every original conun
drum in heanng of my father. Let us
not pry into the result; it was of no con
sequence to any one but me.

"But the poem I have referred to as
attracting my father's attention, and
achieving his favor was 'Hiawatha.'
Some man who courted a sudden and
awful death presented him an early copy,
and I never lost faith in my own senses
until I saw him sit down and go to read
ing it in cold blood — saw him open the
book, and heard him read these following
lines, with the same inflectionless judicial
frigidity with which he always read his
charge to the jury, or administered an
oath to a witness —

"Take your bow, O Hiawatha,
Take your arrows, jasper-headed,
Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,
And your mittens, Minjekahwan,
And your birch canoe for sailing,
And the oil of Mishe-Nama." '

Hts Life and Work. 23

From all accounts Mark was an incor
rigible boy, filled with roving imaginations
from his very earliest age. Many of the
scenes in his books are taken from the
real occurrences of his boyhood. The
steamboat scene in "The Gilded Age"
was witnessed by him while out on his
aimless wanderings. His adventure with
a dead man in his father's office was also
literally true. He had played " hookey'*
from school all day and far into the night
was absent, and rather than go home and
be greeted with a flogging, raised the
window and climbed into the office with
the intention of resting all night upon a
lounge. His description of the horror
creeping over him as he saw a ghastly
hand lying in the moonlight; how he
shut his eyes and tried to count, and
opened them in time to see the dead man
lying on the floor, stiff and stark, with a
ghastly wound in his side, and at last,
how he beat a terrified retreat through
the window, carrying the sash with him
for ' 'convenience" is vividly remembered
by every reader of his works. Mrs.

24 Mark Twain

Clemens asserts that the whole affair
transpired as Mark recorded it — the man
was killed in a street fight almost in front *
of the office door, and was taken in there
while & post mortem examination was held,
and there left until next morning. Dur
ing the night Mark came in, and the
scene he has so ludicrously but graphically
depicted was enacted.

His books abound in stories of his
boyhood. "Tom Sawyer" tells of his
youthful adventures, although his coun
terpart is more correctly depicted in
"Huckleberry Finn". In his "Old Times
on the Mississippi" he says: "When I was
a boy, there was but one permanent am
bition among my comrades in our village
on the west bank of the Mississippi
river. That was to be a steamboatman.
We had transient ambitions of other
sorts, but they were only transient.
When a circus came and went it left us
all burning to become clowns; the first
negro minstrel show that came to our
section left us all suffering to try that
kind of life; now and then we had a hope

His Life and Work.

that if we lived and were good, God
would permit us to become pirates.
These ambitions faded out, each in its
turn, but the ambition to be a steamboat-
man always remained."

When the father died, the mother was
left with four children, Sam being twelve
years of age. The sons realized that
they must do their part in the struggle
for the support of the family. In those
early years he tried various methods of
earning a livelihood, and finally entered
the office of the Hannibal Weekly Courier,
as a printer's apprentice. At a printers'
banquet in New York, some years ago,
he told the story of his apprenticeship, in
which he said: "It may be that the
printer of to-day is not the printer of
thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger
to him. I knew him well. I built the
fire for him in the winter mornings; I
brought his water from the village pump;
I swept out his office; I picked up his
type from under his stand; and, if he was
there to see, I put the good type in his
case and the broken ones among the

26 Mark Twain

'hell matter;' and if he wasn't there to see,
I dumped it all with the 'pi' on the im
posing stone — for that was the furtive
fashion of the cub, and I was the cub.
I wetted down the paper Saturdays, I
turned it Sundays — for this was a country
weekly; I rolled, I washed the rollers,
I washed the forms, I folded the papers,
I carried them around in the disagree
able dawn Thursday mornings. The
carrier was then an object of interest to
all the dogs in town. If I had saved up
all the bites I ever received, I could keep
M. Pasteur busy for a year. I enveloped
the papers that were for the mail — we
had 100 town subscribers and 350 country
ones; the town subscribers paid in gro
ceries and the country ones in cabbage
and cord wood — when they paid at all,
which was merely sometimes, and then
we always stated the fact in the paper,
and gave them a puff; and if we forgot
to they stopped the paper. Every man
in the town list helped to edit the thing;
that is, he gave orders as to how it was
to be edited; dictated its opinions, marked

His Life and Work.

out its course for it, and every time the
boss failed to connect, he stopped his
paper.

"Life was easy with us; if we pied a
form we suspended till next week, and
we always suspended every now and then
when the fishing was good, and explained
it by the illness of the editor, a paltry
excuse, because that kind of a paper was
just as well off with a sick editor as a
well one, and better off with a dead one
than with either of them.

"I can see that printing office of pre
historic times yet, with its horse bills on
the walls, its *d' boxes clogged with
tallow, because we always stood the
candle in the *k* box nights, its towel,
which was not considered soiled until it
could stand alone, and other signs and
symbols that marked the establishment
of that kind in Mississippi valley."

For three years he worked faithfully in
the office of the Courier ', and at the age
of fifteen considered himself a full-fledged
journeyman printer. He had been earn
ing fifty cents a week, and had saved his

28 Mark Twain

money. One evening upon coming home
he asked his mother for five dollars. On
being questioned as to what he wanted
with it, he said he wanted it to start out
traveling with. He failed to obtain the
five dollars, but he assured his mother
that he would go all the same, and he
really went, nor did the old lady ever
set eyes on him again until he had be
come a man. He had made up his mind
to run away and see the exposition in
New York. He worked his way east
ward as a tramp printer, stopping for
several weeks in Sandusky and other
towns in Ohio.

Arriving in New York his worldly
possessions amounted to twelve dollars,
a ten dollar bill of which sum he had
sewed into his coat sleeve. After he
had visited and carefully examined the
long coveted exposition, he found em
ployment in the printing office of John
N. Green. Some two or three months
after this the boy met a man from his
own town of Hannibal, and fearing that
his whereabouts would be reported, he

His Life and Work. 29

suddenly took his departure for Philadel
phia. He secured work in the office of
the Ledger and other newspapers, and
remained in the Quaker city for several
months. While here, as a result of
taking the part of a poor boy who was
imposed upon by a fireman, he was
severely beaten by the latter, so that "he
resembled Lisbon after the earthquake, "
to quote his own language. One day he
made up his mind that he had seen
enough of the world in the Eastern States,
and, with his ten dollars still sewed in
his coat sleeve, he started westward,
having in view his Missouri home. He
tarried awhile in Cincinnati, Louisville
and other river towns, and finally arrived
in St. Louis. He was at this time seven
teen years of age, and his longings and
ambitions for river life returned. ' 'I first
wanted to be a cabin boy," he says, "and
then a deck hand who stood on the end
of the stage plank with a coil of rope in
his hand, because he was particularly
conspicuous. But these were only day
dreams — they were too heavenly to be

jo Mark Twain

contemplated as real possibilities. * *
I said I never would come home again
till I was a pilot and could come in glory.
But somehow I could not manage it. I
went meekly aboard a few boats that lay
packed together like sardines at the long
St. Louis wharf, and very humbly in
quired for the pilots, but got only a cold
shoulder and short words from mates and
clerks. But I was ashamed to go home.
* * * I was in Cincinnati and I set to
work to map out a new career. I had
been reading about the recent explora
tions of the River Amazon by an expedi
tion sent out by our government. It
was said that the expedition, owing to
difficulties, had not thoroughly explored
a part of the country lying about the
head-waters, some four thousand miles
from the mouth of the river. It was
only about fifteen hundred miles from
Cincinnati to New Orleans where I
could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty
dollars left. I would go on and complete
the exploration of the Amazon. I packed
my valise, and took passage on an ancient

His Life and Work. 31

tub, called the Paul Jones, for New
Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars
I had the scarred and tarnished splendors
of 'her' main saloon principally to my
self, for she was not a creature to attract
the eye of wiser travelers. When we
presently got under way, and went pok
ing down the broad Ohio, I became a
new being, and the subject of my own
admiration, I was a traveler. A word
had never tasted so good in my mouth
before. * * I kept my hat off all the
time, and stayed where the wind and the
sun could strike me, because I wanted to
get a bronzed and weather-beaten look of
an old traveler. Before the second day
was half gone, I experienced a joy which
filled me with the purest gratitude; for I
saw that the skin had begun to blister
and peel off my neck and face. I wished
that the boys and girls at home could see
me now.

4 ''After two weeks the Paul Jones
reached New Orleans, and the young
traveler discovered two things. One was
that a vessel would not be likely to sail

32 Mark Twain

for the mouth of the Amazon under ten
or twelve years; and the other was that
the nine or ten dollars still left in my
pocket would not suffice for so imposing
an exploration as I had planned, even if
I could afford to wait for a ship. There
fore it followed that I must contrive a
new career. The Paul Jones was now
bound for St. Louis. I planned a siege
against my pilot, and at the end of three
hard days he surrendered. He agreed to
teach me the Mississippi from New
Orleans to St. lyouis for five hundred
dollars, payable out of the first wages I
should receive after graduating. I
entered upon the small enterprise of
'learning* twelve or thirteen hundred
miles of the great Mississippi river with
the easy confidence of my time of life.
If I had really known what I was about
to require of my faculties, I should not
have had the courage to begin.'"

"The work proved hard and discourag
ing for the youth, but he finally reached
the desired position of pilot; and had ttve
proud satisfaction of receiving two bun-

His Life and Work.

clred and fifty dollars per month. Here
he remained for five years, till he was
twenty-six, when the growth of railroads
and the Civil War made piloting un
profitable. "

An old steamboatman, Captain H. E.
Bixby, furnishes the following interesting
reminiscences of Mark Twain's experi
ence of a pilot: "In 1852 I was chief
pilot on the Paul Jones, a boat that made
occasional trips from Pittsburg to New
Orleans. One day a tall, angular,
hoosier-like young fellow, whose limbs
appeared to be fastened with leather
hinges, entered the pilot house, and in a
peculiar, drawling voice said:

" 'Good mawnin, sir. Don't you want
to take er piert young fellow and teach
'iin how to be er pilot? '

" 'No sir; there is more bother about it
than it's worth/

" 'I wish you would, mister. I'm er
printer by trade, but it don't 'pear to
'gree with me, and I'm on my way to
Central America for my health. I believe

34 Mark Twain

I'll make a tolerable good pilot, 'cause I
like the river/

' 'What makes you pull your words
that way?'

" 'I don't know, mister; you'll have to
ask my ma. She pulls hern too. Ain't
there some way that we can fix it, so
that you'll teach me how to be er pilot?'
" 'The only way is for money.'
" 'How much are you going to charge?'
" 'Well, I'll teach you the river for
$500.

" 'Gee whillikens! he! he! I ain't got
$500, but I've got five lots in Keokuk,
Iowa, and 2,000 acres of land in Ten
nessee that is worth two bits an acre any
time. You can have that if you want it.'
"I toll him I did not care for his land,
and after talking awhile he agreed to pay
$100 in cash, $150 in twelve months and
the balance when he became a pilot.
He was with me for a long time, but
sometimes took occasional trips with
other pilots. He was always drawling
out dry jokes, but then we did not pay
any attention to him."

His Life and Work.

Upon the western rivers the occurrence
of sand bars, together with snags and
other obstructions, require constant
watchfulness on the part of those who run
the boats, and frequent soundings in
shallow places. Upon approaching a
sand bar or shallow, the captain takes
his stand upon the edge of the hurricane
deck, in front of the pilot house, while
one of the crew stands at the bow to cast
the lead and give the soundings to the
captain, who repeats them to the pilot.
When the line man draws up the lead
and finds the water down two feet, he
sings out "by the mark twain," or-as is
more frequently the case, simply ' 'mark
twain." The captain repeats to the
pilot, and it becomes the latter to mind
his helm; but as the length of the line
below the water increases, he gives out
the soundings in a constantly increasing
joyous tone, singing out, "three feet" or
"four feet" in a sing-song cadence, until
all danger is passed and the line is laid
away. This specimen of Mississippi
river vernacular " Mark Twain" was in

36 Mark Twain

his later years adopted by Samuel L.
Clemens as a nom de plume.

Bis Life and Work.

III.

IN NEVADA AND CALIPOENIA.

At the outbreak of the Civil War,
Mark Twain was a regularly employed
pilot on the river steamboat Alonzo
Childs. He remained at the wheel until
the craft was converted into a Confederate
ram, the opening of the war having put
an end to profitable piloting.

Young Clemens at the age of twenty-
four years, returned to Hannibal, and
enlisted as a three months' volunteer in
the Confederate army under General
Price.

In a magazine article printed some
years since he related his experiences as
a soldier, in a paper entitled "The Pri-

38 Mark Twain

vate History of a Campaign that Failed."
The following is his account of the or
ganization of the company :

"I was visiting in the small town
where my boyhood had been spent —
Hannibal, Marion County. Several of
us got together in a secret place by night
and formed ourselves into a military
company. One Tom Lyman, a young
fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no
military experience, was made captain;
I was made second lieutenant. We had
no first lieutenant; I do not know why;
it was long ago. There were fifteen of
us. By the advice of an innocent con
nected with the organization, we called
ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not
remember that any one found fault with
the name. I did not ; I thought it sounded
quite well. The young fellow who pro
posed this title was perhaps a fair sample
of the kind of stuff we were made of.
He was young, ignorant, good-natured,
well-meaning, trivial, full of romance,
and given to reading chivalric novels and
singing forlorn love-ditties. He had

His Life and Work.

some pathetic little nickel-plated aristo
cratic instincts, and detested his name,
which was Dunlap; detested it, partly
because it was nearly as common in that
region as Smith, but mainly because it
had a plebeian sound to his ear. So he
tried to ennoble it by writing it in this
way: d* Unlap. That contented his eye,
but left his ear unsatisfied, for people
gave the new name the same old pro
nunciation — emphasis on the front end of
it. He proved useful to us in his way;
he named our camps for us, and he gen
erally struck a name that was 'no slouch/
as the boys said.''

Having been a pilot, and therefore
knowing the channel and being familiar
with the points where steamboats would
have to hug the shore, Lieutenant
Clemens was detailed to special duty on
the river. He was captured and paroled.
Being captured a second time, he was
sent to St. I,ouis, and imprisoned in a
tobacco warehouse. He got to thinking
the matter over — the possibility of being
sent to Grant's army, by which he was

4O Mark Twain

first captured, to be exchanged, and by
which, if recognized, he would certainly
be shot for a violation of his parole. He
finally succeeded in making his escape
and started westward.

President Lincoln had appointed
James W. Nye as Governor of Nevada,
and Orion Clemens, an older brother of
Samuel, was selected as Territorial Sec
retary by the President. Sam joined his
brother at Carson City in the capacity of
private secretary, but fearing that the
influence of his brother would not be
sufficient to save him if he should be
recognized by passing officers or soldiers
of the Union army, he did not remain
long in Carson, but pushed on to an out
of the way mining camp, called Aurora,
where he remained until he fancied the
storm had blown over. While in Aurora
he wrote a series of letters to the Vir
ginia City Enterprise, which subsequently
resulted in his obtaining an editorial
position upon that journal.

Nevada, at that time, was swarming
with adventurers. Bankrupt tradesmen

His Life and Work.

were flocking there from other territories.
College graduates, tired of grubbing for
Greek roots, went there to grub for gold
and silver. Murderers and thieves, es
caped from justice, gamblers and the
outcasts from the cities joined the throng
and society became very lively in the
mining towns of the territory. The
fashionable ornaments of the day con
sisted of an eight inch revolver, an
Arkansas toothpick and jack boots.

In the mining regions Mark Twain
passed through divers experiences. He
worked at day's wages in a quartz mill,
and was explorer and prospector. Many of
his sketches, afterward incorporated, in
"The Jumping Krog" and "Roughing It,"
were published at that time in local or
Eastern journals. Once for the space of
a few moments, he owned the famous
Comstock lode, and was worth millions.
He found out all this after he had sold
the claim.

During the winter of 1861-2 he returned
to Carson City for a time. There was
little doing at the territorial capital, and

Mark Twain

in the rear of Governor Nye's private
office was a comfortable room, where
Clemens and the other attaches of the
offices wiled away the winter days at
cards and story telling.

In the spring of 1862 he accepted the
local editorship of the Virginia City
Enterprise, and upon that paper utilized
for the first time his pseudonym of 4 'Mark
Twain." He perpetrated many broad
and practical jokes through his paper.
His sharp pen caused a man named
Willis, then city editor of the Virginia
Union to hunting up his record. This
resulted in Clemens sending Willis a
challenge to mortal combat. Willis
would not accept, for he said he would
not meet any one on the field of honor
except a man of honor. His best man
then challenged Clemens, but he too
declined on the same ground given by
Willis. At that time dueling had just
been made popular by a meeting between
Tom Fitch, the silver-tongued orator,
and Joseph T. Goodman, editor of the
Enterprise. But the matter was dropped,

His Life and Work. 43

and Mark Twain and Willis never met
upon the field of honor.

"About the year 1863," says Robert
Fulford, "I was a printer on the Virginia
City Enterprise, and Mark was on the
local staff. Mark and I roomed together
across the 'divide' in a place known as
Gold Hill, about a mile from Virginia
City. He was a droll, dry sort of a
fellow, delighted in practical jokes, and
the boys had to be constantly on the alert
for fear of some new scheme he would
spring upon them."

A club of good fellows was organized
in Virginia City by Mark Twain, Dan
De Quille, Frank May, Louis Aldrich
and others, under the name of the " Vis
igoths," and they carried their practical
jokes to such an extent that they gained
a somewhat unfavorable reputation.

While in Virginia City, some miners
came down from Calaveras, and told
Mark Twain about the miners there
loading a frog up with shot. And it was
a fact. In those days the men in the
camps would bet about anything, and

44 Mark Twain

one day they got to betting about how far
some frogs could jump. They conceived
the idea of filling one of the rival frogs
with shot, and did it, and the frog couldn't
jump. Mark wrote out the story for the
Enterprise, and in this way "The Jump
ing Frog of Calaveras" first saw the light
oi day.

Many interesting anecdotes are told of
the humorist's life in Virginia City, and
he tells one himself of how the funniest
thing he ever wrote came to an untimely
end and was lost to the world through
the interferance of an "editorial" com
positor. In Nevada, at that time, it was
the custom of the proprietor of every new
saloon, to send a basket of his choicest
wines to the newspaper office, and for
the editor to return the compliment by
giving a glowing account of the brilliancy
of the affair. A basket of unusually
choice wine had been sent to the office
one day, from a saloon of a very aristo
cratic order that was to be opened.
Mark was to "write up" the opening.
He wrote a few lines in the best of

His Life and Work. 45

English and then it began to be badly
mixed, and as he represented bottle after
bottle as having been sampled, approved
and emptied, he drifted into worse and
worse confusion, until finally the article
was all tangled up, as might be supposed
of a man who had drank a basket of
mixed wines. When the paper came
out Mark could not find his cherished
article, but instead found a short para
graph setting forth in the most common
place way, that a basket of wines had

been received from Mr. , and that

they were very fine, etc. Mark was
mad and found that one of the printers
was responsible. The fellow said he
could not make head or tail of the copy,
and thought Mr. Clemens must have
been drunk when he wrote it, so he tore
it up and substituted the paragraph.
The humorist mourned long for the loss
of the article which he could not re
produce, and to this day believes that it
was the most brilliant of any of his pro
ductions, even before or since.

During this period in his career > Mark

46 Mark Twain

gave to the world many of the short
humorous sketches that made him famous.
He had already acquired a name on the
Pacific Coast, and his newspaper articles
were beginning to attract attention east
of the Rocky Mountains. Among these
sketches were "The Undertaker's Chat,"
"The Petrified Man," and "The Mar
velous 'Bloody Massacre.'" Some of the
quaintest and brightest things which
have appeared under his name originally
enlivened the pages of the Enterprise
with its crimson catalogue of murders,
duels and Judge lyynch executions.

In 1863 the Gould and Curry mine on
the Comstock paid dividends amounting
to $100 to $150 a share. Whenever a
dividend was declared, the San Francisco
Bulletin, after announcing the fact, would
add: "Wonder if this dividend was
cooked?" A certain San Francisco
capitalist, being in Virginia City one day
after one of these monthly queries, told
the cause of them. It is a fact that one
mining company had hired money and
declared a dividend. This was the Dana

His Life and Work.

mine, which never had a foot of ore, but
the dividend raised the price of the stock
to a respectable figure, at which the
owners thereof disposed of their stock.
This San Francisco capitalist stated that
this swindle had caught the proprietors
of that journal somewhat heavily. "But,"
he added, "if the Bulletin wants to find
a company nearer home which is borrow
ing money to pay dividends, I can give
you an instance in point. The Spring
Valley Water Company has hired money
to pay its two last dividends, and all the
big fish are getting out and letting the
little fish in. Perhaps that might attract
that journal's indignation also."

Twain and another writer employed on
the Enterprise counseled together on the
improbability of a plain notice of the fact
of the Spring Valley Water Company's
hiring money to pay dividends — made, as
it must be, in a country journal — would
attract any notice whatever in the metro
politan press. Accordingly, in order to
overcome the difficulty surrounding the
"country" location, the matter was held

48 Mark Twain

under advisement for one day, much to
the disgust of the San Francisco capitalist.

On the second day Mark announced
that he had surmounted the * 'country"
difficulty, and, sure enough, he had.
Accordingly, in the local columns of the
Enterprise the next morning appeared an
account of a terrible tragedy that had
been committed in "the great pine forest
between Empire City and Dutch Nick's"
the day before. The story went on to
state that a man named Hopkins, who
resided there, and who had owned mil
lions in the Comstock, had been induced
to sell out his entire mining interests by
a relative of his, who was one of the editors
of the Bulletin. By the same advise he had
invested every dollar in the Spring Valley
Water Company, and, on learning that
its two last dividends had been paid with
borrowed money, he became so violently
nsane, that he murdered his wife and
thirteen children, under the impression
that they would come to immediate want.

The next day Mark published a card
in which he took it all back except the

His Life and Work. 49

way the money had been procured to pay
the dividends, and adding that ' 'it took a
fearful tragedy to get any truth into a
San Francisco newspaper anyhow."

J. H. Stebbins, an old time printer,
relates the following incident of Twain's
life in Virginia City: "Clemens was
local reporter on The Enterprise, and I
was a printer on the same paper.
Clemens was writing humorous sketches,
but his fame as a humorist was young
yet. He was an inveterate smoker, and
smoked the foulest-smelling pipe in Vir
ginia City by au odds. Clemens' office
was just off the composing-room, and
although printers, as a rule, are not
squeamish about pipes and things, this
pipe was breeding a revolution. It
smelled so infernally bad that we always
spoke of it as 'The Remains.' There
were numerous plots suggested to get
The Remains' out of the way, but we
hesitated about putting them into execu
tion when we learned that it was a pipe
of considerable value, and one that he
cherished on account of its associations or

Mark Twain

something. It was clear, however, that
something had to be done, and we finally
concluded to present Clemens with a new
pipe. \Ve had suffered so much from the
old pipe of a thousand smells that we
felt justified in making him the victim of
a joke, if we could, and so we scoured
the town and bought the cheapest pipe
we could find that would pass after night
for a good one. I think it cost thirty
cents. One night, after we had the
paper up, we all filed solemnly out into
the local -room and presented Clemens
with the pipe. We threw as much cere
mony into the presentation as possible.
One of the boys made an address that
was really affecting. He talked about
the toilers in the profession of journalism,
their long nights of labor when all the
rest of the world was wrapped in peace
ful slumber. Then he worked in some
of the poetry about tobacco and the solace
it afforded the tired brain. He spoke of
the warm friendship that existed between
the local department and the composing-
room, and hoped nothing would ever

His Life and Work.

occur to sever these silken ties. Then
he handed him the twenty -five-cent frand,
wiped his fingers through his eyes and
sat down.

1 'Clemens was knocked completely out
for a time, but he pulled himself together
and returned his thanks in a very feeling
manner. He said the pretty gift from
his co-workers on the paper touched him
deeply, and he would retain it long as a
souvenir of pleasant days. The old pipe
had long been a friend and companion.
It had been a comforter in lonely hours;
but this handsome gift from friends he
loved made the parting easy, and as a
climax to his remarks he threw the ill-
smelling old-timer out of the window.
We accepted his invitation to go down
stairs with him, and knowing the mis
erable swindle we had perpetrated, every
dollar he spent gave us a pang.

4 'The very next night, while Clemens
was smoking his new pipe, the bowl of
the cussed thing split open from stem to
stern. We heard him growling to him
self, and looking out of a hole in the wall

Mark Twain

through which he shoved copy, we saw
him brushing the ashes off his desk and
clothes and swearing softly in a very
picturesque manner. He didn't say a
word to us about the pipe or its fate, and
you bet we said nothing to him. It was
evident, however, that he had done some
thinking, for he appeared at the office
next night complacently smoking 'The
Remains/ He had gone down into the
back yard and hunted it up."

From Virginia City, Mark Twain
drifted as a matter of course to San
Francisco — the harbor of all adventurers
on the coast. He was in a chronic state
of impecuniosity when he arrived at the
Golden Gate. He had furnished some
correspondence to the Morning Call from
Nevada, and to the office of that news
paper he immediately betook himself.
He wanted work and money. He wore
a ragged felt hat, a soldier's blue over
coat, and pantaloons which had formed a
passing acquaintance with the tops of his
boots. George Barnes, who was at that
time editor of the Call, told him to go

His Life and Work

to work the next day, and gave him an
order on the business office for money
enough to make himself look respectable.
The next day Twain took possession of
his chair, and for six weary months
Barnes tried to get some work cut of
him.

At the end of that time, in his good-
natured way, he tried to let Mark down
and out easily and politely, by saying to
him, "Mark, don't you think you are
wasting your time and talents in doing
local work?"

"V/hat do you mean?" said Mark.

"Why, I think with your style and
talent you could make more money
writing for first-class magazines than in
such work as you are doing now."

"That means that you don't want me
any more, I suppose?" and he put his feet
on the desk and smiled blandly at Barnes.

"Well, I think you are better fitted
for that class of work."

"The fact is you have come to the
conclusion that I am not the kind of a
man you want."

54 Mark Twain

"Well, if you will have it," said
Barnes. "You are not. You are the
laziest, most shiftless, good-for-nothing
specimen I ever saw around a newspaper
office. I have tried for six months to
get some work out of you and failed, and
I have come to the conclusion that it is
useless to keep you any longer."

"Barnes," replied Twain, in his most
placid manner, "you are not as smart a
man as I thought you were. You have
been six months in finding that out,
and I knew it the day I came to work.
Give us an order on the office for three
days' pay and I git."

One of the printers employed upon
the Call at the time, furnishes the follow
ing reminiscence:

"One evening Clemens came into our
room where we were shining our boots.

"What's up, boys?" he asked.

"We're going to the theatre."

"But it's not seven yet, you've plenty
of time, "said Clemens, sitting down on
the corner of the bed. "I want to tell
you a good story," and he proceeded to

His Life and Work. 55

entertain us with an account of his latest
practical joke. This reminded him of a
personal experience on a steamboat, which
in turn led to a graphic description of
his life on the Mississippi. He talked on
without pause, holding our closest inter
est, by his artful blending of humor,
pathos, vivid description and thrilling
incident, until at length, breaking off
suddenly, he said with a laugh:

'/Well, boys, if you're going to the
theater, it's time you were off."

' 'We drew our watches. It was eleven
o'clock."

His love for practical joking while
living in California, called forth the fol
lowing from a San Francisco paper some
years ago:

' 'There have been moments in the lives
of various kind-hearted and respectable
citizens of California and Nevada, when,
if Mark Txvain were before them as
members of a vigilance committee for any
mild crime, such as mule-stealing or
arson, it is to be feared his shrift would
have been short. What a dramatic

Mark Twain

picture the idea conjures up, to be sure!
Mark, before those honest men, infuriated
by his practical jokes, trying to show
them what an innocent creature he was
when it came to mules, or how the only
policy of fire insurance he held had
lapsed, how void of guile he was in any
direction, and all -with that inimitable
drawl, that perplexed countenance, and
the peculiar scraping back of the left foot,
like a boy speaking his first piece at
school. It is but fair to say that the fun
that Mark mixed up for citizens in those
days was not altogether appreciated in
the midst of it, for some one, touched too
sharply, surge bat amarialiquid, and Mark
had another denouncer joined to the
wounded throng."

"I think I may justly claim to having
kept Mark Twain in the realms of liter
ature," said General John McComb to
the writer not long ago. "In 1864 Mark
Twain was city editor of the Morning
Call. In those days the city editor of a
San Francisco newspaper had something
else to do than sit at his desk, make out

His Life and Work.

details and read copy. Mark used gen
erally to look out for the late police news,
would report a lecture or anything that
came to hand. I think the local staff
then consisted of himself and one reporter.
Things did not go exactly to Mark's
liking; he detested police reporting, and
would not go to the City Hall any oftener
than he was obliged to. He was out of
his sphere, he thought, and, as a conse
quence, used to be disatisned with the
world in general and newspaper work in
particular. One morning I met him at
the corner of Clay and Montgomery
Streets. We stopped, shook hands, and
he said:

" 'Mac, I've done my last newspaper
work; I'm going back East.7

" 'What do you mean?' I asked.

" 'Well," he replied, "I've been trying
to get out of this work a long while.
Sometime since I made application
through some friends at Washington, for
an appointment as Government pilot on
the Mississippi River. I have just re
ceived notification that my application

58 Mark Twain

was successful. The salary is $300 per
month, and it is not hard work."

''I was a great deal surprised and dis
appointed. Clemens and I had become
warm friends, and I had conceived a high
regard for his literary ability, although I
could see he was more or less hampered
by his surroundings. I determined to
do what I could to cause him to recon
sider his determination. With this object
in view I said to him: (Sam, you are
making the mistake of your life. There
is a better place for you than a Mississippi
steamboat. You have a style of writing
that is fresh and original and is bound to
be popular. If you don't like the tread
mill work of a newspaper man, strike up
higher; write sketches, write a book;
you'll find a market for your stuff, and
in time you'll be appreciated and get
more money than you can standing
alongside the wheel of a steamboat.
There's nothing in this pilot business
either. You say }TOU are to get $300 a
month — that's ia greenbacks you re
member. Now $300 in greenbacks won't

His Life and Work.

go a great way as you know. Then
again, the war will be over in a little
while and where' 11 you be? You will be
thrown out of Government employ and
you'll have to fight for work with a lot of
older and more experienced men. If you
succeed, what will happen? You'll be a
river pilot all the rest of your days; and
you know what that is. No, Sam, don't
you drop your pen now, stick to it, and
it will make your fortune."

"He listened very attentively to what I
had said, and I saw that I had made an
impression. He said he would think it
over, shook my hand and passed on down
Clay Street. The next day he came into
my office and the first thing he said was:
'Now, Mac, I've taken your advice. I
thought it all over last night, and finally
I wrote to Washington declining the ap
pointment, and so I'll stick to the news
paper work a while longer."

On one occasion Clemens was standing
at the corner of Clay and Montgomery
Streets, leaning against a lamp post and
holding a cigar box under his arm. Mrs.

60 Mark Twain

Captain Edward Poole, a very beautiful
woman, and as bright and witty as beau
tiful, carne along and stopped and held
out her hand, saying: "Why, Mark,
where are you going in such a hurry?"

"I'm m-o-o-v-ing," drawled Mark, at
the sams time opening the cigar box
disclosing a pair cf blue socks, a pipe and
two paper collars.

He never cared for the ladies, was in
fact a fish out of water when he happened
to be near them. While employed on
the daily Alta, he called at a dressmaker's
establishment, and for ten minutes
addressed a wax figure of a lady, before
discovering his mistake.

In the spring of 1865 he became in
terested with Bret Harte in the conduct
of the Calif ornian. While sub-editor of
that magazine he produced many sketches
of merit which were widely copied in the
Eastern press.

In a series of articles entitled ' ' Answers
to Correspondents," contributed to the
Calif ornian^ appeared the following:

'SiMON WH^KivKR/ Sonora. — The fol-

His Life and Work. 61

lowing simple and touching remarks and
accompanying poem have just come to
hand from the rich gold-mining region of
Sonora:

" lTo Mr. Mark Twain: The within
parson, which I have sot to poetry under
the name and style of cHe Done His
I^evel Best,' was one among the whitest
men I ever see, and it ain't every man
that knowed him that can find it in his
heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is
busted and gone home to the States.
He was here in an early day, and he
was the handyest man about takin' holt
of anything that come along you most
ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful,
stirrin' cretur,' always doin' something,
and no man can say he ever see him do
anything by halvers. Preachin' was his
natural gait, but he warn't a man to lay
back and twidle his thums because there
didn't happen to be nothin' doin1 in his
own especial line — no, sir, he was a man
who would meander forth and stir up
something for hisself. His last acts was
to go to his pile o' 'kings-tf^' (calklatin'

62 Mark Twain

to fill but which he didn't fill) when
there was a 'flush' out agin him, and
naturally, you see, he went under. And
so he was cleaned out, as you may say,
and he struck the home-trail, cheerful
but flat broke. I knowed this talented
man in Arkansaw, and if you would
print this humbly tribute to his gorgis
abilities, you would greatly obleege his
onhappy friend/

"HE DONE His LEVEL BEST.

"Was he mining on the flat —

He done it with a zest;
Was he a leading of the choir —

He done his level best.

If he'd a reg'lar task to do,

He never took no rest;
Or if 'twas off-and-on— the same —

He done his level best.

If he was preachin* on his beat,
He'd tramp from east to west,

And north to south — in cold and heat
He done his level best.

He'd yank a sinner outen (Hades),*

And land him with the blest;
Then snatch a prayer'n waltz in again,

And do his level best.

His Life and Work. 63

He'd cuss and sing and howl and pray,
And dance and drink and jest,

And lie and steal — all one to him —
He done his level best.

Whatever this man was sot to do,

He done it with a zest;
No matter what his contract was,

He'd do his level best.

'October, 1865,'

' 'Verily this man was gifted with 'gorgis
abilities/ and it is a happiness to me to
embalm the memory of their lustre in
these columns. If it were not that the
poet crop is unusually large and rank in
California this year, I would encourage
you to continue writing, Simon; but as it
is, perhaps it might be too risky in you
to enter against so much opposition."

The nomadic taint ran riot in the blood
of both Mark Twain and Bret Harte, and
they one day deserted the California^ and
started inland for another delusive exper
iment in mining for gold. On returning
to San Francisco, Clemens found his
health failing and made arrangements to
go to the Sandwich Islands as a news
paper correspondent. Before his departure

64 Mark Twain

he held his first interview with Artemus
Ward, the published report of which was
widely quoted.

He sailed in 1866 for Honolulu.
There was a wedding on board the
vessel, and Mark gave away the bride.
The groom was greatly vexed over the
absence of a wedding ring, when
Mark reached up and pulled off one of
the huge curtain rings large enough to
go around the girl's two arms. He held
it in position on her finger at the proper
time, and as she was a remarkably pretty
girl he took good care to exercise his
privilege of kissing her at the close.

Arriving in Honolulu, he proceeded to
write up the sugar plantations, and
descriptions of life and character on the
islands. His letters were very readable.

They were mostly published in the
Sacramento Union. He wrote, among
other things, a most thrilling description
of a burning crater some miles around,
full of white and red heated crystal fire
caverns and crimson lava.

There is a touch of wondrous beauty

His Life and Work.

in his picture of the Sandwich Islands
written some years after:

' 'No alien land in all the world has any
deep, strong, charm for ine but that one,
no other land could so longingly and so
beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and
waking, through half a lifetime as that
one has done. Other things leave me,
but it abides; other things change, but it
remains the same. For me its balmy
airs are always blowing, its summer seas
flashing in the sun, the pulsing of its surf
beat is in my ear; I can see its garlanded
crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy
palms drowsing by its shore, its remote
summits floating like islands above the
cloud rack; I can feel the spirit of its
woodland solitudes. I can hear the plash
of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the
breath of flowers that perished twenty
years ago. And these world wanderers
who sit before us here have lately looked
upon these things! and with eyes of flesh,
not the unsatisfying vision of the spirit.
I envy them that!"

The climate of Hawaii soon restored

66 Mark Twain

him to perfect health, and after an ab
sence of two months, he returned to San
Francisco, with renewed spirits, and with
his world-wide fame still before him.

His Life and Work. 67

IV.

ONE OF THE "INNOCENTS."

During the winter months of 1866-7,
a coterie of bright journalists eked out a
miserable existence in San Francisco.
Prominent among the Bohemians who
lunched together at the Miners' Restau
rant were Charles Warren Stoddard, F.
Bret Harte, Charles H. Webb, Prentice
Mulford and Mark Twain. None of these
gentlemen were quite so poor and needy
as Sam Clemens, who on several occa
sions ventured upon the dangerous
border land of starvation. One day a
comedian from a local theatre approached
Mark on the street;

68 Mark Twain

"See here, Clemens," said he, "I need
a half-dozen good jokes. Get 'em up and
I'll give you five dollars."

' 'Sorry, old man," answered Mark,
thoughtfully, "but I'm afraid the scheme
won't work."

"Why not?"

"Well, the fact is, I'm so d d poor,

if I was found with $5 on my person
people would say I stole them; on the
other hand, if you got off any decent
jokes people would say you stole them,
too."

In January 1867, Stoddard and Mul-
ford gave several successful public enter
tainments in San Francisco, and fired
with ambition, Mark Twain started forth
upon a lecture tour through the smaller
cities of California and Nevada. In
those days most any sort of an enter
tainment brought out a crowd, and when
it was announced one day in Carson City
that Mark was to deliver a lecture for
the benefit of something or other, at the
Episcopal Church, it was generally un-

His Life and Work. 69

derstood that the house would be
crowded.

"Well, the night arrived," writes a
friend who was present. "Mark as
cended the steps into the pulpit about
8 o'clock, there being a whole lot of the
boys and young women, friends of his,
as well as a good many old people in
front. Mark made a very polite bow,
and then unfolded a gigantic roll of brown
paper. People thought at first it was a
map, but it turned out to be his lecture
written on great sheets of grocers' brown
paper, with an ordinary grocers' marking
brush. After his bow he turned his
back around to the audience and craned
his head up to the lamp and thus read
from the big sheets as though it would
be impossible for him to see any other
way.

"The lecture was on 'The Future of
Nevada,' and was the funniest thing I
ever heard. He prophesied the great era
of prosperity that was before us and
sought to encourage us residents of the
sagebrush region by foretelling what

Mark Twain

appeared to be Golconda-like tales of
impossible mineral discoveries. Right
on the heels of it, however, came the
remarkable discoveries of Virginia City,
and then we thought he wasn't so far off
in his humorous productions. Many a
time have I thought of that lecture of
Mark Twain. It ought to have been
published. I have read all his books, and
I never saw anything in any of them
better than this."

For several months Mr. Clemens con
tinued this platform experience with
profit, the while writing interesting
letters to the Eastern newspapers and
contributing sketches to the periodicals.
In March 1867, he published his first
book, "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras,"
a collection of his best fugitive sketches,
and this immediately aroused public at
tention, not only in America but also in
England.

Soon after he sailed for New York by
way of Panama, and upon arriving there,
having found that his little volume was
well received, arranged for an English

His Life and Work.

edition, which was published by Messrs.
Routiedge & Sons of London.

From New York Mark proceeded to
Washington, where he endeavored to
earn his living by writing letters to the
San Francisco Alta, and delivering a
lecture or two. His lecture experience
in Washington was brief but interesting,
and he tells all about it in his inimical
way, as follows:

"Well, now, I'll have to tell you some
thing about that lecture. It was a little
the hardest and roughest experience I
ever underwent in my whole career as a
lecturer. Now, I had not been in
Washington more than a day or two
before a friend of mine came to my room
at the hotel early one moining, wakened
me out of a sound sleep, and nearly
stunned me by asking if I was aware of
the tact that I was to deliver a lecture at
Lincoln hall that evening. I told him
no, and that he must be crazy to get out
of bed at such an unseemly hour to ask
such a foolish question. But he soon
assured me that he was perfectly sane by

7 2 Mark Twain

showing me the morning papers, which
all announced that Mark Twain was to
lecture that evening and that his subject
would be 'The Sandwich Islands.' To
say that I was surprised would be putting
it mildly. I was mad, for I thought
some one had put up a game on me.

"Well, on careful inquiry, I learned
that an old theatrical friend of mine
thought he would do me a favor. So he
made all the necessary arrangements for
me to lecture, with the exception of the
slight circumstance that he neglected to
inform me of any of his intentions. He
rented Lincoln hall, billed the town, and
sent the newspapers advertisements and
notices about the coming lecture. And
the worst of it was he had done all his
\vork thoroughly. After learning this I
\vas in a dilemma. I had never prepared
any lecture on the Sandwich Islands.
\Vhat was I to do? I could not back out
by telling the people that I was unpre
pared. No, that was out of the question,
because the people wouldn't believe it.
The billing of the town had been too well

His Life and Work.

done for that. So there was only one
thing left for me to do, and that was to
lock myself in my room and write that
lecture between the breakfast hour and
half-past seven that evening. Well, I
did it, and was on hand at the advertised
hour, facing one of the biggest audiences
I ever addressed.

(<I did not use my manuscript, but in
those days I always had my lecture in
writing, and kept it on a reading stand
at one end of the place where I stood on
the platform. I was very good at mem
orizing, and rarely had any trouble in
speaking without notes; but the very fact
that I had my manuscript near at hand
where I could readily turn to it without
having to undergo the mortification of
pulling it from my pocket, gave me
courage and kept me from making awk
ward pauses. But the writing of that
Sandwich Island lecture in one day was
the toughest job ever put on me."

One afternoon while sitting in his
dingy little room, smoking his cob pipe,
Mark became deeply interested in reading

Mark Twain

about the contemplated trip of the steam
ship ''Quaker City" to Europe and the
Holy L,and, and saw the chance of his
life. He wrote to General John Mc-
Cornb, one of the proprietors of the San
Francisco Daily Alta California, asking
for an advance of $1,200 in gold, propos
ing to pay it in letters at $15 apiece. It
was no small request to make of a San
Francisco newspaper in the • '6o's, but
McComb induced his partners to grant
the request.

That was how Mark Twain formed one
of the party who sailed in the steamship
" Quaker City," Captain Duncan, for an
extended excursion to Palestine and the
Holy Land. This voyage to the different
seaports of Southern Europe and the
Orient gave him an opportunity of which
he made abundant use. The excursion
was a very exclusive sort of affair, and
Captain Duncan is authority for the
statement that Clemens had represented
himself when he applied for passage on
the "Quaker City," as a Baptist minister
in ill health, from San Francisco.

His Life and Work.

Clemens had accompanied the excur
sion party solely as a newspaper corres
pondent. He fell in with a crowd of
good, respectable Bourgeois and Bour
geoises, and if the exaggerated narrative
of the "Innocents Abroad," published
two years later, is to be relied upon, he
certainly must have kept his pious-
minded fellow voyagers in a constant
state of nervous excitement.

The story of that eventful tour has
been well told in "Innocents Abroad."
He set out to explore the Holy L,and and
Egypt, stopping, by the way, at Athens.
His description of the city at night is one
of the most vivid vignettes on record.

"The full moon was riding high in the
heavens now. We sauntered carelessly
and unthinkingly to the edge of the
lofty battlements of the citadel, and
looked down. A vision!— and such a
vision! Athens by moonlight! It lay
in the level plain, right under our feet —
all spread abroad like a picture, and we
looked upon it as we might be looking at
it from a balloon. We saw no semblance

Mark Twain

of a street, but every house, every window,
every clinging vine, every projection
were marked as clearly as it were at
noonday; and yet there was no glare, no
glitter, nothing harsh or repulsive. The
harshest city was flooded with the
yellowest light that ever streamed from
the moon, and seemed like some living
creature wrapped in peaceful slumber.
On its further side was a little temple,
whose delicate pillars and ornate front
glowed with a rich lustre that chained
the eye like a spell; and nearer by, the
palace of the king reared its creamy
walls out of the mist of a great garden of
shrubbery, that was flecked all over with
a random shower of amber lights — a
spray of golden sparks that lost their
brightness in the glory of the moon, and
glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage
like the pallid star of the milky way.
Overhead the stately columns, majestic
still in their ruin; underfoot, the dream
ing city; in the distance, the silver sea.
The picture needed nothing. It was
perfect."

His Life and Work.

Equally realistic, vivid and interesting
were his sketches of scenes and incidents
in Palestine and Egypt. Of his experi
ence with a camel in Syria, he wrote as
folio ws, in a vein of the richest humor:

"In Syria, at the headwaters of the
Jordan, a camel took charge of my over
coat while the tents were being pitched,
and examined it with a critical eye, all
over, with as much interest as if he had
an idea of getting one made like it; and
then, after he was done figuring on it as
an article of apparel, he began to con
template it as an article of diet. He
put his foot on it, and lifted one of the
sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed
and chewed at it, gradually taking it in,
and all the while opening and closing
his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as
if he had never tasted anything so good
as an overcoat before in his life. Then
he smacked his lips once or twice, and
reached after the other sleeve. Next he
tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile
of such contentment that it was plain to
see that he regarded that as the daintiest

J8 Mark Twain

thing about an overcoat. The tails went
next, along with some percussion caps
and cough candy, and some figpaste from
Constantinople. And then my news
paper correspondence dropped out, and
he took a chance in that — manuscript
letters written for the home papers. But
he was treading on dangerous ground
now. He began to come across solid
wisdom in those documents that was
weighty on his stomach; and occasionally
he would take a joke that would shake
him up till it loosened his teeth; it was
getting to be perilous times with him,
but he held his grip with good courage
and hopefully, till at last he began to
stumble on statements that not even a
camel could swallow with impunity. He
began to gag and gasp, and his eyes to
stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and
in about a quarter of a minute he fell
over as stiff as a carpenters' workbench,
and died a death of indescribable agony.
I went and pulled the manuscript out of
his mouth, and found that the sensitive
creature had choked to death on one of

His Life and Work.

the mildest and gentlest statements of
fact that I ever laid before a trusting
public."

The trip of the "Quaker City" was
not designed as a lengthy tour of Europe,
but merely a midsummer excursion of a
few months. Brief as was the voyage,
however, Mark Twain made the most of
it, and gathered material not only enough
in quantity to produce a large volume,
but enough in quality to give him ever
lasting fame.

Returning to New York, he proceeded
to Washington, where he commenced a
new career, as the special correspondent
ol newspapers in San Francisco, Chicago,
and elsewhere.

8o Mark Twain

V,
EIS riE-ST LITEEABY SUCCESS,

During the following winter Mark
Twain sojourned at the National capital,
working at odd moments upon the initial
chapter of his "Innocents Abroad." His
Bohemian habits were retained in every
particular, at least the statement is war
ranted by a friend who writes of Mark's
life at this time:

4 'His room was a perfect chaos, his
table a curiosity in its wa}\ On it could
be seen any thing — from soiled manuscript
to old boots. He never laid his paper
on the table when writing, partly because
there was no available space and partly
because the position so necessitated was

His Life and Work. 81

too much for his lazy bones. With both feet
plunged in manuscript, chair tilted back
and note-book and pencil in hand he did
all the writing I ever saw him do. An
ordinary atmosphere would not suffice to
set in motion the stream of Mark's ideas.
It must first be thoroughly saturated with
the vilest tobacco smoke, which he puffed
from a villainous pipe — said pipe having
never received a cleaning — as many
newspaper friends of those days can
testify. He regarded this pipe as his
salvation from bores, taking a ghastly
delight in puffing away like a locomotive
when an undesirable visitor dropped in,
and eagerly watching the paleness which
gradually crept over the face of the enemy
as the poisonous stuff got in its work."

One day while Mark was busily en
gaged with his work, in his dingy little
room, a tall, sallow-faced man, with a
miserable expression of countenance, and
a deep, consumptive cough, entered the
room and without an invitation sat down.
Turning to the visitor, Clemens said:

"Well-.11

82 Mark Twain

The visitor said "Well."

"What can I do for you?" asked the
humorist.

"Well, nothin' in particular. I heard
'em say that you are the man that
writes funny things, and as I have several
hours to loaf around before the train
leaves, I thought I would come around
and get you to make me laugh a little. I
ain't had a good laugh in many a day,
and I didn't know but what you mout
accommodate me."

Clemens scowled at the man, who,
thinking that the humorist was present
ing him with a specimen of facial fun,
began to titter.

"That'll do fust rate, cap'n, but I'd
ruther hear you talk. I can make a
mouth at a man about as easy as any
fellow you ever saw, an' w'at I want is a
few words from you that'll jolt me like a
wagin had backed agin me."

"My friend, I am very busy to-day,
and—"

"Yes, I know all that. I am very
busy myself, except that I've got about

His Life and Work. 83

two hours to loaf, an' as I said jest now,
I'd like for you to get oft something that
I can take home. Wy, I can go around
an' git the drinks on it for a week."

4 ' Won't you have a cigar?" asked
Clemens, desirous of learning whether the
man was a smoker.

uNo, I never could stand a seeggah."

The humorist smiled, and taking up
his pipe, filled it up with strong tobacco,
and began to puff. 'Til keep him in
here, now," mused the smoker, "until he
is as sick as a dog. I wouldn't consent
to his departure, if he was to get down
on his knees and pray for deliverance."

" No thing does a man more good than
a hearty laugh," the visitor said, cough
ing as a cloud of smoke surrounded his
head. "Wah, hoo, wah, hoo! Don't
you think it is a leetle close in here?"

"Oh, no," replied Mark, arising and
locking the door.

"I like a little fresh a'r, 'specially when
thar's so much smoke in a room."

"Oh, there's air enough here. How
did you leave all the folks?"

84 Mark Twain

"Well, Gabe, my youngest — wah, hoo,
wall, lioo — ain't as peart as he niout be,
but all the others air stirrin'. You ain't
got 110 chillun, I reckon? "

"No," the humorist replied, as he vig
orously puffed his pipe.

"Well, I'm sorry for you. Thar
ain't iiothin' that adds to a man's nachul
enjoyment like chillun. That boy Gabe,
what I was talkin' about jest now, w'y, I
wouldn't give him up fur the finest yoke
of steers you ever seen."

"You wouldn't?"

"No sir, wouldn't tech 'em with a ten-
foot pole — would refuse 'em pine blank.
Podner, don't you — wah, hoo, wah, hoo
— think it's a gettin' a little too clost in
here now?"

"No, not a bit, just right."

"Well, I don't know the style in this
place, but I'll try an' put up with it.

After a moment's silence the visitor
continued:

"When I left home, Mur — that's my
wife — said to me, saj'S she, 'Now, say,
while you are thar, don't smoke that cob

His Life and Work. 85

pipe/ I wanted to follow her advice,
but I put my — wah, hoo, wah, hoc, — old
fuzee in my jeans, an' now I bl'cve I'll
take a smoke."

He took out a cob pipe, and a twist of
new tobacco, known in his neighborhood
as "Tough Sam," whittled off a handful,
filled his pipe, lighted it, placed his feet
on the stove and went to work. Mark
soon began to snuff the foul air, but he
was determined to stand it. The visitor
blew smoke like a tar kiln. Mark grew
restless. Beads of cold perspiration began
to gather on his brow. Throwing down
his pipe, he hastily unlocked the door,
and fled. On the sidewalk he met a
friend.

"Hello, Clemens, what's the matter?"

Twain related what had occurred.

"Oh, you mean that fellow in brown
jeans?"

"Yes."

' l You ought to have had better sense
than to light your pipe in his presence."

"Why?"

86 Mark Twain

" Because he's a member of the Ar
kansas Legislature. "

William M. S lev/art, United States
Senator from Nevada, was an acquaint
ance of the humorist at this time, and
some years since, while in a reminiscent
mood, related the following: "I knew
Mark Twain in Washington, at a time
when he was without money. He told
me his condition and said he was very
anxious to get out his book. He showed
me his notes and I saw that they would
make a great book and probabl}r bring
him in a fortune. I promised that I
would 'stake' him until he had the book
written. I made him a clerk to my com
mittee in the senate, which paid him $6
per day; then I hired a man for $100 per
month to do the work.

<4I then had rooms on F street in a
house which was kept by an ancient lady.
She belonged to an old Southern family
whose property was lost during the war
of the rebellion. I had three large rooms
on the second floor and there was also a
hall room. I was very anxious that Sam

His Life and Work.

should stick to his work until he finished
it, as I was almost as much interested as
he. I took him to live with me, and
gave him the hall room to sleep in. He
did his work in the room which I had
fixed up as a study. He would work
during the day, and in the evening he
would read me what he had written, after
which he would stroll out about the city
for recreation. He usually returned to
his *hall bedroom about midnight and
would sit up until nearly morning, read
ing, smoking, whistling and singing.

"His noise used to be a source of great
annoyance to the landlady. She was
very nervous and unable to sleep when
any gas was burning in the house. She
regarded Sam as a very careless fellow
and I don't think she liked him very
well. She came to me one morning with
her eyes swollen and her appearance alto
gether betokening a very dilapidated
condition. She said she had been unable
to sleep all night and that in fact for a
week she had been losing sleep. Sam
was the cause of all her trouble, and she

88 Mark Twain

told me how he remained up all the night
burning gas and creating a rumpus. I
informed Sarn of the landlady's complaint
and told him he ought to go to bed at a
reasonable hour and not frighten the old
lady. Sam replied that that was all the
fun he had, but he promised to rnend his
ways and I thought no more of the mat
ter.

"In a week the landlady came to me
again, and this time with tears in her
eyes. She said she knew she was re
ceiving a very handsome rent from me
for the rooms, and that she also was
aware she could not rent them again dur
ing the season, but she was compelled to
ask me to give them up on account of the
way Mr. Clemens was wearing her life
out. I felt truly sorry for the old lady.
I called Sam in and repeated to him what
the landlady had said. I told him I
would thrash him if I ever heard another
complaint. I said I did not want to turn
him out because I wanted him to finish
his book. He made one of his smart re
plies at the expense of the landlady, and

His Life and Work. 89

I told him I would thrash him then and
there. He begged in a most pitiful way
for rne not to do so, and I could not help
laughing.

"Seeing that he had gotten me into a
good humor again he said that he would
not annoy the old woman again, but that
he would certainly get even with me for
having threatened to thrash him if it
took him ten years to do so."

During the winter spent in Washing
ton Mark wrote many newspaper letters
and a large number of short, humorous
articles. These include "Facts in the
Case of the Great Beef Contract, " and the
account of his resignation as clerk of the
senate committee on conchology. He
also wrote "Riley — Newspaper Corres
pondent" which attracted a vast amount
of attention and was liberally quoted.

In March, 1868, he sailed for San Fran
cisco, for the purpose of arranging some
trivial business matter on the Pacific
Coast. He was absent about five months
returning to New York about August.
While in California and on board the

Mark Twain

steamship en route, he completed the
manuscript of his ''Innocents Abroad, or
the New Pilgrim Progress."

Meanwhile the San Francisco Alta had
secured copyright upon Mr. Clemens'
letters from the Holy Land. General
John McComb, always the friend of the
struggling author, finally persuaded his
partners in the Alta office to surrender
the copyright, and Mark Twain became
the owner of ''The Innocents Abroad."

Jn New York, upon his return from
San Francisco, he resumed his newspaper
correspondence, and in a letter to the
Chicago Republican^ dated New York,
August 17, 1868, he devoted three columns
to an account of his return voyage from
California. He carefully reviewed the
matter of California immigration, and the
changes that had taken place in San Fran
cisco since his previous visit. He de
scribed the Panama Canal, and vividly
portrayed life and character in Central
America. Here is an amusing extract
from his letter:

"Possibly you know that they have a

His Life and Work.

'revolution' in Central America every
time the moon changes. All you have
to do is to get out in the street, in Pan
ama or Aspinwall, and give a whoop,
and the thing is done. Shout, down
with the Administration! and up with
somebody else, and revolution follows.
Nine- tenths of the people break for home,
slam the doors behind them, and get
under the bed. The other tenth go and
overturn the Government and banish the
officials, from president down to notary
public. Then for the next thirty days
they inquire anxiously of all comers what
sort of a stir their little shivaree made in
Europe and America! By that time the
next revolution is ready to be touched
off, and out they go."

From this letter it appears that be had
visited Hartford, where in the golden
future, he was to take up his permanent
residence. In closing the letter to the
Chicago Republican he wrote:

<(I have been about ten days in Hart
ford, and shall return there before very
long. I think it must be the handsomest

$2 Mark Twain

city in the Union in summer. It is the
moneyed center of the State; and one of
its capitals, also, for Connecticut is so
law-abiding, and so addicted to law, that
there is not room enough in one city to
manufacture all of the articles they need.
Hartford is the place where the insurance
companies all live. They use some of the
houses for dwellings. The others are for
insurance offices. So it is easy to see
that there is quite a spirit of speculative
enterprise there. Many of the inhabi
tants have retired from business, but the
others labor along in the old customary
way, as presidents of insurance com
panies."

In 1868-9 Clemens was living at the Ev
erett House in New York city. Having
completed his ' 'Innocents Abroad, " he
looked about for a publisher. His visit
to Hartford early in August, was for the
purpose of confering with a publisher
there, but he had met with but little en
couragement. He next tried a dozen
publishing houses in New York, but in
vain. He sent his manuscript to other

His Life and Work.

publishers in Boston and Philadelphia
with like success. Somewhat disheart
ened he laid the book away in his room.

One day he was entertaining the late
Albert D. Richardson in his apartment.
In a self-disgusted mood he handed
Richardson his manuscript, to see if his
friend thought it so irredeemably bad.
Richardson read it, pronounced it very
clever; full of the extravagant drollery
which the American people relish, and
expressed his astonishment that any pub
lisher of intelligence and experience
should have declined it.

"You can't be any more astonished
than I am," remarked Clemens, dryly.
"These publishers have astonished as
much conceit out of me as a long seige of
sea-sickness."

Richardson, who had published several
books through the American Publishing
Company, said that he was going to
Hartford, that he would take the manu
script with him, and that he was sure
the company would be glad to publish it.
He kept his promise and placed the man-

Mark Twain

uscript in the hands of Mr. Bliss, then
secretary of the company, who was
pleased with it. But some of the other
officers and directors were averse, and
made so many objections that Bliss finally
declared that he would publish the vol
ume on his own account. This caused
some of the others to yield, and <( Inno
cents Abroad" was issued, but under pro
test, and many misgivings as to its finan
cial success.

The result is well known. The book
made Mark Twain famous. The sale,
including pirated editions, reached 200,-
ooo copies. The American Company
cleared in the neighborhood of $75,000
by the publication. Mark was crazed
with joy. He wrote to his old friend,
Captain Bixby, of the steamboat Paul
Jones:

"Thirty tons of paper have been used
in publishing my book 'Innocents
Abroad.' It has met with a greater sale
than any book ever published, except
'Uncle Tom's Cabin/ The volumes sell
from $3 to $5 according to finish, and I

His Life and Work.

get one-half the profit. Not so bad, for
a scrub pilot, is it? How do you run
Plutn Point — a son-of-gun of a place? I
would rather be a pilot than anything I
ever tried."

The London Saturday Review of Octo
ber 8, 1869, reviewed " Innocents Abroad"
at great length, along with other volumes,
as a book of travel. The review was
written most seriously, and one could
imagine the delight of the humorist in
reading this tribute to his power. In
fact the review so amused Mark Twain
that he himself wrote a long burlesque
on the Saturday Review criticism, in which
he said:

"To say that 'Innocents Abroad' is a
curious book would be to use the faintest
language — would be to speak of the Mat-
terhorn as a neat elevation, or of Niagara
as being 'nice' or 'pretty.' 'Curious' is
too tame a word wherewith to describe
the imposing insanity of this work.
There is no word that is large enough or
long enough. Let us, therefore, photo
graph a passing ^glimpse of book and

$6 t Mark Twain

author, and trust the rest to the reader.
Let the cultivated English student of
human nature picture to himself this
Mark Twain as a person capable of doing
the following-described things — and not
only doing them, but with incredible in
nocence printing them calmly and tran
quilly in a book. For instance —

"He states that he entered a hair
dresser's in Paris to get shaved, and the
first 'rake' the barber gave with his razor,
it loosened his 'hide' and lifted him out
of the chair.

"This is unquestionably exaggerated.
In Florence he was so annoyed by beg
gars that he pretends to have seized and
eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge.
There is, of course, no truth in this. He
gives at full length a theatrical programme
seventeen or eighteen hundred years old,
which he professes to have found in the
ruins of the Coliseum among the dirt,
and mould and rubbish. It is a sufficient
comment upon this statement to remark
that even a cast-iron programme would
not have lasted so long under the cireum-

His Life and Work.

stances. In Greece he plainly betrays
both fright and flight upon one occasion,
but with frozen effrontery puts the latter
in this falsely tame form: — 'We sidled
towards the Piraeus.' 'Sidled/ indeed!
He did iiot hesitate to intimate that at
Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the
proper course, he got down, took him
under his arm, carried him to the road
again, pointed him right, remounted, and
went to sleep contentedly till it was time
to restore the beast to the path once
more. He states that a growing youth
among his ship's passengers was in the
constant habit of appeasing his hunger
with soap and oakum between meals.
In Palestine he tells of ants that came
eleven miles to spend the summer in the
desert and brought their provisions with
them; yet he shows by his description of
the country that the feat was an impossi
bility. He mentions, as if it were the
most common-place matter, that he cut a
Moslem in two in broad daylight in Jer
usalem with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword,
and would have shed more blood if he

Mark Twain

had had a grave-yard of his own. These
statements are unworthy a moment's at
tention. Mr. Twain or any other
foreigner who did such a thing in Jerusa
lem would be mobbed, and would infalli
bly lose his life. But why go on? Why
repeat more of his audacious and exasper
ating falsehoods? I«et us close fittingly
with this one: he affirms that 'in the
mosque of St. Sophia, at Constantinople,
I got my feet so stuck up with a compli
cation of gurns, slime, and general im
punity that I wore out more than two
thousand pair of bootjacks getting my
boots off that night, and even then some
Christian hide peeled off with them/ It
is monstrous. Such statements are simply
lies — there is no other name for them.
Will the reader longer marvel at the
brutal ignorance that pervades the Amer
ican nation.

"In another place he commits the bald
absurdity of putting the phrase 'tare an
ouns' into an Italian mouth. In Rome
he unhesitatingly believes the legend
that St. Philip Neri's heart was so in-.

His Lije and Work.

flamed with divine love that it burst his
ribs — believes it wholly, because an
author with a learned list of university
degrees strung after his name endorses it
— 'otherwise,' says the gentle idiot, 'I
should have felt a curiosity to know what
Philip had for dinner.' Our author
makes a long, fatiguing journey to the
Grotto del Cane, on purpose to test its
poisoning powers on a dog — got elabor
ately ready for the experiment, and then
discovered that he had no dog. A wiser
person would have kept such a thing dis
creetly to himself, but with this harmless
creature everything comes out. He hurts
his foot in a rut two thousand years old
in exhumed Pompeii, and presently,
when staring at one of the cinder- like
corpses unearthed in the next square,
conceives the idea that maybe it is the
remains of the ancient Street Commis
sioner, and straightway his horror softens
down to a sort of chirpy contentment
with the condition of things.

"We have thus spoken freely of this
man's stupefying simplicity and inno-

200 Mark Twain

cence, but we cannot deal similarly with
his colossal ignorance. We do not know
where to begin. And if we knew where
to begin, we certainly should not know
where to leave off. We will give one
specimen, and one only. He did not
know until he got to Rome that Michael
Angelo was dead! And then, instead of
crawling away and hiding his shameful
ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to ex
press his pious, grateful sort of satisfaction
that he is gone and out of his troubles !

"No, the reader may seek out the
author's exhibitions of his uncultivation
of himself. The book is absolutely dan
gerous, considering the magnitude and
variety of its misstatements. And yet it
is a text- book in the schools of America! "

Even in our own country * 'Innocents
Abroad" had its curious adventures. In
Pennsylvania, a rural clergyman sadly
returned the volume to the book agent,
with the remark that "the man who could
shed tears over the tomb of Adam, must
be an idiot."

His Life and Work. 101

VI

MAEEIAGE

Among those cultivated people who
were passengers on the steamer Quaker
City, in the now memoiable excursion
to the Holy Land in 1867, were Judge J.
L. Langdon and family of Elmira, New
York. A son of Judge Langdon figures
as "Dan" in "Innocents Abroad." Miss
Lizzie, a handsome and accomplished
sister of Dan, was introduced to Mark
Twain during the voyage outward, and
when the Quaker City sailed homeward
Mr. Clemens was paying deep attention
to the young lady. She was somewhat
of an invalid, and upon the return of the
family to Elmira, her illness took a more
serious form.

102 Mark Twain

Perhaps the proximity of Buffalo to
Eltnira, the home of his sweetheart, oc
casioned Mark's removal to the former
city in the latter part of 1869, for at all
events we find him there, occupying an
editorial position on the Buffalo Express.
Subsequently we find him making peri
odical visits to the neighboring city of
Elmira.

Miss L,angdon was a young lady of
position and fortune. Mark knew that
her father did not look upon him with
favor, but nevertheless he acquired suffi
cient courage to propose, and was re
jected, much to his sorrow.

"Well," he said to the lady, "I didn't
much believe you'd have me, but I
thought I'd try."

After awhile he ' 'tried" again with the
same result, and then he remarked, with
his celebrated drawl, "I think a great
deal more of you than if you'd said 'Yes ;
but its hard to bear." A third time be
met with better fortune, and then came
to the most difficult part of his task, to
address the old gentleman.

His Life and Work. 10$

"Judge," he said to the dignified mil
lionaire, "have you seen anything going
on between Miss lizzie and me ? "

1 ' What ? What ? " exclaimed the judge
rather sharply, apparently not under
standing the situation, yet doubtless get
ting a glimpse of it from the inquiry.

"Have you seen anything going on
between Miss Lizzie and me ? "

"No, no, indeed ! " replied the mag
nate sternly. "No, sir; I have not."

"Well! Look sharp and you will."

The judge did "look sharp" after that
and one day he called the ardent and de
voted young man into his study, and
said, after some preamble:

"Mr. Clemens, I have something to
say to you which bears upon a subject of
great importance, at least to me and
mine. You have been coming here for
some time and your manners leave no
doubt in my mind as to your object.
Now, rny daughter's welfare is very dear
to me,., and before I can admit you to her
society on the footing of a suitor to her
hand. I. would like, to know something

104 Mark Twain

more than I do about you, your antece
dents, etc. Stop a minute ! You must
remember that a man may be a 'good
fellow' and a pleasant companion on a
voyage and all that, but when it is a
question as grave as this a wise father
tries to take every precaution before al
lowing his daughter's affections to be
come engaged, and I ask of you, as a
gentleman, that you shall give me the
names of some of your friends in Califor
nia to whom I may write and make such
inquiries as I deem necessary, that is, if
you still desire our friendship."

Mark put on a bold front.

"Sir," said he, bowing profoundly, as
became a young man who respects his
hoped-for father-in-law, "your sentiments
are in every way correct. I approve of
them myself, and hasten to add that you
have not been mistaken in my senti
ments towards your daughter, whom I
may tell you candidly seems to me to be
the most perfect of her sex, and I honor
your solicitation for her welfare. I am
not only perfectly willing to ^give you

His Life and Work. 105

reference, but am only too glad to have
an opportunity to do so, which iny
natural modesty would have prevented
me from offering. Therefore, permit me
to give you the names of a few of my
friends. I will write them down. First
is Lieutenant General John McComb,
Alexander Badlam, General L,ander and
Col. W. H. L. Barnes. They will all He
for me just as I would for them under
like circumstances."

The prospective father-in-law wrote
letters of inquiry to several residents of
San Francisco, to whom Clemens referred
him, and with one exception, the letters
denounced him bitterly, especially derid
ing his capacity for becoming a good
husband. Mark sat beside his fiancee
when the letters were read aloud by the
old gentleman. There was a dreadful
silence for a moment, and then Mark
stammered: " Well, that's pretty rough
on a fellow, anyhow? "

His betrothed came to the rescue how
ever, and overturned the mass of testi-

io6 Mark Twain

mony against him by saying, 'Til risk
you, anyhow."

So they were married, the wedding oc
curring in the parlor of the L,angdon
residence in Elmira. Mark had in
structed his friends in the newspaper
office at Buffalo to select him a suite of
rooms in a first-class boarding house in
the city, and to have a carriage at the
depot to meet the bride and groom. Ke
knew that they would comply with his
request and gave himself no more anxiety
about it.

When the happy couple alighted from
the train at the Buffalo depot, they found
a handsome carriage, a beautiful span of
horses and a driver in livery. They
were driven to a handsome house, on an
aristocratic street, and as the door was
opened there were the parents of the
bride to welcome them home. The old
folks had quietly arrived by a special
train.

After Mark had gone through the
house, and admired its elegant furnish
ings, he was informed officially that he

His Life and Work. 107

had been driven by his own coachman,
in his own carriage, to his own house.
They say that the tears came to his won
derfully dark and piercing eyes, and that
all he could say was, ''Well, this is a
first-class swindle."

For nearly a year Mr Clemens was
editorally connected with the Buffalo
Express. For this journal he wrote many
excellent sketches, among them "An
Unburlesqueable Thing," "A Memory,"
"The Widow's Protest," "Running for
Governor" and others.

The Reverend J. Hyatt Smith relates
an amusing anecdote of Mark's life in
Buffalo: "When I was living in Buffalo,"
says Mr. Smith, "Mark Twain occupied
a cottage across the street. We did not
see very much of him, but one morning
as we were enjoying our cigars on the
veranda after breakfast, we saw Mark
come to his door in his dressing-gown
and slippers, and look over at us. He
stood at his own door and smoked for a
minute, as if making up his mind about
something, and, at last, opened his gate

Xo8 Mark Twain

and came lounging across the street.
There was an unoccupied rocking-chair
on the veranda, and when my brother
offered it to him he dropped into it with
a sigh of relief. He smoked for a few
moments and said:

"Nice morning."

"Yes, very pleasant."

4 'Shouldn't wonder if we had rain by
and by."

"Well, we could stand a little."

"This is a nice house you have here? "

"Yes, we rather like it."

"How's your family ? "

"Quite well — and yours ? "

"Oh, we're all comfortable."

"There was another impressive silence,
and finally Mark crossed his legs, blew a
puff of smoke in the air, and in his lazy
drawl, remarked:

*I suppose you're a little surprised to
see me over here so early. Fact is, I
haven't been so neighborly, perhaps, as I
ought to be. We must mend that state
of things. But this morning I came over
because I thought you might be inter-

His Life and Work. lop

ested in knowing that your roof is on
fire. It struck rne that it would be a
good idea if — ' "But at the mention of
fire the whole family hurried upstairs.
When we had put the fire out, and had
returned to the veranda, Mark wasn't
there."

Some years later when Mr. Clemens
was lecturing in Buffalo, after being in
troduced to the audience, he spoke as
follows in his low, drawling, character
istic manner:

4 'I notice many changes since I was a
citizen of Buffalo, fourteen or fifteen
years ago. I miss the faces of many old
friends. They have gone to the tomb —
to the gallows — to the White House,
Thus far the rest of us have escaped, but
be sure our own time is coming. Over
us, with awful certainty, hangs one or
the other of these fates. Therefore, that
we be secure against error, the wise
among us will prepare for them all. This
word of admonition may be sufficient; let
us pass to cheerfuller things. I remem
ber one circumstance of by-gone times

no Mark Twain

with great vividness. I arrived here
after dark on a February evening in
1870, with my wile and a large company
of friends, when I had been a husband
twenty -four hours, and they put us two
in a carriage and drove us up and down,
and every which way, through all the
back streets in Buffalo, until at last I got
ashamed and said: 'I asked Mr. Slee to
get me a cheap boarding house, but I
didn't mean he should stretch economy
to the going outside the state to find it.'
The fact was there was a practical joke
to the fore, which- I didn't know any
thing about, and all this fooling around
was to give it time to mature. My
father-in-law, the late Jervis L,angdon,
whom many of you will remember, had
been clandestinely spending a fair fortune
upon a house and furniture in Delaware
Avenue for us, and had kept his secret
so well, that I was the only person this
side of the Niagara Falls, that hadn't
found it out. We reached the house at
last about ten o'clock and were intro
duced to a Mrs. Johnson, the ostensible

Plis Life and Work. in

landlady. I took a glance around and
then iny opinion of Mr. Slee's judgment
as a provider of cheap boarding houses
for men who had to work for their living
dropped to zero. I told Mrs. Johnson
there had been an unfortunate mistake,
that Mr. Slee had evidently supposed I
had money, whereas I only had talent;
and so, by her leave, we would abide
with her a week, and then she could
keep my trunk and we would hunt
another place. Then the battalion of
ambushed friends and relatives burst in
on us, out of closets and from behind
curtains; the property was delivered over
to us and the joke revealed. Such jokes
as these are all too scarce in a person's
life. That house was so completely
equipped in every detail — even to ser
vants and a coachman — that there was
nothing to do but just sit down and live
in it."

In the fall of 1870, Mr. Clemens re
signed his position on the Buffalo Express
and took up his residence in Hartford,
Connecticut. He had received several

Mark Twain

large sums of money, as royalty on his
"Innocents Abroad," and this, together
with his wife's funds were invested in
local corporations, mostly insurance com
panies. During the winter following he
wrote "Roughing It," and early in 1871,
the book was published. The volume
awakened fully as much interest as "In
nocents Abroad." It is a humorous
record of his life in the mining regions
and is replete with adventure, tragedy
and comedy. *

The writing of "Roughing It," was
inspired according to Mark's confession,
by the stimulating use of tobacco, a
luxury which he never denied himself
even in his days of poverty. In speaking
upon this point, he once said: "I began
smoking immoderately when I was eight
years old; that is, I began with one hun
dred cigars a month, and by the time I
was twenty I had increased my allow
ance to two hundred a month. Before I
was thirty I had increased it to three
hundred a month. Once, when I was
fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three

His Life and Work.

months, but I do not remember whether
the effect resulting was good or evil. I
repeated this experiment when I was
twenty -two; again I do not remember
what the result was. I repeated the ex
periment once more, when I was thirty-
four, and ceased from smoking for a year
and a half. My health did not improve,
because it was not possible tc improve
health that was already perfect. As I
never permitted myself to regret this ab
stinence, I experienced no inconvenience
from it. I wrote nothing but occasional
magazine articles during pastime, and as
I never wrote one except under strong
impulse, I observed no lapse of facility.
But by and by I sat down with a con
tract behind me to write a book of five
or six hundred pages — the book called
''Roughing It" — and then I found myself
seriously obstructed. I was three weeks
writing six chapters. Then I gave up
the fight, resumed my three hundred
cigars, burned the six chapters, and
wrote the book in three months without
difficulty."

H4 Mark Twain

VII,
ENGLAND AND GEEMAHY.

In 1872, Mark Twain sailed for Eng
land to arrange for the European publi
cation of his works and successfully se
curing Chatto and Windus, as his Eng
lish representatives, and the publishing
house of Tauchnitz at Leipzig, as his
continental agent. Already he was
widely known and quoted in England,
and was a welcome guest.

In speaking of his experience in Lon
don he says :

"During my sojourn in smoky, dirty,
grand old London, I received an invita
tion to attend a banquet there and I
went. It was one of those tremendous
dinners where there are eight hundred to
nine hundred invited guests. I hadn't

His Life and Work. 115

been used to that sort of thing, and I
didn't feel quite at home. When we
took our seats at the table, I noticed that
at each plate was a little plan of the hall,
with the position of each guest numbered
so that one could see at a glance where a
friend was seated by learning the num
ber. Just before we fell to, some one —
the lord mayor, or whoever was bossing
the occasion — arose and began to read a
list of those present — No. i, Lord So-and-
so; No. 2, the Duke of Something or
other, and so on. When this individual
read the name of some prominent politi
cal character or literary celebrity, it
would be greeted with more or less ap
plause. The individual who was reading
the names did so in so monotonous a
manner that I became tired, and began
looking about for something to engage
my attention. I found the gentleman
next to me on the right a well-informed
personage, and I entered into conversa
tion with him. I had never seen him be
fore, but he was a good talker and en
joyed it. Suddenly, just as he was

Xi6 Mark Twain

giving 1m views upon the future religious
aspect of Great Britain, our ears were as
sailed by a deafening storm of applause.
Such a clapping of hands I never heard
before. It sent the blood into my head
with a rush, and I got terribly excited.
I straightened up and commenced clap
ping my hands with all my might. I
moved about in my chair and clapped
harder and harder. 'Who is it ? ' I asked
the gentleman on my right. 'Whose
name did he read ? ' 'Samuel L,. Clemens,'
he answered. I stopped applauding. I
didn't clap any more. It kind of took
the life out of me, and I sat there like a
mummy, and didn't even get up and
bow. It was one of the most distressing
fixes I ever got into, and it will be many
a day before I forget it."

Mark lectured on various occasions in
England with striking success. Rev. H.
R. Haweis, who heard him at this time,
writes:

"I heard hin once at the Hanover
Square rooms. The audience was not
large nor very enthusiastic. I believe he

His Life and Work. 117

would have been an increasing success
had he stayed longer. We had not time
to get accustomed to his peculiar way,
and there was nothing to take us by
storm. He came on the platform and
stood quite alone. A little table, with
the traditional water-bottle and tumbler,
was by his side. His appearance was
not impressive, not very unlike the rep
resentation of him in the various pictures
in his 'Tramp Abroad.' He spoke more
slowly than any other man I ever heard,
and did not look at his audience quite
enough. I do not think that he felt al
together at home with us, nor we with
him. We never laughed loud or long.
We sat throughout expectant and on the
qui vive, very well interested and gently
simmering with amusement. With the
exception of one exquisite description of
the old Magdalen ivy-covered collegiate
buildings at Oxford University, I do not
think there was one thing worth setting
down in print. I got no information out
of the lecture, and hardly a joke that
would wear, or a story that would bear

IT 8 Mark Twain

repeating. There was a deal about the
dismal, lone silver-land, the story of the
Mexican plug that bucked, and a duel
which never came off and another duel in
which no one was injured; and we sat
patiently enough through it, fancying
that by and by the introduction would be
over, and the lecture would begin, when
Twain suddenly made his bow and went
off! It was over. I looked at my watch
I was never more taken back. I had
been sitting there exactly an hour and
twenty minutes! It seemed ten minutes
at the outside. If you have ever tried to
address a public meeting, you will know
what this means. It means that Mark
Twain is a consummate public speaker.
If ever he chose to say anything, he would
say it marvelously well; but in the art of
saying nothing in an hour, he surpasses
our most accomplished parliamentary
speakers."

Mr. Clemens relates, as one of the
most harrowing experiences of his life, a
six hours' ride across England, his fellow
traveler an Englishman, who, shortly

His Life and Work. 119

after they started, drew forth the nrst
volume of the English edition of "Inno
cents Abroad'' from his pocket, and
calmly perused it from beginning to end
without a smile. Then he drew forth
the second volume and read it as solemnly
as the first. Mark says he thought he
should die, yet John Bull was probably
enjoying it alter his own undemonstra
tive style.

Upon his return from England in 1873,
in conjunction with Charles Dudley
Warner, Mark Twain issued his fourth
book, "The Gilded Age," which met
with remarkable sale in this country and
in Europe.

In 1876, there appeared in the Atlantic
Monthly, that famous fragment, ' 'Punch
Brothers, Punch with care." It had a
curious origin. Early in April, 1875, the
city line of the New York and Harlem
railroad company having adoped the
punch system, posted in the panels of
their cars a card of information and in
struction to conductors and passengers,
both of whom were indirectly requested

I2O Mark Twain

to watch the other. It read as follows:
The CONDUCTOR, when he receives a
Fare, must immediately PUNCH in the
presence of the passenger,
A BLUE Trip Slip for an 8 Cents Fare,
A BUFF Trip Slip for a 6 Cents Fare,
A PINK Trip Slip for a 3 Cents Fare,
FOR COUPON AND TRANSFER TICKETS,

PUNCH THE TICKETS.
The poesy of the thing was discovered
almost as "immediately" as the conduc
tor "immediately" punched and all sorts
of jingles were accommodated to the
measure. In September the first poem
appeared in print and various versions
appeared in the New York and Boston
newspapers.

In the January, 1876, Atlantic, Mark
Twain's "Literary Nightmare" appeared
with the following version:
'' Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare !
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare;
Punch in the presence of the passenjare !

His Life and Work. 121

CHORUS.

Punch, brothers, punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare !
Said Mark: "I came across these jing
ling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while
ago, and read them a couple of times.
They took instant and entire possession
of me. All through breakfast they went
waltzing through my brain, and when, at
last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not
tell whether I had eaten anything or not.
I had carefully laid out my day's work
the day before — a thrilling tragedy in the
novel which I am writing. I went to
my den to begin my deed of blood. I
took up my pen, but all I coulcl get it to
say was, "Punch in the presence of the
passenjare." I fought hard for an hour,
but it was useless. My head kept hum
ming, "A blue trip slip for an eight-cent
fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,"
and so on and so on, without peace or
respite. The day's work was ruined — I
could see that plainly enough. I gave
up and drifted down town, and presently
discovered that my feet were keeping

122 Mark Twain

time to that relentless jingle. When I
could stand it no longer I altered my
step. But it did no good; those rhymes
accommodated themselves to the new
step and went on harassing me just as
before. I returned home and suffered all
the afternoon; suffered all through an
unconscious and unrefreshing dinner;
suffered, and cried, and jingled all
through the evening; went to bed and
rolled, tossed and jingled right along the
same as ever; got up at midnight frantic,
and tried to read; but there was nothing
visible upon the whirling page except
"Punch! punch in the presence of the
passanjare." By sunrise I was out of my
mind, and everybody marvelled and was
distressed at the idiotic burden of my
ravings. — "

Tlie Literary Nightmare awakened
horse car-poets throughout the world.
Algernon Charles Swinburne in La Revue
des Duex Mondes, had a brief copy of
French verses, written with all his well-
known warmth and melody.

His Life and Work.

LK CHANT DU CONDUCTKUR.

Ayant ete paye le conducteur
Percera en pleine vue du voyageur,
Quand il rocoit trois sous un coupon

vert,
Un coupon jatme pour six sous c'est

1' affaire,
Et pour huit sous c'est un coupon

couleur,
De-rose, en pleine vue du voyageur.

Done, percezsoigneusement, mes freres,
Tout en pleine vue des voyageurs, etc.
The Western, an enterprising St. Louis
magazine, had a terrible attack, and ad
dressing "Marco Twain" it came out in a
Latin anthem, with the following chorus:
Pungite, fratres, pungite,
Pungite cum arnore
Pungite pro vectore
Diligentissime pungite.
A man who had just been reading the
"Literary Nightmare," said The Austin
(Nev.) Reveille, stepped in to a Main street
saloon muttering, "Punch, brothers !
punch with care ! punch in the presence

124 Mark Twain

of the passenjare ! " when a retired prize
fighter who was snoozing in a corner got
up, and accosting the nightmare fellow,
demanded, " Whose ears are you going
to punch, you bloody duffer? " The
other fellow tried to explain, but the
fighter insisted that he (the other fellow)
had said " Punch, brothers ! punch with
care! punch that big feller square in the
earl"

The Bridgeport Standard man said:
"Mark Twain will sail for Europe on
business in the spring; but
If he plays any jokes on the captain there,
And don't come down with the reg'ler

fare,

The captain'll probably rip and tear,
And punch him in the presence of the
passenjare."

When "The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer" appeared in 1876, the fame of
Mark Twain was universal. In this vol
ume he revealed the story of his boyhood
days on the Mississippi, and his pranks
and adventures in the town of Hannibal.
It was published as a book for boys, and

HisrLife~dnd Work. 125

commanded an enormous sale, edition
alter edition being exhausted. In fact,
"Tom Sawyer" sold better than any of
his books, excepting "Innocents Abroad."
In the meanwhile, "The Gilded Age"
had been dramatized and the production
of the comedy on the American stage
netted the author large sums of money.
"Injin Jo" one of the principal charac
ters in "Tom Sawyer" still lives at Han
nibal, Mo. , and is one of the noted indi
viduals of the town. He drives an old
white horse and a red express wagon,
borne down on one side from long and
hard service. Jo hauls trunks from the
depot and chores around with his horse
and wagon. He loves a dollar more than
anybody else in the town, and out of his
meagre earnings he has accumulated quite
a fortune. He owns twelve tenement
houses in Hannibal, ranging in value from
$500 to $ 1,000 each yet from the clothes
that he wears one would naturally think
that he would be constantly in dread of
the ragman coming along and casting him
into a sack of old iron and rags.

126 Mark Twain

A well-known' literary critic in review
ing "Tom Sawyer/' said: "This literary
wag has performed some services which
entitle him to the gratitude of his genera
tion. , He has run the traditional Sunday-
school boy through his literary mangle
and turned him out washed and ironed
into a proper state of flatness and col
lapse. That whining, canting, early-
dying, anaemic creature was the nau
seating model held up to the full-blooded
mischievous lads of by-gone years as
worthy of their imitation. He poured
his religious hypocrisy over every honest
pleasure a boy had. He whined his
lachrymose warnings on every play
ground. He vexed their lives. So,
when Mark grew old enough, he went
gunning for him, and lo, wherever his
soul may be, the skin of the strumous
young pietist is now neatly tacked up to
view on the Sunday-school door of to-day
as a warning, and the lads of to-day see
no particular charm in a priggish, hy-
dropathical existence. '

In 1877 appeared a volume of his com-

His Life and Work. 12?

plete sketches, which included most of
his fugitive newspaper articles.

In the following year, April n, 1878,
he sailed for Europe in the steamship
Holsatia. He was accompanied by his
family, and after traveling in England,
France and Switzerland, settled down to
spend the summer in Germany. Here
he obtained the materials for his famous
book, "A Tramp Abroad." In this
volume " Harris" guide and courier, is
introduced to the reader. Harris is not
only invited to bow promiscuously but is
set on to talk to doubtful people, to en
tertain bores, and generally to be the
butt of einbarassing situations. Mr.
Clemens made a minute study of the
Germans, their manners, habits, tastes
and amusements. We all remember his
treatment of the cases and gender in the
German grammar:

guten Freunak, Mein^ gut<?#
Mein^z guien Freund^w, and
den and dem until one feels one might
better go without friends in Germany
than take all this trouble about them.

128 Mark Twain

'What a bother,' he cries, 'it is to decline
a good male ! ' But that is nothing to
the trouble we are landed in by the
female ! Every man has a gender and
there is no sense or system in the distri
bution. In German a young lady has no
sex, while a turnip has. Thus you say:
"Wilhelm, where is the turnip ?'
" 'She has gone to the kitchen/
"' Where is the accomplished young
lady ? '

" 'It has gone to the opera ! "
Still better were his illustrations of the
German fish wife. His argument with a
raven, his adventures with a blue jay and
his perilous journey on the river rail,
were afterward exquisitely described in
"A Tramp Abroad," published in 1880.
While on his return from Germany, he
tarried in London and Glasgow, and
while in the latter city was elected a
member of the Scottish Society of Litera
ture and Art.

His Life and Work. 129

VIII,
HIS LATER WOKKS,

On September 3, 1879, Mr. Clemens
and his family arrived in New York on
the steamship Galbier, having been
abroad for a period ot sixteen months.

"There," said Mark, to a friend, as the
ship left quarantine and began her
journey up the bay, "the danger is finally
passed. When the ship begins to roll
sideways and kick up behind at the satne
time, I always know I am expected to
perform a certain duty. I learned it
years ago on the Quaker City. You might
suppose that I would have forgotten my
part after so long a residence on shore.
But there it is again. It's habit; every
thing connected with the sea comes down
to a matter of habit. You might confine
me for forty years in a Rhode Island corn

JJO Mark Twain

patch, and at the end of that time I'd
know just as well what to do when a ship
begins to kick as I do at this moment.
The darkest night never confuses me in
the least. It's a little singular when you
look at it, isn't it? But I presume it's
attributable to the solemn steadfastness
of the great deep."

As a conscientious Republican in his
political preferences, Mr. Clemens took
an active interest in the Presidential
campaign of 1880. While visiting in
Elmira, New York, in the fall of that
year, he made a short speech one Satur
day night, introducing to a Republican
meeting General Ilawley of Connecticut.
In the course of his remarks Mr. Clemens
said:

"General Hawley is a member of my
church at Hartford, and the author of
'Beautiful Snow.' May be he will deny
that. But I am only here to give him a
character from his last place. As a pure
citizen, I respect him; as a personal
friend of years, I have the warmest re
gard for him; as a neighbor, whose vege-

His Life and Work. 131

table garden adjoins mine, why — why, I
watch him. As the author of 'Beautiful
Snow/ he has added a new pang to
winter. He is a square, true man in
honest politics, and I must say he occu"
pies a mighty lonesome position. So
broad, so bountiful is his character that
he never turned a tramp empty-handed
from his door, but always gave him a
letter of introduction to me. Pure,
honest, incorruptible, that is Joe Hawley.
Such a man in politics is like a bottle of
perfumery in a glue factory — it may mod
ify the stench but it doesn't destroy it.
I haven't said any more of him than I
would say of myself. Ladies and gentle
men, this is General Hawley."

In November, 1880, a Charity Fair was
in progress in Buffalo, and during its
course a small journal, called the Bazaar
Bulletin , was published. In one number
of this paper appeared a contribution from
the pen of Mark Twain, entitled:

"A TALK FOR STRUGGLING YOUNG
POETS."

"Well, sir, there was a young fellow

Mark Twain

who believed that he was a poet; but the
main difficulty with him was to get any
body else to believe it. Many and many
a poet has split on that rock — if it is a
rock. Many and many a poet will split
on it, thank God. The young fellow I
speak of, used all the customary devices
— and with the customary results — to wit:
he competed for prizes, and didn't take
any; he sent specimens of poetry to
famous people, and asked for a 'candid
opinion/ meaning a puff, and didn't get
it; he took advantage of dead persons
and obituaried them in ostensible poetry,
but it made him no friends — certainly
none among the dead. But at last he
heard of another chance; there was going
to be a fair in Buffalo, accompanied by
the usual inoffensive paper, and the editor
of that paper offered a prize of $10 for the
best original poem on the usual topic of
Spring, no poem to be considered unless
it should possess positive value.

"Well, sir, he shook up his muse, he
introduced into her a rousing charge of
information from his jug, and then sat

His Life and Work.

down and dashed off the following rnad-
rigal just as easy as lying:

HAIL! BEAUTIOUS, GLADSOME SPRING.

A POEM BY S. L. CLEMENS.

No. 1163. Hartford, Conn., Nov. 17.
GEO. P. BIS3ELL & CO.,

BANKERS,

Pay to Mrs. David Gray, or Order, for F
TEN ........................ DOLLARS.

Household Account.

S. L. CLEMENS.

4 'Did he take the prize? Yes, he took
the prize. The poem and its title didn't
seem to go together very well; but, no
matter, that sort of thing has happened
before; it didn't rhyme, neither was it
blank verse, for the blanks were all filled,
yet it took the prize for this reason, no
other poem offered was really worth more
than $4.50, whereas there was no getting
around the petrified fact that this one was
worth $10. In truth there was not a
banker in the whole town who was will
ing to invest a cent in those other poems,
but every one of them said this one was
good, sound, seaworthy poetry, and worth
its face. Such is the way in which that
struggling young poet achieved recogni-

134 Mark Twain

tion at last, and got a start along the
road that leads to lyric eminence — what
ever that may mean. Therefore, let
other struggling young poets be encour
aged by this to go striving.

"MARK TWAIN."

Not long after this, Mr. Clemens acted
as auctioneer at the last sale at a bazaar
or fair held in Hartford. In opening the
sale he said: "Well, now, after a week
of work by these ladies, who have
handled an immense amount of money
without putting a penny into their private
pockets, I, their mere clerk, propose, as
clerks will sometimes, to 'knock dow \'
something."

It was at this time that the humorist
wrote a letter to a friend in Tennessee,
expressing his admiration for Artemus
Ward, as follows:

"DEAR SIR: — One of the first questions
which Londoners ask me is whether I knew
Artemus Ward; the answer 'yes/ makes
them my friends on the spot. Arte
mus seems to have been on the warmest
terms with thousands of those people.

His Life and Work.

Well, he seems never to have written a
harsh thing against anybody — neither
have I, for that matter, at least nothing
harsh enough for a body to fret about —
and I think he never felt bitter toward
people. There may have been three or
four other people like that in the world
at one time or another, but they probably
died a good while ago. I think his lec
ture on the 'Babes in the Woods/ was
the funniest thing I ever listened to.
Arternus once said to me gravely, almost
sadly :

" 'Clemens, I have done too much
fooling, too much trifling; I am going to
write something that will live/

" 'Well, what for instance?'

<(In the same grave way he said:

(< 'A lie/

''It was an admirable surprise. I was
just getting ready to cry; he was becom
ing pathetic. * * * "

Yours truly,
S. L. CI^MKNS.

In 1882, Mr. Clemens wrote "The
Stolen White Elephant," and the same

Ij6 Mark Twain

year visited Bermuda. The following
winter James R. Osgood and Company, of
Boston, issued "The Stolen White Ele
phant," with which were incorporated
"Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Ex
cursion," "Punch, Brother, Punch," and
other sketches.

About this time the humorist was
asked to contribute to the Bartholdi Ped
estal Fund. Here was his response:

"You know my weakness for Adam,
and you know how I have struggled to
get him a monument and failed. Now,
it seems to me, here is my chance.
What do we care for a statue of liberty
when we've got the thing itself in its
wildest sublimity? What you want of a
monument is to keep you in mind of
something you haven't got — something
you've lost. Very well, we haven't lost
liberty; we've lost Adam. * * *
Look at Adam, what have we done for
Adam? What has Adam done for us?
He gave us life, he gave us death, he
gave us heaven, he gave us hell. * * *
With trifling alteration, this present

His Life and Work.

statue will answer very well for Adam.
You can turn that blanket into an ulster;
part the hair on one side, or conceal the
sex of his head with a fire-helmet, and at
once he's a man; put a harp and a halo
and a palm branch in the left hand to
symbolize a part of what Adam did for
us, and leave the fire basket just where
it is to symbolize the rust. My friends,
the father of life and death and taxes has
been neglected long enough. Is it but a
question of finance? Behold the enclosed
(paid bank) checks. Use them as freely
as they are freely contributed. Heavens
knows I would there were a ton of them.
I would send them all to you, for my
heart is in this sublime work.

"S. I,. C."

In 1882, while Mark Twain was col
lecting retrospective material for his "L/ife
on the Mississippi," he stopped, one day,
at Arkansaw City. He had, years be
fore, known the place as Campbeirs
Bend, and naturally, had a desire to poke
about unattended by persons who would
be likely to break in upon his musings;

Mark Twain

so, avoiding the committee that had been
appointed to receive him, he wandered
off into the woods. He thought nothing
of the distance he was traversing. There
was music among the tree tops, and
flowers, rich in deep coloring, perfumed
the air. After a long walk he came to a
cabin, and, upon entering, found an old
and tangle-bearded man sitting near the
empty fireplace. The old fellow glanced
at Twain, and then, springing between
the visitor and the door, snatched down
a gun, cocked it and said:

"So I've got you, have I?"

"I don't understand you!" Twain
gasped.

"Oh, no, I reckon not. Er man never
understands a thing when he don't
want'er. Didn't stop your steamboat
down yander below the bend the other
day an' steal sixty sheep that belonged
to me, did you?"

1<I will swear upon the honor of a
gentleman that I did not. I haven't been
in this neighborhood before in twenty
years."

His Life and Work.

"Set down tkar." Twain obeyed.
The old man continued: "It mout have
been have been a good while sense you
was here before the other day, but you
got here just in time ter steal them sheep
an' I'm goin' ter have your skelp. Hear
me?"

"My dear sir, you are laboring under
a frightful mistake. I never owned a
sheep in my life - "

"No, I don't reckon you ever did own
one an' mo'n that, nobody else ain't apt
to own nary one whar you hang out.
Yas, sah, come right here an' tuck my
sheep an' ermong 'em wuz cr pet lamb
that my little gran'daughter loves better'n
she does her life an' she hain't slep' er
wink sense fur cryin' about it. Oh, you
needn't blink, fur I am goin' ter hold you
here till my little gal comes an' then I'm
goin' to blow yo' head off. It won't be
long 'fo' she comes an' ef you've got any
pra'rs that you reckon oughter be said,
why you better say 'em, that's all."

"My dear sir— "

Mark Twain

"Don't 'dear sir' me. I've got you, an'
I'm going ter use you."

1 'But how do you know that I stole
your sheep?"

"You know how I know it. You
know that jest ez soon ez you seed me er
comin' you shoved off, an1 mo'n that, you
know that when I jumped in a canoe an'
started to paddle out ter you, w'y, you
shot at me. You know all that well
enough."

* 'Merciful heavens !" Twain exclaimed.

"Yas, sah, yas; that's erbout whut I
'lowed, but the boat puffed on away."

A stick snapped outside. "Great
heavens!" Twain thought, "is the girl
coming?" No, it was only a calf. The
expression on the old fellow's face grew
harder. There was a cruel twitching
about the corners of his mouth.

"Oh, don't you fret, she'll be here
d'reckly."

"My friend, "said Twain, with an effort
to be calm, "if you will go with me over
to Arkansaw City I will prove to you
that I would not steal a sheep."

His Life and Work. 141

"I don't want no proof that comes
frum that place. You'd tell a lie, an'
them fellers over thar would sw'ar ter it.
I see my little gal comin' through yander.
Ez I said jest now, ef you've got any
pra'rs you want said, w'y, I reckon you
better say 'em."

4 'Would you commit murder?"

" Would you steal sheep?"

4 'Surely not."

c<Ah, hah, an* sholy I wouldn't be com-
mittin' murder by killin' sich er feller ez
you air. Don't move now, fur ef you do
I'll drap you. Come, quick, now, befo'
the gal comes, tell me ef you know who
did steal them sheep, that is, if you didn't."

* 'I think I do," Twain quickly rejoined,
and then, remembering the name of a
steamboat engineer whom he had known
before the war, he added: "Jo Billings
stole your sheep."

The old fellow looked sharply at him,
and replied:

"Air you shore?"

"I am certain."

"Was you on his boat at the time?"

142 Mark Twain

"Yes, and tried to keep him from
stealing them, but could not."

"Will you help me find him?"

"Yes."

"Wall, then, scoot. Quick, befo' the
gal comes."

When Twain reached Arkansaw City,
he found the perplexed and disappointed
committee. He was nervous and de
pressed. While he was standing in the
office of the hotel, some one said:

"Mr. Clemens, you used to know Jo
Billings, didn't you?"

Twain felt an uneasiness crawling over
him. "Yes," he replied.

"There he is."

Twain looked around and started.
The old fellow who had held him in the
cabin came forward, snorted, and then said :

"Sam, I oughter shot you fur not
knowin' me, but I reckon I've changed
some. Sheep, w'y, I never had one in
my life. Haw, haw! Come, fellers,
here's to Sam an' his erbility ter still
hedge on the truth."

"Life on the Mississippi," appeared in

His Ltfe and Work. 143

1883. It was a volume of reminiscences
of his youthful days as a steamboat pilot
on the father of waters. This volume
was followed in 1885 by "The Prince and
the Pauper," which was a remarkable
performance and a surprise even to the
friends of Mr. Clemens. For many years
he had been a conscientious and untiring
student of language, literature, history,
not merely making up for deficiencies of
early education, but laying solid founda
tions and building on them a broad and
liberal culture, which made him a man
of letters in the true sense of the term.
His thorough knowledge of English and
American literature is supplemented by
a knowledge of that of various other lan
guages, of which he has acquired a
thorough command. The story of ' 'The
Prince and the Pauper," for instance, re
veals somewhat the extent and fidelity of
his study of early England, and is a story
that, at the beginning of his career, he
could neither have thought out or appre
ciated, and yet it is very distinctively

Mark Twain

marked with his peculiar native genius
and humor.

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
were published in 1886. The manu
script was completed many months
before the book appeared, owing to com
plications and differences with the pub
lishers, and was finally published by Mr.
Clemens himself. In this book Mark
Twain was at his best. The London
Athenaum in reviewing the work, said:
"It is such a book as he, and he only,
could have written. It is meant for boys;
but there are few men (we should hope)
who, once they take it up, will not delight
in it. It forms a companion or sequel to
'Tom Sawyer.' Huckleberry Finn, as
everybody knows, is one of Tom's closest
friends; and the present volume is a
record of the adventures which befell him
soon after the event which made him a
parson of property and brought Tom
Sawyer's story to a becoming conclusion.
They are of the most surprising and de
lightful kind imaginable, and in the course
of them we fall in with a number of types

His Life and Work. 145

of character of singular freshness and
novelty, besides being schooled in half a
dozen extraordinary dialects. . . . We
shall content ourselves with repeating
that the book is Mark Twain at his best,
and remarking that Jim and Huckleberry
are real creations, and the worthy peers
of the illustrious Torn Sawyer."

I,ater appeared UA Connecticut Yankee
in King Authur's Court," and other
volumes. In all of his books there is
common sense, and love of justice, and
hatred of cant, and a vein of serious
earnestness, even in his most comical
writings, that will for all time make him
near to the people. As the lyondon
Daily News once said of him:

"His gravity in narrating the most pre
posterous tale, his sympathy with every
one of his absurdest characters, his mi
croscopic imagination, his vein of serious
ness, his contrasts of pathos, his bursts
of indignant plain speaking about certain
national errors, make Mark Twain an
author of the highest merit, and far re
mote from the mere buffoon."

146 Mark Twain

IX,
THE LECTUEE PLATFOEM,

In 1884, Mark Twain and George W.
Cable made a general tour of the country,
each giving readings from his own works.
Cordial receptions and crowded houses
greeted them everywhere. The platform
was not a novelty to Mark Twain. He
had delivered lectures in California and
Nevada in 1866 and 1867, had appeared
in public upon several occasions in Eng
land, and had spoken a number of times
at dinners and banquets in New York
and Boston. He became known as a man
possessing remarkable powers of elocu
tion, and his parlor readings of Shake
speare were said to be masterly perform
ances. Strong inducements had been
offered him to lecture abroad, even so far
away as Australia. In 1 884 he consented

His Life and Work. 147

to lecture in America for a period not ex
ceeding five months.

In December, 1884, Mark Twain and
George W. Cable appeared in Cleveland.
They arrived one afternoon and regis
tered at the Forest City House. I called
to pay my respects. Was Mr. Clemens
in ? Yes, but he had just eaten dinner,
it then being three o'clock, and had gone
to bed, not to be disturbed until seven
o'clock, excepting in case Mr. John Hay,
the author of "Little Breeches/1 called.
Mr. Clemens would see Mr. Hay, but no
other human being could entice him from
his bed. In the evening occurred the
entertainment. Mr. Cable read passages
from his novel "Dr. Sevier." Mark
Twain came upon the stage walking
slowly, apparently in deep meditation.
Those present saw a rather small man,
with a big head, with bushy gray hair,
heavy dark eyebrows, a receding c'un, a
long face, toothless gums visible between
the lips, an iron-gray mustache, closely
cut and stiff. The right hand involun
tarily stroked the receding chin, and a

14.8 Mark Twain

merry twinkle came into his eyes, as he
advanced to the front of the stage and
began to recite, in his peculiar, drawling
and deliberate way, "King Sollermun,"
taken from advance sheets of (< Huckle
berry Finn." When he had finished, he
turned and boyishly ran off the stage,
with a sort of dog trot. Then I remem
ber that Mr. Cable came on, told us all
about "Kate Riley" and "Ristofolo," and
then, in imitation of Mark Twain, tried
to run off the stage in the same playful
manner. I remember also what a deplor
able failure Mr. Cable made of the at
tempt, how his gentle trot reminded me
of a duck going down hill, and how
eventually he collided with one of the
scenes, and lastly how the audience
roared with laughter. Then Mark came
forward again with his ' 'Tragic Tale of
the Fishwife," followed by Cable, who
walked soberly now, like a Baptist dea
con. Twain told us of "A Trying Situa
tion," and finally concluded the enter
tainment with one of his inimitable ghost
stories.

His Life and Work. 149

He is a good talker, and invariably
prepares himself, though he skillfully
hides his preparation by his method of
delivery, which denotes that he is getting
his ideas and phrases as he proceeds. He
is an accomplished artist in his way.
His peculiar mode of expression always
seems contagious with an audience, and a
laugh would follow the most sober re
mark. It is a singular fact that an audi
ence will be in a laughing mood, when
they first enter the lecture room; they
are ready to burst out at anything and
everything. In the town of Colchester,
Connecticut, there was a good illustration
of this, the Hon. Demshain Hornet having
a most unpleasant experience at the ex
pense of Mark Twain. Mr. Clemens
was advertised to lecture in the town of
Colchester, but for some reason failed to
arrive. In the emergency the lecture
committee decided to employ Mr. Hor
net to deliver his celebrated lecture on
temperance, but so late in the day was
this arrangement made that no bills an
nouncing it could be circulated, and the

150 Mark Twain

audience assembled, expecting to hear
Mark Twain. No one in the town knew
Mr. Clemens, or had ever heard him lec
ture, and they entertained the idea that
he was funny, and went to the lecture
prepared to laugh. Even those upon the
platform, excepting the chairman, did
not know Mr. Hornet from Mark Twain,
and so, when he was introduced, thought
nothing of the name, as they knew
"Mark Twain" was a nom de plume, and
supposed his real name was Hornet.

Mr. Hornet bowed politely, looked
about him, and remarked: "Intemper
ance is the curse of the country." The
audience burst into a merry laugh. He
knew it could not be at his remark, and
thought his clothes must be awry, and
he asked the chairman, in a whisper, if
he was all right, and received "yes" for
an answer. Then he said: "Rum slays
more than disease ! " Another, but louder
laugh followed. He could not under
stand it, but proceeded: "It breaks up
happy homes ! " Still louder mirth. ''It
is carrying young men down to death and

His Life and Werk. 151

hell ! " Then came a perfect roar of ap
plause. Mr. Hornet began to get ex
cited. He thought they were poking
fun at him, but went on: "We must
crush the serpent ! " A tremendous howl
of laughter. The men on the platform,
except the chairman, squirmed as they
laughed. Then Hornet got mad. "What
I say is Gospel truth, "he cried. The audi
ence fairly bellowed with mirth. Hornet
turned to a man on the stage, and said:
"Do you see anything very ridiculous in
my remarks or behavior?" "Yes, ha,
ha ! It's intensely funny — ha, ha, ha !
Go on ! " replied the roaring man. ' 'This
is an insult," cried Hornet, wildly danc
ing about. More laughter, and cries of
"Go on, Twain!" Then the chairman
began to see through a glass darkly, and
arose and quelled the merriment, and ex
plained the situation, and the men on the
stage suddenly ceased laughing, and the
folks in the audience looked sheepish,
and they quit laughing too, and then the
excited Mr. Hornet, being thoroughly
mad, told them he had never before got

152 Mark Twain

into a town so entirely populated with
asses and idiots, and having said that he
left the hall in disgust, followed by the
audience in deep gloom.

When Mr. Clemens and Mr. Cable ap
peared in Albany, New York, they paid
their respects to the Governor, and visited
the State capitol. They entered the Ad
jutant-General's office, and finding the
official out, they sat down to await his
return. There were a considerable num
ber of gentlemen in the party, and the
chairs were soon occupied. Mr. Clemens
sat down carelessly on one of the Adjut
ant-General's official tables. The party
were chatting cheerfully and conducting
themselves peacefully, when a dozen
clerks and deputies of the department-
came rushing into the office, and with
unusual vehemence, asked what was
wanted. None of the visiting party
seemed to understand the situation. An
investigation, however, disclosed the fact
that Mark Twain, by accident or design,
had planted himself squarely on a long

His Life and Work. 153

row of electric buttons, and thus set ring,
ing a score or more of call bells.

In Montreal, upon the occasion of
Mark Twain's appearance, there were a
large number of Frenchmen in the audi
ence. This caused him to introduce into
his lecture the following:

4 'Where so many of the guests are
French, the propriety will be recognized
of my making a portion of my speech in
the beautiful language, in order that I
may be partly understood. I speak
French with timidity, and not flowingly,
except when excited. When using that
language, I have noticed that I have
hardly ever been mistaken for a French
man, except, perhaps, by horses; never,
I believe, by people. I had hoped that
mere French construction, with English
words, would answer; but this is not the
case. I tried it at a gentleman's house
in Quebec, and it would not work. The
maid- servant asked, "What would mon
sieur?" I said, "Monsieur So-and-So,
is he with himself? " She did not under
stand. I said, " Is it that he is still not

154 Mark Twain

returned to his house of merchandise ? "
She did not understand that either. I
said, "He will desolate himself when he
learns that his friend American was ar
rived, and he not with himself to shake
him at the hand." She did not even un
derstand that; I don't know why, but
she didn't, and she lost her temper be
sides. Somebody in the rear called out,
"Qui est done la?" or words to that
effect. She said, "C'est un fou," and
shut the door on me. Perhaps she was
right; but how did she ever find that out?
For she had never seen me before till
that moment. But, as I have already
intimated, I will close this oration with a
few sentiments in the French language.
I have not ornamented them. I have not
burdened them with flowers of rhetoric,
for, to my mind, that literature is best
and most enduring which is characterized
by a noble simplicity: JPai belle bouton
d'or de mon oncle, mais je n'ai pas celui
du charpentier. Si vous avez le fromage
du brave menuisier, c'est bon; mais si
vous ne Tavez pas, ne vous desolez pas,

His Life and Work.

prenez le chapeau de drap noir de son
beaufrere malade. Tout a 1'heure ! Sa-
voir faire ! Qu'est ce que vous dites !
Pate de fois gras ! Revenons a nos mou-
tons ! Pardon, messieurs, pardonnez
moi; essayant a parler la belle langue
d'Ollendorf strains me more than you can
possibly imagine. But I mean well, and
I've done the best I could."

Mr. Clemens met with an amusing ad
venture when he and Mr. Cable were
making their tour in the South. A mis
guided but enthusiastic young man man
aged, after some difficulty, to secure an
introduction to the humorist on a river
steamer, just before the latter's departure
from New Orleans for St. L,ouis. The
young man said: " I've read ail of your
writings, Mr. Twain, but I think I like
'The Heathen Chinee' the best of them
all." Mr. Clemens shook the young
man's hand with tremendous enthusiasm.
"My dear sir," he remarked, "I am
pretty well used to complements, but I
must say I never received one which gave
me equal satisfaction, and showed so

156 Mark Twain

kindly an appreciation of efforts to please
the public. A thousand thanks." And
the young man replied, "You are per
fectly welcome, Mr. Twain. I am sure
you deserve it."

Shortly after his return from his lecture
tour, the representative of a leading pub
lishing house called upon Mr. Clemens
at his Hartford residence, offering him
his own price for a certain contribution
which was specially desired. "Well, I
tell you," said Mark, with his inimitable
drawl, "I have just got a thundering big
book through me, and an awful lecture
course through the people of this unfor
tunate country, and I feel like an ana
conda that had swallowed a goat. I
don't want to turn over or wiggle again
for six months." This was his way of
declining the offer.

After dinner speaking became as natu
ral to Mr. Clemens, as his appearance
upon the lecture platform, and he has won
the title of being the most entertaining
table talker in America. Not many
years since he was present at a monthly

His Life and Work.

meeting of the Military Service Institute,
on Governor's Island. General W. T.
Sherman and General Schofield were
present. Mr. Clemens said that that
which he was about to read was part of a
still uncompleted book, of which he
would give the first chapter by way of
explanation, and follow it with selected
fragments, * 'or outline the rest of it in
bulk, so to speak; do as the dying cow
boy admonished his : p'ritual adviser to
do, 'just leave out the details and heave
in the bottom facts.' "

Once upon a time a military regiment
from Worcester, Massachusetts, visited
Hartford, and the humorist was put for
ward, as the spokesman, to welcome,
officially, the soldier guests of the city.
Among other things he said: "When
asked to respond, I said I would be glad
to, but there were reasons why I could
not make a speech. But I said I would
talk. I never made a speech without
getting together a lot of statistics and be
ing instructive. The man who starts in
upon a speech without preparation enters

158 Mark Twain

upon a sea of infelicities and troubles. I
had thought of a great many things I
had intended to say. In fact nearly all
of these things I have heard here to-night
I had thought of. Get a man away
down here on the list, and he starts out
empty. One reason I didn't like to come
here to make a prepared speech was be
cause I have sworn off. I have reformed,
I would not make a prepared speech
without statistics and philosophy. The
advantage of a prepared speech is that
3^ou start when you are ready and stop
when you get through. If unprepared,
you are all at sea, you don't know where
you are. I thought to achieve brevity,
but I was mistaken. A man never hangs
on so long on his hind legs as when he
don't know when to stop. I once heard
a man who tried to be reformed. He
tried to be brief. A number of strangers
sat in a hotel parlor. One sat off to one
side and said nothing. Finally all went
out except one man and this dummy.
The dummy touched this man on the
shoulder and said: "I think I have s-s-s-e

His Life and Work. 159

(whistles) een you before." * 'What makes
you whistle?" asked the other man. "I
used to stammer, and the d-d-d-d- (whis
tles) octor told me when I w-w-w-w-w-
(whistles) anted to speak and s-s-s-s-tam-
mered to whistle. I d-d-d-d- (whistle) id
whistle and it c-c-c-c-ured me." So it is
with a man who makes an unprepared
speech. He tries to be brief and it takes
him longer. I won't detain you. We
welcome you with cordial hospitality,
and if you will remain we will try and
furnish better weather to-morrow."

;One of his famous after dinner speeches
was in response to the toast, ' 'The Babies, "
and another was his speech on * 'Woman,"
at the annual dinner of the New England
Society, some years ago. He spoke im
mediately after General Grant. Among
the good things he said were the follow
ing: "The daughter of modern civiliza
tion is a marvel of exquisite and beautiful
art and expense. All the lands, all the
climes, all the arts are laid under tribute
to furnish her forth. Her linen is from
Belfast; her robe is from Paris; her fan

160 Mark Twain

from Japan; her card case is from China;
her watch is from Geneva; *.* * her
hair from — from — I don't know where
her hair is from — I never could find out.
That is her other hair — her public hair —
her Sunday hair. I don't mean the hair
she goes to bed with. Why you ought
to know the hair I mean; it's that thing
which she calls a switch, and which re
sembles a switch as much as it does a
brickbat or a shotgun. It's that thing
that she twists and then coils round and
round her head, beehive fashion, and
then tucks the end in under the hive and
harpoons it with a hairpin."

In 1885, at the Academy of Music, in
Philadelphia, occurred a benefit perform
ance for the Actors' Fund. The house
was crowded. Joseph Murphy had just
given the graveyard scene from "Shaun
Rhue." The widower and his little son
visit the grave of the wife and mother
and go through some very pathetic in
cidents. A delay occurred after the
"Shaun Rhue" had sorrowfully led his off
spring from the hallowed spot. The

His Life and Work. 161

audience was in the usual sympathetic
condition after the scene, and noses were
blown generously in the commendable
effort to brace up for the appearance of
Mark Twain, who was to come on next
and read his ridiculous ' 'Tale of a Fish
wife." The dozen mounds, with their
crosses and head pieces that had been
used to make up the scene of the ceme
tery, had not been removed, and the idea
that the humorist would have to read his
nonsense in such surroundings caused
anxiety. Twain was standing at the
wing ready to go on, and many saw him.
The uneasiness of the people became
more universal, as it now seemed inevit
able that a most grotesque picture would
be thrust upon them. An appalling
blunder in stage management seemed
about to be committed. The gentlemen
who had charge of the entertainment
were sitting in a box at the right of the
stage, and could plainly see Twain's em
barrassment. Both made a rush for be
hind the scenes to order the removal of
the graves. But they were too late. As

162 Mark Twain

they flew through the box door, Mark
Twain stepped cautiously on the stage.
He took a couple of steps forward,
glanced up at the picture before him and
stopped short. He turned his head to
ward whence he had come, as though
looking for the manager, gave an agon
izing glance of appeal, muttered some
thing that had the tone of vigor, but at
last went ahead. He made his way down
to the footlights with halting, uncertain
steps, fumbling his notes between his
fingers and casting nervous looks at the
solemn signs of death that half sur
rounded him. At last he got squarely
before the audience. By this time every
person in the house was thoroughly un
comfortable. A weak effort at applause
had been made by some of the bravest
hearted on the appearance of the humor
ist, but Mark's indifference to the recep
tion and the overwhelming incongruity
of the scene had a saddening effect. The
house became so still that the rolling of
a ball of cotton could have been heard.
He stood before the leader of the.or-

His Life and Work.

chestra like a schoolboy about to speak
his first piece. Never a model of the
aesthetic in action, he was now painfully
awkward and confused. He twisted his
notes and wiggled his fingers, every now
and then looking over his shoulder at the
scene of death with gazes of suspicion
and apprehension. He remained looking
foolish for many seconds, two cr three
times making an ineffectual attempt to
say something. At length he found
voice, and in his drawling tones, even
longer drawn out than usual, the embar
rassed reader said:

<( Indies and gentlemen, er — this — er
— melancholy occasion gives me an — er —
opportunity to make an — er — explanation
that I have long desired to deliver myself
of. I rise to a question of the highest
privilege before a Philadelphia audience."

The audience, without the remotest
idea of what was coming still sat quiet
and expectant. Mr. Clemens continued;

"In the course of my checkered career
I have, on diverse occasions, been
charged, always maliciously, of course,

164 Mark Twain

with more or less serious offenses. It is
in reply to one of the more — er — impor
tant of these that I wish to speak. More
than once I have been accused of writing
the obituary poetry in the Philadelphia
Ledger."

A gentle smile was seen to pass over
the faces of the multitude, and pleasant
feeling began to assert itself.

"I wish right here," went on Mr.
Clemens, with gathered self-possession,
<%to deny that terrible assertion." The
audience now laughed outright, and com
fort was pretty well restored.' "I will
admit, that once, when a compositor in
the Ledger establishment, I did set up
some of that poetry, but for a worse
offence than that no indictment can be
found against me." And then, in an out
raged manner, the humorist exclaimed:
"I did not write that poetry," and then,
after a pause, "at least, not all of it."

The reader had his hearers with him
after that, and he never read his "Tale of
a Fishwife" to a more appreciative audi
ence.

His Life and Work. 16$

X.

MAKE TWAIN AT HOME,

When, in 1868, Samuel L. Clemens
visited the city of Hartford, Connecticut,
to arrange for the publication of his first
book, <l Innocents Abroad," he was capti
vated by the old town and its beautiful
suburbs. Later, in 1871, when he deter
mined upon leaving Buffalo and taking
up his residence in an eastern city, it
was not strange that he should select
Hartford as the site for his permanent
home. In a corner of the Nook Farm,
on Farmington avenue, about a mile and
a quarter from the business center of the
city, he built a large, unique house of
brick and stone. The building was of
the Queen Anne style of architecture,
which, just at that time, was the most

166 Mark Twain

popular, as well as the most aristocratic
mode of residence in vogue. There were
gables and arches and quaint windows,
and in many of these, boxes of flowers
were placed. The house was built in
the center of a park-like grove of old
trees, and the hand of a Scotch landscape
artist soon molded hedges, flower beds
and a well-kept lawn. To-day it stands
a home of homes. A porte cochere, cov
ered with vines, extends from the en
trance, under which the carriages drive.
The exterior of the house has the air of a
luxurious, old, English home.

From the day that Mark Twain and
his young wife took up their abode in
their Hart lord home, money was ex
pended with lavish hands, and the result
has been a rich, charming, artistic and
home-like interior. One is ushered into
an immense square hall, the floor of
which is in marble tiles of peculiar pat
tern. A winding staircase, very wide
and massive, of heavily carved English
oak extends above. Opposite the front
door are double doors leading into the

His Life and Work. 167

library. Near these doors in the hall,
stands upon a marble pedestal, the bust
of Mr. Clemens, executed by young Carl
Gerhardt. There are also paintings on
the carved oaken walls of the hall and a
heavily carved table. To the right are
double doors leading into the large draw
ing-room. All the doors and windows
are draped at the top by handsome lam
brequins; the doors and woodwork are
of dark polished wTood, covered with
stencil designs in metallic paint, so that
at a short distance they look as if inlaid
with mother-of-pearl. The drawing-
room is furnished with light-colored
satin furniture. Leading from this apart
ment is the dining-room, which is finished
in heavy carved woods of the most elab
orate workmanship; high carved dado,
old tapestry portieres, a massive buffet
covered with cut glass and silverware.
An odd idea is a window directly over
the fireplace; it is of one solid piece of
plate glass, surrounded by a frame of
dark blue glass, and inside that, like the
mat of a picture, opal glass, as one looks

i68 Mark Twain

out at the beautiful landscape, he can
hardly realize at first that it is nature's
handiwork thus framed in, instead of a
painting actually hanging upon the wall.
The flue of the fireplace extends each
side of this picturesque window. Con
nected with the dining- room is the library,
which is the general living room. It has
large double doors leading into the front
hall opposite the entrance. It is a sunny,
cheerful room, with a huge, heavily
carved fireplace which Mr. Clemens
brought from Europe, where it had once
held place in an ancient castle; it seems
to have brought with it to this American
home some of the dignity, pomp and
vsplendor of which it once formed an im
portant part. The room looks as if it
belonged to a baronial castle, but in
winter it is less sombre, and a blazing
fire of logs burns behind the brass fender,
bringing into greater prominence the
motto cut in brass above the fire: "The
ornament of a house is the friends that
frequent it." Oa either side are low
book shelves built against the wall; they

His Life and Work. 169

form a part of the massive chimney-piece
and look like wings of a great bat. The
floor is covered with rugs and luxurious
seats are fitted into the windows; a large
carved table stands in the center covered
with magazines and papers.

The whole house has rather the ap
pearance of an old castle, with the carv
ings grotesque and ponderous, Instead of
the old mahogany of colonial days. A
wide oaken staircase leads to the apart
ments above, the most conspicuous of
which is a large room fitted up most com
fortably with cozy nooks filled in with
cushioned seats. Beyond is a room in
which a large rocking horse and scattered
toys make one acquainted with the reason
Mr. Clemens ceased writing in this at
tractive apartment and moved still further
up-stairs to a corner of the billiard room.
Each suite of apartments has its separate
bathroom. One guest chamber is fur
nished in pink silk; even the bedstead is
of pink silk tufted all over with tiny
satin buttons.

Ifo Mark Twain

The study or work room of the humor
ist is the billiard room, upon the upper
floor, the windows of which look out
upon the broad acres of beautiful land
scape. In the distance is heard the ripple
of Park river. In the corner of the room
is his writing-table, covered usually with
books, manuscripts, letters and other
literary litter; and in the middle of the
room stands the billiard- table. Mr.
Clemens is an expert billiard player, and
when he tires of writing at his little desk
in the corner, he rises and makes some
scientific strokes with the cue. A resi
dent of Hartford says that he called upon
Mark once in the billiard room, when
the fire in the grate threw some sparks
out upon the floor. These caught some
loose paper and the room for a moment
promised to break out in flames. ' 'Twain
was playing billiards at the time," says
the man, "and he did not stop his game.
He immediately rung for the servants,
and lazily told them that they had better
extinguish the fire, and with that he
leaned over the table and made a stroke

His Life and Work. 171

with his billiard cue which would have
done honor to the world's champion.
Twain never gets excited."

The study is a long room with sloping
sides formed by the roof. There are
three balconies adjacent, two large ones
on either side, and one at the end. One
may step out into these through regular
doors. His mode of work in this study
is systematic. He makes it an invariable
rule to perform a certain amount of literary
work every day, and his working hours
are made continuous by his not taking
any midday meal. He is mercilous
toward his own productions, and has
often destroyed an entire day's labor as
soon as it was written. He found by ex
perience that the final result was more
satisfactory by taking this course, than
by trying to remodel what he considered
a faulty manuscript. In this way he has
destroyed hundreds of pages of manu
script, and from one of his larger books he
culled out no less than five hundred pages.

Since his advent in the city of Hart
ford, Mark Twain has won for himself

172 Mark Twain

the name of "prince of entertainers."
Seated in his richly furnished library, to
whose beauty and artistic completeness
half the lands of Europe have contributed,
he will tell an anecdote or discuss a
literary or social question with a calm
directness and earnestness, revealing to
you an entirely new side of his character,
that has nothing in common with that
which he is wont to display to the public
who throng to his lectures. Even his
drollest stories he relates with this same
earnest impressiveness, and with a face
as serious as a sexton's. His brilliancy
has a certain delightful quality which is
almost too evanescent to be imprisoned
in any one phrase. You have no oppres
sive consciousness that you are expected
to laugh; you rather feel as if the talker
had unexpectedly taken you into his con
fidence, and you feel your heart going
out toward him in return. He is a
reader of the finest discriminating faculty,
high dramatic power, and remarkable
sympathetic interpretation, and his read
ing of Browning, whom he greatly ad-

His Life and Work.

mires, is a rare entertainment. He is a
leading member of the Monday Evening
Club of Hartford, the Authors' Club, the
Century Club, the Actors' Club of New
York, and other social and literary or
ganizations.

During the summer months, Mr.
Clemens and his family sojourn at Quarry
Farm, near Elrnira, New York, at the
home of Mr. T. W. Crane, whose wife is
a sister of Mrs. Clemens. Here among
the historic hills of the Chemung valley,
the humorist works with the same sys
tematic rule as in the study of his Hart
ford house. A friend who visited Mr.
Clemens in his summer retreat, writes as
follows:

* 'A summer house has been built for
Mr. Clemens within the Crane grounds,
on a high peak, which stands six hun
dred feet above the valley that lies spread
out before it. The house is built almost
entirely of glass, and is modelled ex
actly on the plan of a Mississippi steam
boat's pilot-house. Here, shut off from
all outside communication, Mr. Clemens

if 4'. Mark Twain

does the hard work of the year, or rather
the confining and engrossing work of
writing, which demands continuous ap
plication, day after day. The lofty
work-room is some distance from the
house. He goes to it every morning
about half-past eight and stays there un
til called to dinner by the blowing of a
horn about five o'clock. He takes no
lunch or noon meal of any sort, and
works without eating, while the rules are
imperative not to disturb him during this
working period. His only recreation is
his cigar."

Another correspondent wrote as follows:

' 'To keep away the large number of

visitors and sight-seers who come to view

the sanctum, Twain posted upon his door

the following notice:

i Step Softly! Keep Away! Do not Dis- •
| turb the Remains ! •

"In spite of this characteristic warning
we open the door and enter. The floor
is bare. There is a table in the center
of the room covered with books, news-

His Life and Work.

papers, manuscripts and all the para
phernalia of authorship. Over the fire
place is a shelf, on which rests a few
books and a couple of boxes of choice
cigars/'

An intimate acquaintance writing of
Mr. Clemens and the tobacco habit says:

"He is an inveterate smoker, and
smokes constantly while at his work,
and, indeed, all the time, from half-past
eight in the morning to half-past ten at
night, stopping only when at his meals.
A cigar lasts him about forty minutes,
now that he has reduced to an exact
science the act of reducing the weed to
ashes. So he smokes from fifteen to
twenty cigars every day. Some time
ago he was persuaded to stop the prac
tice, and actually went a year and more
without tobacco; but he found himself
unable to carry along important work
which he undertook, and it was not until
he resumed smoking that he could do it.
Since then his faith in his cigar has not
wavered . L,ike other American smokers,
Mr. Clemens is unceasing in his search

176 Mark Twain

for the really satisfactory cigar at a really
satisfactory price, and, first and last, has
gathered a good deal of experience in the
pursuit. It is related that, having enter
tained a party of gentlemen one winter
evening in Hartford, he gave to each, just
before they left the house, one of a new
sort of cigar that he was trying to believe
was the object of his search. He made
each guest light it before starting. The
next morning he found all that he had
given away lying on the snow beside the
pathway across his lawn. Each smoker
had been polite enough to smoke until
he got out of the house, but every one
on gaining his liberty had yielded to the
instinct of self-preservation and tossed
the cigar away, forgetting that it would
be found there by daylight. The testi
mony of the next morning was over
whelming, and the verdict against the
new brand was accepted."

Some years ago in making a phrenolo
gical examination of Mark Twain, Pro
fessor Beall of Cincinnati, made report as
follows:

His Life and Work.

"Wit and humor are very familiar
words, and yet, from the difficulty in de
fining them, or from not distinguishing
the particular mental mechanism upon
which they depend, the relative merits
of many authors are often but vaguely
understood. Wit is primarily an intel
lectual perception of incongruity or un
expected relations, but the idea that any
thing thus apprehended is ludicrous is
suggested by the affective faculty of
mirthfulness, in the same manner that
the understanding may perceive a" dan
gerous object and thus arouse the emotion
of fear. The relation between the intel
lectual faculties and the feelings is recipro
cal, so that the sentiment of the ludi
crous, when strong, may prompt the in
tellect to create imaginary senses or
associated ideas adapted to gratify It, or
become active as the result of real per
ceptions. Talent for wit, then, depends
upon certain intellectual activities com
bined with the sentiment of mirth. But
humor introduces another element —
namely secretiveness* This propensity

Mark Twain

not only creates the desire to conceal
. one's own thoughts, but gives almost
equal pleasure in penetrating the dis
guises of others. It enables a joker to
"keep a straight face" while telling a
story, and the secretiveness of the listener
. is gratified by detecting the absurdity in
. the narrative beneath the assumed gravity
of the speaker. That is, to the amusing
incongruity of the events in the story is
added the further incongruity between
the character of the story and the serious
countenance of the narrator. The -Eng
lish and Italians are more humorous than
witty, the reverse of which is true of the
French. Mark Twain is excellent in
wit, but super-excellent in humor. Se
cretiveness is very marked in the diame
ter of his head just above the ears, and is
indicated also by the width of his nostrils,
the nearly closed eyes, compressed lips,
slow, guarded manner of speech, etc.
His nose is of the ' 'apprehensive" type
in its great length and somewhat hooked
-point, but it is not thick enough above
-the nostrils to indicate taste for com-

His Life and Work. 179

merce. This * 'apprehensive" or cautious
nasal organ, so prominent in Dante, Cal
vin and other men celebrated for earnest
ness and gravity, might seem an anomaly
in this case but for the explanation that
cautiousness and secretiveness are essen
tial ingredients in genuine humor. On
this principle we can account for the
temperament of our great humorist,
which is not the laughing, fat, rotund
vital, but rather the spare, angular men
tal, or mental-motive, which is favorable
to hard sense, logic, general intelligence
and insight into human nature. His in
tellect is well balanced, having a strong
foundation of perceptive faculties which
gather details with the fidelity of a
camera. He has also a large upper fore
head, giving philosophical power, ability
to generalize, reason, plan, and see a
long way ahead. The middle centers,
or memory of events, criticism and com
parison, are also well developed. His
eyes are rather deeply set, and his lan
guage is subordinate to his thought. -
The hollow temples indicate but little-

180 Mark Twain

music, and mirthfulness, at the upper
corners of the forehead, is by no means
remarkable. Ideality, or love of beauty,
is only fair. The head measures 22^2
inches, which is half an inch less than
the average intellectual giant, but the
fiber of the whole man is fine, close and
strong, and the cerebral combination is
of a very available sort. He has very
ardent affections, strong love of approba
tion, sense of justice, firmness, kindness
and ability to read character; with small
self-esteem, love of gain, or inclination to
the supernatural. Knowledge of the
world and interest in humanity are his
leading traits, and, altogether, he is a
phenomenal man of whom Americans
may well be proud."

Being extremely domestic in his tastes
Mark Twain is fond of his home life, and
of his beautiful children. His eldest
daughter, Susie, was born in 1872, Clara
I^anghorne was born in 1874, and Jean
in 1880. Another child, a son, died in
infancy. Mrs. Clemens is described as
gentle, quiet and motherly, ten years

His Lift and Work. i#z

younger than her husband. Mr. Clemens
is reported to have said that when his
mother died there would be no one left
in the family to appreciate his jokes. It
is said Mrs. Clemens is particularly slow
in these matters. She dresses very
plainly, wearing her dark hair smoothly
brushed from the parting in the center,
with no crimps or attempt at dressing.
She appears still more sedate by usually
wearing eye-glasses. She is, however,
noted for her goodness and for being a
fond mother.

For many years the near neighbors of
the family have been the families of Mr.
Charles Dudley Warner, Mr. George
Warner, Rev. Mr. Twitchell and Mrs.
Harriet Eeecher Stowe. It is said that
once when Mr. Clemens, at the solicita
tion of his wife, called on Mrs. Stowe, he
was so absent-minded as to put on neither
collar nor necktie. On Mrs. Clemens
remonstrating on his return, he said he
would make it all right, and accordingly
sent a collar and tie of his over to Mrs.
Stowe in a box.

iS2 Mark Twain

Miss Susie has always been Mark's
favorite child. She inherits much of her
father's brightness. She kept a diary at
one time, in which she noted the occur
rences in the family, and, among other
things, the sayings of her parents. On
one page she wrote that father sometimes
used stronger words when mother wasn't
by and he thought "we" didn't hear.
Mrs. Clemens found the diary and showed
it to her husband, probably thinking the
particular page worth his notice. After
this Clemens did and said several things
that were intended to attract the child's
attention, and found them duly noted
afterward. But one day the following
entry occurred:

"I don't think I'll put down anything
more about father, for I think he does
things to have me rot ice him, and I be
lieve he reads this diary."

Of the Clemens children, a correspond
ent of a Chicago newspaper, tells of their
adventures with their father, while on a
visit to that city, as follows;

His Life and Work. 183

" 'We came in last night," said Mark,
pulling at the left side of his mustache.
"Mrs. Clemens is not very well, neither
am I. I have been amusing the children.
I have taken them to a panorama. I
understand there are three others near
here. I will take them there too. I
want to satiate them with battles — it
may amuse them." Three little girls
composed of three red gowns, three red
parasols and six blue stockings stood on
the steps and laughed.

" (Run up and tell mamma what a
jolly time you've had and I'll think of
something else to amuse you." '

1 'When the three little girls had dis
appeared Mr. Clemens sighed. 'Did you
ever try to amuse three little girls at the
same time?' he asked, after a pause; 'it
requires genius. I wonder whether they
would like to bathe in the lake?' he con
tinued, with sudden animation, hardly
pausing- five minutes between each word,
'it might amuse them.'

" Are you on your vacation trip, Mr.
Clemens?"

Mark Twain

" 'No; I have just returned from a
visit to my mother in Keokuk, Iowa.
We came from Buffalo to Duluth by a
lake steamer and then from St. Paul
down the river to Keokuk. Neither in
this country nor in any other have I seen
such interesting scenery as that along
the upper Mississippi. One finds all that
the Hudson affords — bluffs and w coded
highlands — and a great deal in addition.
Between St. Paul and the mouth of the
Illinois river there are over four hundred
islands, strung out in every possible
shape. A river without islands is like a
woman without hair. She may be good
and pure, but one doesn't fall in love
with her very often. Did you ever fall
in love with a bald-headed woman?'
The reporter admitted that he had drawn
the line there.

" 'I never did, either/ continued Mr.
Clemens, meditatively; 'at least I think
I never did. There is no place for loaf
ing more satisfactory than the pilot house
of a Mississippi steamboat. It amuses
the children to see the pilot monkey with

His Life and Work. 183

the wheel. Traveling by boat is the
best way to travel unless one can stay at
home. On a lake or river boat one is as
thoroughly cut off from letters and
papers and the tax collector as though
he were amid sea. Moreover, one doesn't
have the discomforts of seafaring. It is
very unpleasant to look at sea sick
people — at least so my friends said the
last time I crossed.'

" 'It might amuse the children,
though,' suggested the reporter.

"'I hadn't thought of that/ replied
Mr. Clemens; 'but perhaps it might.
The lake seems rather rough to-day — I
wonder whether one could get a boat, a
little boat that would bob considerably.
Yes, it might amuse the children.'

" 'But at such a sacrifice.'

" 'You are not a parent?' replied the
humorist.

" 'It is strange,' continued Mr. Clem
ens, ia momentary forgetfulness of the
children, 'how little has been written
about the upper Mississippi. The river
below St. L,ouis has been described time

i86 Mark Twain

and again, and it is the least interesting
part. One can sit in the pilot house for
a few hours and watch the low shores,
the ungainly trees and the democratic
buzzards, and then one might as well go
to bed. One has seen everything there
is to see. Along the upper Mississippi
every hour brings something new. There
are crowds cf odd islands, bluffs, prairies,
hills, woods and villages — everything one
could desire to amuse the children.
Few people ever think of going there,
however. Dickens, Corbett, Mother
Trollope and the other discriminating
Knglish people who 'wrote up' the
country before 1842 had hardly any idea
that such a stretch of river scenery ex
isted. Their successors have followed in
their footsteps, and as we form our
opinions of our country from what other
people say of us, of course we ignore the
finest part of the Mississippi.'

4 'At this moment the three little girls in
the three red gowns and six blue stockings
appeared, and Mr. Clemens assumed the
shape- of an crrmseraent bureau."

His Life and Work. 187

An instance of his home life is the
following anecdote: Having been asked
to contribute to a newspaper issued at
the Fair in aid of the abused children in
Boston, he wrote: "Why should I want
a society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children, to prosper, when I have a baby
downstairs that kept me awake several
hours last night, with no pretext for it
but to make trouble? This occurs every
night, and it embitters me, because I see
how needless it was to put in the other
burglar alarm, a costly and complicated
contrivance, which cannot be depended
upon, because it's always getting out of
order; whereas, although the baby is al
ways getting out of order, too, it can
nevertheless be depended on. Yes, I am
bitter against your society, for I think
the idea of it is all wrong; but, if you
will start a society for the prevention of
cruelty to fathers, I will write you a
whole book."

At a Hartford dinner party one day,
the subject of eternal life and future
punishment came up for a lengthy dis-

l88 Mark Twain

cussion, in which Mark Twain, who was
present took no part. A lady near him,
turned suddenly toward him and ex
claimed :

"Why do you not say anything? I
want your opinion."

Mr. Clemens replied gravely: ' 'Mad
am, you must. excuse me, I am silent of
necessity. I have friends in both places."

His Life and Work. 189

IX

A3 A BUSINESS MAE.

A million copies cf Mark Twain's
books have been sold in this country.
England and her colonies have taken
half as many more, and the larger works
have been translated into German,
French, Italian, Norwegian and Danish.
"Innocents Abroad," "Roughing It,"
"The Gilded Age," and "A Tramp
Abroad," were published by the American
Publishing Company of Hartford. "The
Stolen White Elephant" appeared from
the presses of Osgood of Boston.

The humorist has often said that if he
were to live his life over again, he would
publish his own books, and act as his
own business manager, thus securing a
larger share of the profits arising from

I go Mark Twain

the sale of his works. The manuscript
of the ' 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
was completed in March, 1884, but owing
to complications and differences with the
publishers, it did not appear until the
following year, although a prospectus of
the story was sent out, and the opening
chapter published in the Century maga
zine. When the book was completed
,Mr. Clemens made a proposition in re
gard to its publication to the American
Publishing Company. From the sale of
'his earlier works this firm had made for
itself reputation and wealth. Mark
Twain, on his side, received royalties
amounting in all to over four hundred
thousand dollars. When "Huckleberry
Finn," the sequel to "Tom Sawyer," was
completed, he again made them a propo
sition. Negotiations were commenced
but never completed. The parties could
not agree upon terms. He was offered
liberal royalties but refused to accept
them. The final offer was that the
profits should be equally divided, each of
the parties to receive fifty per cent, of

His Life and Work. 291

the proceeds from the sale of the new
book. This proposition was not satisfac
tory to the author, who wanted sixty per
cent, of the profits. The Company re
fused to accept the offer, and Mr. Clemens
determined to at once combine the
business of publisher with that of author.
He had great confidence in the business
ability of his nephew, Charles I,. Web
ster of Fredonia,New York. With him he
formed a partnership, and ' 'Huckleberry
Finn" appeared bearing the imprint of
Charles I,. Webster and Company. The
result was watched with interest by
literary men and publishers all over the
world. ' 'Huckleberry Finn" netted the
author a profit of nearly $100,000. Mr.
Webster died a few years since but the
firm name remains unchanged.

Upon his earlier books, Mark received
upwards of $30,000 per year, for a num
ber of years. "Tom Sawyer" sold better
than any of his books excepting "Inno
cents Abroad." When the ' 'Gilded Age"
was dramatized and placed on the stage by
John T. Raymond, it proved 'a gold mine

Mark Twain

for the fortunate author. In one year
Raymond paid Mark over $70,000 in
royalties.

He never dabbled in Wall street
stocks, although he knew whether
Union Pacific or Western Union, were
up or down and why. His most unfortu
nate investment was in the stock of an
accident insurance company, where he
had invested $50,000, but luckily he
saved his money from the wreck. His
wife had a large fortune in her own right,
but so far as Mark Twain was concerned
she might have been penniless, for he in
sisted that her property be settled upon
herself and managed for her interest ex
clusively. He has made his own fortune
in his own way, and has never had to
borrow a cent from any one in his
business investments since the " Inno
cents" began to coin money for him.

The firm of Charles I,. Webster and
Company have published many books in
addition to those written by Mark Twain.
The profits in the " Memoirs of General
Grant" and those of the Pope were enor-

His Life and Work.

mous. In 1884, when he read from his
own works with George W. Cable, his
share of the net profits was $30,000
He invented Mark Twain's Scrap Book
which made a fortune for the publishers.
Nearly a million copies have been sold,
and his profits amount to $100,000. He
also invented a note book. All note
books that he could buy had the vicious
habit of opening at the wrong place and
distracting attention in that way. So,
by a simple contrivance, he arranged one
that always opens at the right place; that
is, of course, at the page last written up
on. Other simple inventions of Mark
Twain's include: A vest, which enables
the wearer to dispense with suspenders;
a shirt, with collars and cuffs attached,
which requires neither buttons nor studs;
a perpetual-calendar watch-charm, which
gives the day of the week and of the
month; and a game whereby people may
play historical dates and events upon a
board, somewhat after the manner of
cribbage, being a game whose office is
twofold — to furnish the dates and events,

Mark Twain

and to impress them permanently upon
the memory.

He is a literary Midas. Everything
he has touched has turned to gold, not
from luck, but from hard work and with
an eye to business. In order to obtain
the "Grant Memoirs" for publication, he
made terms with the Grant family, which
other publishers did not dare to make.
As Twain said: "They did not appreci
ate the magnitude of the occasion."

After he had become a business man
and a millionaire he was elected an
honorary member of the Concord, Mass.,
Free-Trade Club, and in acknowledging
the compliment wrote to the secretary as
follows:

' ' It does look as if Massachusetts were
in a fair way to embarrass me with kind
nesses this year. In the first place* a
Massachusetts judge has just decided in
open Court that a Boston publisher may
sell, not only his own property in a free
and unfettered way, but also may as
freely sell property which does not belong
to him, but to me — property which he

His Life and Work.

lias not bought, and which I have not
sold. Under this ruling I am now ad
vertising that judge's homestead for sale,
and if I make as good a sum out of it as
I expect, I shall go on and sell out the
rest of his property. In the next place,
a committee of the public library of your
town have condemned and excommuni
cated my last book — and doubled its
sale. . . And finally, the Free-Trade
Club of Concord comes forward and adds
to the splendid burden of obligations al
ready conferred upon me by the Common
wealth of Massachusetts an honorary
membership, which is worth more than
all the rest just at this juncture, since it
endorses me as worthy to associate with
certain gentlemen whom even the moral
icebergs of the Concord Library Com
mittee are bound to respect. May the
great Commonwealth of Massachusetts
endure forever, is the heartfelt prayer of
one who, long a recipient of her mere
general good -will, is proud to realize that
he is £t last become her pet."

ig6 Mark Twain

Mr. Clemens has been so busily en
gaged during the later years of his life,
that necessarily his book work and his
personal correspondence have suffered.
He failed to answer a letter written by
Sergeant Ballantine, the English author.
After waiting a reasonable time the latter
was so exasperated, at not receiving an
answer, that he mailed Mark a sheet of
paper and a postage stamp, as a gentle
reminder. Mr. Clemens wrote back on
a postal card:

"Paper and stamp received. Please
send an envelope."

To-day in healthful middle age,
Samuel I,. Clemens is reaping the fruits
of a long and varied career. He has been
a printer, steamboat pilot, private secre
tary, miner, reporter, lecturer, inventor,
author, publisher and capitalist. He is
one of the few living persons with a
truly world-wide reputation. As Miss
Gilder has truthfully and wittily re
marked: "Unless the excellent gentle
men, engaged in revising the Scriptures,
should claim the authorship of their

His Life and Work.

work, there is no other living writer,
whose books are now so widely read as
Mark Twain's; and it may not be out of
the way to add that in more than onar
pious household, the "Innocents Abroad/*
is laid beside the family Bible, and re*
ferred to as a hand book of Holy
description and narrative."

Mark Twain

GEMS PEOM MAEK TWAIN.

COLLECTED FROM HIS PUBLISHED WORKS, FUGI
TIVE SKETCHES, LECTURES, SPEECHES
AND CORRESPONDENCE.

"Be virtuous and you will be eccen
tric."

"The train is profusely decorated with
tunnels."

"A tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a
platter of tomatoes."

"Figures stew out of me just as natural
as the otter of roses out of the otter."

"There is no bird, or cow, or anything
that uses as good grammar as a blue-jay."

"I wouldn't give a cent to hear Inger-
soll on Moses, but I'd give ten dollars to
hear Moses on Ingersoll."

His Life and Work.

"One could see the dress creeping
along the floor some time after the woman
was gone."

"When the musing spider steps on to
the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits
wild surprise, then he shrivels. n

* 'I left my rheumatism there. Baden-
Baden is welcome to it. It was little,;
but it was all I had to give. I should
have liked to leave something more
catching, but it was not in my power/1 ,

* 'I tried him with mild jokes, then
with severe ones; I dosed him with bad
jokes, and riddled him with good ones; 1
fired old stale jokes into him, and pep
pered him fore and aft with red-hot ones.1
I warmed up to my work, and assaulted
him on the right and left, in front and
behind; I fumed, and charged, and ranted,
till I was sick, and frantic and furious;
but I never moved him once — I never
started a smile or a tear! Never a ghost
of a smile, and never a suspicion of
moisture! He was deaf, and dumb, and
blind as a badger."

200 Mark Twain

"He was deeply and sincerely pious,
and swore like a fish woman."

"He was frescoed from head to heel
with pictures and mottoes tatooed in red
and blue India ink.'"

' 'There were no hackmen, hacks or
omnibuses on the pier. I said it was
like being in heaven."
' " Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.
Over it broods the spell of a curse that
has withered its fields and fettered its
energies."

i * 'Formerly, to be a Californian was to
be a speculator. A man could not help
it. One man tried to be otherwise, but
be was only kicking against fate. While
everybody was wild with a spirit of spec
ulation, and full of plans for making sud
den fortunes, he said he would farm
along quietly, and slowly gain a modest
competence, and so be happy. But his
first crop of onions happened to be about
the only onions produced that year. He
3old it for a hundred thousand dollars
and retired."

His Life and Work. 2OT

"A small company, but small com
panies are pleasantest. "

"He was full of blessed egotism and
placid self-importance, but he didn't
know as much as a 3-em quad."

"A cat that eat up an entire box of
Seidlitz powders, and then hadn't any
more judgment than to go and take a
drink."

"It is the nature of woman to ask
trivial, irrelevant and pursuing ques
tions, — questions that pursue you from a
beginning in nothing to a run-to-cover in
nowhere."

"We walked out into the grass grown,
fragment-strewn court beyond the Parthe
non. It startled us every now and then,
to see a stony white face stare suddenly
up at us out of the grass with its dead.
The place seemed alive with ghosts. I
half expected to see the Athenian heroes
of twenty centuries ago glide out of the
shadows, and steal into the old temple
they knew so well and regarded with
such boundless pride."

202 Mark Twain

" At sea. Now came the resurrection
hour, the berths gave up their dead.
These pale spectres in plug hats file up
the companion way."

' 'Age enlarges and enriches the powers
of some musical instruments, — notably
those of the violin, — but it seems to set a
piano's teeth on edge."

"I am a Yankee of the Yankees, a
practical man, nearly barren of sentiment
or poetry — in other words, my father was
a, blacksmith, my uncle was a horse
doctor, and I was both."

"He found that the 'education of the
nineteenth century is plenty good enough
capital to go into business in the sixth
century with/ and the next year he was
running the kingdom all by himself on a
moderate royalty of forty per cent."

' 'There didn't seem to be brains enough
in the entire nursery to bait a fish-hook,
but you didn't mind that after a little
while, for you saw that brains were not
Deeded in a society like that, and would
have marred its symmetry and spoiled it."

His Life and Work. 2OJ

'This vile bit of human rubbish."

4 Chambermaids are dead to every
human instinct."

"A forlorn dog, with bowed head, and
tail withdrawn from service."

"When a man has been fifty years at
sea, he is only a gray and bearded child."

"He was a man with a hair lip, and a
pure heart, and everybody said he was
true as steel."

"To the Indian, soap and education
are not as sudden as a massacre, but they
are more deadly in the long run.'*

"They appointed me clerk of the com
mittee on conchology, and then allowed
me no amanuensis to play billiards with."

"If there was a horse-race, you'd find
him flush or you'd find him busted at the
end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd
bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd
bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight,
he'd bet on it; why, if there were two
birds sitting on a fence, he would bet
you which one would fly first."

2O4 Mark Twain

"If I had another cold in the head, and
there was no course left me but to take
either an earthquake or a quart of warm
salt water, I would take my chances on
the earthquake."

"Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!
— the poor old faithful creature. For she
was so faithful. Would you believe it,
she had been a servant in that self-same
house and that self-same family for
twenty-seven years come Christmas, and
never a cross word and never a lick!
And, oh, to think she should meet such
a death at last! — a sitting over the red-
hot stove at three o'clock in the morning,
and went to sleep and fell on it and was
actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a
bit, but literally roasted to a crisp! Poor
faithful creature, how she was cooked !
I am but a poor woman, but even if I
have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a
tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave
— and Mr. Riley, if you would have the
goodness to think up a little epitaph to
put on it which would sort of describe
the awful way in which she met her "

Ills Life and Work. 2OJ

"Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful
servant! ' said Riley, and never smiled.1 "

4 'The less a man knows the bigger
noise he makes and the higher salary he
commands."

"Who can join in the heartless libel
that says woman is extravagant in dress
when he can look back and call to mind
our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed
in her modification of the Highland
costume. "

"He buys the original pig for a dollar
and a half, and feeds him forty dollars'
worth of corn, and then sells him for
about nine dollars. This is the only crop
he ever makes any money on. He loses
on the corn, but he makes seven and a
half on the hog."

"He stood bewildered a moment, with
a sense of goneness on him like one who
finds himself suddenly overboard upon a
midnight sea, and beholds the ship pass
into shrouding gloom, while the dreadful
conviction falls upon his soul that he has
not been missed."

206 Mark Twain

"Just a hunk of brains, that's what he
was."

"He will eat a man, he will eat a
Bible, — he will eat anything between a
man and a Bible."

"He wrote with impressive flatulence
and soaring confidence upon the vastest
subjects; but puffing alms-gifts of wed
ding cake, salty ice cream, abnormal
watermelons, and sweet potatoes the size
of your leg was his best hold."

"Tom appeared on the sidewalk with
a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled
brush. He surveyed the fence, and all
gladness left him, and a deep melancholy
settled down upon his spirit. Thirty
yards of board fence nine feet high. Life
to him seemed hollow, and existence but
a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush
and passed it along the topmost plank;
repeated the operation ; did it again; com
pared the insignificant whitewashed
streak with the far-reaching continent of
tmwhitewashed fence, and sat down on
the tree-box discouraged."

His Life and Work.

"It was just like a new author, s. They
always think that they know more than
anybody else when they are getting out
their first book."

"For weeks she nursed her grief in
silence, while the roses faded from her
cheeks. And through it all she clung to
the hope that some day the old love
would bloom again in Reginald's heart,
and he would write to her; but the long
summer days dragged wearily along, and
still no letter came. The newspapers
teemed with stories of battle and carnage,
e and eagerly she read them, but always
with the same result: the tears welled up
and blurred the closing lines — the name
she sought was looked for in vain, and
the dull aching returned to her sinking
heart. Letters to the other girls some
times contained brief mention ot him,
and presented always the same picture of
him — a morose, unsmiling, desperate
man, always in the thickest of the fight,
begrimed with powder, and moving calm
and unscathed through tempests of shot
and shell, as if he bore a charmed life."

208 Mark Twain

"A cross between a tired mud turtle
and a crippled hearse horse."

"He means well, but art is folly to
him; he only understands groceries."

"His strawberries would be a comfort
able success if the robins would eat tur
nips, but they won't, and hence the
difficulty."

* 'Having forgotten to mention it sooner,
I will remark, in conclusion, that the
ages of the Siamese Twins " are respec
tively fifty-one and fifty-three years."

1 'I found the brave fellow in a pro
found French calm. I say French cairn,
because French calmness and English
calmness have points of difference. He
was moving swiftly back and forth
among the debris of his furniture, now
and then staving chance fragments of it
across the room with his foot; grinding a
constant prist of curses through his set
teeth; anl halting every little while to
deposit another handful of his hair on
the pile which he had been building of it
on the table."

His Life and Work. 20?

"The place is as dark as the inside of
an infidel."

"She was a perfect polyglot once, but
somehow her palate got down."

"And so saying, he turned his face to
the wall and gave up the ghost."

"We write frankly and fearlessly, but
then we 'modify' before we print."

"Oh, I know him. A sallow-faced,,
red-headed fellow, with a little scar on
the side of his throat like a splinter under
the flesh."

"A woman who could face the aevil
himself — or a mouse — loses her grip and
goes all to pieces in front of a flash of
lightning."

"He was a man of middle size and
compact frame, and when he was think
ing deeply, he had a way of knitting his
brows and tapping his forehead reflec
tively with his finger, which impressed
you at once with the conviction that you
stood in the presence of a person of no
common order."

2IO Mark Twain

"The poem is smooth and blubbery; it
reads like buttermilk gurgling from a
jug."

"A sincere compliment is always grate
ful to a young lady, so long as you don't
try to knock her down with it."

"Cain is branded a murderer so heart
lessly and unanimously in America, only
because he was neither a Democrat nor a
Republican."

"A long cadaverous creature, with
lanky locks hanging down to his
shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling
from the hills and valleys of his face."

'Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a
poor chap a world of good after he is dead,
especially if he had hard luck while he
was alive. I wish they were used more."

"I do not know how it came about ex
actly, but gradually we appeared to melt
down and run together, conversationally
• speaking, and then everything went
along as comfortably as clockwork."

His Life and Work. 211

" Your conscience is a nuisance. A
conscience is like a child. If you pet it
and play with it and let it have every
thing it wants, it becomes spoiled and
intrudes on all of your amusements and
most of your griefs. Treat your con
science as you would treat anything else.
When it is rebellious, spank it — be se
vere with it, airgue with it, prevent it from
coming to play with you at all hours —
and you will secure a good conscience.
That is to say, a properly trained one.
A spoiled conscience simply destroys all
the pleasure in life. I think I have re
duced min to order. At least I haven't
heard from it for some time. Perhaps
I've killed it through over-severity. It's
wrong to kill a child, but in spite of all I
have said, a conscience differs from a
child in many ways. Perhaps it is best
when it is dead."

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