Every life is a drama—a play in all its particulars; comedy, farce, tragedy—all the elements are there. To examine in detail any life, however conspicuous or obscure, is to become amazed not only at the inevitable sequence of events, but at the interlinking of details, often far removed, into a marvelously intricate pattern which no art can hope to reproduce, and can only feebly imitate.
The biographer may reconstruct an episode, present a picture, or reflect a mood by which the reader is enabled to feel something of the glow of personality and know, perhaps, a little of the substance of the past. In so far as the historian can accomplish this his work is a success. At best his labor will be pathetically incomplete, for whatever its detail and its resemblance to life, these will record mainly but an outward expression, behind which was the mighty sweep and tumult of unwritten thought, the overwhelming proportion of any life, which no other human soul can ever really know.
Mark Twain's appearance on the stage of the world was a succession of dramatic moments. He was always exactly in the setting. Whatever he did, or whatever came to him, was timed for the instant of greatest effect. At the end he was more widely observed and loved and honored than ever before, and at the right moment and in the right manner he died.
How little one may tell of such a life as his! He traveled always such a broad and brilliant highway, with plumes flying and crowds following after. Such a whirling panorama of life, and death, and change! I have written so much, and yet I have put so much aside—and often the best things, it seemed afterward, perhaps because each in its way was best and the variety infinite. One may only strive to be faithful—and I would have made it better if I could.
APPENDIX.
(See Chapter xxvi)
KEOKUK, Iowa, October 3, 1858.
MISS WOOD,—My mother having sent me your kind letter, with a request that myself and wife should write to you, I hasten to do so.
In my memory I can go away back to Henry's infancy; I see his large, blue eyes intently regarding my father when he rebuked him for his credulity in giving full faith to the boyish idea of planting his marbles, expecting a crop therefrom; then comes back the recollection of the time when, standing we three alone by our father's grave, I told them always to remember that brothers should be kind to each other; afterward I see Henry returning from school with his books for the last time. He must go into my printing-office. He learned rapidly. A word of encouragement or a word of discouragement told upon his organization electrically. I could see the effects in his day's work. Sometimes I would say, “Henry!” He would stand full front with his eyes upon mine—all attention. If I commanded him to do something, without a word he was off instantly, probably in a run. If a cat was to be drowned or shot Sam (though unwilling yet firm) was selected for the work. If a stray kitten was to be fed and taken care of Henry was expected to attend to it, and he would faithfully do so. So they grew up, and many was the grave lecture commenced by ma, to the effect that Sam was misleading and spoiling Henry. But the lectures were never concluded, for Sam would reply with a witticism, or dry, unexpected humor, that would drive the lecture clean out of my mother's mind, and change it to a laugh. Those were happier days. My mother was as lively as any girl of sixteen. She is not so now. And sister Pamela I have described in describing Henry; for she was his counterpart. The blow falls crushingly on her. But the boys grew up—Sam a rugged, brave, quick-tempered, generous-hearted fellow, Henry quiet, observing, thoughtful, leaning on Sam for protection; Sam and I too leaning on him for knowledge picked up from conversation or books, for Henry seemed never to forget anything, and devoted much of his leisure hours to reading.
Henry is gone! His death was horrible! How I could have sat by him, hung over him, watched day and night every change of expression, and ministered to every want in my power that I could discover. This was denied to me, but Sam, whose organization is such as to feel the utmost extreme of every feeling, was there. Both his capacity of enjoyment and his capacity of suffering are greater than mine; and knowing how it would have affected me to see so sad a scene, I can somewhat appreciate Sam's sufferings. In this time of great trouble, when my two brothers, whose heartstrings have always been a part of my own, were suffering the utmost stretch of mortal endurance, you were there, like a good angel, to aid and console, and I bless and thank you for it with my whole heart. I thank all who helped them then; I thank them for the flowers they sent to Henry, for the tears that fell for their sufferings, and when he died, and all of them for all the kind attentions they bestowed upon the poor boys. We thank the physicians, and we shall always gratefully remember the kindness of the gentleman who at so much expense to himself enabled us to deposit Henry's remains by our father.
With many kind wishes for your future welfare, I remain your earnest friend,
Respectfully,
ORION CLEMENS.
(See Chapter xxvii)
The item which served as a text for the “Sergeant Fathom” communication was as follows:
VICKSBURG, May 4, 1859.
My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is
higher this far up than it has been since 1815. My opinion is that the
water will be four feet deep in Canal Street before the first of next
June. Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all
under water, and it has not been since 1815. I. SELLERS.—[Captain Sellers, as
in this case, sometimes signed
his own name to his
communications.]
THE BURLESQUE INTRODUCTORY
Our friend Sergeant Fathom, one of the oldest cub pilots on the river, and now on the Railroad Line steamer Trombone, sends us a rather bad account concerning the state of the river. Sergeant Fathom is a “cub” of much experience, and although we are loath to coincide in his view of the matter, we give his note a place in our columns, only hoping that his prophecy will not be verified in this instance. While introducing the Sergeant, “we consider it but simple justice (we quote from a friend of his) to remark that he is distinguished for being, in pilot phrase, 'close,' as well as superhumanly 'safe.'” It is a well-known fact that he has made fourteen hundred and fifty trips in the New Orleans and St. Louis trade without causing serious damage to a steamboat. This astonishing success is attributed to the fact that he seldom runs his boat after early candle-light. It is related of the Sergeant that upon one occasion he actually ran the chute of Glasscock's Island, down-stream, in the night, and at a time, too, when the river was scarcely more than bank full. His method of accomplishing this feat proves what we have just said of his “safeness”—he sounded the chute first, and then built a fire at the head of the island to run by. As to the Sergeant's “closeness,” we have heard it whispered that he once went up to the right of the “Old Hen,”—[Glasscock's Island and the “Old Hen” were phenomenally safe places.]—but this is probably a pardonable little exaggeration, prompted by the love and admiration in which he is held by various ancient dames of his acquaintance (for albeit the Sergeant may have already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect, his step is firm, his hair retains its sable hue, and, more than all, he hath a winning way about him, an air of docility and sweetness, if you will, and a smoothness of speech, together with an exhaustless fund of funny sayings; and, lastly, an overflowing stream, without beginning, or middle, or end, of astonishing reminiscences of the ancient Mississippi, which, taken together, form a 'tout ensemble' which is sufficient excuse for the tender epithet which is, by common consent, applied to him by all those ancient dames aforesaid, of “che-arming creature!”). As the Sergeant has been longer on the river, and is better acquainted with it than any other “cub” extant, his remarks are entitled to far more consideration, and are always read with the deepest interest by high and low, rich and poor, from “Kiho” to Kamschatka, for let it be known that his fame extends to the uttermost parts of the earth:
THE COMMUNICATION
R.R. Steamer Trombone, VICKSBURG, May 8, 1859.
The river from New Orleans up to Natchez is higher than it has been since the niggers were executed (which was in the fall of 1813) and my opinion is that if the rise continues at this rate the water will be on the roof of the St. Charles Hotel before the middle of January. The point at Cairo, which has not even been moistened by the river since 1813, is now entirely under water.
However, Mr. Editor, the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley should not act precipitately and sell their plantations at a sacrifice on account of this prophecy of mine, for I shall proceed to convince them of a great fact in regard to this matter, viz.: that the tendency of the Mississippi is to rise less and less high every year (with an occasional variation of the rule), that such has been the case for many centuries, and eventually that it will cease to rise at all. Therefore, I would hint to the planters, as we say in an innocent little parlor game commonly called “draw,” that if they can only “stand the rise” this time they may enjoy the comfortable assurance that the old river's banks will never hold a “full” again during their natural lives.
In the summer of 1763 I came down the river on the old first Jubilee. She was new then, however; a singular sort of a single-engine boat, with a Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, forecastle on her stern, wheels in the center, and the jackstaff “nowhere,” for I steered her with a window-shutter, and when we wanted to land we sent a line ashore and “rounded her to” with a yoke of oxen.
Well, sir, we wooded off the top of the big bluff above Selmathe only dry land visible—and waited there three weeks, swapping knives and playing “seven up” with the Indians, waiting for the river to fall. Finally, it fell about a hundred feet, and we went on. One day we rounded to, and I got in a horse-trough, which my partner borrowed from the Indians up there at Selma while they were at prayers, and went down to sound around No. 8, and while I was gone my partner got aground on the hills at Hickman. After three days' labor we finally succeeded in sparring her off with a capstan bar, and went on to Memphis. By the time we got there the river had subsided to such an extent that we were able to land where the Gayoso House now stands. We finished loading at Memphis, and loaded part of the stone for the present St. Louis Court House (which was then in process of erection), to be taken up on our return trip.
You can form some conception, by these memoranda, of how high the water was in 1763. In 1775 it did not rise so high by thirty feet; in 1790 it missed the original mark at least sixty-five feet; in 1797, one hundred and fifty feet; and in 1806, nearly two hundred and fifty feet. These were “high-water” years. The “high waters” since then have been so insignificant that I have scarcely taken the trouble to notice them. Thus, you will perceive that the planters need not feel uneasy. The river may make an occasional spasmodic effort at a flood, but the time is approaching when it will cease to rise altogether.
In conclusion, sir, I will condescend to hint at the foundation of these arguments: When me and De Soto discovered the Mississippi I could stand at Bolivar Landing (several miles above “Roaring Waters Bar”) and pitch a biscuit to the main shore on the other side, and in low water we waded across at Donaldsonville. The gradual widening and deepening of the river is the whole secret of the matter.
Yours, etc.
SERGEANT FATHOM.
I. MARK TWAIN'S EMPIRE CITY HOAX (See Chapter xli) THE LATEST SENSATION.
A Victim to Jeremy Diddling Trustees—He Cuts his Throat from Ear to
Ear, Scalps his Wife, and Dashes Out the Brains of Six Helpless
Children!
From Abram Curry, who arrived here yesterday afternoon from Carson, we learn the following particulars concerning a bloody massacre which was committed in Ormsby County night before last. It seems that during the past six months a man named P. Hopkins, or Philip Hopkins, has been residing with his family in the old log-house just at the edge of the great pine forest which lies between Empire City and Dutch Nick's. The family consisted of nine children—five girls and four boys—the oldest of the group, Mary, being nineteen years old, and the youngest, Tommy, about a year and a half. Twice in the past two months Mrs. Hopkins, while visiting Carson, expressed fears concerning the sanity of her husband, remarking that of late he had been subject to fits of violence, and that during the prevalence of one of these he had threatened to take her life. It was Mrs. Hopkins's misfortune to be given to exaggeration, however, and but little attention was given to what she said.
About 10 o'clock on Monday evening Hopkins dashed into Carson on horseback, with his throat cut from ear to ear, and bearing in his hand a reeking scalp, from which the warm, smoking blood was still dripping, and fell in a dying condition in front of the Magnolia saloon. Hopkins expired, in the course of five minutes, without speaking. The long, red hair of the scalp he bore marked it as that of Mrs. Hopkins. A number of citizens, headed by Sheriff Gasherie, mounted at once and rode down to Hopkins's house, where a ghastly scene met their eyes. The scalpless corpse of Mrs. Hopkins lay across the threshold, with her head split open and her right hand almost severed from the wrist. Near her lay the ax with which the murderous deed had been committed. In one of the bedrooms six of the children were found, one in bed and the others scattered about the floor. They were all dead. Their brains had evidently been dashed out with a club, and every mark about them seemed to have been made with a blunt instrument. The children must have struggled hard for their lives, as articles of clothing and broken furniture were strewn about the room in the utmost confusion. Julia and Emma, aged respectively fourteen and seventeen, were found in the kitchen, bruised and insensible, but it is thought their recovery is possible. The eldest girl, Mary, must have sought refuge, in her terror, in the garret, as her body was found there frightfully mutilated, and the knife with which her wounds had been inflicted still sticking in her side. The two girls Julia and Emma, who had recovered sufficiently to be able to talk yesterday morning, declare that their father knocked them down with a billet of wood and stamped on them. They think they were the first attacked. They further state that Hopkins had shown evidence of derangement all day, but had exhibited no violence. He flew into a passion and attempted to murder them because they advised him to go to bed and compose his mind.
Curry says Hopkins was about forty-two years of age, and a native of western Pennsylvania; he was always affable and polite, and until very recently no one had ever heard of his ill-treating his family. He had been a heavy owner in the best mines of Virginia and Gold Hill, but when the San Francisco papers exposed our game of cooking dividends in order to bolster up our stocks he grew afraid and sold out, and invested an immense amount in the Spring Valley Water Company, of San Francisco. He was advised to do this by a relative of his, one of the editors of the San Francisco Bulletin, who had suffered pecuniarily by the dividend-cooking system as applied to the Daney Mining Company recently. Hopkins had not long ceased to own in the various claims on the Comstock lead, however, when several dividends were cooked on his newly acquired property, their water totally dried up, and Spring Valley stock went down to nothing. It is presumed that this misfortune drove him mad, and resulted in his killing himself and the greater portion of his family. The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company to go on borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover of which the cunning financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving the crash to come upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to expose the villainy at work. We hope the fearful massacre detailed above may prove the saddest result of their silence.
II. NEWS-GATHERING WITH MARK TWAIN.
Alfred Doten's son gives the following account of a reporting trip made by his father and Mark Twain, when the two were on Comstock papers:
My father and Mark Twain were once detailed to go over to Como and write up some new mines that had been discovered over there. My father was on the Gold Hill News. He and Mark had not met before, but became promptly acquainted, and were soon calling each other by their first names.
They went to a little hotel at Carson, agreeing to do their work there together next morning. When morning came they set out, and suddenly on a corner Mark stopped and turned to my father, saying:
“By gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?”
“It is, Mark. Let's go in.”
They did so, and remained there all day, swapping yarns, sipping beer, and lunching, going back to the hotel that night.
The next morning precisely the same thing occurred. When they were on the same corner, Mark stopped as if he had never been there before, and sand:
“Good gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?”
“It is, Mark. Let's go in.”
So again they went in, and again stayed all day.
This happened again the next morning, and the next. Then my father became uneasy. A letter had come from Gold Hill, asking him where his report of the mines was. They agreed that next morning they would really begin the story; that they would climb to the top of a hill that overlooked the mines, and write it from there.
But the next morning, as before, Mark was surprised to discover the brewery, and once more they went in. A few moments later, however, a man who knew all about the mines—a mining engineer connected with them—came in. He was a godsend. My father set down a valuable, informing story, while Mark got a lot of entertaining mining yarns out of him.
Next day Virginia City and Gold Hill were gaining information from my father's article, and entertainment from Mark's story of the mines.
(See Chapter liv) HAWAIIAN IMPORTANCE TO AMERICA.
After a full elucidation of the sugar industry of the Sandwich Islands, its profits and possibilities, he said:
I have dwelt upon this subject to show you that these islands have a genuine importance to America—an importance which is not generally appreciated by our citizens. They pay revenues into the United States Treasury now amounting to over a half a million a year.
I do not know what the sugar yield of the world is now, but ten years ago, according to the Patent Office reports, it was 800,000 hogsheads. The Sandwich Islands, properly cultivated by go-ahead Americans, are capable of providing one-third as much themselves. With the Pacific Railroad built, the great China Mail Line of steamers touching at Honolulu—we could stock the islands with Americans and supply a third of the civilized world with sugar—and with the silkiest, longest-stapled cotton this side of the Sea Islands, and the very best quality of rice.... The property has got to fall to some heir, and why not the United States?
NATIVE PASSION FOR FUNERALS
They are very fond of funerals. Big funerals are their main weakness. Fine grave clothes, fine funeral appointments, and a long procession are things they take a generous delight in. They are fond of their chief and their king; they reverence them with a genuine reverence and love them with a warm affection, and often look forward to the happiness they will experience in burying them. They will beg, borrow, or steal money enough, and flock from all the islands, to be present at a royal funeral on Oahu. Years ago a Kanaka and his wife were condemned to be hanged for murder. They received the sentence with manifest satisfaction because it gave an opening for a funeral, you know. All they care for is a funeral. It makes but little difference to them whose it is; they would as soon attend their own funeral as anybody else's. This couple were people of consequence, and had landed estates. They sold every foot of ground they had and laid it out in fine clothes to be hung in. And the woman appeared on the scaffold in a white satin dress and slippers and fathoms of gaudy ribbon, and the man was arrayed in a gorgeous vest, blue claw-hammer coat and brass buttons, and white kid gloves. As the noose was adjusted around his neck, he blew his nose with a grand theatrical flourish, so as to show his embroidered white handkerchief. I never, never knew of a couple who enjoyed hanging more than they did.
VIEW FROM HALEAKALA
It is a solemn pleasure to stand upon the summit of the extinct crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet above the sea, and gaze down into its awful crater, 27 miles in circumference and ago feet deep, and to picture to yourself the seething world of fire that once swept up out of the tremendous abyss ages ago.
The prodigious funnel is dead and silent now, and even has bushes growing far down in its bottom, where the deep-sea line could hardly have reached in the old times, when the place was filled with liquid lava. These bushes look like parlor shrubs from the summit where you stand, and the file of visitors moving through them on their mules is diminished to a detachment of mice almost; and to them you, standing so high up against the sun, ten thousand feet above their heads, look no larger than a grasshopper.
This in the morning; but at three or four in the afternoon a thousand little patches of white clouds, like handfuls of wool, come drifting noiselessly, one after another, into the crater, like a procession of shrouded phantoms, and circle round and round the vast sides, and settle gradually down and mingle together until the colossal basin is filled to the brim with snowy fog and all its seared and desolate wonders are hidden from sight.
And then you may turn your back to the crater and look far away upon the broad valley below, with its sugar-houses glinting like white specks in the distance, and the great sugar-fields diminished to green veils amid the lighter-tinted verdure around them, and abroad upon the limitless ocean. But I should not say you look down; you look up at these things.
You are ten thousand feet above them, but yet you seem to stand in a basin, with the green islands here and there, and the valleys and the wide ocean, and the remote snow-peak of Mauna Loa, all raised up before and above you, and pictured out like a brightly tinted map hung at the ceiling of a room.
You look up at everything; nothing is below you. It has a singular and startling effect to see a miniature world thus seemingly hung in mid-air.
But soon the white clouds come trooping along in ghostly squadrons and mingle together in heavy masses a quarter of a mile below you and shut out everything-completely hide the sea and all the earth save the pinnacle you stand on. As far as the eye can reach, it finds nothing to rest upon but a boundless plain of clouds tumbled into all manner of fantastic shapes-a billowy ocean of wool aflame with the gold and purple and crimson splendors of the setting sun! And so firm does this grand cloud pavement look that you can hardly persuade yourself that you could not walk upon it; that if you stepped upon it you would plunge headlong and astonish your friends at dinner ten thousand feet below.
Standing on that peak, with all the world shut out by that vast plain of clouds, a feeling of loneliness comes over a man which suggests to his mind the last man at the flood, perched high upon the last rock, with nothing visible on any side but a mournful waste of waters, and the ark departing dimly through the distant mists and leaving him to storm and night and solitude and death!
“The inimitable Mark Twain, delivered himself last night of his first lecture on the Sandwich Islands, or anything else.
“Some time before the hour appointed to open his head the Academy of Music (on Pine Street) was densely crowded with one of the most fashionable audiences it was ever my privilege to witness during my long residence in this city. The Elite of the town were there, and so was the Governor of the State, occupying one of the boxes, whose rotund face was suffused with a halo of mirth during the whole entertainment. The audience promptly notified Mark by the usual sign—stamping—that the auspicious hour had arrived, and presently the lecturer came sidling and swinging out from the left of the stage. His very manner produced a generally vociferous laugh from the assemblage. He opened with an apology, by saying that he had partly succeeded in obtaining a band, but at the last moment the party engaged backed out. He explained that he had hired a man to play the trombone, but he, on learning that he was the only person engaged, came at the last moment and informed him that he could not play. This placed Mark in a bad predicament, and wishing to know his reasons for deserting him at that critical moment, he replied, 'That he wasn't going to make a fool of himself by sitting up there on the stage and blowing his horn all by himself.' After the applause subsided, he assumed a very grave countenance and commenced his remarks proper with the following well-known sentence: 'When, in the course of human events,' etc. He lectured fully an hour and a quarter, and his humorous sayings were interspersed with geographical, agricultural, and statistical remarks, sometimes branching off and reaching beyond, soaring, in the very choicest language, up to the very pinnacle of descriptive power.”
(See Chapters lviii and lix)
I. ADVERTISEMENT
“Mark Twain” is too well known to the public to require a formal introduction at my hands. By his story of the Frog he scaled the heights of popularity at a single jump and won for himself the 'sobriquet' of The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope. He is also known to fame as The Moralist of the Main; and it is not unlikely that as such he will go down to posterity. It is in his secondary character, as humorist, however, rather than in the primal one of moralist, that I aim to present him in the present volume. And here a ready explanation will be found for the somewhat fragmentary character of many of these sketches; for it was necessary to snatch threads of humor wherever they could be found—very often detaching them from serious articles and moral essays with which they were woven and entangled. Originally written for newspaper publication, many of the articles referred to events of the day, the interest of which has now passed away, and contained local allusions, which the general reader would fail to understand; in such cases excision became imperative. Further than this, remark or comment is unnecessary. Mark Twain never resorts to tricks of spelling nor rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too rich and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But there are few who can resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard, good sense which form the staple of his writing.
J. P. II. FROM ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS
“MORAL STATISTICIAN”—I don't want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc....
Of course you can save money by denying yourself all these vicious little enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use in accumulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good-humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue-officers a true statement of your income. Now you all know all these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a clean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as “ornery” and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your ceaseless and villainous “moral statistics”? Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars and then came back, in my absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor-stove.
... In due time I stood, with my companion, on the wall of the vast caldron which the natives, ages ago, named 'Hale mau mau'—the abyss wherein they were wont to throw the remains of their chiefs, to the end that vulgar feet might never tread above them. We stood there, at dead of night, a mile above the level of the sea, and looked down a thousand feet upon a boiling, surging, roaring ocean of fire!—shaded our eyes from the blinding glare, and gazed far away over the crimson waves with a vague notion that a supernatural fleet, manned by demons and freighted with the damned, might presently sail up out of the remote distance; started when tremendous thunder-bursts shook the earth, and followed with fascinated eyes the grand jets of molten lava that sprang high up toward the zenith and exploded in a world of fiery spray that lit up the somber heavens with an infernal splendor.
“What is your little bonfire of Vesuvius to this?”
My ejaculation roused my companion from his reverie, and we fell into a conversation appropriate to the occasion and the surroundings. We came at last to speak of the ancient custom of casting the bodies of dead chieftains into this fearful caldron; and my comrade, who is of the blood royal, mentioned that the founder of his race, old King Kamehameha the First—that invincible old pagan Alexander—had found other sepulture than the burning depths of the 'Hale mau mau'. I grew interested at once; I knew that the mystery of what became of the corpse of the warrior king hail never been fathomed; I was aware that there was a legend connected with this matter; and I felt as if there could be no more fitting time to listen to it than the present. The descendant of the Kamehamehas said:
The dead king was brought in royal state down the long, winding road that descends from the rim of the crater to the scorched and chasm-riven plain that lies between the 'Hale mau mau' and those beetling walls yonder in the distance. The guards were set and the troops of mourners began the weird wail for the departed. In the middle of the night came a sound of innumerable voices in the air and the rush of invisible wings; the funeral torches wavered, burned blue, and went out. The mourners and watchers fell to the ground paralyzed by fright, and many minutes elapsed before any one dared to move or speak; for they believed that the phantom messengers of the dread Goddess of Fire had been in their midst. When at last a torch was lighted the bier was vacant—the dead monarch had been spirited away!
NEW YORK “HERALD” EDITORIAL ON THE RETURN OF THE “QUAKER CITY” PILGRIMAGE, NOVEMBER 19, 1867.
In yesterday's Herald we published a most amusing letter from the pen of that most amusing American genius, Mark Twain, giving an account of that most amusing of all modern pilgrimages—the pilgrimage of the 'Quaker City'. It has been amusing all through, this Quaker City affair. It might have become more serious than amusing if the ship had been sold at Jaffa, Alexandria, or Yalta, in the Black Sea, as it appears might have happened. In such a case the passengers would have been more effectually sold than the ship. The descendants of the Puritan pilgrims have, naturally enough, some of them, an affection for ships; but if all that is said about this religious cruise be true they have also a singularly sharp eye to business. It was scarcely wise on the part of the pilgrims, although it was well for the public, that so strange a genius as Mark Twain should have found admission into the sacred circle. We are not aware whether Mr. Twain intends giving us a book on this pilgrimage, but we do know that a book written from his own peculiar standpoint, giving an account of the characters and events on board ship and of the scenes which the pilgrims witnessed, would command an almost unprecedented sale. There are varieties of genius peculiar to America. Of one of these varieties Mark Twain is a striking specimen. For the development of his peculiar genius he has never had a more fitting opportunity. Besides, there are some things which he knows, and which the world ought to know, about this last edition of the Mayflower.
(See Chapter lxiii)
WOMAN A EULOGY OF THE FAIR SEX.
The Washington Correspondents Club held its anniversary on Saturday night. Mr. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, responded to the toast, “Woman, the pride of the professions and the jewel of ours.” He said:
Mr. President,—I do not know why I should have been singled out to receive the greatest distinction of the evening—for so the office of replying to the toast to woman has been regarded in every age. [Applause.] I do not know why I have received this distinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club. But, be this as it may, Mr. President, I am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen any one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a heartier good—will to do the subject justice, than I. Because, Sir, I love the sex. [Laughter.] I love all the women, sir, irrespective of age or color. [Laughter.]
Human intelligence cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. She sews on our buttons [laughter]; she mends our clothes [laughter]; she ropes us in at the church fairs; she confides in us; she tells us whatever she can find out about the private affairs of the neighbors; she gives good advice, and plenty of it; she gives us a piece of her mind sometimes—and sometimes all of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our children. (Ours as a general thing.)—[this last sentence appears in Twain's published speeches and may have been added later. D.W.]
In all relations of life, sir, it is but just and a graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick. [Great laughter.]
Wheresoever you place woman, sir—in whatsoever position or estate—she is an ornament to that place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [Here Mr. Twain paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that the applause should come in at this point. It came in. Mr. Twain resumed his eulogy.] Look at the noble names of history! Look at Cleopatra! Look at Desdemona! Look at Florence Nightingale! Look at Joan of Arc! Look at Lucretia Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed. “Well,” said Mr. Twain, scratching his head, doubtfully, “suppose we let Lucretia slide.”] Look at Joyce Heth! Look at Mother Eve! I repeat, sir, look at the illustrious names of history! Look at the Widow Machree! Look at Lucy Stone! Look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton! Look at George Francis Train! [Great laughter.] And, sir, I say with bowed head and deepest veneration, look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not lie—could not lie. [Applause.] But he never had any chance. It might have been different with him if he had belonged to a newspaper correspondents' club. [Laughter, groans, hisses, cries of “put him out.” Mark looked around placidly upon his excited audience, and resumed.]
I repeat, sir, that in whatsoever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart she has few equals and no superior [laughter]; as a cousin she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper she is precious; as a wet nurse she has no equal among men! [Laughter.]
What, sir, would the people of this earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir. (Mighty scarce.)—[another line added later in the published 'Speeches'. D.W.] Then let us cherish her, let us protect her, let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy—ourselves, if we get a chance. [Laughter.]
But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautiful; worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and every one of us has personally known, loved, and honored the very best one of them all—his own mother! [Applause.]
(See Chapter lxvi)
THE PUBLIC TO MARK TWAIN—CORRESPONDENCE
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN—DEAR SIR,—Hearing that you are about to sail for New York in the P. M. S. S. Company's steamer of the 6th July, to publish a book, and learning with the deepest concern that you propose to read a chapter or two of that book in public before you go, we take this method of expressing our cordial desire that you will not. We beg and implore you do not. There is a limit to human endurance.
We are your personal friends. We have your welfare at heart. We desire to see you prosper. And it is upon these accounts, and upon these only, that we urge you to desist from the new atrocity you contemplate. Yours truly,
60 names including: Bret Harte, Maj.-Gen. Ord, Maj.-Gen. Halleck,
The Orphan Asylum, and various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on
Foot and Horseback, and 1500 in the Steerage.
(REPLY)
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th
TO THE 1,500 AND OTHERS,—It seems to me that your course is entirely unprecedented. Heretofore, when lecturers, singers, actors, and other frauds have said they were about to leave town, you have always been the very first people to come out in a card beseeching them to hold on for just one night more, and inflict just one more performance on the public, but as soon as I want to take a farewell benefit you come after me, with a card signed by the whole community and the board of aldermen, praying me not to do it. But it isn't of any use. You cannot move me from my fell purpose. I will torment the people if I want to. I have a better right to do it than these strange lecturers and orators that come here from abroad. It only costs the public a dollar apiece, and if they can't stand it what do they stay here for? Am I to go away and let them have peace and quiet for a year and a half, and then come back and only lecture them twice? What do you take me for?
No, gentlemen, ask of me anything else and I will do it cheerfully; but do not ask me not to afflict the people. I wish to tell them all I know about VENICE. I wish to tell them about the City of the Sea—that most venerable, most brilliant, and proudest Republic the world has ever seen. I wish to hint at what it achieved in twelve hundred years, and what it lost in two hundred. I wish to furnish a deal of pleasant information, somewhat highly spiced, but still palatable, digestible, and eminently fitted for the intellectual stomach. My last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but I have submitted this discourse to several able critics, and they have pronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold it?
Let me talk only just this once, and I will sail positively on the 6th of July, and stay away until I return from China—two years.
Yours truly, MARK TWAIN.
(FURTHER REMONSTRANCE)
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN,—Learning with profound regret that you have concluded to postpone your departure until the 6th July, and learning also, with unspeakable grief, that you propose to read from your forthcoming book, or lecture again before you go, at the New Mercantile Library, we hasten to beg of you that you will not do it. Curb this spirit of lawless violence, and emigrate at once. Have the vessel's bill for your passage sent to us. We will pay it.
Your friends,
Pacific Board of Brokers [and
other financial and social
institutions]
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN—DEAR SIR,—Will you start now, without any unnecessary
delay?
Yours truly,
Proprietors of the Alta,
Bulletin, Times, Call, Examiner
[and other San Francisco
publications].
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN—DEAR SIR,—Do not delay your departure. You can come back and lecture another time. In the language of the worldly—you can “cut and come again.”
Your friends,
THE CLERGY.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN—DEAR SIR,—You had better go.
Yours,
THE CHIEF OF POLICE.
(REPLY)
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
GENTLEMEN,—Restrain your emotions; you observe that they cannot avail. Read:
NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY
Bush Street
Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868
One Night Only
FAREWELL LECTURE
of
MARK TWAIN
Subject:
The Oldest of the Republics
VENICE
PAST AND PRESENT
Box-Office open Wednesday and Thursday
No extra charge for reserved seats
ADMISSION........... ONE DOLLAR
Doors open at 7 Orgies to commence at 8 P. M.
The public displays and ceremonies projected to give fitting eclat
to this occasion have been unavoidably delayed until the 4th. The
lecture will be delivered certainly on the 2d, and the event will be
celebrated two days afterward by a discharge of artillery on the
4th, a procession of citizens, the reading of the Declaration of
Independence, and by a gorgeous display of fireworks from Russian
Hill in the evening, which I have ordered at my sole expense, the
cost amounting to eighty thousand dollars.
AT NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY
Bush Street
Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg