Chapters from My Autobiography

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My teaching and training enabled me to see deeper into these tragedies
than an ignorant person could have done. I knew what they were for. I
tried to disguise it from myself, but down in the secret deeps of my
heart I knew--and I _knew_ that I knew. They were inventions of
Providence to beguile me to a better life. It sounds curiously innocent
and conceited, now, but to me there was nothing strange about it; it was
quite in accordance with the thoughtful and judicious ways of Providence
as I understood them. It would not have surprised me, nor even
over-flattered me, if Providence had killed off that whole community in
trying to save an asset like me. Educated as I had been, it would have
seemed just the thing, and well worth the expense. _Why_ Providence
should take such an anxious interest in such a property--that idea never
entered my head, and there was no one in that simple hamlet who would
have dreamed of putting it there. For one thing, no one was equipped
with it.

It is quite true I took all the tragedies to myself; and tallied them
off, in turn as they happened, saying to myself in each case, with a
sigh, "Another one gone--and on my account; this ought to bring me to
repentance; His patience will not always endure." And yet privately I
believed it would. That is, I believed it in the daytime; but not in the
night. With the going down of the sun my faith failed, and the clammy
fears gathered about my heart. It was then that I repented. Those were
awful nights, nights of despair, nights charged with the bitterness of
death. After each tragedy I recognized the warning and repented;
repented and begged; begged like a coward, begged like a dog; and not in
the interest of those poor people who had been extinguished for my sake,
but only in my own interest. It seems selfish, when I look back on it
now.

My repentances were very real, very earnest; and after each tragedy they
happened every night for a long time. But as a rule they could not stand
the daylight. They faded out and shredded away and disappeared in the
glad splendor of the sun. They were the creatures of fear and darkness,
and they could not live out of their own place. The day gave me cheer
and peace, and at night I repented again. In all my boyhood life I am
not sure that I ever tried to lead a better life in the daytime--or
wanted to. In my age I should never think of wishing to do such a thing.
But in my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I
realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the
race--never quite sane in the night. When "Injun Joe" died.[12] ... But
never mind: in another chapter I have already described what a raging
hell of repentance I passed through then. I believe that for months I
was as pure as the driven snow. After dark.

It was back in those far-distant days--1848 or '9--that Jim Wolf came to
us. He was from Shelbyville, a hamlet thirty or forty miles back in the
country, and he brought all his native sweetnesses and gentlenesses and
simplicities with him. He was approaching seventeen, a grave and slender
lad, trustful, honest, a creature to love and cling to. And he was
incredibly bashful.

It is to this kind that untoward things happen. My sister gave a
"candy-pull" on a winter's night. I was too young to be of the company,
and Jim was too diffident. I was sent up to bed early, and Jim followed
of his own motion. His room was in the new part of the house, and his
window looked out on the roof of the L annex. That roof was six inches
deep in snow, and the snow had an ice-crust upon it which was as slick
as glass. Out of the comb of the roof projected a short chimney, a
common resort for sentimental cats on moonlight nights--and this was a
moonlight night. Down at the eaves, below the chimney, a canopy of dead
vines spread away to some posts, making a cozy shelter, and after an
hour or two the rollicking crowd of young ladies and gentlemen grouped
themselves in its shade, with their saucers of liquid and piping-hot
candy disposed about them on the frozen ground to cool. There was joyous
chaffing and joking and laughter--peal upon peal of it.

About this time a couple of old disreputable tom-cats got up on the
chimney and started a heated argument about something; also about this
time I gave up trying to get to sleep, and went visiting to Jim's room.
He was awake and fuming about the cats and their intolerable yowling. I
asked him, mockingly, why he didn't climb out and drive them away. He
was nettled, and said over-boldly that for two cents he _would_.

It was a rash remark, and was probably repented of before it was fairly
out of his mouth. But it was too late--he was committed. I knew him; and
I knew he would rather break his neck than back down, if I egged him on
judiciously.

"Oh, of course you would! Who's doubting it?"

It galled him, and he burst out, with sharp irritation--

"Maybe _you_ doubt it!"

"I? Oh no, I shouldn't think of such a thing. You are always doing
wonderful things. With your mouth."

He was in a passion, now. He snatched on his yarn socks and began to
raise the window, saying in a voice unsteady with anger--

"_You_ think I dasn't--_you_ do! Think what you blame please--_I_ don't
care what you think. I'll show you!"

The window made him rage; it wouldn't stay up. I said--

"Never mind, I'll hold it."

Indeed, I would have done anything to help. I was only a boy, and was
already in a radiant heaven of anticipation. He climbed carefully out,
clung to the window-sill until his feet were safely placed, then began
to pick his perilous way on all fours along the glassy comb, a foot and
a hand on each side of it. I believe I enjoy it now as much as I did
then: yet it is a good deal over fifty years ago. The frosty breeze
flapped his short shirt about his lean legs; the crystal roof shone like
polished marble in the intense glory of the moon; the unconscious cats
sat erect upon the chimney, alertly watching each other, lashing their
tails and pouring out their hollow grievances; and slowly and
cautiously Jim crept on, flapping as he went, the gay and frolicsome
young creatures under the vine-canopy unaware, and outraging these
solemnities with their misplaced laughter. Every time Jim slipped I had
a hope; but always on he crept and disappointed it. At last he was
within reaching distance. He paused, raised himself carefully up,
measured his distance deliberately, then made a frantic grab at the
nearest cat--and missed. Of course he lost his balance. His heels flew
up, he struck on his back, and like a rocket he darted down the roof
feet first, crashed through the dead vines and landed in a sitting
posture in fourteen saucers of red-hot candy, in the midst of all that
party--and dressed as _he_ was: this lad who could not look a girl in
the face with his clothes on. There was a wild scramble and a storm of
shrieks, and Jim fled up the stairs, dripping broken crockery all the
way.

[Sidenote: (1867.)]

The incident was ended. But I was not done with it yet, though I
supposed I was. Eighteen or twenty years later I arrived in New York
from California, and by that time I had failed in all my other
undertakings and had stumbled into literature without intending it. This
was early in 1867. I was offered a large sum to write something for the
"Sunday Mercury," and I answered with the tale of "Jim Wolf and the
Cats." I also collected the money for it--twenty-five dollars. It seemed
over-pay, but I did not say anything about that, for I was not so
scrupulous then as I am now.

A year or two later "Jim Wolf and the Cats" appeared in a Tennessee
paper in a new dress--as to spelling; spelling borrowed from Artemus
Ward. The appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West,
and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of
the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work
with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out of my
memory.

A couple of years went by; then the original story--my own
version--cropped up again and went floating around in the spelling, and
with my name to it. Soon first one paper and then another fell upon me
rigorously for "stealing" Jim Wolf and the Cats from the Tennessee man.
I got a merciless beating, but I did not mind it. It's all in the game.
Besides, I had learned, a good while before that, that it is not wise to
keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large
advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of
silence.

[Sidenote: (1873.)]

[Sidenote: (1900.)]

But I was not done with Jim and the Cats yet. In 1873 I was lecturing in
London, in the Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, and was living at
the Langham Hotel, Portland place. I had no domestic household, and no
official household except George Dolby, lecture-agent, and Charles
Warren Stoddard, the California poet, now (1900) Professor of English
Literature in the Roman Catholic University, Washington. Ostensibly
Stoddard was my private secretary; in reality he was merely my
comrade--I hired him in order to have his company. As secretary there
was nothing for him to do except to scrap-book the daily reports of the
great trial of the Tichborne Claimant for perjury. But he made a
sufficient job out of that, for the reports filled six columns a day and
he usually postponed the scrap-booking until Sunday; then he had 36
columns to cut out and paste in--a proper labor for Hercules. He did his
work well, but if he had been older and feebler it would have killed him
once a week. Without doubt he does his literary lectures well, but also
without doubt he prepares them fifteen minutes before he is due on his
platform and thus gets into them a freshness and sparkle which they
might lack if they underwent the staling process of overstudy.

He was good company when he was awake. He was refined, sensitive,
charming, gentle, generous, honest himself and unsuspicious of other
people's honesty, and I think he was the purest male I have known, in
mind and speech. George Dolby was something of a contrast to him, but
the two were very friendly and sociable together, nevertheless. Dolby
was large and ruddy, full of life and strength and spirits, a tireless
and energetic talker, and always overflowing with good-nature and
bursting with jollity. It was a choice and satisfactory menagerie, this
pensive poet and this gladsome gorilla. An indelicate story was a sharp
distress to Stoddard; Dolby told him twenty-five a day. Dolby always
came home with us after the lecture, and entertained Stoddard till
midnight. Me too. After he left, I walked the floor and talked, and
Stoddard went to sleep on the sofa. I hired him for company.

Dolby had been agent for concerts, and theatres, and Charles Dickens and
all sorts of shows and "attractions" for many years; he had known the
human being in many aspects, and he didn't much believe in him. But the
poet did. The waifs and estrays found a friend in Stoddard: Dolby tried
to persuade him that he was dispensing his charities unworthily, but he
was never able to succeed.

One night a young American got access to Stoddard at the Concert Rooms
and told him a moving tale. He said he was living on the Surrey side,
and for some strange reason his remittances had failed to arrive from
home; he had no money, he was out of employment, and friendless; his
girl-wife and his new baby were actually suffering for food; for the
love of heaven could he lend him a sovereign until his remittances
should resume? Stoddard was deeply touched, and gave him a sovereign on
my account. Dolby scoffed, but Stoddard stood his ground. Each told me
his story later in the evening, and I backed Stoddard's judgment. Dolby
said we were women in disguise, and not a sane kind of women, either.

The next week the young man came again. His wife was ill with the
pleurisy, the baby had the bots, or something, I am not sure of the name
of the disease; the doctor and the drugs had eaten up the money, the
poor little family was starving. If Stoddard "in the kindness of his
heart could only spare him another sovereign," etc., etc. Stoddard was
much moved, and spared him a sovereign for me. Dolby was outraged. He
spoke up and said to the customer--

"Now, young man, you are going to the hotel with us and state your case
to the other member of the family. If you don't make him believe in you
I sha'n't honor this poet's drafts in your interest any longer, for I
don't believe in you myself."

The young man was quite willing. I found no fault in him. On the
contrary, I believed in him at once, and was solicitous to heal the
wounds inflicted by Dolby's too frank incredulity; therefore I did
everything I could think of to cheer him up and entertain him and make
him feel at home and comfortable. I spun many yarns; among others the
tale of Jim Wolf and the Cats. Learning that he had done something in a
small way in literature, I offered to try to find a market for him in
that line. His face lighted joyfully at that, and he said that if I
could only sell a small manuscript to Tom Hood's Annual for him it would
be the happiest event of his sad life and he would hold me in grateful
remembrance always. That was a most pleasant night for three of us, but
Dolby was disgusted and sarcastic.

Next week the baby died. Meantime I had spoken to Tom Hood and gained
his sympathy. The young man had sent his manuscript to him, and the very
day the child died the money for the MS. came--three guineas. The young
man came with a poor little strip of crape around his arm and thanked
me, and said that nothing could have been more timely than that money,
and that his poor little wife was grateful beyond words for the service
I had rendered. He wept, and in fact Stoddard and I wept with him, which
was but natural. Also Dolby wept. At least he wiped his eyes and wrung
out his handkerchief, and sobbed stertorously and made other exaggerated
shows of grief. Stoddard and I were ashamed of Dolby, and tried to make
the young man understand that he meant no harm, it was only his way. The
young man said sadly that he was not minding it, his grief was too deep
for other hurts; that he was only thinking of the funeral, and the heavy
expenses which--

We cut that short and told him not to trouble about it, leave it all to
us; send the bills to Mr. Dolby and--

"Yes," said Dolby, with a mock tremor in his voice, "send them to me,
and I will pay them. What, are you going? You must not go alone in your
worn and broken condition; Mr. Stoddard and I will go with you. Come,
Stoddard. We will comfort the bereaved mamma and get a lock of the
baby's hair."

It was shocking. We were ashamed of him again, and said so. But he was
not disturbed. He said--

"Oh, I know this kind, the woods are full of them. I'll make this offer:
if he will show me his family I will give him twenty pounds. Come!" The
young man said he would not remain to be insulted; and he said
good-night and took his hat. But Dolby said he would go with him, and
stay by him until he found the family. Stoddard went along to soothe the
young man and modify Dolby. They drove across the river and all over
Southwark, but did not find the family. At last the young man confessed
there wasn't any.

The thing he sold to Tom Hood's Annual was "Jim and the Cats." And he
did not put my name to it.

So that small tale was sold three times. I am selling it again, now. It
is one of the best properties I have come across.

MARK TWAIN.

(_To be Continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The colored butler.

[10] See "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

[11] Used in "Huck Finn," I think.

[12] Used in "Tom Sawyer."

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. DCXV.

MAY 17, 1907.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XVIII.

BY MARK TWAIN.

[_Dictated December 21, 1906._] I wish to insert here some pages of
Susy's Biography of me in which the biographer does not scatter,
according to her custom, but sticks pretty steadily to a single subject
until she has fought it to a finish:

_Feb. 27, '86._--Last summer while we were in Elmira an article
came out in the "Christian Union" by name "What ought he to have
done" treating of the government of children, or rather giving an
account of a fathers battle with his little baby boy, by the mother
of the child and put in the form of a question as to whether the
father disciplined the child corectly or not, different people
wrote their opinions of the fathers behavior, and told what they
thought he should have done. Mamma had long known how to disciplin
children, for in fact the bringing up of children had been one of
her specialties for many years. She had a great many theories, but
one of them was, that if a child was big enough to be nauty, it was
big enough to be whipped and here we all agreed with her. I
remember one morning when Dr. ---- came up to the farm he had a
long discussion with mamma, upon the following topic. Mamma gave
_this_ as illustrative of one important rule for punishing a child.
She said we will suppose the boy has thrown a handkerchief onto the
floor, I tell him to pick it up, he refuses. I tell him again, he
refuses. Then I say you must either pick up the handkerchief or
have a whipping. My theory is never to make a child have a whipping
and pick up the handkerchief too. I say "If you do not pick it up,
I must punish you," if he doesn't he gets the whipping, but _I_
pick up the handkerchief, if he does he gets no punishment. I tell
him to do a thing if he disobeys me he is punished for so doing,
but not forced to obey me afterwards.

When Clara and I had been very nauty or were being very nauty, the
nurse would go and call Mamma and she would appear suddenly and
look at us (she had a way of looking at us when she was displeased
as if she could see right through us) till we were ready to sink
through the floor from embarasment, and total absence of knowing
what to say. This look was usually followed with "Clara" or "Susy
what do you mean by this? do you want to come to the bath-room with
me?" Then followed the climax for Clara and I both new only too
well what going to the bath-room meant.

But mamma's first and foremost object was to make the child
understand that he is being punished for _his_ sake, and because
the mother so loves him that she cannot allow him to do wrong; also
that it is as hard for her to punish him as for him to be punished
and even harder. Mamma never allowed herself to punish us when she
was angry with us she never struck us because she was enoyed at us
and felt like striking us if we had been nauty and had enoyed her,
so that she thought she felt or would show the least bit of temper
toward us while punnishing us, she always postponed the punishment
until _she_ was no more chafed by our behavior. She never humored
herself by striking or punishing us because or while she was the
least bit enoyed with us.

Our very worst nautinesses were punished by being taken to the
bath-room and being whipped by the paper cutter. But after the
whipping was over, mamma did not allow us to leave her until we
were perfectly happy, and perfectly understood why we had been
whipped. I never remember having felt the least bit bitterly toward
mamma for punishing me. I always felt I had deserved my punishment,
and was much happier for having received it. For after mamma had
punished us and shown her displeasure, she showed no signs of
further displeasure, but acted as if we had not displeased her in
any way.

Ordinary punishments answered very well for Susy. She was a thinker, and
would reason out the purpose of them, apply the lesson, and achieve the
reform required. But it was much less easy to devise punishments that
would reform Clara. This was because she was a philosopher who was
always turning her attention to finding something good and satisfactory
and entertaining in everything that came her way; consequently it was
sometimes pretty discouraging to the troubled mother to find that after
all her pains and thought in inventing what she meant to be a severe and
reform-compelling punishment, the child had entirely missed the
severities through her native disposition to get interest and pleasure
out of them as novelties. The mother, in her anxiety to find a penalty
that would take sharp hold and do its work effectively, at last
resorted, with a sore heart, and with a reproachful conscience, to that
punishment which the incorrigible criminal in the penitentiary dreads
above all the other punitive miseries which the warden inflicts upon him
for his good--solitary confinement in the dark chamber. The grieved and
worried mother shut Clara up in a very small clothes-closet and went
away and left her there--for fifteen minutes--it was all that the
mother-heart could endure. Then she came softly back and
listened--listened for the sobs, but there weren't any; there were
muffled and inarticulate sounds, but they could not be construed into
sobs. The mother waited half an hour longer; by that time she was
suffering so intensely with sorrow and compassion for the little
prisoner that she was not able to wait any longer for the distressed
sounds which she had counted upon to inform her when there had been
punishment enough and the reform accomplished. She opened the closet to
set the prisoner free and take her back into her loving favor and
forgiveness, but the result was not the one expected. The captive had
manufactured a fairy cavern out of the closet, and friendly fairies out
of the clothes hanging from the hooks, and was having a most sinful and
unrepentant good time, and requested permission to spend the rest of the
day there!

_From Susy's Biography of Me._

But Mamma's oppinions and ideas upon the subject of bringing up
children has always been more or less of a joke in our family,
perticularly since Papa's article in the "Christian Union," and I
am sure Clara and I have related the history of our old family
paper-cutter, our punishments and privations with rather more pride
and triumph than any other sentiment, because of Mamma's way of
rearing us.

When the article "What ought he to have done?" came out Mamma read
it, and was very much interested in it. And when papa heard that
she had read it he went to work and secretly wrote his opinion of
what the father ought to have done. He told Aunt Susy, Clara and I,
about it but mamma was not to see it or hear any thing about it
till it came out. He gave it to Aunt Susy to read, and after Clara
and I had gone up to get ready for bed he brought it up for us to
read. He told what he thought the father ought to have done by
telling what mamma would have done. The article was a beautiful
tribute to mamma and every word in it true. But still in writing
about mamma he partly forgot that the article was going to be
published, I think, and expressed himself more fully than he would
do the second time he wrote it; I think the article has done and
will do a great deal of good, and I think it would have been
perfect for the family and friend's enjoyment, but a little bit too
private to have been published as it was. And Papa felt so too,
because the very next day or a few days after, he went down to New
York to see if he couldn't get it back before it was published but
it was too late, and he had to return without it. When the
Christian Union reached the farm and papa's article in it all ready
and waiting to be read to mamma papa hadn't the courage to show it
to her (for he knew she wouldn't like it at all) at first, and he
didn't but he might have let it go and never let her see it, but
finally he gave his consent to her seeing it, and told Clara and I
we could take it to her, which we did, with tardiness, and we all
stood around mamma while she read it, all wondering what she would
say and think about it.

She was too much surprised, (and pleased privately, too) to say
much at first, but as we all expected publicly, (or rather when she
remembered that this article was to be read by every one that took
the Christian Union) she was rather shocked and a little
displeased.

Clara and I had great fun the night papa gave it to us to read and
then hide, so mamma couldn't see it, for just as we were in the
midst of reading it mamma appeared, papa following anxiously and
asked why we were not in bed? then a scuffle ensued for we told her
it was a secret and tried to hide it; but she chased us wherever we
went, till she thought it was time for us to go to bed, then she
surendered and left us to tuck it under Clara's matress.

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