Chapters from My Autobiography

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A little while after the article was published letters began to
come in to papa crittisizing it, there were some very pleasant ones
but a few very disagreable. One of these, the very worst, mamma got
hold of and read, to papa's great regret, it was full of the most
disagreble things, and so very enoying to papa that he for a time
felt he must do something to show the author of it his great
displeasure at being so insulted. But he finally decided not to,
because he felt the man had some cause for feeling enoyed at, for
papa had spoken of him, (he was the baby's father) rather
slightingly in his Christian Union Article.

After all this, papa and mamma both wished I think they might never
hear or be spoken to on the subject of the Christian Union article,
and whenever any has spoken to me and told me "How much they did
enjoy my father's article in the Christian Union" I almost laughed
in their faces when I remembered what a great variety of oppinions
had been expressed upon the subject of the Christian Union article
of papa's.

The article was written in July or August and just the other day
papa received quite a bright letter from a gentleman who has read
the C. U. article and gave his opinion of it in these words.

It is missing. She probably put the letter between the leaves of the
Biography and it got lost out. She threw away the hostile letters, but
tried to keep the pleasantest one for her book; surely there has been no
kindlier biographer than this one. Yet to a quite creditable degree she
is loyal to the responsibilities of her position as historian--not
eulogist--and honorably gives me a quiet prod now and then. But how
many, many, many she has withheld that I deserved! I could prize them
now; there would be no acid in her words, and it is loss to me that she
did not set them all down. Oh, Susy, you sweet little biographer, you
break my old heart with your gentle charities!

I think a great deal of her work. Her canvases are on their easels, and
her brush flies about in a care-free and random way, delivering a dash
here, a dash there and another yonder, and one might suppose that there
would be no definite result; on the contrary I think that an intelligent
reader of her little book must find that by the time he has finished it
he has somehow accumulated a pretty clear and nicely shaded idea of the
several members of this family--including Susy herself--and that the
random dashes on the canvases have developed into portraits. I feel that
my own portrait, with some of the defects fined down and others left
out, is here; and I am sure that any who knew the mother will recognize
her without difficulty, and will say that the lines are drawn with a
just judgment and a sure hand. Little creature though Susy was, the
penetration which was born in her finds its way to the surface more than
once in these pages.

Before Susy began the Biography she let fall a remark now and then
concerning my character which showed that she had it under observation.
In the Record which we kept of the children's sayings there is an
instance of this. She was twelve years old at the time. We had
established a rule that each member of the family must bring a fact to
breakfast--a fact drawn from a book or from any other source; any fact
would answer. Susy's first contribution was in substance as follows. Two
great exiles and former opponents in war met in Ephesus--Scipio and
Hannibal. Scipio asked Hannibal to name the greatest general the world
had produced.

"Alexander"--and he explained why.

"And the next greatest?"

"Pyrrhus"--and he explained why.

"But where do you place yourself, then?"

"If I had conquered you I would place myself before the others."

Susy's grave comment was--

"That _attracted_ me, it was just like papa--he is so frank about his
books."

So frank in admiring them, she meant.

[_Thursday, March 28, 1907._] Some months ago I commented upon a chapter
of Susy's Biography wherein she very elaborately discussed an article
about the training and disciplining of children, which I had published
in the "Christian Union" (this was twenty-one years ago), an article
which was full of worshipful praises of Mrs. Clemens as a mother, and
which little Clara, and Susy, and I had been hiding from this lovely and
admirable mother because we knew she would disapprove of public and
printed praises of herself. At the time that I was dictating these
comments, several months ago, I was trying to call back to my memory
some of the details of that article, but I was not able to do it, and I
wished I had a copy of the article so that I could see what there was
about it which gave it such large interest for Susy.

Yesterday afternoon I elected to walk home from the luncheon at the St.
Regis, which is in 56th Street and Fifth Avenue, for it was a fine
spring day and I hadn't had a walk for a year or two, and felt the need
of exercise. As I walked along down Fifth Avenue the desire to see that
"Christian Union" article came into my head again. I had just reached
the corner of 42nd Street then, and there was the usual jam of wagons,
carriages, and automobiles there. I stopped to let it thin out before
trying to cross the street, but a stranger, who didn't require as much
room as I do, came racing by and darted into a crack among the vehicles
and made the crossing. But on his way past me he thrust a couple of
ancient newspaper clippings into my hand, and said,

"There, you don't know me, but I have saved them in my scrap-book for
twenty years, and it occurred to me this morning that perhaps you would
like to see them, so I was carrying them down-town to mail them, I not
expecting to run across you in this accidental way, of course; but I
will give them into your own hands now. Good-by!"--and he disappeared
among the wagons.

Those scraps which he had put into my hand were ancient newspaper copies
of that "Christian Union" article! It is a handsome instance of mental
telegraphy--or if it isn't that, it is a handsome case of coincidence.

_From the Biography._

_March 14th, '86._--Mr. Laurence Barrette and Mr. and Mrs. Hutton
were here a little while ago, and we had a very interesting visit
from them. Papa said Mr. Barette never had acted so well before
when he had seen him, as he did the first night he was staying with
us. And Mrs. ---- said she never had seen an actor on the stage,
whom she more wanted to speak with.

Papa has been very much interested of late, in the "Mind Cure"
theory. And in fact so have we all. A young lady in town has worked
wonders by using the "Mind Cure" upon people; she is constantly
busy now curing peoples deseases in this way--and curing her own
even, which to me seems the most remarkable of all.

A little while past, papa was delighted with the knowledge of what
he thought the best way of curing a cold, which was by starving it.
This starving did work beautifully, and freed him from a great many
severe colds. Now he says it wasn't the starving that helped his
colds, but the trust in the starving, the mind cure connected with
the starving.

I shouldn't wonder if we finally became firm believers in Mind
Cure. The next time papa has a cold, I haven't a doubt, he will
send for Miss H---- the young lady who is doctoring in the "Mind
Cure" theory, to cure him of it.

Mamma was over at Mrs. George Warners to lunch the other day, and
Miss H---- was there too. Mamma asked if anything as natural as
near sightedness could be cured she said oh yes just as well as
other deseases.

When mamma came home, she took me into her room, and told me that
perhaps my near-sightedness could be cured by the "Mind Cure" and
that she was going to have me try the treatment any way, there
could be no harm in it, and there might be great good. If her plan
succeeds there certainly will be a great deal in "Mind Cure" to my
oppinion, for I am very near sighted and so is mamma, and I never
expected there could be any more cure for it than for blindness,
but now I dont know but what theres a cure for _that_.

It was a disappointment; her near-sightedness remained with her to the
end. She was born with it, no doubt; yet, strangely enough, she must
have been four years old, and possibly five, before we knew of its
existence. It is not easy to understand how that could have happened. I
discovered the defect by accident. I was half-way up the hall stairs one
day at home, and was leading her by the hand, when I glanced back
through the open door of the dining-room and saw what I thought she
would recognise as a pretty picture. It was "Stray Kit," the slender,
the graceful, the sociable, the beautiful, the incomparable, the cat of
cats, the tortoise-shell, curled up as round as a wheel and sound asleep
on the fire-red cover of the dining-table, with a brilliant stream of
sunlight falling across her. I exclaimed about it, but Susy said she
could see nothing there, neither cat nor table-cloth. The distance was
so slight--not more than twenty feet, perhaps--that if it had been any
other child I should not have credited the statement.

_From the Biography._

_March 14th, '86._--Clara sprained her ankle, a little while ago,
by running into a tree, when coasting, and while she was unable to
walk with it she played solotaire with cards a great deal. While
Clara was sick and papa saw her play solotaire so much, he got very
much interested in the game, and finally began to play it himself a
little, then Jean took it up, and at last _mamma_, even played it
ocasionally; Jean's and papa's love for it rapidly increased, and
now Jean brings the cards every night to the table and papa and
mamma help her play, and before dinner is at an end, papa has
gotten a separate pack of cards, and is playing alone, with great
interest. Mamma and Clara next are made subject to the contagious
solatair, and there are four solotaireans at the table; while you
hear nothing but "Fill up the place" etc. It is dreadful! after
supper Clara goes into the library, and gets a little red mahogany
table, and placing it under the gas fixture seats herself and
begins to play again, then papa follows with another table of the
same discription, and they play solatair till bedtime.

We have just had our Prince and Pauper pictures taken; two groups
and some little single ones. The groups (the Interview and Lady
Jane Grey scene) were pretty good, the lady Jane scene was perfect,
just as pretty as it could be, the Interview was not so good; and
two of the little single pictures were very good indeed, but one
was very bad. Yet on the whole we think they were a success.

Papa has done a great deal in his life I think, that is good, and
very remarkable, but I think if he had had the advantages with
which he could have developed the gifts which he has made no use of
in writing his books, or in any other way for other peoples
pleasure and benefit outside of his own family and intimate
friends, he could have done _more_ than he has and a great deal
more even. He is known to the public as a humorist, but he has much
more in him that is earnest than that is humorous. He has a keen
sense of the ludicrous, notices funny stories and incidents knows
how to tell them, to improve upon them, and does not forget them.
He has been through a great many of the funny adventures related in
"Tom Sawyer" and in "Huckleberry Finn," _himself_ and he lived among
just such boys, and in just such villages all the days of his early
life. His "Prince and Pauper" is his most orriginal, and best
production; it shows the most of any of his books what kind of
pictures are in his mind, usually. Not that the pictures of England
in the 16th Century and the adventures of a little prince and
pauper are the kind of things he mainly thinks about; but that
_that_ book, and those pictures represent the train of thought and
imagination he would be likely to be thinking of to-day, to-morrow,
or next day, more nearly than those given in "Tom Sawyer" or
"Huckleberry Finn."[13]

Papa can make exceedingly bright jokes, and he enjoys funny things,
and when he is with people he jokes and laughs a great deal, but
still he is more interested in earnest books and earnest subjects
to talk upon, than in humorous ones.[14]

When we are all alone at home, nine times out of ten, he talks
about some very earnest subjects, (with an ocasional joke thrown
in) and he a good deal more often talks upon such subjects than
upon the other kind.

He is as much of a Pholosopher as anything I think. I think he
could have done a great deal in this direction if he had studied
while young, for he seems to enjoy reasoning out things, no matter
what; in a great many such directions he has greater ability than
in the gifts which have made him famous.

Thus at fourteen she had made up her mind about me, and in no timorous
or uncertain terms had set down her reasons for her opinion. Fifteen
years were to pass before any other critic--except Mr. Howells, I
think--was to reutter that daring opinion and print it. Right or wrong,
it was a brave position for that little analyser to take. She never
withdrew it afterward, nor modified it. She has spoken of herself as
lacking physical courage, and has evinced her admiration of Clara's; but
she had moral courage, which is the rarest of human qualities, and she
kept it functionable by exercising it. I think that in questions of
morals and politics she was usually on my side; but when she was not
she had her reasons and maintained her ground. Two years after she
passed out of my life I wrote a Philosophy. Of the three persons who
have seen the manuscript only one understood it, and all three condemned
it. If she could have read it, she also would have condemned it,
possibly,--probably, in fact--but she would have understood it. It would
have had no difficulties for her on that score; also she would have
found a tireless pleasure in analyzing and discussing its problems.

MARK TWAIN.

(_To be Continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[13] It is so yet--M. T.

[14] She has said it well and correctly. Humor is a subject which has
never had much interest for me. This is why I have never examined it,
nor written about it nor used it as a topic for a speech. A hundred
times it has been offered me as a topic in these past forty years, but
in no case has it attracted me.--M. T.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. DCXVI.

JUNE 7, 1907.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XIX.

BY MARK TWAIN.

_From Susy's Biography of Me._

_March 23, '86._--The other day was my birthday, and I had a little
birthday party in the evening and papa acted some very funny
charades with Mr. Gherhardt, Mr. Jesse Grant (who had come up from
New York and was spending the evening with us) and Mr. Frank
Warner. One of them was "on his knees" honys-sneeze. There were a
good many other funny ones, all of which I dont remember. Mr. Grant
was very pleasant, and began playing the charades in the most
delightful way.

Susy's spelling has defeated me, this time. I cannot make out what
"honys-sneeze" stands for. Impromptu charades were almost a nightly
pastime of ours, from the children's earliest days--they played in them
with me when they were only five or six years old. As they increased in
years and practice their love for the sport almost amounted to a
passion, and they acted their parts with a steadily increasing ability.
At first they required much drilling; but later they were generally
ready as soon as the parts were assigned, and they acted them according
to their own devices. Their stage facility and absence of constraint and
self-consciousness in the "Prince and Pauper" was a result of their
charading practice.

At ten and twelve Susy wrote plays, and she and Daisy Warner and Clara
played them in the library or up-stairs in the school-room, with only
themselves and the servants for audience. They were of a tragic and
tremendous sort, and were performed with great energy and earnestness.
They were dramatized (freely) from English history, and in them Mary
Queen of Scots and Elizabeth had few holidays. The clothes were borrowed
from the mother's wardrobe and the gowns were longer than necessary, but
that was not regarded as a defect. In one of these plays Jean (three
years old, perhaps) was Sir Francis Bacon. She was not dressed for the
part, and did not have to say anything, but sat silent and decorous at a
tiny table and was kept busy signing death-warrants. It was a really
important office, for few entered those plays and got out of them alive.

_March 26._--Mamma and Papa have been in New York for two or three
days, and Miss Corey has been staying with us. They are coming home
to-day at two o'clock.

Papa has just begun to play chess, and he is very fond of it, so he
has engaged to play with Mrs. Charles Warner every morning from 10
to 12, he came down to supper last night, full of this pleasant
prospect, but evidently with something on his mind. Finally he said
to mamma in an appologetical tone, Susy Warner and I have a plan.

"Well" mamma said "what now, I wonder?"

Papa said that Susy Warner and he were going to name the chess
after some of the old bible heroes, and then play chess on Sunday.

_April 18, '86._--Mamma and papa Clara and Daisy have gone to New
York to see the "Mikado." They are coming home to-night at half
past seven.

Last winter when Mr. Cable was lecturing with papa, he wrote this
letter to him just before he came to visit us.

DEAR UNCLE,--That's one nice thing about me, I never bother any
one, to offer me a good thing twice. You dont ask me to stay over
Sunday, but then you dont ask me to leave Saturday night, and
knowing the nobility of your nature as I do--thank you, I'll stay
till Monday morning.[15]

Your's and the dear familie's
GEORGE W. CABLE.

[_December 22, 1906._] It seems a prodigious while ago! Two or three
nights ago I dined at a friend's house with a score of other men, and at
my side was Cable--actually almost an old man, really almost an old man,
that once so young chap! 62 years old, frost on his head, seven
grandchildren in stock, and a brand-new wife to re-begin life with!

[_Dictated Nov. 19, 1906._]

Ever since papa and mamma were married, papa has written his books
and then taken them to mamma in manuscript and she has expergated
them. Papa read "Huckleberry Finn" to us in manuscript just before
it came out, and then he would leave parts of it with mamma to
expergate, while he went off up to the study to work, and sometimes
Clara and I would be sitting with mamma while she was looking the
manuscript over, and I remember so well, with what pangs of regret
we used to see her turn down the leaves of the pages, which meant
that some delightfully dreadful part must be scratched out. And I
remember one part pertickularly which was perfectly fascinating it
was dreadful, that Clara and I used to delight in, and oh with what
dispair we saw mamma turn down the leaf on which it was written, we
thought the book would be almost ruined without it. But we
gradually came to feel as mamma did.

It would be a pity to replace the vivacity and quaintness and felicity
of Susy's innocent free spelling with the dull and petrified
uniformities of the spelling-book. Nearly all the grimness it taken out
of the "expergating" of my books by the subtle mollification
accidentally infused into the word by Susy's modification of the
spelling of it.

I remember the special case mentioned by Susy, and can see the group
yet--two-thirds of it pleading for the life of the culprit sentence that
was so fascinatingly dreadful and the other third of it patiently
explaining why the court could not grant the prayer of the pleaders; but
I do not remember what the condemned phrase was. It had much company,
and they all went to the gallows; but it is possible that that specially
dreadful one which gave those little people so much delight was
cunningly devised and put into the book for just that function, and not
with any hope or expectation that it would get by the "exper-gator"
alive. It is possible, for I had that custom.

Susy's quaint and effective spelling falls quite opportunely into
to-day's atmosphere, which is heavy with the rumblings and grumblings
and mutterings of the Simplified Spelling Reform. Andrew Carnegie
started this storm, a couple of years ago, by moving a simplifying of
English orthography, and establishing a fund for the prosecution and
maintenance of the crusade. He began gently. He addressed a circular to
some hundreds of his friends, asking them to simplify the spelling of a
dozen of our badly spelt words--I think they were only words which end
with the superfluous _ugh_. He asked that these friends use the
suggested spellings in their private correspondence.

By this, one perceives that the beginning was sufficiently quiet and
unaggressive.

Next stage: a small committee was appointed, with Brander Matthews for
managing director and spokesman. It issued a list of three hundred
words, of average silliness as to spelling, and proposed new and sane
spellings for these words. The President of the United States,
unsolicited, adopted these simplified three hundred officially, and
ordered that they be used in the official documents of the Government.
It was now remarked, by all the educated and the thoughtful except the
clergy that Sheol was to pay. This was most justly and comprehensively
descriptive. The indignant British lion rose, with a roar that was heard
across the Atlantic, and stood there on his little isle, gazing,
red-eyed, out over the glooming seas, snow-flecked with driving
spindrift, and lathing his tail--a most scary spectacle to see.

The lion was outraged because we, a nation of children, without any
grown-up people among us, with no property in the language, but using it
merely by courtesy of its owner the English nation, were trying to
defile the sacredness of it by removing from it peculiarities which had
been its ornament and which had made it holy and beautiful for ages.

In truth there is a certain sardonic propriety in preserving our
orthography, since ours is a mongrel language which started with a
child's vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two
hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of
the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smouched
from every unwatched language under the sun, the spelling of each
individual word of the lot locating the source of the theft and
preserving the memory of the revered crime.

Why is it that I have intruded into this turmoil and manifested a desire
to get our orthography purged of its asininities? Indeed I do not know
why I should manifest any interest in the matter, for at bottom I
disrespect our orthography most heartily, and as heartily disrespect
everything that has been said by anybody in defence of it. Nothing
professing to be a defence of our ludicrous spellings has had any basis,
so far as my observation goes, except sentimentality. In these
"arguments" the term venerable is used instead of mouldy, and hallowed
instead of devilish; whereas there is nothing properly venerable or
antique about a language which is not yet four hundred years old, and
about a jumble of imbecile spellings which were grotesque in the
beginning, and which grow more and more grotesque with the flight of the
years.

[_Dictated Monday, November 30, 1906._]

Jean and Papa were walking out past the barn the other day when
Jean saw some little newly born baby ducks, she exclaimed as she
perceived them "I dont see why God gives us so much ducks when
Patrick kills them so."

Susy is mistaken as to the origin of the ducks. They were not a gift, I
bought them. I am not finding fault with her, for that would be most
unfair. She is remarkably accurate in her statements as a historian, as
a rule, and it would not be just to make much of this small slip of
hers; besides I think it was a quite natural slip, for by heredity and
habit ours was a religious household, and it was a common thing with us
whenever anybody did a handsome thing, to give the credit of it to
Providence, without examining into the matter. This may be called
automatic religion--in fact that is what it is; it is so used to its
work that it can do it without your help or even your privity; out of
all the facts and statistics that may be placed before it, it will
always get the one result, since it has never been taught to seek any
other. It is thus the unreflecting cause of much injustice. As we have
seen, it betrayed Susy into an injustice toward me. It had to be
automatic, for she would have been far from doing me an injustice when
in her right mind. It was a dear little biographer, and she meant me no
harm, and I am not censuring her now, but am only desirous of correcting
in advance an erroneous impression which her words would be sure to
convey to a reader's mind. No elaboration of this matter is necessary;
it is sufficient to say _I_ provided the ducks.

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