Chapters from My Autobiography

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"I am substantially an obscure person, but I have at least one
distinction to my credit of such colossal dimensions that it entitles me
to immortality--to wit: I refused a book of yours, and for this I stand
without competitor as the prize ass of the nineteenth century."

It was a most handsome apology, and I told him so, and said it was a
long-delayed revenge but was sweeter to me than any other that could be
devised; that during the lapsed twenty-one years I had in fancy taken
his life several times every year, and always in new and increasingly
cruel and inhuman ways, but that now I was pacified, appeased, happy,
even jubilant; and that thenceforth I should hold him my true and valued
friend and never kill him again.

I reported my adventure to Webb, and he bravely said that not all the
Carletons in the universe should defeat that book; he would publish it
himself on a ten per cent. royalty. And so he did. He brought it out in
blue and gold, and made a very pretty little book of it, I think he
named it "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other
Sketches," price $1.25. He made the plates and printed and bound the
book through a job-printing house, and published it through the American
News Company.

In June I sailed in the _Quaker City_ Excursion. I returned in November,
and in Washington found a letter from Elisha Bliss, of the American
Publishing Company of Hartford, offering me five per cent. royalty on a
book which should recount the adventures of the Excursion. In lieu of
the royalty, I was offered the alternative of ten thousand dollars cash
upon delivery of the manuscript. I consulted A. D. Richardson and he
said "take the royalty." I followed his advice and closed with Bliss. By
my contract I was to deliver the manuscript in July of 1868. I wrote the
book in San Francisco and delivered the manuscript within contract time.
Bliss provided a multitude of illustrations for the book, and then
stopped work on it. The contract date for the issue went by, and there
was no explanation of this. Time drifted along and still there was no
explanation. I was lecturing all over the country; and about thirty
times a day, on an average, I was trying to answer this conundrum:

"When is your book coming out?"

I got tired of inventing new answers to that question, and by and by I
got horribly tired of the question itself. Whoever asked it became my
enemy at once, and I was usually almost eager to make that appear.

As soon as I was free of the lecture-field I hastened to Hartford to
make inquiries. Bliss said that the fault was not his; that he wanted to
publish the book but the directors of his Company were staid old fossils
and were afraid of it. They had examined the book, and the majority of
them were of the opinion that there were places in it of a humorous
character. Bliss said the house had never published a book that had a
suspicion like that attaching to it, and that the directors were afraid
that a departure of this kind would seriously injure the house's
reputation; that he was tied hand and foot, and was not permitted to
carry out his contract. One of the directors, a Mr. Drake--at least he
was the remains of what had once been a Mr. Drake--invited me to take a
ride with him in his buggy, and I went along. He was a pathetic old
relic, and his ways and his talk were also pathetic. He had a delicate
purpose in view and it took him some time to hearten himself
sufficiently to carry it out, but at last he accomplished it. He
explained the house's difficulty and distress, as Bliss had already
explained it. Then he frankly threw himself and the house upon my mercy
and begged me to take away "The Innocents Abroad" and release the
concern from the contract. I said I wouldn't--and so ended the interview
and the buggy excursion. Then I warned Bliss that he must get to work or
I should make trouble. He acted upon the warning, and set up the book
and I read the proofs. Then there was another long wait and no
explanation. At last toward the end of July (1869, I think), I lost
patience and telegraphed Bliss that if the book was not on sale in
twenty-four hours I should bring suit for damages.

That ended the trouble. Half a dozen copies were bound and placed on
sale within the required time. Then the canvassing began, and went
briskly forward. In nine months the book took the publishing house out
of debt, advanced its stock from twenty-five to two hundred, and left
seventy thousand dollars profit to the good. It was Bliss that told me
this--but if it was true, it was the first time that he had told the
truth in sixty-five years. He was born in 1804.

III.

... This was in 1849. I was fourteen years old, then. We were still
living in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, in the
new "frame" house built by my father five years before. That is, some of
us lived in the new part, the rest in the old part back of it--the "L."
In the autumn my sister gave a party, and invited all the marriageable
young people of the village. I was too young for this society, and was
too bashful to mingle with young ladies, anyway, therefore I was not
invited--at least not for the whole evening. Ten minutes of it was to be
my whole share. I was to do the part of a bear in a small fairy play. I
was to be disguised all over in a close-fitting brown hairy stuff proper
for a bear. About half past ten I was told to go to my room and put on
this disguise, and be ready in half an hour. I started, but changed my
mind; for I wanted to practise a little, and that room was very small. I
crossed over to the large unoccupied house on the corner of Main and
Hill streets,[4] unaware that a dozen of the young people were also
going there to dress for their parts. I took the little black slave boy,
Sandy, with me, and we selected a roomy and empty chamber on the second
floor. We entered it talking, and this gave a couple of half-dressed
young ladies an opportunity to take refuge behind a screen undiscovered.
Their gowns and things were hanging on hooks behind the door, but I did
not see them; it was Sandy that shut the door, but all his heart was in
the theatricals, and he was as unlikely to notice them as I was myself.

That was a rickety screen, with many holes in it, but as I did not know
there were girls behind it, I was not disturbed by that detail. If I had
known, I could not have undressed in the flood of cruel moonlight that
was pouring in at the curtainless windows; I should have died of shame.
Untroubled by apprehensions, I stripped to the skin and began my
practice. I was full of ambition; I was determined to make a hit; I was
burning to establish a reputation as a bear and get further engagements;
so I threw myself into my work with an abandon that promised great
things. I capered back and forth from one end of the room to the other
on all fours, Sandy applauding with enthusiasm; I walked upright and
growled and snapped and snarled; I stood on my head, I flung
handsprings, I danced a lubberly dance with my paws bent and my
imaginary snout sniffing from side to side; I did everything a bear
could do, and many things which no bear could ever do and no bear with
any dignity would want to do, anyway; and of course I never suspected
that I was making a spectacle of myself to any one but Sandy. At last,
standing on my head, I paused in that attitude to take a minute's rest.
There was a moment's silence, then Sandy spoke up with excited interest
and said--

"Marse Sam, has you ever seen a smoked herring?"

"No. What is that?"

"It's a fish."

"Well, what of it? Anything peculiar about it?"

"Yes, suh, you bet you dey is. _Dey eats 'em guts and all!_"

There was a smothered burst of feminine snickers from behind the screen!
All the strength went out of me and I toppled forward like an undermined
tower and brought the screen down with my weight, burying the young
ladies under it. In their fright they discharged a couple of piercing
screams--and possibly others, but I did not wait to count. I snatched my
clothes and fled to the dark hall below, Sandy following. I was dressed
in half a minute, and out the back way. I swore Sandy to eternal
silence, then we went away and hid until the party was over. The
ambition was all out of me. I could not have faced that giddy company
after my adventure, for there would be two performers there who knew my
secret, and would be privately laughing at me all the time. I was
searched for but not found, and the bear had to be played by a young
gentleman in his civilized clothes. The house was still and everybody
asleep when I finally ventured home. I was very heavy-hearted, and full
of a sense of disgrace. Pinned to my pillow I found a slip of paper
which bore a line that did not lighten my heart, but only made my face
burn. It was written in a laboriously disguised hand, and these were its
mocking terms:

"You probably couldn't have played _bear_, but you played _bare_ very
well--oh, very very well!"

We think boys are rude, unsensitive animals, but it is not so in all
cases. Each boy has one or two sensitive spots, and if you can find out
where they are located you have only to touch them and you can scorch
him as with fire. I suffered miserably over that episode. I expected
that the facts would be all over the village in the morning, but it was
not so. The secret remained confined to the two girls and Sandy and me.
That was some appeasement of my pain, but it was far from
sufficient--the main trouble remained: I was under four mocking eyes,
and it might as well have been a thousand, for I suspected all girls'
eyes of being the ones I so dreaded. During several weeks I could not
look any young lady in the face; I dropped my eyes in confusion when any
one of them smiled upon me and gave me greeting; and I said to myself,
"_That is one of them_," and got quickly away. Of course I was meeting
the right girls everywhere, but if they ever let slip any betraying sign
I was not bright enough to catch it. When I left Hannibal four years
later, the secret was still a secret; I had never guessed those girls
out, and was no longer expecting to do it. Nor wanting to, either.

One of the dearest and prettiest girls in the village at the time of my
mishap was one whom I will call Mary Wilson, because that was not her
name. She was twenty years old; she was dainty and sweet, peach-bloomy
and exquisite, gracious and lovely in character, and I stood in awe of
her, for she seemed to me to be made out of angel-clay and rightfully
unapproachable by an unholy ordinary kind of a boy like me. I probably
never suspected her. But--

The scene changes. To Calcutta--forty-seven years later. It was in 1896.
I arrived there on my lecturing trip. As I entered the hotel a divine
vision passed out of it, clothed in the glory of the Indian
sunshine--the Mary Wilson of my long-vanished boyhood! It was a
startling thing. Before I could recover from the bewildering shock and
speak to her she was gone. I thought maybe I had seen an apparition, but
it was not so, she was flesh. She was the granddaughter of the other
Mary, the original Mary. That Mary, now a widow, was up-stairs, and
presently sent for me. She was old and gray-haired, but she looked young
and was very handsome. We sat down and talked. We steeped our thirsty
souls in the reviving wine of the past, the beautiful past, the dear and
lamented past; we uttered the names that had been silent upon our lips
for fifty years, and it was as if they were made of music; with reverent
hands we unburied our dead, the mates of our youth, and caressed them
with our speech; we searched the dusty chambers of our memories and
dragged forth incident after incident, episode after episode, folly
after folly, and laughed such good laughs over them, with the tears
running down; and finally Mary said suddenly, and without any leading
up--

"Tell me! What is the special peculiarity of smoked herrings?"

It seemed a strange question at such a hallowed time as this. And so
inconsequential, too. I was a little shocked. And yet I was aware of a
stir of some kind away back in the deeps of my memory somewhere. It set
me to musing--thinking--searching. Smoked herrings. Smoked herrings. The
peculiarity of smo.... I glanced up. Her face was grave, but there was a
dim and shadowy twinkle in her eye which--All of a sudden I knew! and
far away down in the hoary past I heard a remembered voice murmur, "Dey
eats 'em guts and all!"

"At--last! I've found one of you, anyway! Who was the other girl?"

But she drew the line there. She wouldn't tell me.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] That house still stands.

IV.

... But it was on a bench in Washington Square that I saw the most of
Louis Stevenson. It was an outing that lasted an hour or more, and was
very pleasant and sociable. I had come with him from his house, where I
had been paying my respects to his family. His business in the Square
was to absorb the sunshine. He was most scantily furnished with flesh,
his clothes seemed to fall into hollows as if there might be nothing
inside but the frame for a sculptor's statue. His long face and lank
hair and dark complexion and musing and melancholy expression seemed to
fit these details justly and harmoniously, and the altogether of it
seemed especially planned to gather the rays of your observation and
focalize them upon Stevenson's special distinction and commanding
feature, his splendid eyes. They burned with a smouldering rich fire
under the penthouse of his brows, and they made him beautiful.

* * * * *

I said I thought he was right about the others, but mistaken as to Bret
Harte; in substance I said that Harte was good company and a thin but
pleasant talker; that he was always bright, but never brilliant; that in
this matter he must not be classed with Thomas Bailey Aldrich, nor must
any other man, ancient or modern; that Aldrich was always witty, always
brilliant, if there was anybody present capable of striking his flint at
the right angle; that Aldrich was as sure and prompt and unfailing as
the red-hot iron on the blacksmith's anvil--you had only to hit it
competently to make it deliver an explosion of sparks. I added--

"Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and
humorous sayings. None has equalled him, certainly none has surpassed
him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of
his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn't help it, he is a
fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you
know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in him;
when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes, he was always brilliant, he will
always be brilliant; he will be brilliant in hell--you will see."

Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, "I hope not."

"Well, you will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a
transfigured Adonis backed against a pink sunset."

* * * * *

There on that bench we struck out a new phrase--one or the other of us,
I don't remember which--"submerged renown." Variations were discussed:
"submerged fame," "submerged reputation," and so on, and a choice was
made; "submerged renown" was elected, I believe. This important matter
rose out of an incident which had been happening to Stevenson in Albany.
While in a book-shop or book-stall there he had noticed a long rank of
small books, cheaply but neatly gotten up, and bearing such titles as
"Davis's Selected Speeches," "Davis's Selected Poetry," Davis's this and
Davis's that and Davis's the other thing; compilations, every one of
them, each with a brief, compact, intelligent and useful introductory
chapter by this same Davis, whose first name I have forgotten. Stevenson
had begun the matter with this question:

"Can you name the American author whose fame and acceptance stretch
widest in the States?"

I thought I could, but it did not seem to me that it would be modest to
speak out, in the circumstances. So I diffidently said nothing.
Stevenson noticed, and said--

"Save your delicacy for another time--you are not the one. For a
shilling you can't name the American author of widest note and
popularity in the States. But I can."

Then he went on and told about that Albany incident. He had inquired of
the shopman--

"Who is this Davis?"

The answer was--

"An author whose books have to have freight-trains to carry them, not
baskets. Apparently you have not heard of him?"

Stevenson said no, this was the first time. The man said--

"Nobody has heard of Davis: you may ask all around and you will see. You
never see his name mentioned in print, not even in advertisement; these
things are of no use to Davis, not any more than they are to the wind
and the sea. You never see one of Davis's books floating on top of the
United States, but put on your diving armor and get yourself lowered
away down and down and down till you strike the dense region, the
sunless region of eternal drudgery and starvation wages--there you'll
find them by the million. The man that gets that market, his fortune is
made, his bread and butter are safe, for those people will never go back
on him. An author may have a reputation which is confined to the
surface, and lose it and become pitied, then despised, then forgotten,
entirely forgotten--the frequent steps in a surface reputation. At
surface reputation, however great, is always mortal, and always killable
if you go at it right--with pins and needles, and quiet slow poison, not
with the club and tomahawk. But it is a different matter with the
submerged reputation--down in the deep water; once a favorite there,
always a favorite; once beloved, always beloved; once respected, always
respected, honored, and believed in. For, what the reviewer says never
finds its way down into those placid deeps; nor the newspaper sneers,
nor any breath of the winds of slander blowing above. Down there they
never hear of these things. Their idol may be painted clay, up then at
the surface, and fade and waste and crumble and blow away, there being
much weather there; but down below he is gold and adamant and
indestructible."

V.

This is from this morning's paper:

MARK TWAIN LETTER SOLD.

_Written to Thomas Nast, it Proposed a Joint Tour._

A Mark Twain autograph letter brought $43 yesterday at the auction
by the Merwin-Clayton Company of the library and correspondence of
the late Thomas Nast, cartoonist. The letter is nine pages
note-paper, is dated Hartford, Nov. 12, 1877, and it addressed to
Nast. It reads in part as follows:

Hartford, _Nov. 12_.

MY DEAR NAST: I did not think I should ever stand on a platform
again until the time was come for me to say I die innocent. But the
same old offers keep arriving that have arriven every year, and
been every year declined--$500 for Louisville, $500 for St. Louis,
$1,000 gold for two nights in Toronto, half gross proceeds for New
York, Boston, Brooklyn, &c. I have declined them all just as usual,
though sorely tempted as usual.

Now, I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but
because (1) travelling alone is so heart-breakingly dreary, and (2)
shouldering the whole show is such cheer-killing responsibility.

Therefore I now propose to you what you proposed to me in November,
1867--ten years ago, (when I was unknown,) viz.; That you should
stand on the platform and make pictures, and I stand by you and
blackguard the audience. I should enormously enjoy meandering
around (to big towns--don't want to go to little ones) with you for
company.

The letter includes a schedule of cities and the number of
appearances planned for each.

This is as it should be. This is worthy of all praise. I say it myself
lest other competent persons should forget to do it. It appears that
four of my ancient letters were sold at auction, three of them at
twenty-seven dollars, twenty-eight dollars, and twenty-nine dollars
respectively, and the one above mentioned at forty-three dollars. There
is one very gratifying circumstance about this, to wit: that my
literature has more than held its own as regards money value through
this stretch of thirty-six years. I judge that the forty-three-dollar
letter must have gone at about ten cents a word, whereas if I had
written it to-day its market rate would be thirty cents--so I have
increased in value two or three hundred per cent. I note another
gratifying circumstance--that a letter of General Grant's sold at
something short of eighteen dollars. I can't rise to General Grant's
lofty place in the estimation of this nation, but it is a deep happiness
to me to know that when it comes to epistolary literature he can't sit
in the front seat along with me.

This reminds me--nine years ago, when we were living in Tedworth Square,
London, a report was cabled to the American journals that I was dying. I
was not the one. It was another Clemens, a cousin of mine,--Dr. J. Ross
Clemens, now of St. Louis--who was due to die but presently escaped, by
some chicanery or other characteristic of the tribe of Clemens. The
London representatives of the American papers began to flock in, with
American cables in their hands, to inquire into my condition. There was
nothing the matter with me, and each in his turn was astonished, and
disappointed, to find me reading and smoking in my study and worth next
to nothing as a text for transatlantic news. One of these men was a
gentle and kindly and grave and sympathetic Irishman, who hid his sorrow
the best he could, and tried to look glad, and told me that his paper,
the _Evening Sun_, had cabled him that it was reported in New York that
I was dead. What should he cable in reply? I said--

"Say the report is greatly exaggerated."

He never smiled, but went solemnly away and sent the cable in those
words. The remark hit the world pleasantly, and to this day it keeps
turning up, now and then, in the newspapers when people have occasion to
discount exaggerations.

The next man was also an Irishman. He had his New York cablegram in his
hand--from the New York _World_--and he was so evidently trying to get
around that cable with invented softnesses and palliations that my
curiosity was aroused and I wanted to see what it did really say. So
when occasion offered I slipped it out of his hand. It said,

"If Mark Twain dying send five hundred words. If dead send a thousand."

Now that old letter of mine sold yesterday for forty-three dollars. When
I am dead it will be worth eighty-six.

MARK TWAIN.

(_To be Continued._)

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. DC.

OCTOBER 5, 1906.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--III.

BY MARK TWAIN.

VI.

To-morrow will be the thirty-sixth anniversary of our marriage. My wife
passed from this life one year and eight months ago, in Florence, Italy,
after an unbroken illness of twenty-two months' duration.

I saw her first in the form of an ivory miniature in her brother
Charley's stateroom in the steamer "Quaker City," in the Bay of Smyrna,
in the summer of 1867, when she was in her twenty-second year. I saw her
in the flesh for the first time in New York in the following December.
She was slender and beautiful and girlish--and she was both girl and
woman. She remained both girl and woman to the last day of her life.
Under a grave and gentle exterior burned inextinguishable fires of
sympathy, energy, devotion, enthusiasm, and absolutely limitless
affection. She was _always_ frail in body, and she lived upon her
spirit, whose hopefulness and courage were indestructible. Perfect
truth, perfect honesty, perfect candor, were qualities of her character
which were born with her. Her judgments of people and things were sure
and accurate. Her intuitions almost never deceived her. In her judgments
of the characters and acts of both friends and strangers, there was
always room for charity, and this charity never failed. I have compared
and contrasted her with hundreds of persons, and my conviction remains
that hers was the most perfect character I have ever met. And I may add
that she was the most winningly dignified person I have ever known. Her
character and disposition were of the sort that not only invites
worship, but commands it. No servant ever left her service who deserved
to remain in it. And, as she could choose with a glance of her eye, the
servants she selected did in almost all cases deserve to remain, and
they _did_ remain. She was always cheerful; and she was always able to
communicate her cheerfulness to others. During the nine years that we
spent in poverty and debt, she was always able to reason me out of my
despairs, and find a bright side to the clouds, and make me see it. In
all that time, I never knew her to utter a word of regret concerning our
altered circumstances, nor did I ever know her children to do the like.
For she had taught them, and they drew their fortitude from her. The
love which she bestowed upon those whom she loved took the form of
worship, and in that form it was returned--returned by relatives,
friends and the servants of her household. It was a strange combination
which wrought into one individual, so to speak, by marriage--her
disposition and character and mine. She poured out her prodigal
affections in kisses and caresses, and in a vocabulary of endearments
whose profusion was always an astonishment to me. I was born _reserved_
as to endearments of speech and caresses, and hers broke upon me as the
summer waves break upon Gibraltar. I was reared in that atmosphere of
reserve. As I have already said, in another chapter, I never knew a
member of my father's family to kiss another member of it except once,
and that at a death-bed. And our village was not a kissing community.
The kissing and caressing ended with courtship--along with the deadly
piano-playing of that day.

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