Chapters from My Autobiography

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It is pathetic. There are other duels in my list, but I find in
each and all of them one and the same ever-recurring defect--the
_principals_ are never present, but only their sham
representatives. The _real_ principals in any duel are not the
duellists themselves, but their families. They do the mourning, the
suffering, theirs is the loss and theirs the misery. They stake all
that, the duellist stakes nothing but his life, and that is a
trivial thing compared with what his death must cost those whom he
leaves behind him. Challenges should not mention the duellist; he
has nothing much at stake, and the real vengeance cannot reach him.
The challenge should summon the offender's old gray mother, and his
young wife and his little children,--these, or any to whom he is a
dear and worshipped possession--and should say, "You have done me
no harm, but I am the meek slave of a custom which requires me to
crush the happiness out of your hearts and condemn you to years of
pain and grief, in order that I may wash clean with your tears a
stain which has been put upon me by another person."

The logic of it is admirable: a person has robbed me of a penny; I
must beggar ten innocent persons to make good my loss. Surely
nobody's "honor" is worth all that.

Since the duellist's family are the real principals in a duel, the
State ought to compel them to be present at it. Custom, also, ought
to be so amended as to require it; and without it no duel ought to
be allowed to go on. If that student's unoffending mother had been
present and watching the officer through her tears as he raised his
pistol, he--why, he would have fired in the air. We know that. For
we know how we are all made. Laws ought to be based upon the
ascertained facts of our nature. It would be a simple thing to make
a duelling law which would stop duelling.

As things are now, the mother is never invited. She submits to
this; and without outward complaint, for she, too, is the vassal of
custom, and custom requires her to conceal her pain when she learns
the disastrous news that her son must go to the duelling-field, and
by the powerful force that is lodged in habit and custom she is
enabled to obey this trying requirement--a requirement which exacts
a miracle of her, and gets it. Last January a neighbor of ours who
has a young son in the army was wakened by this youth at three
o'clock one morning, and she sat up in bed and listened to his
message:

"I have come to tell you something, mother, which will distress
you, but you must be good and brave, and bear it. I have been
affronted by a fellow officer, and we fight at three this
afternoon. Lie down and sleep, now, and think no more about it."

She kissed him good night and lay down paralyzed with grief and
fear, but said nothing. But she did not sleep; she prayed and
mourned till the first streak of dawn, then fled to the nearest
church and implored the Virgin for help; and from that church she
went to another and another and another; church after church, and
still church after church, and so spent all the day until three
o'clock on her knees in agony and tears; then dragged herself home
and sat down comfortless and desolate, to count the minutes, and
wait, with an outward show of calm, for what had been ordained for
her--happiness, or endless misery. Presently she heard the clank of
a sabre--she had not known before what music was in that
sound!--and her son put his head in and said:

"X was in the wrong, and he apologized."

So that incident was closed; and for the rest of her life the
mother will always find something pleasant about the clank of a
sabre, no doubt.

In one of my listed duels--however, let it go, there is nothing
particularly striking about it except that the seconds interfered.
And prematurely, too, for neither man was dead. This was certainly
irregular. Neither of the men liked it. It was a duel with cavalry
sabres, between an editor and a lieutenant. The editor walked to
the hospital, the lieutenant was carried. In this country an editor
who can write well is valuable, but he is not likely to remain so
unless he can handle a sabre with charm.

The following very recent telegram shows that also in France duels
are humanely stopped as soon as they approach the (French)
danger-point:

"_Reuter's Telegram._--PARIS, _March 5_.--The duel between Colonels
Henry and Picquart took place this morning in the Riding School of
the Ecole Militaire, the doors of which were strictly guarded in
order to prevent intrusion. The combatants, who fought with swords,
were in position at ten o'clock.

"At the first reengagement Lieutenant-Colonel Henry was slightly
scratched in the fore arm, and just at the same moment his own
blade appeared to touch his adversary's neck. Senator Ranc, who was
Colonel Picquart's second, stopped the fight, but as it was found
that his principal had not been touched, the combat continued. A
very sharp encounter ensued, in which Colonel Henry was wounded in
the elbow, and the duel terminated."

After which, the stretcher and the band. In lurid contrast with
this delicate flirtation, we have this fatal duel of day before
yesterday in Italy, where the earnest Austrian duel is in vogue. I
knew Cavalotti slightly, and this gives me a sort of personal
interest in his duel. I first saw him in Rome several years ago. He
was sitting on a block of stone in the Forum, and was writing
something in his note-book--a poem or a challenge, or something
like that--and the friend who pointed him out to me said, "That is
Cavalotti--he has fought thirty duels; do not disturb him." I did
not disturb him.

[_May 13, 1907._] It is a long time ago. Cavalotti--poet, orator,
satirist, statesman, patriot--was a great man, and his death was deeply
lamented by his countrymen: many monuments to his memory testify to
this. In his duels he killed several of his antagonists and disabled the
rest. By nature he was a little irascible. Once when the officials of
the library of Bologna threw out his books the gentle poet went up there
and challenged the whole fifteen! His parliamentary duties were
exacting, but he proposed to keep coming up and fighting duels between
trains until all those officials had been retired from the activities of
life. Although he always chose the sword to fight with, he had never had
a lesson with that weapon. When game was called he waited for nothing,
but always plunged at his opponent and rained such a storm of wild and
original thrusts and whacks upon him that the man was dead or crippled
before he could bring his science to bear. But his latest antagonist
discarded science, and won. He held his sword straight forward like a
lance when Cavalotti made his plunge--with the result that he impaled
himself upon it. It entered his mouth and passed out at the back of his
neck. Death was instantaneous.

[_Dictated December 20, 1906._] Six months ago, when I was recalling
early days in San Francisco, I broke off at a place where I was about
to tell about Captain Osborn's odd adventure at the "What Cheer," or
perhaps it was at another cheap feeding-place--the "Miners' Restaurant."
It was a place where one could get good food on the cheapest possible
terms, and its popularity was great among the multitudes whose purses
were light It was a good place to go to, to observe mixed humanity.
Captain Osborn and Bret Harte went there one day and took a meal, and in
the course of it Osborn fished up an interesting reminiscence of a dozen
years before and told about it. It was to this effect:

He was a midshipman in the navy when the Californian gold craze burst
upon the world and set it wild with excitement. His ship made the long
journey around the Horn and was approaching her goal, the Golden Gate,
when an accident happened.

"It happened to me," said Osborn. "I fell overboard. There was a heavy
sea running, but no one was much alarmed about me, because we had on
board a newly patented life-saving device which was believed to be
competent to rescue anything that could fall overboard, from a
midshipman to an anchor. Ours was the only ship that had this device; we
were very proud of it, and had been anxious to give its powers a
practical test. This thing was lashed to the garboard-strake of the
main-to'gallant mizzen-yard amidships,[19] and there was nothing to do
but cut the lashings and heave it over; it would do the rest. One day
the cry of 'Man overboard!' brought all hands on deck. Instantly the
lashings were cut and the machine flung joyously over. Damnation, it
went to the bottom like an anvil! By the time that the ship was brought
to and a boat manned, I was become but a bobbing speck on the waves half
a mile astern and losing my strength very fast; but by good luck there
was a common seaman on board who had practical ideas in his head and
hadn't waited to see what the patent machine was going to do, but had
run aft and sprung over after me the moment the alarm was cried through
the ship. I had a good deal of a start of him, and the seas made his
progress slow and difficult, but he stuck to his work and fought his way
to me, and just in the nick of time he put his saving arms about me when
I was about to go down. He held me up until the boat reached us and
rescued us. By that time I was unconscious, and I was still unconscious
when we arrived at the ship. A dangerous fever followed, and I was
delirious for three days; then I come to myself and at once inquired
for my benefactor, of course. He was gone. We were lying at anchor in
the Bay and every man had deserted to the gold-mines except the
commissioned officers. I found out nothing about my benefactor but his
name--Burton Sanders--a name which I have held in grateful memory ever
since. Every time I have been on the Coast, these twelve or thirteen
years, I have tried to get track of him, but have never succeeded. I
wish I could find him and make him understand that his brave act has
never been forgotten by me. Harte, I would rather see him and take him
by the hand than any other man on the planet."

At this stage or a little later there was an interruption. A waiter near
by said to another waiter, pointing,

"Take a look at that tramp that's coming in. Ain't that the one that
bilked the house, last week, out of ten cents?"

"I believe it is. Let him alone--don't pay any attention to him; wait
till we can get a good look at him."

The tramp approached timidly and hesitatingly, with the air of one
unsure and apprehensive. The waiters watched him furtively. When he was
passing behind Harte's chair one of them said,

"He's the one!"--and they pounced upon him and proposed to turn him over
to the police as a bilk. He begged piteously. He confessed his guilt,
but said he had been driven to his crime by necessity--that when he had
eaten the plate of beans and flipped out without paying for it, it was
because he was starving, and hadn't the ten cents to pay for it with.
But the waiters would listen to no explanations, no palliations; he must
be placed in custody. He brushed his hand across his eyes and said
meekly that he would submit, being friendless. Each waiter took him by
an arm and faced him about to conduct him away. Then his melancholy eyes
fell upon Captain Osborn, and a light of glad and eager recognition
flashed from them. He said,

"Weren't you a midshipman once, sir, in the old 'Lancaster'?"

"Yes," said Osborn. "Why?"

"Didn't you fall overboard?"

"Yes, I did. How do you come to know about it?"

"Wasn't there a new patent machine aboard, and didn't they throw it over
to save you?"

"Why, yes," said Osborn, laughing gently, "but it didn't do it."

"No, sir, it was a sailor that done it."

"It certainly was. Look here, my man, you are getting distinctly
interesting. Were you of our crew?"

"Yes, sir, I was."

"I reckon you may be right. You do certainly know a good deal about that
incident. What is your name?"

"Burton Sanders."

The Captain sprang up, excited, and said,

"Give me your hand! Give me both your hands! I'd rather shake them than
inherit a fortune!"--and then he cried to the waiters, "Let him
go!--take your hands off! He is my guest, and can have anything and
everything this house is able to furnish. I am responsible."

There was a love-feast, then. Captain Osborn ordered it regardless of
expense, and he and Harte sat there and listened while the man told
stirring adventures of his life and fed himself up to the eyebrows. Then
Osborn wanted to be benefactor in his turn, and pay back some of his
debt. The man said it could all be paid with ten dollars--that it had
been so long since he had owned that amount of money that it would seem
a fortune to him, and he should be grateful beyond words if the Captain
could spare him that amount. The Captain spared him ten broad
twenty-dollar gold pieces, and made him take them in spite of his modest
protestations, and gave him his address and said he must never fail to
give him notice when he needed grateful service.

Several months later Harte stumbled upon the man in the street. He was
most comfortably drunk, and pleasant and chatty. Harte remarked upon the
splendidly and movingly dramatic incident of the restaurant, and said,

"How curious and fortunate and happy and interesting it was that you two
should come together, after that long separation, and at exactly the
right moment to save you from disaster and turn your defeat by the
waiters into a victory. A preacher could make a great sermon out of
that, for it does look as if the hand of Providence was in it."

The hero's face assumed a sweetly genial expression, and he said,

"Well now, it wasn't Providence this time. I was running the
arrangements myself."

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, I hadn't ever seen the gentleman before. I was at the next table,
with my back to you the whole time he was telling about it. I saw my
chance, and slipped out and fetched the two waiters with me and offered
to give them a commission out of what I could get out of the Captain if
they would do a quarrel act with me and give me an opening. So, then,
after a minute or two I straggled back, and you know the rest of it as
well as I do."

MARK TWAIN.

(_To be Continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[18] This was tried. I well remember it.--M. T., _October, '06_.

[19] Can this be correct? I think there must be some mistake.--M. T.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. DCXXIII.

OCTOBER, 1907.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XXIII.

BY MARK TWAIN.

[Sidenote: (1845.)]

[_Dictated March 9, 1906._] ... I am talking of a time sixty years ago,
and upwards. I remember the names of some of those schoolmates, and, by
fitful glimpses, even their faces rise dimly before me for a
moment--only just long enough to be recognized; then they vanish. I
catch glimpses of George Robards, the Latin pupil--slender, pale,
studious, bending over his book and absorbed in it, his long straight
black hair hanging down below his jaws like a pair of curtains on the
sides of his face. I can see him give his head a toss and flirt one of
the curtains back around his head--to get it out of his way, apparently;
really to show off. In that day it was a great thing among the boys to
have hair of so flexible a sort that it could be flung back in that way,
with a flirt of the head. George Robards was the envy of us all. For
there was no hair among us that was so competent for this exhibition as
his--except, perhaps, the yellow locks of Will Bowen and John Robards.
My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry's.
We tried all kinds of devices to get these crooks straightened out so
that they would flirt, but we never succeeded. Sometimes, by soaking our
heads and then combing and brushing our hair down tight and flat to our
skulls, we could get it straight, temporarily, and this gave us a
comforting moment of joy; but the first time we gave it a flirt it all
shrivelled into curls again and our happiness was gone.

John Robards was the little brother of George; he was a wee chap with
silky golden curtains to his face which dangled to his shoulders and
below, and could be flung back ravishingly. When he was twelve years old
he crossed the plains with his father amidst the rush of the
gold-seekers of '49; and I remember the departure of the cavalcade when
it spurred westward. We were all there to see and to envy. And I can
still see that proud little chap sailing by on a great horse, with his
long locks streaming out behind. We were all on hand to gaze and envy
when he returned, two years later, in unimaginable glory--_for he had
travelled_! None of us had ever been forty miles from home. But he had
crossed the Continent. He had been in the gold-mines, that fairyland of
our imagination. And he had done a still more wonderful thing. He had
been in ships--in ships on the actual ocean; in ships on three actual
oceans. For he had sailed down the Pacific and around the Horn among
icebergs and through snow-storms and wild wintry gales, and had sailed
on and turned the corner and flown northward in the trades and up
through the blistering equatorial waters--and there in his brown face
were the proofs of what he had been through. We would have sold our
souls to Satan for the privilege of trading places with him.

I saw him when I was out on that Missouri trip four years ago. He was
old then--though not quite so old as I--and the burden of life was upon
him. He said his granddaughter, twelve years old, had read my books and
would like to see me. It was a pathetic time, for she was a prisoner in
her room and marked for death. And John knew that she was passing
swiftly away. Twelve years old--just her grandfather's age when he rode
away on that great journey with his yellow hair flapping behind him. In
her I seemed to see that boy again. It was as if he had come back out of
that remote past and was present before me in his golden youth. Her
malady was heart disease, and her brief life came to a close a few days
later.

Another of those schoolboys was John Garth. He became a prosperous
banker and a prominent and valued citizen; and a few years ago he died,
rich and honored. _He died._ It is what I have to say about so many of
those boys and girls. The widow still lives, and there are
grandchildren. In her pantalette days and my barefoot days she was a
schoolmate of mine. I saw John's tomb when I made that Missouri visit.

Her father, Mr. Kercheval, had an apprentice in the early days when I
was nine years old, and he had also a slave woman who had many merits.
But I can't feel very kindly or forgivingly toward either that good
apprentice boy or that good slave woman, for they saved my life. One day
when I was playing on a loose log which I supposed was attached to a
raft--but it wasn't--it tilted me into Bear Creek. And when I had been
under water twice and was coming up to make the third and fatal descent
my fingers appeared above the water and that slave woman seized them and
pulled me out. Within a week I was in again, and that apprentice had to
come along just at the wrong time, and he plunged in and dived, pawed
around on the bottom and found me, and dragged me out and emptied the
water out of me, and I was saved again. I was drowned seven times after
that before I learned to swim--once in Bear Creek and six times in the
Mississippi. I do not now know who the people were who interfered with
the intentions of a Providence wiser than themselves, but I hold a
grudge against them yet. When I told the tale of these remarkable
happenings to Rev. Dr. Burton of Hartford, he said he did not believe
it. _He slipped on the ice the very next year and sprained his ankle._

Will Bowen was another schoolmate, and so was his brother, Sam, who was
his junior by a couple of years. Before the Civil War broke out, both
became St. Louis and New Orleans pilots. Both are dead, long ago.

[Sidenote: (1845.)]

[_Dictated March 16, 1906._] We will return to those schoolchildren of
sixty years ago. I recall Mary Miller. She was not my first sweetheart,
but I think she was the first one that furnished me a broken heart. I
fell in love with her when she was eighteen and I was nine, but she
scorned me, and I recognized that this was a cold world. I had not
noticed that temperature before. I believe I was as miserable as even a
grown man could be. But I think that this sorrow did not remain with me
long. As I remember it, I soon transferred my worship to Artimisia
Briggs, who was a year older than Mary Miller. When I revealed my
passion to her she did not scoff at it. She did not make fun of it. She
was very kind and gentle about it. But she was also firm, and said she
did not want to be pestered by children.

And there was Mary Lacy. She was a schoolmate. But she also was out of
my class because of her advanced age. She was pretty wild and determined
and independent. But she married, and at once settled down and became in
all ways a model matron and was as highly respected as any matron in the
town. Four years ago she was still living, and had been married fifty
years.

Jimmie McDaniel was another schoolmate. His age and mine about tallied.
His father kept the candy-shop and he was the most envied little chap in
the town--after Tom Blankenship ("Huck Finn")--for although we never saw
him eating candy, we supposed that it was, nevertheless, his ordinary
diet. He pretended that he never ate it, and didn't care for it because
there was nothing forbidden about it--there was plenty of it and he
could have as much of it as he wanted. He was the first human being to
whom I ever told a humorous story, so far as I can remember. This was
about Jim Wolfe and the cats; and I gave him that tale the morning after
that memorable episode. I thought he would laugh his teeth out. I had
never been so proud and happy before, and have seldom been so proud and
happy since. I saw him four years ago when I was out there. He wore a
beard, gray and venerable, that came half-way down to his knees, and yet
it was not difficult for me to recognize him. He had been married
fifty-four years. He had many children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, and also even posterity, they all said--
thousands--yet the boy to whom I had told the cat story when we were
callow juveniles was still present in that cheerful little old man.

Artimisia Briggs got married not long after refusing me. She married
Richmond, the stone mason, who was my Methodist Sunday-school teacher in
the earliest days, and he had one distinction which I envied him: at
some time or other he had hit his thumb with his hammer and the result
was a thumb nail which remained permanently twisted and distorted and
curved and pointed, like a parrot's beak. I should not consider it an
ornament now, I suppose, but it had a fascination for me then, and a
vast value, because it was the only one in the town. He was a very
kindly and considerate Sunday-school teacher, and patient and
compassionate, so he was the favorite teacher with us little chaps. In
that school they had slender oblong pasteboard blue tickets, each with a
verse from the Testament printed on it, and you could get a blue ticket
by reciting two verses. By reciting five verses you could get three blue
tickets, and you could trade these at the bookcase and borrow a book for
a week. I was under Mr. Richmond's spiritual care every now and then for
two or three years, and he was never hard upon me. I always recited the
same five verses every Sunday. He was always satisfied with the
performance. He never seemed to notice that these were the same five
foolish virgins that he had been hearing about every Sunday for months.
I always got my tickets and exchanged them for a book. They were pretty
dreary books, for there was not a bad boy in the entire bookcase. They
were _all_ good boys and good girls and drearily uninteresting, but they
were better society than none, and I was glad to have their company and
disapprove of it.

[Sidenote: (1849.)]

Twenty years ago Mr. Richmond had become possessed of Tom Sawyer's cave
in the hills three miles from town, and had made a tourist-resort of it.
In 1849 when the gold-seekers were streaming through our little town of
Hannibal, many of our grown men got the gold fever, and I think that all
the boys had it. On the Saturday holidays in summer-time we used to
borrow skiffs whose owners were not present and go down the river three
miles to the cave hollow (Missourian for "valley"), and there we staked
out claims and pretended to dig gold, panning out half a dollar a day at
first; two or three times as much, later, and by and by whole fortunes,
as our imaginations became inured to the work. Stupid and unprophetic
lads! We were doing this in play and never suspecting. Why, that cave
hollow and all the adjacent hills were made of gold! But we did not know
it. We took it for dirt. We left its rich secret in its own peaceful
possession and grew up in poverty and went wandering about the world
struggling for bread--and this because we had not the gift of prophecy.
That region was all dirt and rocks to us, yet all it needed was to be
ground up and scientifically handled and it was gold. That is to say,
the whole region was a cement-mine--and they make the finest kind of
Portland cement there now, five thousand barrels a day, with a plant
that cost $2,000,000.

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