Chapters from My Autobiography

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I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not travelled
on my _nom de guerre_ enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I
was moved to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have
exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive me
that fault, since I believe it is the first time I have ever
deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion like this.

What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C., of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing but
death terminates. The C.'s were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice
and several months in Rome, afterwards, and one day that lamented break
of mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those
people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it
almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C.'s were indignant
about the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They
poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty
attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about
the Boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the
matter. That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief,
beyond imagination. Very well, I had accepted that as a fact for a year
or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of
it--which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought of
it I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy a
thing. Well, the C.'s comforted me, but they did not persuade me to
continue to think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to
get it out of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H.'s
letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought of
that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if
possibly she might be right. At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and
I wrote to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth.

I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering--dimly I can
see a hundred people--no, perhaps fifty--shadowy figures sitting at
tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forever more. I don't
know who they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand
table and facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave,
unsmiling; Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out
of his face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his
benignant face; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection
and all good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are
being turned toward the light first one way and then another--a charming
man, and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was
sitting still (what _he_ would call still, but what would be more or
lees motion to other people). I can see those figures with entire
distinctness across this abyss of time.

One other feature is clear--Willie Winter (for these past thousand years
dramatic editor of the "New York Tribune," and still occupying that high
post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then than he is now,
and he showed it. It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter at
a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet
where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did not read a
charming poem written for the occasion. He did it this time, and it was
up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen
to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of
heart and brain.

Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable
celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday--because I got up at
that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed
would be the gem of the evening--the gay oration above quoted from the
Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had perfectly
memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and
self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic guests,
that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened, as did
everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered
myself of--we'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. I was
expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the
case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the dialogue: 'The old
miner said, "You are the fourth, I'm going to move." "The fourth what?"
said I. He answered, "The fourth littery man that has been here in
twenty-four hours. I am going to move." "Why, you don't tell me," said
I. "Who were the others?" "Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, consound the lot--"'

Now then the house's _attention_ continued, but the expression of
interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered what
the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty--I
struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description of
the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always
hoping--but with a gradually perishing hope--that somebody would laugh,
or that somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't know
enough to give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and
so I went on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through
to the end, in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with
horror. It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if I
had been making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the
Trinity; there is no milder way in which to describe the petrified
condition and the ghastly expression of those people.

When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat. I
shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as
miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what
the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I
shall never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near
me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp.
There was no use--he understood the whole size of the disaster. He had
good intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. It was
an atmosphere that would freeze anything. If Benvenuto Cellini's
salamander had been in that place he would not have survived to be put
into Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful pause. There was an
awful silence, a desolating silence. Then the next man on the list had
to get up--there was no help for it. That was Bishop--Bishop had just
burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had
appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," a place which would make any novel
respectable and any author noteworthy. In this case the novel itself was
recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was
away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest,
consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may
say our American millions were standing, from Maine to Texas and from
Alaska to Florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands
ready to applaud when Bishop should get up on that occasion, and for the
first time in his life speak in public. It was under these damaging
conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. I had
spoken several times before, and that in the reason why I was able to go
on without dying in my tracks, as I ought to have done--but Bishop had
had no experience. He was up facing those awful deities--facing those
other people, those strangers--facing human beings for the first time in
his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away in
his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard
from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that
dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head
like the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there
wasn't any fog left. He didn't go on--he didn't last long. It was not
many sentences after his first before he began to hesitate, and break,
and lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down
in a limp and mushy pile.

Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than
one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man hadn't
strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied,
paralyzed, it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try.
Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells mournfully, and
without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and supported us out of
the room. It was very kind--he was most generous. He towed us tottering
away into some room in that building, and we sat down there. I don't
know what my remark was now, but I know the nature of it. It was the
kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can help
your case. But Howells was honest--he had to say the heart-breaking
things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this
shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that
had ever happened in anybody's history--and then he added, "That is, for
_you_--and consider what you have done for Bishop. It is bad enough in
your case, you deserve to suffer. You have committed this crime, and you
deserve to have all you are going to get. But here is an innocent man.
Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him.
He can never hold his head up again. The world can never look upon
Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse."

That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which
pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two
whenever it forced its way into my mind.

Now, then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived
this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an
idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last.
It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with
humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it
anywhere. What could have been the matter with that house? It is
amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and
those deities the loudest of them all. Could the fault have been with
me? Did I lose courage when I saw those great men up there whom I was
going to describe in such a strange fashion? If that happened, if I
showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can't be successfully
funny if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I can't account for
it, but if I had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back
here now on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same old
speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they'd run all
over that stage. Oh, the fault must have been with _me_, it is not in
the speech at all.

[_Dictated October 3, 1907._] In some ways, I was always honest; even
from my earliest years I could never bring myself to use money which I
had acquired in questionable ways; many a time I tried, but principle
was always stronger than desire. Six or eight months ago,
Lieutenant-General Nelson A. Miles was given a great dinner-party in New
York, and when he and I were chatting together in the drawing-room
before going out to dinner he said,

"I've known you as much as thirty years, isn't it?"

I said, "Yes, that's about it, I think."

He mused a moment or two and then said,

"I wonder we didn't meet in Washington in 1867; you were there at that
time, weren't you?"

I said, "Yes, but there was a difference; I was not known then; I had
not begun to bud--I was an obscurity; but you had been adding to your
fine Civil War record; you had just come back from your brilliant
Indian campaign in the Far West, and had been rewarded with a
brigadier-generalship in the regular army, and everybody was talking
about you and praising you. If you had met me, you wouldn't be able to
remember it now--unless some unusual circumstance of the meeting had
burnt it into your memory. It is forty years ago, and people don't
remember nobodies over a stretch of time like that."

I didn't wish to continue the conversation along that line, so I changed
the subject. I could have proven to him, without any trouble, that we
did meet in Washington in 1867, but I thought it might embarrass one or
the other of us, so I didn't do it. I remember the incident very well.
This was the way of it:

I had just come back from the Quaker City Excursion, and had made a
contract with Bliss of Hartford to write "The Innocents Abroad." I was
out of money, and I went down to Washington to see if I could earn
enough there to keep me in bread and butter while I should write the
book. I came across William Clinton, brother of the astronomer, and
together we invented a scheme for our mutual sustenance; we became the
fathers and originators of what is a common feature in the newspaper
world now--the syndicate. We became the old original first Newspaper
Syndicate on the planet; it was on a small scale, but that is usual with
untried new enterprises. We had twelve journals on our list; they were
all weeklies, all obscure and poor, and all scattered far away among the
back settlements. It was a proud thing for those little newspapers to
have a Washington correspondence, and a fortunate thing for us that they
felt in that way about it. Each of the twelve took two letters a week
from us, at a dollar per letter; each of us wrote one letter per week
and sent off six duplicates of it to these benefactors, thus acquiring
twenty-four dollars a week to live on--which was all we needed, in our
cheap and humble quarters.

Clinton was one of the dearest and loveliest human beings I have ever
known, and we led a charmed existence together, in a contentment which
knew no bounds. Clinton was refined by nature and breeding; he was a
gentleman by nature and breeding; he was highly educated; he was of a
beautiful spirit; he was pure in heart and speech. He was a Scotchman,
and a Presbyterian; a Presbyterian of the old and genuine school, being
honest and sincere in his religion, and loving it, and finding serenity
and peace in it. He hadn't a vice--unless a large and grateful sympathy
with Scotch whiskey may be called by that name. I didn't regard it as a
vice, because he was a Scotchman, and Scotch whiskey to a Scotchman is
as innocent as milk is to the rest of the human race. In Clinton's case
it was a virtue, and not an economical one. Twenty-four dollars a week
would really have been riches to us if we hadn't had to support that
jug; because of the jug we were always sailing pretty close to the wind,
and any tardiness in the arrival of any part of our income was sure to
cause us some inconvenience.

I remember a time when a shortage occurred; we had to have three
dollars, and we had to have it before the close of the day. I don't know
now how we happened to want all that money at one time; I only know we
had to have it. Clinton told me to go out and find it--and he said he
would also go out and see what he could do. He didn't seem to have any
doubt that we would succeed, but I knew that that was his religion
working in him; I hadn't the same confidence; I hadn't any idea where to
turn to raise all that bullion, and I said so. I think he was ashamed of
me, privately, because of my weak faith. He told me to give myself no
uneasiness, no concern; and said in a simple, confident, and
unquestioning way, "the Lord will provide." I saw that he fully believed
the Lord would provide, but it seemed to me that if he had had my
experience--

But never mind that; before he was done with me his strong faith had had
its influence, and I went forth from the place almost convinced that the
Lord really would provide.

I wandered around the streets for an hour, trying to think up some way
to get that money, but nothing suggested itself. At last I lounged into
the big lobby of the Ebbitt House, which was then a new hotel, and sat
down. Presently a dog came loafing along. He paused, glanced up at me
and said, with his eyes, "Are you friendly?" I answered, with my eyes,
that I was. He gave his tail a grateful little wag and came forward and
rested his jaw on my knee and lifted his brown eyes to my face in a
winningly affectionate way. He was a lovely creature--as beautiful as a
girl, and he was made all of silk and velvet. I stroked his smooth brown
head and fondled his drooping ears, and we were a pair of lovers right
away. Pretty soon Brigadier-General Miles, the hero of the land, came
strolling by in his blue and gold splendors, with everybody's admiring
gaze upon him. He saw the dog and stopped, and there was a light in his
eye which showed that he had a warm place in his heart for dogs like
this gracious creature; then he came forward and patted the dog and
said,

"He is very fine--he is a wonder; would you sell him?"

I was greatly moved; it seemed a marvellous thing to me, the way
Clinton's prediction had come true. I said,

"Yes."

The General said,

"What do you ask for him?"

"Three dollars."

The General was manifestly surprised. He said,

"Three dollars? Only three dollars? Why, that dog is a most uncommon
dog; he can't possibly be worth leas than fifty. If he were mine, I
wouldn't take a hundred for him. I'm afraid you are not aware of his
value. Reconsider your price if you like, I don't wish to wrong you."

But if he had known me he would have known that I was no more capable of
wronging him than he was of wronging me. I responded with the same quiet
decision as before,

"No--three dollars. That is his price."

"Very well, since you insist upon it," said the General, and he gave me
three dollars and led the dog away, and disappeared up-stairs.

In about ten minutes a gentle-faced middle-aged gentleman came along,
and began to look around here and there and under tables and everywhere,
and I said to him,

"Is it a dog you are looking for?"

His face was sad, before, and troubled; but it lit up gladly now, and he
answered,

"Yes--have you seen him?"

"Yes," I said, "he was here a minute ago, and I saw him follow a
gentleman away. I think I could find him for you if you would like me to
try."

I have seldom seen a person look so grateful--and there was gratitude in
his voice, too, when he conceded that he would like me to try. I said I
would do it with great pleasure, but that as it might take a little time
I hoped he would not mind paying me something for my trouble. He said he
would do it most gladly--repeating that phrase "most gladly"--and asked
me how much. I said--

"Three dollars."

He looked surprised, and said,

"Dear me, it is nothing! I will pay you ten, quite willingly."

But I said,

"No, three is the price"--and I started for the stairs without waiting
for any further argument, for Clinton had said that that was the amount
that the Lord would provide, and it seemed to me that it would be
sacrilegious to take a penny more than was promised.

I got the number of the General's room from the office-clerk, as I
passed by his wicket, and when I reached the room I found the General
there caressing his dog, and quite happy. I said,

"I am sorry, but I have to take the dog again."

He seemed very much surprised, and said,

"Take him again? Why, he is my dog; you sold him to me, and at your own
price."

"Yes," I said, "it is true--but I have to have him, because the man
wants him again."

"What man?"

"The man that owns him; he wasn't my dog."

The General looked even more surprised than before, and for a moment he
couldn't seem to find his voice; then he said,

"Do you mean to tell me that you were selling another man's dog--and
knew it?"

"Yes, I knew it wasn't my dog."

"Then why did you sell him?"

I said,

"Well, that is a curious question to ask. I sold him because you wanted
him. You offered to buy the dog; you can't deny that I was not anxious
to sell him--I had not even thought of selling him, but it seemed to me
that if it could be any accommodation to you--"

He broke me off in the middle, and said,

"_Accommodation_ to me? It is the most extraordinary spirit of
accommodation I have ever heard of--the idea of your selling a dog that
didn't belong to you--"

I broke him off there, and said,

"There is no relevancy about this kind of argument; you said yourself
that the dog was probably worth a hundred dollars, I only asked you
three; was there anything unfair about that? You offered to pay more,
you know you did. I only asked you three; you can't deny it."

"Oh, what in the world has that to do with it! The crux of the matter is
that you didn't own the dog--can't you see that? You seem to think that
there is no impropriety in selling property that isn't yours provided
you sell it cheap. Now, then--"

I said,

"Please don't argue about it any more. You can't get around the fact
that the price was perfectly fair, perfectly reasonable--considering
that I didn't own the dog--and so arguing about it is only a waste of
words. I have to have him back again because the man wants him; don't
you see that I haven't any choice in the matter? Put yourself in my
place. Suppose you had sold a dog that didn't belong to you; suppose
you--"

"Oh," he said, "don't muddle my brains any more with your idiotic
reasonings! Take him along, and give me a rest."

So I paid back the three dollars and led the dog down-stairs and passed
him over to his owner, and collected three for my trouble.

I went away then with a good conscience, because I had acted honorably;
I never could have used the three that I sold the dog for, because it
was not rightly my own, but the three I got for restoring him to his
rightful owner was righteously and properly mine, because I had earned
it. That man might never have gotten that dog back at all, if it hadn't
been for me. My principles have remained to this day what they were
then. I was always honest; I know I can never be otherwise. It is as I
said in the beginning--I was never able to persuade myself to use money
which I had acquired in questionable ways.

Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.

MARK TWAIN.

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