Chapters from My Autobiography

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[Sidenote: (1864.)]

About a year later I got _my_ chance. But I was not hunting for it.
Goodman went off to San Francisco for a week's holiday, and left me to
be chief editor. I had supposed that that was an easy berth, there being
nothing to do but write one editorial per day; but I was disappointed in
that superstition. I couldn't find anything to write an article about,
the first day. Then it occurred to me that inasmuch as it was the 22nd
of April, 1864, the next morning would be the three-hundredth
anniversary of Shakespeare's birthday--and what better theme could I
want than that? I got the Cyclopaedia and examined it, and found out who
Shakespeare was and what he had done, and I borrowed all that and laid
it before a community that couldn't have been better prepared for
instruction about Shakespeare than if they had been prepared by art.
There wasn't enough of what Shakespeare had done to make an editorial of
the necessary length, but I filled it out with what he hadn't
done--which in many respects was more important and striking and
readable than the handsomest things he had really accomplished. But next
day I was in trouble again. There were no more Shakespeares to work up.
There was nothing in past history, or in the world's future
possibilities, to make an editorial out of, suitable to that community;
so there was but one theme left. That theme was Mr. Laird, proprietor of
the Virginia "Union." _His_ editor had gone off to San Francisco too,
and Laird was trying his hand at editing. I woke up Mr. Laird with some
courtesies of the kind that were fashionable among newspaper editors in
that region, and he came back at me the next day in a most vitriolic
way. He was hurt by something I had said about him--some little thing--I
don't remember what it was now--probably called him a horse-thief, or
one of those little phrases customarily used to describe another
editor. They were no doubt just, and accurate, but Laird was a very
sensitive creature, and he didn't like it. So we expected a challenge
from Mr. Laird, because according to the rules--according to the
etiquette of duelling as reconstructed and reorganized and improved by
the duellists of that region--whenever you said a thing about another
person that he didn't like, it wasn't sufficient for him to talk back in
the same offensive spirit: etiquette required him to send a challenge;
so we waited for a challenge--waited all day. It didn't come. And as the
day wore along, hour after hour, and no challenge came, the boys grew
depressed. They lost heart. But I was cheerful; I felt better and better
all the time. They couldn't understand it, but _I_ could understand it.
It was my _make_ that enabled me to be cheerful when other people were
despondent. So then it became necessary for us to waive etiquette and
challenge Mr. Laird. When we reached that decision, they began to cheer
up, but I began to lose some of my animation. However, in enterprises of
this kind you are in the hands of your friends; there is nothing for you
to do but to abide by what they consider to be the best course. Daggett
wrote a challenge for me, for Daggett had the language--the right
language--the convincing language--and I lacked it. Daggett poured out a
stream of unsavory epithets upon Mr. Laird, charged with a vigor and
venom of a strength calculated to persuade him; and Steve Gillis, my
second, carried the challenge and came back to wait for the return. It
didn't come. The boys were exasperated, but I kept my temper. Steve
carried another challenge, hotter than the other, and we waited again.
Nothing came of it. I began to feel quite comfortable. I began to take
an interest in the challenges myself. I had not felt any before; but it
seemed to me that I was accumulating a great and valuable reputation at
no expense, and my delight in this grew and grew, as challenge after
challenge was declined, until by midnight I was beginning to think that
there was nothing in the world so much to be desired as a chance to
fight a duel. So I hurried Daggett up; made him keep on sending
challenge after challenge. Oh, well, I overdid it; Laird accepted. I
might have known that that would happen--Laird was a man you couldn't
depend on.

The boys were jubilant beyond expression. They helped me make my will,
which was another discomfort--and I already had enough. Then they took
me home. I didn't sleep any--didn't want to sleep. I had plenty of
things to think about, and less than four hours to do it in,--because
five o'clock was the hour appointed for the tragedy, and I should have
to use up one hour--beginning at four--in practising with the revolver
and finding out which end of it to level at the adversary. At four we
went down into a little gorge, about a mile from town, and borrowed a
barn door for a mark--borrowed it of a man who was over in California on
a visit--and we set the barn door up and stood a fence-rail up against
the middle of it, to represent Mr. Laird. But the rail was no proper
representative of him, for he was longer than a rail and thinner.
Nothing would ever fetch him but a line shot, and then as like as not he
would split the bullet--the worst material for duelling purposes that
could be imagined. I began on the rail. I couldn't hit the rail; then I
tried the barn door; but I couldn't hit the barn door. There was nobody
in danger except stragglers around on the flanks of that mark. I was
thoroughly discouraged, and I didn't cheer up any when we presently
heard pistol-shots over in the next little ravine. I knew what that
was--that was Laird's gang out practising him. They would hear my shots,
and of course they would come up over the ridge to see what kind of a
record I was making--see what their chances were against me. Well, I
hadn't any record; and I knew that if Laird came over that ridge and saw
my barn door without a scratch on it, he would be as anxious to fight as
I was--or as I had been at midnight, before that disastrous acceptance
came.

Now just at this moment, a little bird, no bigger than a sparrow, flew
along by and lit on a sage-bush about thirty yards away. Steve whipped
out his revolver and shot its head off. Oh, he was a marksman--much
better than I was. We ran down there to pick up the bird, and just then,
sure enough, Mr. Laird and his people came over the ridge, and they
joined us. And when Laird's second saw that bird, with its head shot
off, he lost color, he faded, and you could see that he was interested.
He said:

"Who did that?"

Before I could answer, Steve spoke up and said quite calmly, and in a
matter-of-fact way,

"Clemens did it."

The second said, "Why, that is wonderful. How far off was that bird?"

Steve said, "Oh, not far--about thirty yards."

The second said, "Well, that is astonishing shooting. How often can he
do that?"

Steve said languidly, "Oh, about four times out of five."

I knew the little rascal was lying, but I didn't say anything. The
second said, "Why, that is _amazing_ shooting; I supposed he couldn't
hit a church."

He was supposing very sagaciously, but I didn't say anything. Well, they
said good morning. The second took Mr. Laird home, a little tottery on
his legs, and Laird sent back a note in his own hand declining to fight
a duel with me on any terms whatever.

Well, my life was saved--saved by that accident. I don't know what the
bird thought about that interposition of Providence, but I felt very,
very comfortable over it--satisfied and content. Now, we found out,
later, that Laird had _hit_ his mark four times out of six, right along.
If the duel had come off, he would have so filled my skin with
bullet-holes that it wouldn't have held my principles.

By breakfast-time the news was all over town that I had sent a challenge
and Steve Gillis had carried it. Now that would entitle us to two years
apiece in the penitentiary, according to the brand-new law. Judge North
sent us no message as coming from himself, but a message _came_ from a
close friend of his. He said it would be a good idea for us to leave the
territory by the first stage-coach. This would sail next morning, at
four o'clock--and in the meantime we would be searched for, but not with
avidity; and if we were in the Territory after that stage-coach left, we
would be the first victims of the new law. Judge North was anxious to
have some object-lessons for that law, and he would absolutely keep us
in the prison the full two years.

Well, it seemed to me that our society was no longer desirable in
Nevada; so we stayed in our quarters and observed proper caution all
day--except that once Steve went over to the hotel to attend to another
customer of mine. That was a Mr. Cutler. You see Laird was not the only
person whom I had tried to reform during my occupancy of the editorial
chair. I had looked around and selected several other people, and
delivered a new zest of life into them through warm criticism and
disapproval--so that when I laid down my editorial pen I had four
horse-whippings and two duels owing to me. We didn't care for the
horse-whippings; there was no glory in them; they were not worth the
trouble of collecting. But honor required that some notice should be
taken of that other duel. Mr. Cutler had come up from Carson City, and
had sent a man over with a challenge from the hotel. Steve went over to
pacify him. Steve weighed only ninety-five pounds, but it was well known
throughout the territory that with his fists he could whip anybody that
walked on two legs, let his weight and science be what they might. Steve
was a Gillis, and when a Gillis confronted a man and had a proposition
to make, the proposition always contained business. When Cutler found
that Steve was my second he cooled down; he became calm and rational,
and was ready to listen. Steve gave him fifteen minutes to get out of
the hotel, and half an hour to get out of town or there would be
results. So _that_ duel went off successfully, because Mr. Cutler
immediately left for Carson a convinced and reformed man.

I have never had anything to do with duels since. I thoroughly
disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise, and I know they are
dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now, I would go to
that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to
a quiet retired spot, and _kill_ him.

MARK TWAIN.

(_To be Continued._)

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. DCVI.

JANUARY 4, 1907.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--IX.

BY MARK TWAIN.

[_Dictated December 13, 1906._] As regards the coming American monarchy.
It was before the Secretary of State had been heard from that the
chairman of the banquet said:

"In this time of unrest it is of great satisfaction that such a man as
you, Mr. Root, is chief adviser of the President."

Mr. Root then got up and in the most quiet and orderly manner touched
off the successor to the San Francisco earthquake. As a result, the
several State governments were well shaken up and considerably weakened.
Mr. Root was prophesying. He was prophesying, and it seems to me that no
shrewder and surer forecasting has been done in this country for a good
many years.

He did not say, in so many words, that we are proceeding, in a steady
march, toward eventual and unavoidable replacement of the republic by
monarchy; but I suppose he was aware that that is the case. He notes the
several steps, the customary steps, which in all the ages have led to
the consolidation of loose and scattered governmental forces into
formidable centralizations of authority; but he stops there, and doesn't
add up the sum. He is not unaware that heretofore the sum has been
ultimate monarchy, and that the same figures can fairly be depended upon
to furnish the same sum whenever and wherever they can be produced, so
long as human nature shall remain as it is; but it was not needful that
he do the adding, since any one can do it; neither would it have been
gracious in him to do it.

In observing the changed conditions which in the course of time have
made certain and sure the eventual seizure by the Washington government
of a number of State duties and prerogatives which have been betrayed
and neglected by the several States, he does not attribute those changes
and the vast results which are to flow from them to any thought-out
policy of any party or of any body of dreamers or schemers, but properly
and rightly attributes them to that stupendous power--_Circumstance_--
which moves by laws of its own, regardless of parties and policies, and
whose decrees are final, and must be obeyed by all--and will be. The
railway is a Circumstance, the steamship is a Circumstance, the
telegraph is a Circumstance. They were mere happenings; and to the whole
world, the wise and the foolish alike, they were entirely trivial,
wholly inconsequential; indeed silly, comical, grotesque. No man, and no
party, and no thought-out policy said, "Behold, we will build railways
and steamships and telegraphs, and presently you will see the condition
and way of life of every man and woman and child in the nation totally
changed; unimaginable changes of law and custom will follow, in spite of
anything that anybody can do to prevent it."

The changed conditions have come, and Circumstance knows what is
following, and will follow. So does Mr. Root. His language is not
unclear, it is crystal:

"Our whole life has swung away from the old State centres, and is
crystallizing about national centres."

" ... The old barriers which kept the States as separate
communities are completely lost from sight."

" ... That [State] power of regulation and control is gradually
passing into the hands of the national government."

"Sometimes by an assertion of the inter-State commerce power,
sometimes by an assertion of the taxing power, the national
government is taking up the performance of duties which under the
changed conditions the separate States are no longer capable of
adequately performing."

"We are urging forward in a development of business and social life
which tends more and more to the obliteration of State lines and
the decrease of State power as compared with national power."

"It is useless for the advocates of State rights to inveigh against
... the extension of national authority in the fields of necessary
control where the States themselves fail in the performance of
their duty."

He is not announcing a policy; he is not forecasting what a party of
planners will bring about; he is merely telling what the people will
require and compel. And he could have added--which would be perfectly
true--that the people will not be moved to it by speculation and
cogitation and planning, but by _Circumstance_--that power which
arbitrarily compels all their actions, and over which they have not the
slightest control.

_"The end is not yet."_

It is a true word. We are on the march, but at present we are only just
getting started.

If the States continue to fail to do their duty as required by the
people--

" ... _constructions of the Constitution will be found_ to vest the
power where it will be exercised--in the national government."

I do not know whether that has a sinister meaning or not, and so I will
not enlarge upon it lest I should chance to be in the wrong. It sounds
like ship-money come again, but it may not be so intended.

Human nature being what it is, I suppose we must expect to drift into
monarchy by and by. It is a saddening thought, but we cannot change our
nature: we are all alike, we human beings; and in our blood and bone,
and ineradicable, we carry the seeds out of which monarchies and
aristocracies are grown: worship of gauds, titles, distinctions, power.
We have to worship these things and their possessors, we are all born
so, and we cannot help it. We have to be despised by somebody whom we
regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to
worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this
in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and
hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we
get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter. Sometimes we get a
good man and worth the price, but we are ready to take him anyway,
whether he be ripe or rotten, whether he be clean and decent, or merely
a basket of noble and sacred and long-descended offal. And when we get
him the whole nation publicly chaffs and scoffs--and privately envies;
and also is proud of the honor which has been conferred upon us. We run
over our list of titled purchases every now and then, in the newspapers,
and discuss them and caress them, and are thankful and happy.

Like all the other nations, we worship money and the possessors of
it--they being our aristocracy, and we have to have one. We like to read
about rich people in the papers; the papers know it, and they do their
best to keep this appetite liberally fed. They even leave out a football
bull-fight now and then to get room for all the particulars of
how--according to the display heading--"Rich Woman Fell Down Cellar--Not
Hurt." The falling down the cellar is of no interest to us when the
woman is not rich, but no rich woman can fall down cellar and we not
yearn to know all about it and wish it was us.

In a monarchy the people willingly and rejoicingly revere and take pride
in their nobilities, and are not humiliated by the reflection that this
humble and hearty homage gets no return but contempt. Contempt does not
shame them, they are used to it, and they recognize that it is their
proper due. We are all made like that. In Europe we easily and quickly
learn to take that attitude toward the sovereigns and the aristocracies;
moreover, it has been observed that when we get the attitude we go on
and exaggerate it, presently becoming more servile than the natives, and
vainer of it. The next step is to rail and scoff at republics and
democracies. All of which is natural, for we have not ceased to be human
beings by becoming Americans, and the human race was always intended to
be governed by kingship, not by popular vote.

I suppose we must expect that unavoidable and irresistible Circumstances
will gradually take away the powers of the States and concentrate them
in the central government, and that the republic will then repeat the
history of all time and become a monarchy; but I believe that if we
obstruct these encroachments and steadily resist them the monarchy can
be postponed for a good while yet.

[Sidenote: (1849-'51.)]

[_Dictated December 1, 1906._] An exciting event in our village
(Hannibal) was the arrival of the mesmerizer. I think the year was 1850.
As to that I am not sure, but I know the month--it was May; that detail
has survived the wear of fifty-five years. A pair of connected little
incidents of that month have served to keep the memory of it green for
me all this time; incidents of no consequence, and not worth embalming,
yet my memory has preserved them carefully and flung away things of real
value to give them space and make them comfortable. The truth is, a
person's memory has no more sense than his conscience, and no
appreciation whatever of values and proportions. However, never mind
those trifling incidents; my subject is the mesmerizer, now.

He advertised his show, and promised marvels. Admission as usual: 25
cents, children and negroes half price. The village had heard of
mesmerism, in a general way, but had not encountered it yet. Not many
people attended, the first night, but next day they had so many wonders
to tell that everybody's curiosity was fired, and after that for a
fortnight the magician had prosperous times. I was fourteen or fifteen
years old--the age at which a boy is willing to endure all things,
suffer all things, short of death by fire, if thereby he may be
conspicuous and show off before the public; and so, when I saw the
"subjects" perform their foolish antics on the platform and make the
people laugh and shout and admire, I had a burning desire to be a
subject myself. Every night, for three nights, I sat in the row of
candidates on the platform, and held the magic disk in the palm of my
hand, and gazed at it and tried to get sleepy, but it was a failure; I
remained wide awake, and had to retire defeated, like the majority.
Also, I had to sit there and be gnawed with envy of Hicks, our
journeyman; I had to sit there and see him scamper and jump when Simmons
the enchanter exclaimed, "See the snake! see the snake!" and hear him
say, "My, how beautiful!" in response to the suggestion that he was
observing a splendid sunset; and so on--the whole insane business. I
couldn't laugh, I couldn't applaud; it filled me with bitterness to have
others do it, and to have people make a hero of Hicks, and crowd around
him when the show was over, and ask him for more and more particulars of
the wonders he had seen in his visions, and manifest in many ways that
they were proud to be acquainted with him. Hicks--the idea! I couldn't
stand it; I was getting boiled to death in my own bile.

On the fourth night temptation came, and I was not strong enough to
resist. When I had gazed at the disk awhile I pretended to be sleepy,
and began to nod. Straightway came the professor and made passes over my
head and down my body and legs and arms, finishing each pass with a snap
of his fingers in the air, to discharge the surplus electricity; then he
began to "draw" me with the disk, holding it in his fingers and telling
me I could not take my eyes off it, try as I might; so I rose slowly,
bent and gazing, and followed that disk all over the place, just as I
had seen the others do. Then I was put through the other paces. Upon
suggestion I fled from snakes; passed buckets at a fire; became excited
over hot steamboat-races; made love to imaginary girls and kissed them;
fished from the platform and landed mud-cats that outweighed me--and so
on, all the customary marvels. But not in the customary way. I was
cautious at first, and watchful, being afraid the professor would
discover that I was an impostor and drive me from the platform in
disgrace; but as soon as I realized that I was not in danger, I set
myself the task of terminating Hicks's usefulness as a subject, and of
usurping his place.

It was a sufficiently easy task. Hicks was born honest; I, without that
incumbrance--so some people said. Hicks saw what he saw, and reported
accordingly; I saw more than was visible, and added to it such details
as could help. Hicks had no imagination, I had a double supply. He was
born calm, I was born excited. No vision could start a rapture in him,
and he was constipated as to language, anyway; but if I saw a vision I
emptied the dictionary onto it and lost the remnant of my mind into the
bargain.

At the end of my first half-hour Hicks was a thing of the past, a fallen
hero, a broken idol, and I knew it and was glad, and said in my heart,
Success to crime! Hicks could never have been mesmerized to the point
where he could kiss an imaginary girl in public, or a real one either,
but I was competent. Whatever Hicks had failed in, I made it a point to
succeed in, let the cost be what it might, physically or morally. He
had shown several bad defects, and I had made a note of them. For
instance, if the magician asked, "What do you see?" and left him to
invent a vision for himself, Hicks was dumb and blind, he couldn't see a
thing nor say a word, whereas the magician soon found that when it came
to seeing visions of a stunning and marketable sort I could get along
better without his help than with it. Then there was another thing:
Hicks wasn't worth a tallow dip on mute mental suggestion. Whenever
Simmons stood behind him and gazed at the back of his skull and tried to
drive a mental suggestion into it, Hicks sat with vacant face, and never
suspected. If he had been noticing, he could have seen by the rapt faces
of the audience that something was going on behind his back that
required a response. Inasmuch as I was an impostor I dreaded to have
this test put upon me, for I knew the professor would be "willing" me to
do something, and as I couldn't know what it was, I should be exposed
and denounced. However, when my time came, I took my chance. I perceived
by the tense and expectant faces of the people that Simmons was behind
me willing me with all his might. I tried my best to imagine what he
wanted, but nothing suggested itself. I felt ashamed and miserable,
then. I believed that the hour of my disgrace was come, and that in
another moment I should go out of that place disgraced. I ought to be
ashamed to confess it, but my next thought was, not how I could win the
compassion of kindly hearts by going out humbly and in sorrow for my
misdoings, but how I could go out most sensationally and spectacularly.

There was a rusty and empty old revolver lying on the table, among the
"properties" employed in the performances. On May-day, two or three
weeks before, there had been a celebration by the schools, and I had had
a quarrel with a big boy who was the school-bully, and I had not come
out of it with credit. That boy was now seated in the middle of the
house, half-way down the main aisle. I crept stealthily and impressively
toward the table, with a dark and murderous scowl on my face, copied
from a popular romance, seized the revolver suddenly, flourished it,
shouted the bully's name, jumped off the platform, and made a rush for
him and chased him out of the house before the paralyzed people could
interfere to save him. There was a storm of applause, and the magician,
addressing the house, said, most impressively--

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