house. He has not made one statement whose veracity fails to tally
exactly with my own standard. I have never seen a person improve so.
This makes me thankful and proud of a country that can produce such
men—two such men. And all in the same country. We can't be with you
always; we are passing away, and then—well, everything will have to
stop, I reckon. It is a sad thought. But in spirit I shall still be with
you. Choate, too—if he can.

Every born American among the eighty millions, let his creed or
destitution of creed be what it may, is indisputably a Christian—to this
degree that his moral constitution is Christian.

There are two kinds of Christian morals, one private and the other
public. These two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more
akin to each other than are archangels and politicians. During three
hundred and sixty-three days in the year the American citizen is true to
his Christian private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character
at its best and highest; then in the other two days of the year he
leaves his Christian private morals at home and carries his Christian
public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can
to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work. Without
a blush he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is his party's
Moses, without compunction he will vote against the best man in the
whole land if he is on the other ticket. Every year in a number of
cities and States he helps put corrupt men in office, whereas if
he would but throw away his Christian public morals, and carry his
Christian private morals to the polls, he could promptly purify the
public service and make the possession of office a high and honorable
distinction.

Once a year he lays aside his Christian private morals and hires a
ferry-boat and piles up his bonds in a warehouse in New Jersey for
three days, and gets out his Christian public morals and goes to the tax
office and holds up his hands and swears he wishes he may never—never if
he's got a cent in the world, so help him. The next day the list appears
in the papers—a column and a quarter of names, in fine print, and every
man in the list a billionaire and member of a couple of churches. I know
all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with
the whole lot of them. They never miss a sermon when they are so's to be
around, and they never miss swearing-off day, whether they are so's to
be around or not.

I used to be an honest man. I am crumbling. No—I have crumbled. When
they assessed me at $75,000 a fortnight ago I went out and tried to
borrow the money, and couldn't; then when I found they were letting a
whole crop of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they
were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said: “This is the
last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself.” In that
moment—in that memorable moment—I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes
the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I had become just a
mere moral sand-pile; and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned
and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property
I've got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and what is
left of my wig.

Those tax officers were moved; they were profoundly moved. They had long
been accustomed to seeing hardened old grafters act like that, and they
could endure the spectacle; but they were expecting better things of me,
a chartered, professional moralist, and they were saddened.

I fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and I should have fallen in
my own, except that I had already struck bottom, and there wasn't any
place to fall to.

At Tuskeegee they will jump to misleading conclusions from insufficient
evidence, along with Doctor Parkhurst, and they will deceive the student
with the superstition that no gentleman ever swears.

Look at those good millionaires; aren't they gentlemen? Well, they
swear. Only once in a year, maybe, but there's enough bulk to it to make
up for the lost time. And do they lose anything by it? No, they don't;
they save enough in three minutes to support the family seven years.
When they swear, do we shudder? No—unless they say “damn!” Then we do.
It shrivels us all up. Yet we ought not to feel so about it, because we
all swear—everybody. Including the ladies. Including Doctor Parkhurst,
that strong and brave and excellent citizen, but superficially educated.

For it is not the word that is the sin, it is the spirit back of the
word. When an irritated lady says “oh!” the spirit back of it is “damn!”
 and that is the way it is going to be recorded against her. It always
makes me so sorry when I hear a lady swear like that. But if she says
“damn,” and says it in an amiable, nice way, it isn't going to be
recorded at all.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong; he can swear
and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and, benevolent and
affectionate way. The historian, John Fiske, whom I knew well and loved,
was a spotless and most noble and upright Christian gentleman, and yet
he swore once. Not exactly that, maybe; still, he—but I will tell you
about it.

One day, when he was deeply immersed in his work, his wife came in, much
moved and profoundly distressed, and said: “I am sorry to disturb you,
John, but I must, for this is a serious matter, and needs to be attended
to at once.”

Then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation against their little
son. She said: “He has been saying his Aunt Mary is a fool and his Aunt
Martha is a damned fool.” Mr. Fiske reflected upon the matter a minute,
then said: “Oh, well, it's about the distinction I should make between
them myself.”

Mr. Washington, I beg you to convey these teachings to your great and
prosperous and most beneficent educational institution, and add them to
the prodigal mental and moral riches wherewith you equip your fortunate
proteges for the struggle of life.

TAMMANY AND CROKER

          Mr. Clemens made his debut as a campaign orator on October 7,
          1901, advocating the election of Seth Low for Mayor, not as a
          Republican, but as a member of the “Acorns,” which he described
          as a “third party having no political affiliation, but was
          concerned only in the selection of the best candidates and the
          best member.”

Great Britain had a Tammany and a Croker a good while ago. This Tammany
was in India, and it began its career with the spread of the English
dominion after the Battle of Plassey. Its first boss was Clive, a
sufficiently crooked person sometimes, but straight as a yard stick
when compared with the corkscrew crookedness of the second boss, Warren
Hastings.

That old-time Tammany was the East India Company's government, and had
its headquarters at Calcutta. Ostensibly it consisted of a Great Council
of four persons, of whom one was the Governor-General, Warren Hastings;
really it consisted of one person—Warren Hastings; for by usurpation he
concentrated all authority in himself and governed the country like an
autocrat.

Ostensibly the Court of Directors, sitting in London and representing
the vast interests of the stockholders, was supreme in authority over
the Calcutta Great Council, whose membership it appointed and removed at
pleasure, whose policies it dictated, and to whom it conveyed its will
in the form of sovereign commands; but whenever it suited Hastings,
he ignored even that august body's authority and conducted the mighty
affairs of the British Empire in India to suit his own notions.

At his mercy was the daily bread of every official, every trader, every
clerk, every civil servant, big and little, in the whole huge India
Company's machine, and the man who hazarded his bread by any failure of
subserviency to the boss lost it.

Now then, let the supreme masters of British India, the giant
corporation of the India Company of London, stand for the voters of the
city of New York; let the Great Council of Calcutta stand for Tammany;
let the corrupt and money-grubbing great hive of serfs which served
under the Indian Tammany's rod stand for New York Tammany's serfs; let
Warren Hastings stand for Richard Croker, and it seems to me that the
parallel is exact and complete. And so let us be properly grateful and
thank God and our good luck that we didn't invent Tammany.

Edmund Burke, regarded by many as the greatest orator of all times,
conducted the case against Warren Hastings in that renowned trial which
lasted years, and which promises to keep its renown for centuries to
come. I wish to quote some of the things he said. I wish to imagine him
arraigning Mr. Croker and Tammany before the voters of New York City and
pleading with them for the overthrow of that combined iniquity of
the 5th of November, and will substitute for “My Lords,” read
“Fellow-Citizens”; for “Kingdom,” read “City”; for “Parliamentary
Process,” read “Political Campaign”; for “Two Houses,” read “Two
Parties,” and so it reads:

“Fellow—citizens, I must look upon it as an auspicious circumstance to
this cause, in which the honor of the city is involved, that from the
first commencement of our political campaign to this the hour of solemn
trial not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen, between the two
parties.

“You will see, in the progress of this cause, that there is not only
a long, connected, systematic series of misdemeanors, but an equally
connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them. Upon
both of these you must judge.

“It is not only the interest of the city of New York, now the most
considerable part of the city of the Americans, which is concerned,
but the credit and honor of the nation itself will be decided by this
decision.”

          At a later meeting of the Acorn Club, Mr. Clemens said:

Tammany is dead, and there's no use in blackguarding a corpse.

The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had
only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him,
“Where is the best place to go to?” He was undecided about it. So the
minister told him that each place had its advantages—heaven for climate,
and hell for society.

MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION

          ADDRESS AT THE CITY CLUB DINNER, JANUARY 4,1901

          Bishop Potter told how an alleged representative of Tammany
          Hall asked him in effect if he would cease his warfare upon the
          Police Department if a certain captain and inspector were
          dismissed.  He replied that he would never be satisfied until
          the “man at the top” and the “system” which permitted evils in
          the Police Department were crushed.

The Bishop has just spoken of a condition of things which none of us
can deny, and which ought not to exist; that is, the lust of gain—a lust
which does not stop short of the penitentiary or the jail to accomplish
its ends. But we may be sure of one thing, and that is that this sort of
thing is not universal. If it were, this country would not be. You may
put this down as a fact: that out of every fifty men, forty-nine are
clean. Then why is it, you may ask, that the forty-nine don't have
things the way they want them? I'll tell you why it is. A good deal
has been said here to-night about what is to be accomplished by
organization. That's just the thing. It's because the fiftieth fellow
and his pals are organized and the other forty-nine are not that the
dirty one rubs it into the clean fellows every time.

You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much
organization that it will interfere with the work to be done. The Bishop
here had an experience of that sort, and told all about it down-town the
other night. He was painting a barn—it was his own barn—and yet he
was informed that his work must stop; he was a non-union painter, and
couldn't continue at that sort of job.

Now, all these conditions of which you complain should be remedied, and
I am here to tell you just how to do it. I've been a statesman without
salary for many years, and I have accomplished great and widespread
good. I don't know that it has benefited anybody very much, even if
it was good; but I do know that it hasn't harmed me very much, and is
hasn't made me any richer.

We hold the balance of power. Put up your best men for office, and we
shall support the better one. With the election of the best man for
Mayor would follow the selection of the best man for Police Commissioner
and Chief of Police.

My first lesson in the craft of statesmanship was taken at an early age.
Fifty-one years ago I was fourteen years old, and we had a society in
the town I lived in, patterned after the Freemasons, or the Ancient
Order of United Farmers, or some such thing—just what it was patterned
after doesn't matter. It had an inside guard and an outside guard, and
a past-grand warden, and a lot of such things, so as to give dignity to
the organization and offices to the members.

Generally speaking it was a pretty good sort of organization, and
some of the very best boys in the village, including—but I mustn't get
personal on an occasion like this—and the society would have got along
pretty well had it not been for the fact that there were a certain
number of the members who could be bought. They got to be an infernal
nuisance. Every time we had an election the candidates had to go
around and see the purchasable members. The price per vote was paid in
doughnuts, and it depended somewhat on the appetites of the individuals
as to the price of the votes.

This thing ran along until some of us, the really very best boys in the
organization, decided that these corrupt practices must stop, and for
the purpose of stopping them we organized a third party. We had a name,
but we were never known by that name. Those who didn't like us called us
the Anti-Doughnut party, but we didn't mind that.

We said: “Call us what you please; the name doesn't matter. We are
organized for a principle.” By-and-by the election came around, and
we made a big mistake. We were triumphantly beaten. That taught us a
lesson. Then and there we decided never again to nominate anybody
for anything. We decided simply to force the other two parties in the
society to nominate their very best men. Although we were organized for
a principle, we didn't care much about that. Principles aren't of much
account anyway, except at election-time. After that you hang them up to
let them season.

The next time we had an election we told both the other parties that
we'd beat any candidates put up by any one of them of whom we didn't
approve. In that election we did business. We got the man we wanted. I
suppose they called us the Anti-Doughnut party because they couldn't buy
us with their doughnuts. They didn't have enough of them. Most reformers
arrive at their price sooner or later, and I suppose we would have had
our price; but our opponents weren't offering anything but doughnuts,
and those we spurned.

Now it seems to me that an Anti-Doughnut party is just what is wanted
in the present emergency. I would have the Anti-Doughnuts felt in every
city and hamlet and school district in this State and in the United
States. I was an Anti-Doughnut in my boyhood, and I'm an Anti-Doughnut
still. The modern designation is Mugwump. There used to be quite a
number of us Mugwumps, but I think I'm the only one left. I had a vote
this fall, and I began to make some inquiries as to what I had better do
with it.

I don't know anything about finance, and I never did, but I know some
pretty shrewd financiers, and they told me that Mr. Bryan wasn't safe on
any financial question. I said to myself, then, that it wouldn't do
for me to vote for Bryan, and I rather thought—I know now—that McKinley
wasn't just right on this Philippine question, and so I just didn't vote
for anybody. I've got that vote yet, and I've kept it clean, ready to
deposit at some other election. It wasn't cast for any wildcat financial
theories, and it wasn't cast to support the man who sends our boys as
volunteers out into the Philippines to get shot down under a polluted
flag.

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY, NEW YORK,
DECEMBER 6, 1900.

          Doctor Mackay, in his response to the toast “St. Nicholas,”
           referred to Mr. Clemens, saying:--“Mark Twain is as true a
          preacher of true righteousness as any bishop, priest, or
          minister of any church to-day, because he moves men to forget
          their faults by cheerful well-doing instead of making them sour
          and morbid by everlastingly bending their attention to the
          seamy and sober side of life.”

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY,—These are,
indeed, prosperous days for me. Night before last, in a speech, the
Bishop of the Diocese of New York complimented me for my contribution to
theology, and to-night the Reverend Doctor Mackay has elected me to the
ministry. I thanked Bishop Potter then for his compliment, and I thank
Doctor Mackay now for that promotion. I think that both have discerned
in me what I long ago discerned, but what I was afraid the world would
never learn to recognize.

In this absence of nine years I find a great improvement in the city of
New York. I am glad to speak on that as a toast—“The City of New York.”
 Some say it has improved because I have been away. Others, and I agree
with them, say it has improved because I have come back. We must judge
of a city, as of a man, by its external appearances and by its inward
character. In externals the foreigner coming to these shores is more
impressed at first by our sky-scrapers. They are new to him. He has
not done anything of the sort since he built the tower of Babel. The
foreigner is shocked by them.

In the daylight they are ugly. They are—well, too chimneyfied and too
snaggy—like a mouth that needs attention from a dentist; like a cemetery
that is all monuments and no gravestones. But at night, seen from the
river where they are columns towering against the sky, all sparkling
with light, they are fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the
soul and more enchanting than anything that man has dreamed of since the
Arabian nights. We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let
us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go.
When your foreigner makes disagreeable comments on New York by daylight,
float him down the river at night.

What has made these sky-scrapers possible is the elevator. The cigar-box
which the European calls a “lift” needs but to be compared with our
elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors.
That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American
elevator acts like the man's patent purge—it worked. As the inventor
said, “This purge doesn't waste any time fooling around; it attends
strictly to business.”

That New-Yorkers have the cleanest, quickest, and most admirable system
of street railways in the world has been forced upon you by the abnormal
appreciation you have of your hackman. We ought always to be grateful to
him for that service. Nobody else would have brought such a system into
existence for us. We ought to build him a monument. We owe him one as
much as we owe one to anybody. Let it be a tall one. Nothing permanent,
of course; build it of plaster, say. Then gaze at it and realize how
grateful we are—for the time being—and then pull it down and throw it on
the ash-heap. That's the way to honor your public heroes.

As to our streets, I find them cleaner than they used to be. I miss
those dear old landmarks, the symmetrical mountain ranges of dust and
dirt that used to be piled up along the streets for the wind and rain
to tear down at their pleasure. Yes, New York is cleaner than Bombay. I
realize that I have been in Bombay, that I now am in New York; that it
is not my duty to flatter Bombay, but rather to flatter New York.

Compared with the wretched attempts of London to light that city, New
York may fairly be said to be a well-lighted city. Why, London's attempt
at good lighting is almost as bad as London's attempt at rapid transit.
There is just one good system of rapid transit in London—the “Tube,” and
that, of course, had been put in by Americans. Perhaps, after a while,
those Americans will come back and give New York also a good underground
system. Perhaps they have already begun. I have been so busy since I
came back that I haven't had time as yet to go down cellar.

But it is by the laws of the city, it is by the manners of the city, it
is by the ideals of the city, it is by the customs of the city and by
the municipal government which all these elements correct, support, and
foster, by which the foreigner judges the city. It is by these that he
realizes that New York may, indeed, hold her head high among the cities
of the world. It is by these standards that he knows whether to class
the city higher or lower than the other municipalities of the world.

Gentlemen, you have the best municipal government in the world—the
purest and the most fragrant. The very angels envy you, and wish they
could establish a government like it in heaven. You got it by a noble
fidelity to civic duty. You got it by stern and ever-watchful exertion
of the great powers with which you are charged by the rights which were
handed down to you by your forefathers, by your manly refusal to let
base men invade the high places of your government, and by instant
retaliation when any public officer has insulted you in the city's name
by swerving in the slightest from the upright and full performance of
his duty. It is you who have made this city the envy of the cities of
the world. God will bless you for it—God will bless you for it. Why,
when you approach the final resting-place the angels of heaven will
gather at the gates and cry out:

“Here they come! Show them to the archangel's box, and turn the
lime-light on them!”

CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES

          AT A DINNER GIVEN IN THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, DECEMBER, 1900

          Winston Spencer Churchill was introduced by Mr. Clemens.

For years I've been a self-appointed missionary to bring about the union
of America and the motherland. They ought to be united. Behold America,
the refuge of the oppressed from everywhere (who can pay fifty dollars'
admission)—any one except a Chinaman—standing up for human rights
everywhere, even helping China let people in free when she wants to
collect fifty dollars upon them. And how unselfishly England has wrought
for the open door for all! And how piously America has wrought for that
open door in all cases where it was not her own!

Yes, as a missionary I've sung my songs of praise. And yet I think that
England sinned when she got herself into a war in South Africa which she
could have avoided, just as we sinned in getting into a similar war in
the Philippines. Mr. Churchill, by his father, is an Englishman; by his
mother he is an American—no doubt a blend that makes the perfect man.
England and America; yes, we are kin. And now that we are also kin in
sin, there is nothing more to be desired. The harmony is complete, the
blend is perfect.

THEORETICAL MORALS

          The New Vagabonds Club of London, made up of the leading
          younger literary men of the day, gave a dinner in honor of Mr.
          and Mrs. Clemens, July 8, 1899.

It has always been difficult—leave that word difficult—not exceedingly
difficult, but just difficult, nothing more than that, not the slightest
shade to add to that—just difficult—to respond properly, in the right
phraseology, when compliments are paid to me; but it is more than
difficult when the compliments are paid to a better than I—my wife.

And while I am not here to testify against myself—I can't be expected
to do so, a prisoner in your own country is not admitted to do so—as to
which member of the family wrote my books, I could say in general that
really I wrote the books myself. My wife puts the facts in, and they
make it respectable. My modesty won't suffer while compliments are being
paid to literature, and through literature to my family. I can't get
enough of them.

I am curiously situated to-night. It so rarely happens that I am
introduced by a humorist; I am generally introduced by a person of
grave walk and carriage. That makes the proper background of gravity
for brightness. I am going to alter to suit, and haply I may say some
humorous things.

When you start with a blaze of sunshine and upburst of humor, when you
begin with that, the proper office of humor is to reflect, to put you
into that pensive mood of deep thought, to make you think of your sins,
if you wish half an hour to fly. Humor makes me reflect now to-night, it
sets the thinking machinery in motion. Always, when I am thinking, there
come suggestions of what I am, and what we all are, and what we are
coming to. A sermon comes from my lips always when I listen to a
humorous speech.

I seize the opportunity to throw away frivolities, to say something to
plant the seed, and make all better than when I came. In Mr. Grossmith's
remarks there was a subtle something suggesting my favorite theory of
the difference between theoretical morals and practical morals. I try to
instil practical morals in the place of theatrical—I mean theoretical;
but as an addendum—an annex—something added to theoretical morals.

When your chairman said it was the first time he had ever taken the
chair, he did not mean that he had not taken lots of other things;
he attended my first lecture and took notes. This indicated the man's
disposition. There was nothing else flying round, so he took notes; he
would have taken anything he could get.

I can bring a moral to bear here which shows the difference between
theoretical morals and practical morals. Theoretical morals are the sort
you get on your mother's knee, in good books, and from the pulpit. You
gather them in your head, and not in your heart; they are theory without
practice. Without the assistance of practice to perfect them, it is
difficult to teach a child to “be honest, don't steal.”

I will teach you how it should be done, lead you into temptation, teach
you how to steal, so that you may recognize when you have stolen and
feel the proper pangs. It is no good going round and bragging you have
never taken the chair.

As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime, you learn real
morals. Commit all the crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take
them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick
to it, commit two or three every day, and by-and-by you will be proof
against them. When you are through you will be proof against all sins
and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against every possible
commission of them. This is the only way.

I will read you a written statement upon the subject that I wrote three
years ago to read to the Sabbath-schools. [Here the lecturer turned his
pockets out, but without success.] No! I have left it at home. Still, it
was a mere statement of fact, illustrating the value of practical morals
produced by the commission of crime.

It was in my boyhood just a statement of fact, reading is only more
formal, merely facts, merely pathetic facts, which I can state so as to
be understood. It relates to the first time I ever stole a watermelon;
that is, I think it was the first time; anyway, it was right along there
somewhere.

I stole it out of a farmer's wagon while he was waiting on another
customer. “Stole” is a harsh term. I withdrew—I retired that watermelon.
I carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard. I broke it open. It
was green—the greenest watermelon raised in the valley that year.

The minute I saw it was green I was sorry, and began to
reflect—reflection is the beginning of reform. If you don't reflect when
you commit a crime then that crime is of no use; it might just as well
have been committed by some one else: You must reflect or the value is
lost; you are not vaccinated against committing it again.

I began to reflect. I said to myself: “What ought a boy to do who has
stolen a green watermelon? What would George Washington do, the father
of his country, the only American who could not tell a lie? What would
he do? There is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy to do who
has stolen a watermelon of that class: he must make restitution; he must
restore that stolen property to its rightful owner.” I said I would do
it when I made that good resolution. I felt it to be a noble, uplifting
obligation. I rose up spiritually stronger and refreshed. I carried that
watermelon back—what was left of it—and restored it to the farmer, and
made him give me a ripe one in its place.

Now you see that this constant impact of crime upon crime protects
you against further commission of crime. It builds you up. A man can't
become morally perfect by stealing one or a thousand green watermelons,
but every little helps.

I was at a great school yesterday (St. Paul's), where for four hundred
years they have been busy with brains, and building up England by
producing Pepys, Miltons, and Marlboroughs. Six hundred boys left to
nothing in the world but theoretical morality. I wanted to become the
professor of practical morality, but the high master was away, so I
suppose I shall have to go on making my living the same old way—by
adding practical to theoretical morality.

What are the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, compared
to the glory and grandeur and majesty of a perfected morality such as
you see before you?

The New Vagabonds are old vagabonds (undergoing the old sort of reform).
You drank my health; I hope I have not been unuseful. Take this system
of morality to your hearts. Take it home to your neighbors and your
graves, and I hope that it will be a long time before you arrive there.

LAYMAN'S SERMON

          The Young Men's Christian Association asked Mr. Clemens to
          deliver a lay sermon at the Majestic Theatre, New York, March
          4, 1906.  More than five thousand young men tried to get into
          the theatre, and in a short time traffic was practically
          stopped in the adjacent streets.  The police reserves had to be
          called out to thin the crowd.  Doctor Fagnani had said
          something before about the police episode, and Mr. Clemens took
          it up.

I have been listening to what was said here, and there is in it a lesson
of citizenship. You created the police, and you are responsible for
them. One must pause, therefore, before criticising them too harshly.
They are citizens, just as we are. A little of citizenship ought to
be taught at the mother's knee and in the nursery. Citizenship is what
makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a
republic on its legs is good citizenship.

Organization is necessary in all things. It is even necessary in reform.
I was an organization myself once—for twelve hours. I was in Chicago
a few years ago about to depart for New York. There were with me Mr.
Osgood, a publisher, and a stenographer. I picked out a state-room on
a train, the principal feature of which was that it contained the
privilege of smoking. The train had started but a short time when the
conductor came in and said that there had been a mistake made, and asked
that we vacate the apartment. I refused, but when I went out on the
platform Osgood and the stenographer agreed to accept a section. They
were too modest.

Now, I am not modest. I was born modest, but it didn't last. I asserted
myself; insisted upon my rights, and finally the Pullman Conductor and
the train conductor capitulated, and I was left in possession.

I went into the dining-car the next morning for breakfast. Ordinarily I
only care for coffee and rolls, but this particular morning I espied
an important-looking man on the other side of the car eating broiled
chicken. I asked for broiled chicken, and I was told by the waiter and
later by the dining-car conductor that there was no broiled chicken.
There must have been an argument, for the Pullman conductor came in and
remarked: “If he wants broiled chicken, give it to him. If you
haven't got it on the train, stop somewhere. It will be better for all
concerned!” I got the chicken.

It is from experiences such as these that you get your education of
life, and you string them into jewels or into tinware, as you may
choose. I have received recently several letters asking my counsel
or advice. The principal request is for some incident that may prove
helpful to the young. There were a lot of incidents in my career to help
me along—sometimes they helped me along faster than I wanted to go.

Here is such a request. It is a telegram from Joplin, Missouri, and
it reads: “In what one of your works can we find the definition of a
gentleman?”

I have not answered that telegram, either; I couldn't. It seems to me
that if any man has just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a
gentleman, for he would need nothing else in the world.

I received the other day a letter from my old friend, William Dean
Howells—Howells, the head of American literature. No one is able to
stand with him. He is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes me,
“To-morrow I shall be sixty-nine years old.” Why, I am surprised at
Howells writing that! I have known him longer than that. I'm sorry to
see a man trying to appear so young. Let's see. Howells says now, “I see
you have been burying Patrick. I suppose he was old, too.”

No, he was never old—Patrick. He came to us thirty-six years ago. He was
my coachman on the morning that I drove my young bride to our new home.
He was a young Irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and
he never changed in all his life. He really was with us but twenty-five
years, for he did not go with us to Europe, but he never regarded that
as separation. As the children grew up he was their guide. He was all
honor, honesty, and affection. He was with us in New Hampshire, with us
last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes were just as blue,
his form just as straight, and his heart just as good as on the day we
first met. In all the long years Patrick never made a mistake. He never
needed an order, he never received a command. He knew. I have been asked
for my idea of an ideal gentleman, and I give it to you Patrick McAleer.

UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY

          After the serious addresses were made, Seth Low introduced Mr.
          Clemens at the Settlement House, February 2, 1901.

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance
one can contain without bursting one's clothes. Ten days ago I did not
know anything about the University Settlement except what I'd read in
the pamphlets sent me. Now, after being here and hearing Mrs. Hewitt
and Mrs. Thomas, it seems to me I know of nothing like it at all. It's a
charity that carries no humiliation with it. Marvellous it is, to think
of schools where you don't have to drive the children in but drive them
out. It was not so in my day.

Down-stairs just now I saw a dancing lesson going on. You must pay a
cent for a lesson. You can't get it for nothing. That's the reason I
never learned to dance.

But it was the pawnbroker's shop you have here that interested me
mightily. I've known something about pawnbrokers' shops in my time,
but here you have a wonderful plan. The ordinary pawnbroker charges
thirty-six per cent. a year for a loan, and I've paid more myself, but
here a man or woman in distress can obtain a loan for one per cent. a
month! It's wonderful!

I've been interested in all I've heard to-day, especially in the
romances recounted by Mrs. Thomas, which reminds me that I have a
romance of my own in my autobiography, which I am building for the
instruction of the world.

In San Francisco, many years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter
(perhaps I should say I had been and was willing to be), a pawnbroker
was taking care of what property I had. There was a friend of mine, a
poet, out of a job, and he was having a hard time of it, too. There was
passage in it, but I guess I've got to keep that for the autobiography.

Well, my friend the poet thought his life was a failure, and I told
him I thought it was, and then he said he thought he ought to commit
suicide, and I said “all right,” which was disinterested advice to a
friend in trouble; but, like all such advice, there was just a little
bit of self-interest back of it, for if I could get a “scoop” on the
other newspapers I could get a job.

The poet could be spared, and so, largely for his own good and partly
for mine, I kept the thing in his mind, which was necessary, as would-be
suicides are very changeable and hard to hold to their purpose. He had a
preference for a pistol, which was an extravagance, for we hadn't enough
between us to hire a pistol. A fork would have been easier.

And so he concluded to drown himself, and I said it was an excellent
idea—the only trouble being that he was so good a swimmer. So we went
down to the beach. I went along to see that the thing was done right.
Then something most romantic happened. There came in on the sea
something that had been on its way for three years. It rolled in across
the broad Pacific with a message that was full of meaning to that poor
poet and cast itself at his feet. It was a life-preserver! This was a
complication. And then I had an idea—he never had any, especially
when he was going to write poetry; I suggested that we pawn the
life-preserver and get a revolver.

The pawnbroker gave us an old derringer with a bullet as big as a
hickory nut. When he heard that it was only a poet that was going to
kill himself he did not quibble. Well, we succeeded in sending a bullet
right through his head. It was a terrible moment when he placed that
pistol against his forehead and stood for an instant. I said, “Oh, pull
the trigger!” and he did, and cleaned out all the gray matter in his
brains. It carried the poetic faculty away, and now he's a useful member
of society.

Now, therefore, I realize that there's no more beneficent institution
than this penny fund of yours, and I want all the poets to know this. I
did think about writing you a check, but now I think I'll send you a few
copies of what one of your little members called 'Strawberry Finn'.

PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

          ADDRESS AT A MEETING OF THE BERKELEY LYCEUM, NEW YORK,
          NOVEMBER 23, 1900

I don't suppose that I am called here as an expert on education, for
that would show a lack of foresight on your part and a deliberate
intention to remind me of my shortcomings.

As I sat here looking around for an idea it struck me that I was called
for two reasons. One was to do good to me, a poor unfortunate traveller
on the world's wide ocean, by giving me a knowledge of the nature and
scope of your society and letting me know that others beside myself have
been of some use in the world. The other reason that I can see is
that you have called me to show by way of contrast what education can
accomplish if administered in the right sort of doses.

Your worthy president said that the school pictures, which have received
the admiration of the world at the Paris Exposition, have been sent to
Russia, and this was a compliment from that Government—which is very
surprising to me. Why, it is only an hour since I read a cablegram
in the newspapers beginning “Russia Proposes to Retrench.” I was not
expecting such a thunderbolt, and I thought what a happy thing it
will be for Russians when the retrenchment will bring home the thirty
thousand Russian troops now in Manchuria, to live in peaceful pursuits.
I thought this was what Germany should do also without delay, and that
France and all the other nations in China should follow suit.

Why should not China be free from the foreigners, who are only making
trouble on her soil? If they would only all go home, what a pleasant
place China would be for the Chinese! We do not allow Chinamen to come
here, and I say in all seriousness that it would be a graceful thing to
let China decide who shall go there.

China never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted Chinamen,
and on this question I am with the Boxers every time. The Boxer is a
patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other
people. I wish him success. The Boxer believes in driving us out of
his country. I am a Boxer too, for I believe in driving him out of our
country.

When I read the Russian despatch further my dream of world peace
vanished. It said that the vast expense of maintaining the army had
made it necessary to retrench, and so the Government had decided that
to support the army it would be necessary to withdraw the appropriation
from the public schools. This is a monstrous idea to us.

We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a
nation.

It is curious to reflect how history repeats itself the world over. Why,
I remember the same thing was done when I was a boy on the Mississippi
River. There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public
schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said
if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every
time a school was closed a jail had to be built.

It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe
it is better to support schools than jails.

The work of your association is better and shows more wisdom than the
Czar of Russia and all his people. This is not much of a compliment, but
it's the best I've got in stock.

EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP

          On the evening of May 14, 1908, the alumni of the College of
          the City of New York celebrated the opening of the new college
          buildings at a banquet in the Waldorf Astoria.  Mr. Clemens
          followed Mayor McClellan.

I agreed when the Mayor said that there was not a man within hearing who
did not agree that citizenship should be placed above everything else,
even learning.

Have you ever thought about this? Is there a college in the whole
country where there is a chair of good citizenship? There is a kind
of bad citizenship which is taught in the schools, but no real good
citizenship taught. There are some which teach insane citizenship,
bastard citizenship, but that is all. Patriotism! Yes; but patriotism
is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the
loudest.

You can begin that chair of citizenship in the College of the City of
New York. You can place it above mathematics and literature, and that is
where it belongs.

We used to trust in God. I think it was in 1863 that some genius
suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated
among the rich. They didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because
they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in God.

Good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking and accuracy of
statement. Now, that motto on the coin is an overstatement. Those
Congressmen had no right to commit this whole country to a theological
doctrine. But since they did, Congress ought to state what our creed
should be.

There was never a nation in the world that put its whole trust in
God. It is a statement made on insufficient evidence. Leaving out the
gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in
God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement.

If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps
the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest
would put their trust in the Health Board of the City of New York.

I read in the papers within the last day or two of a poor young girl who
they said was a leper. Did the people in that populous section of the
country where she was—did they put their trust in God? The girl was
afflicted with the leprosy, a disease which cannot be communicated from
one person to another.

Yet, instead of putting their trust in God, they harried that poor
creature, shelterless and friendless, from place to place, exactly as
they did in the Middle Ages, when they made lepers wear bells, so that
people could be warned of their approach and avoid them. Perhaps those
people in the Middle Ages thought they were putting their trust in God.

The President ordered the removal of that motto from the coin, and I
thought that it was well. I thought that overstatement should not stay
there. But I think it would better read, “Within certain judicious
limitations we trust in God,” and if there isn't enough room on the coin
for this, why, enlarge the coin.

Now I want to tell a story about jumping at conclusions. It was told
to me by Bram Stoker, and it concerns a christening. There was a little
clergyman who was prone to jump at conclusions sometimes. One day he
was invited to officiate at a christening. He went. There sat
the relatives—intelligent-looking relatives they were. The little
clergyman's instinct came to him to make a great speech. He was given to
flights of oratory that way—a very dangerous thing, for often the wings
which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up
there, and down you come.

But the little clergyman couldn't resist. He took the child in his arms,
and, holding it, looked at it a moment. It wasn't much of a child.
It was little, like a sweet-potato. Then the little clergyman waited
impressively, and then: “I see in your countenances,” he said,
“disappointment of him. I see you are disappointed with this baby. Why?
Because he is so little. My friends, if you had but the power of looking
into the future you might see that great things may come of little
things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which
comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There
are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of
stars. Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might
become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world
has ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than—er—er” (turning
to the father)—“what's his name?”

The father hesitated, then whispered back: “His name? Well, his name is
Mary Ann.”

COURAGE

          At a beefsteak dinner, given by artists, caricaturists, and
          humorists of New York City, April 18, 1908, Mr. Clemens, Mr. H.
          H. Rogers, and Mr. Patrick McCarren were the guests of honor.
          Each wore a white apron, and each made a short speech.

In the matter of courage we all have our limits.

There never was a hero who did not have his bounds. I suppose it may be
said of Nelson and all the others whose courage has been advertised that
there came times in their lives when their bravery knew it had come to
its limit.

I have found mine a good many times. Sometimes this was expected—often
it was unexpected. I know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a
rattlesnake, but you could not get him to sleep with a safety-razor.

I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room. I should
be at the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to
talk across a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at
alternate periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never
to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what
they are going to do.

I'll sit down.

THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE

          AT A DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR JOSEPH H. CHOATE AT
          THE LOTOS CLUB, NOVEMBER 24, 1902

          The speakers, among others, were: Senator Depew, William Henry
          White, Speaker Thomas Reed, and Mr. Choate.  Mr. Clemens spoke,
          in part, as follows:

The greatness of this country rests on two anecdotes. The first one is
that of Washington and his hatchet, representing the foundation of true
speaking, which is the characteristic of our people. The second one is
an old one, and I've been waiting to hear it to-night; but as nobody has
told it yet, I will tell it.

You've heard it before, and you'll hear it many, many times more. It is
an anecdote of our guest, of the time when he was engaged as a young man
with a gentle Hebrew, in the process of skinning the client. The main
part in that business is the collection of the bill for services in
skinning the man. “Services” is the term used in that craft for the
operation of that kind-diplomatic in its nature.

Choate's—co-respondent—made out a bill for $500 for his services, so
called. But Choate told him he had better leave the matter to him,
and the next day he collected the bill for the services and handed the
Hebrew $5000, saying, “That's your half of the loot,” and inducing that
memorable response: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”

The deep-thinkers didn't merely laugh when that happened. They stopped
to think, and said “There's a rising man. He must be rescued from the
law and consecrated to diplomacy. The commercial advantages of a great
nation lie there in that man's keeping. We no longer require a man to
take care of our moral character before the world. Washington and his
anecdote have done that. We require a man to take care of our commercial
prosperity.”

Mr. Choate has carried that trait with him, and, as Mr. Carnegie has
said, he has worked like a mole underground.

We see the result when American railroad iron is sold so cheap in
England that the poorest family can have it. He has so beguiled that
Cabinet of England.

He has been spreading the commerce of this nation, and has depressed
English commerce in the same ratio. This was the principle underlying
that anecdote, and the wise men saw it; the principle of give and
take—give one and take ten—the principle of diplomacy.

ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE

          Mr. Clemens was entertained at dinner by the Whitefriars' Club,
          London, at the Mitre Tavern, on the evening of August 6, 1872.
          In reply to the toast in his honor he said:

GENTLEMEN,—I thank you very heartily indeed for this expression of
kindness toward me. What I have done for England and civilization in the
arduous affairs which I have engaged in (that is good: that is so smooth
that I will say it again and again)—what I have done for England and
civilization in the arduous part I have performed I have done with a
single-hearted devotion and with no hope of reward. I am proud, I am
very proud, that it was reserved for me to find Doctor Livingstone and
for Mr. Stanley to get all the credit. I hunted for that man in Africa
all over seventy-five or one hundred parishes, thousands and thousands
of miles in the wilds and deserts all over the place, sometimes riding
negroes and sometimes travelling by rail. I didn't mind the rail or
anything else, so that I didn't come in for the tar and feathers. I
found that man at Ujiji—a place you may remember if you have ever been
there—and it was a very great satisfaction that I found him just in the
nick of time. I found that poor old man deserted by his niggers and
by his geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the
gorillas—dejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famishing—but he
was eloquent. Just as I found him he had eaten his last elephant, and
he said to me: “God knows where I shall get another.” He had nothing to
wear except his venerable and honorable naval suit, and nothing to eat
but his diary.

But I said to him: “It is all right; I have discovered you, and Stanley
will be here by the four-o'clock train and will discover you officially,
and then we will turn to and have a reg'lar good time.” I said: “Cheer
up, for Stanley has got corn, ammunition, glass beads, hymn-books,
whiskey, and everything which the human heart can desire; he has got all
kinds of valuables, including telegraph-poles and a few cart-loads of
money. By this time communication has been made with the land of Bibles
and civilization, and property will advance.” And then we surveyed
all that country, from Ujiji, through Unanogo and other places, to
Unyanyembe. I mention these names simply for your edification, nothing
more—do not expect it—particularly as intelligence to the Royal
Geographical Society. And then, having filled up the old man, we were
all too full for utterance and departed. We have since then feasted on
honors.

Stanley has received a snuff-box and I have received considerable snuff;
he has got to write a book and gather in the rest of the credit, and
I am going to levy on the copyright and to collect the money. Nothing
comes amiss to me—cash or credit; but, seriously, I do feel that Stanley
is the chief man and an illustrious one, and I do applaud him with all
my heart. Whether he is an American or a Welshman by birth, or one,
or both, matters not to me. So far as I am personally concerned, I am
simply here to stay a few months, and to see English people and to learn
English manners and customs, and to enjoy myself; so the simplest thing
I can do is to thank you for the toast you have honored me with and
for the remarks you have made, and to wish health and prosperity to the
Whitefriars' Club, and to sink down to my accustomed level.

HENRY M. STANLEY

          ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1886

          Mr. Clemens introduced Mr. Stanley.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, if any should ask, Why is it that you are here as
introducer of the lecturer? I should answer that I happened to be around
and was asked to perform this function. I was quite willing to do so,
and, as there was no sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could
be necessary only that some person come forward for a moment and do an
unnecessary thing, and this is quite in my line. Now, to introduce so
illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what the man
has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the
unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have
achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his
possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story
edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the
cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements
of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is
in his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.

No, I won't do that; but when you come to regard the achievements
of these two men, Columbus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the
difficulties they encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and against
Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to discover America. Well, he didn't
need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his
grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself. Here
it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the South
American continent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to discover it.
But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was scattered
abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of
Africa as big as the United States.

It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But
I will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar
feature of Mr. Stanley's character, and that is his indestructible
Americanism—an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and
time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate English methods and
fashion, it is like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of
this untainted American citizen who has been caressed and complimented
by half of the crowned heads of Europe who could clothe his body from
his head to his heels with the orders and decorations lavished upon
him. And yet, when the untitled myriads of his own country put out their
hands in welcome to him and greet him, “Well done,” through the Congress
of the United States, that is the crown that is worth all the rest to
him. He is a product of institutions which exist in no other country on
earth-institutions that bring out all that is best and most heroic in a
man. I introduce Henry M. Stanley.

DINNER TO MR. JEROME

          A dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good
          judgment of District-Attorney Jerome was given at Delmonico's
          by over three hundred of his admirers on the evening of May 7,
          1909.

Indeed, that is very sudden. I was not informed that the verdict
was going to depend upon my judgment, but that makes not the least
difference in the world when you already know all about it. It is not
any matter when you are called upon to express it; you can get up and do
it, and my verdict has already been recorded in my heart and in my head
as regards Mr. Jerome and his administration of the criminal affairs of
this county.

I agree with everything Mr. Choate has said in his letter regarding Mr.
Jerome; I agree with everything Mr. Shepard has said; and I agree with
everything Mr. Jerome has said in his own commendation. And I thought
Mr. Jerome was modest in that. If he had been talking about another
officer of this county, he could have painted the joys and sorrows of
office and his victories in even stronger language than he did.

I voted for Mr. Jerome in those old days, and I should like to vote for
him again if he runs for any office. I moved out of New York, and that
is the reason, I suppose, I cannot vote for him again. There may be some
way, but I have not found it out. But now I am a farmer—a farmer up in
Connecticut, and winning laurels. Those people already speak with such
high favor, admiration, of my farming, and they say that I am the only
man that has ever come to that region who could make two blades of grass
grow where only three grew before.

Well, I cannot vote for him. You see that. As it stands now, I cannot.
I am crippled in that way and to that extent, for I would ever so much
like to do it. I am not a Congress, and I cannot distribute pensions,
and I don't know any other legitimate way to buy a vote. But if I should
think of any legitimate way, I shall make use of it, and then I shall
vote for Mr. Jerome.

HENRY IRVING

          The Dramatic and Literary Society of London gave a welcome-home
          dinner to Sir Henry Irving at the Savoy Hotel, London, June 9,
          1900.  In proposing the toast of “The Drama” Mr. Clemens said:

I find my task a very easy one. I have been a dramatist for thirty
years. I have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the
Spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died. I
leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead.

The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It is a most difficult
thing. It requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts.
No, there is another talent that ranks with it—for anybody can write a
drama—I had four hundred of them—but to get one accepted requires real
ability. And I have never had that felicity yet.

But human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we
know that we are born to a thing we do not care what the world thinks
about it. We go on exploiting that talent year after year, as I have
done. I shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may
happen, but I am not looking for it.

In writing plays the chief thing is novelty. The world grows tired of
solid forms in all the arts. I struck a new idea myself years ago. I was
not surprised at it. I was always expecting it would happen. A person
who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence, and I
thought I had better make inquiries before I exploited my new idea of
doing a drama in the form of a dream, so I wrote to a great authority on
knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new.

I could depend upon him. He lived in my dear home in America—that dear
home, dearer to me through taxes. He sent me a list of plays in which
that old device had been used, and he said that there was also a modern
lot. He travelled back to China and to a play dated two thousand six
hundred years before the Christian era. He said he would follow it up
with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence
would have carried them back to the Flood.

That is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my
dramatic career. I have done a world of good in a silent and private
way, and have furnished Sir Henry Irving with plays and plays and plays.
What has he achieved through that influence? See where he stands now—on
the summit of his art in two worlds and it was I who put him there—that
partly put him there.

I need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon
civilization. It has made good morals entertaining. I am to be followed
by Mr. Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of the profession.
He has not written as many plays as I have, but he has lead that
God-given talent, which I lack, of working them off on the manager. I
couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence
will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great
gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work.

DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE

          ADDRESS DELIVERED APRIL 29, 1901

          In introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said:

          “The longer the speaking goes on to-night the more I wonder how
          I got this job, and the only explanation I can give for it is
          that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of
          articles I have sent to The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton
          W. Mabie.  There is one man here to-night that has a job cut
          out for him that none of you would have had--a man whose humor
          has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense of
          humor has been an example for all five continents.  He is going
          to speak to you.  Gentlemen, you know him best as Mark Twain.”

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,—This man knows now how it feels to be the
chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man I have ever
seen in that position that did enjoy it. And I know, by side-remarks
which he made to me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was feeling
as some of the rest of us have felt under the same circumstances. He was
afraid that he would not do himself justice; but he did—to my surprise.
It is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion like this,
and it is admirable, it is fine. It is a great compliment to a man
that he shall come out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie came out of it
tonight—to my surprise. He did it well.

He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and notwithstanding that, I
have every admiration, because when everything is said concerning The
Outlook, after all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies,
that it is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is vigorous
in its mistaken criticisms of men like me. I have lived in this world a
long, long time, and I know you must not judge a man by the editorials
that he puts in his paper. A man is always better than his printed
opinions. A man always reserves to himself on the inside a purity and an
honesty and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things that
he prints are just the reverse.

Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. Even in
an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must
be better than the principles which he puts in print. And that is
the case with Mr. Mabie. Why, to see what he writes about me and the
missionaries you would think he did not have any principles. But that is
Mr. Mabie in his public capacity. Mr. Mabie in his private capacity is
just as clean a man as I am.

In this very room, a month or two ago, some people admired that
portrait; some admired this, but the great majority fastened on that,
and said, “There is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of art.” When
that portrait is a hundred years old it will suggest what were the
manners and customs in our time. Just as they talk about Mr. Mabie
to-night, in that enthusiastic way, pointing out the various virtues of
the man and the grace of his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait
talked about. They were enthusiastic, just as we men have been over the
character and the work of Mr. Mabie. And when they were through they
said that portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that
piece of humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not
rise to those perfections that exist in the man himself. Come up, Mr.
Alexander. [The reference was to James W. Alexander, who happened to be
sitting—beneath the portrait of himself on the wall.] Now, I should come
up and show myself. But he cannot do it, he cannot do it. He was born
that way, he was reared in that way. Let his modesty be an example,
and I wish some of you had it, too. But that is just what I have been
saying—that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it
represents, and all the things that have been said about Mr. Mabie, and
certainly they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall
short of the real Mabie.

INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY

          James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill Nye) were to
          give readings in Tremont Temple, Boston, November, 1888.  Mr.
          Clemens was induced to introduce Messrs. Riley and Nye.  His
          appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and
          when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration.

I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the
same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than
once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them
personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many
years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam.
The ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best
hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to
cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff.

In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The
sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so
fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested;
when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped
the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable
in all the details of their daily life—I mean this quaint and arbitrary
distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the
two—between, I may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or,
in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other
always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within
certain well-defined zones of activity the one was always dynamo and
the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these
positions became exactly reversed.

For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr.
Eng Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high—in fact,
an abnormally high and fine moral sense, he had no machinery to work
it with; whereas, Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all, and
hasn't yet, was equipped with all the necessary plant for putting a
noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable
terms outside.

In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always
dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor; Mr. Eng Nye had a stately
intellect, but couldn't make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn't, but could.
That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn't think things
himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and
weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material.

Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they
could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has
remained so to this day: they must travel together, hoe, and plant, and
plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there's no result.

I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so
to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers
understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye's deep and broad and limpid
philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round
about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his
water; it's the other man's, and he is only working the pump. And when
Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches
your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry—as sweet and
as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about
his other friends, the woods and the flowers—you will remember, while
placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the
other man's—he is only turning the crank.

I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a singleminded, one-eyed
umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it—and I
judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will
now go to the bat.

DINNER TO WHITELAW REID

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR REID, GIVEN BY THE
          PILGRIMS' CLUB OF NEW YORK ON FEBRUARY 19, 1908

I am very proud to respond to this toast, as it recalls the proudest day
of my life. The delightful hospitality shown me at the time of my visit
to Oxford I shall cherish until I die. In that long and distinguished
career of mine I value that degree above all other honors. When the ship
landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an English
cheer. Nothing could surpass in my life the pleasure of those four
weeks. No one could pass by me without taking my hand, even the
policemen. I've been in all the principal capitals of Christendom in my
life, and have always been an object of interest to policemen. Sometimes
there was suspicion in their eyes, but not always. With their puissant
hand they would hold up the commerce of the world to let me pass.

I noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch from Washington,
saying that Congress would immediately pass a bill restoring to our gold
coinage the motto “In God We Trust.” I'm glad of that; I'm glad of
that. I was troubled when that motto was removed. Sure enough, the
prosperities of the whole nation went down in a heap when we ceased to
trust in God in that conspicuously advertised way. I knew there would
be trouble. And if Pierpont Morgan hadn't stepped in—Bishop Lawrence may
now add to his message to the old country that we are now trusting in
God again. So we can discharge Mr. Morgan from his office with honor.

Mr. Reid said an hour or so ago something about my ruining my activities
last summer. They are not ruined, they are renewed. I am stronger
now—much stronger. I suppose that the spiritual uplift I received
increased my physical power more than anything I ever had before. I was
dancing last night at 2.30 o'clock.

Mr. Choate has mentioned Mr. Reid's predecessors. Mr. Choate's head is
full of history, and some of it is true, too. I enjoyed hearing him tell
about the list of the men who had the place before he did. He mentioned
a long list of those predecessors, people I never heard of before, and
elected five of them to the Presidency by his own vote. I'm glad and
proud to find Mr. Reid in that high position, because he didn't look it
when I knew him forty years ago. I was talking to Reid the other day,
and he showed me my autograph on an old paper twenty years old. I didn't
know I had an autograph twenty years ago. Nobody ever asked me for it.

I remember a dinner I had long ago with Whitelaw Reid and John Hay at
Reid's expense. I had another last summer when I was in London at the
embassy that Choate blackguards so. I'd like to live there.

Some people say they couldn't live on the salary, but I could live on
the salary and the nation together. Some of us don't appreciate what
this country can do. There's John Hay, Reid, Choate, and me. This is the
only country in the world where youth, talent, and energy can reach such
heights. It shows what we could do without means, and what people can do
with talent and energy when they find it in people like us.

When I first came to New York they were all struggling young men, and I
am glad to see that they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay when
I had no white hairs in my head and more hair than Reid has now.
Those were days of joy and hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the
Tribune. I went there once in that old building, and I looked all around
and I finally found a door ajar and looked in. It wasn't Reid or Hay
there, but it was Horace Greeley. Those were in the days when Horace
Greeley was a king. That was the first time I ever saw him and the last.

I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was
a fine presence there somewhere. He tried to smile, but he was out of
smiles. He looked at me a moment, and said:

“What in H—-do you want?”

He began with that word “H.” That's a long word and a profane word. I
don't remember what the word was now, but I recognized the power of
it. I had never used that language myself, but at that moment I was
converted. It has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. If a
man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous
occasions. When you have that word at your command let trouble come.

But later Hay rose, and you know what summit Whitelaw Reid has reached,
and you see me. Those two men have regulated troubles of nations and
conferred peace upon mankind. And in my humble way, of which I am quite
vain, I was the principal moral force in all those great international
movements. These great men illustrated what I say. Look at us great
people—we all come from the dregs of society. That's what can be done in
this country. That's what this country does for you.

Choate here—he hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the
same, and he can do it so felicitously, too. I said long ago he was the
handsomest man America ever produced. May the progress of civilization
always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past!

ROGERS AND RAILROADS

          AT A BANQUET GIVEN MR. H. H. ROGERS BY THE BUSINESS MEN OF
          NORFOLK, VA., CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF THE VIRGINIAN RAILWAY,
          APRIL, 3, 1909

          Toastmaster:

          “I have often thought that when the time comes, which must come
          to all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great Beyond,
          and the question is propounded, 'What have you done to gain
          admission into this great realm?' if the answer could be
          sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh,' it would be the surest
          passport to a welcome entrance.  We have here to-night one who
          has made millions laugh--not the loud laughter that bespeaks
          the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps
          the human heart and the human mind.  I refer, of course, to
          Doctor Clemens.  I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary
          title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of
          any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title.”

I thank you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me,
and I am sure I would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my
time I have made some of them cry; and before I stop entirely I hope to
make some more of them cry. I like compliments. I deal in them myself.
I have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the
chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of his to-night, and I
hope some of them are deserved.

It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an
intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with Napoleon and Caesar.
Why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life? Napoleon
and Caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves. But
I'm here!

The chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the
hands of man are the roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he
built a lot of them; and they are there yet.

Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and you can find them. But
Rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. I
like to hear my old friend complimented, but I don't like to hear it
overdone.

I didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing. I
will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and
when I shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a
railroad in which I own no stock.

They proposed that I go along with the committee and help inspect that
dump down yonder. I didn't go. I saw that dump. I saw that thing when I
was coming in on the steamer, and I didn't go because I was diffident,
sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing
again—that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like Mr. Rogers's
foot.

The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is.
It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very
competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know
lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and I know
how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done
better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made
the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to
ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant. To this day he don't
like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody. On
board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a
couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth
from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like
to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be
ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and
in bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in
case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: “A king's
crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000.” He
could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went
up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.

I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented. I am not stingy in compliments
to him myself. Why, I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to
comfort her. That is the kind of person I am. I knew she would be uneasy
about him. I knew she would be solicitous about what he might do down
here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort her. I said he was doing
well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it. He is like
I used to be. There were times when I was careless—careless in my dress
when I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you
are going away without her superintendence. Once when my wife could not
go with me (she always went with me when she could—I always did meet
that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a long time ago, in
Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not go; but, in her
anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made preparation.
She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors at the White
House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, “If I should tell you
now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before you get to
Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and you
will find it in your dress-vest pocket when you are dressing at the
Arlington—when you are dressing to see the President.” I never thought
of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it
out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, “Don't wear your arctics
in the White House.”

You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness,
complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments,
although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one side of Mr.
Rogers that has not been mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will
touch upon that. There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk
papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side
of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr.
Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a right to
feel that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it,
he rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful
Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from
scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as
well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine
years of age. She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has
existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.

That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his
character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand
daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is
supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. But
the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and
its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God.

I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been
allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I
don't look at him I can tell it now.

In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which
I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will
remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back;
my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, “Your books
have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again,” and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights,
and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my
creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and
persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end
of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made;
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a
borrowed one at that.

You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is
always trying to look like me—I don't blame him for that). These are
only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without
exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.

THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER

          ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,
          JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF
          BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

          Mr. Clemens responded to the toast “The Compositor.”

The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to
fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity. All
things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am among
strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of
thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well. I
built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from
the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from
under his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in
his case and the broken ones among the “hell matter”; and if he wasn't
there to see, I dumped it all with the “pi” on the imposing-stone—for
that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down
the paper Saturdays, I turned it Sundays—for this was a country weekly;
I rolled, I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers,
I carried them around at dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then
an object of interest to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all
the bites I ever received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year.
I enveloped the papers that were for the mail—we had a hundred
town subscribers and three hundred and fifty country ones; the town
subscribers paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages and
cord-wood—when they paid at all, which was merely sometimes, and then
we always stated the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we
forgot it they stopped the paper. Every man on the town list helped
edit the thing—that is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited;
dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time the
boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. We were just infested with
critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. We had one subscriber
who paid cash, and he was more trouble than all the rest. He bought
us once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. He used to modify our
politics every which way, and he made us change our religion four times
in five years. If we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to
stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction.
That man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long
primer, and sign them “Junius,” or “Veritas,” or “Vox Populi,” or some
other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come
in and say he had changed his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech,
because he hadn't any—and order it to be left out. We couldn't afford
“bogus” in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the
signature, credited the article to the rival paper in the next village,
and put it in. Well, we did have one or two kinds of “bogus.” Whenever
there was a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked off for
half a day, and then to make up for short matter we would “turn over
ads”—turn over the whole page and duplicate it. The other “bogus” was
deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody ever read; so we kept
a galley of it standing, and kept on slapping the same old batches of it
in, every now and then, till it got dangerous. Also, in the early days
of the telegraph we used to economize on the news. We picked out the
items that were pointless and barren of information and stood them on
a galley, and changed the dates and localities, and used them over and
over again till the public interest in them was worn to the bone. We
marked the ads, but we seldom paid any attention to the marks afterward;
so the life of a “td” ad and a “tf” ad was equally eternal. I have seen
a “td” notice of a sheriff's sale still booming serenely along two years
after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole circumstance
become ancient history. Most of the yearly ads were patent-medicine
stereotypes, and we used to fence with them.

I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse
bills on the walls, its “d” boxes clogged with tallow, because we
always stood the candle in the “k” box nights, its towel, which was
not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and
symbols that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi
Valley; and I can see, also, the tramping “jour,” who flitted by in the
summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a
hatful of handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do
a temperance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs not complex;
all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he
was satisfied. But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,
and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will
“make even” and stop.

SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

          On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr.
          Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter.  So many members
          surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: “Is this genuine
          popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme?”

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—It seems a most difficult thing for
any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. I don't know
what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say
a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.

If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind
chairmen say of me. In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty
as if he was envious of me. I would like to have one man come out
flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it
were true. I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking,
that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by
saying complimentary things.

I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well
as any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented. And
there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know
all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you
things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented.

The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you
live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and
pleasant. To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy.

Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But,
oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair. I have
made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am.
Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is
nothing of the sort. I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy.

Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits
of mine, and then he will make a speech.

I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as
the two put together.

When that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another
story told. At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found
him. He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all
sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but
when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he
was a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence
with which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis.

I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to
the members of my family. They don't believe them, but I like to tell
them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can.

I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am
praised any more than I am entitled to be.

READING-ROOM OPENING

          On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address
          preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London.

I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the
legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with
intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the
community so desires.

If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand
in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of the
healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it
taxes itself for its mental food.

A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up
through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. What would we
do without newspapers?

Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster
was made known to the entire world. This reminds me of an episode
which occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford,
Connecticut.

The clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any. He
did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates around
for collection. I complained to the governor of his lack of financial
trust in me, and he replied: “I would trust you myself—if you had a
bell-punch.”

You have paid me many compliments, and I like to listen to compliments.
I indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of England
and America. He also alluded to my name, of which I am rather fond.

A little girl wrote me from New Zealand in a letter I received
yesterday, stating that her father said my proper name was not Mark
Twain but Samuel Clemens, but that she knew better, because Clemens was
the name of the man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not
Mark. She was sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark is in the Bible and
Twain is in the Bible.

I was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and
as I now know my name to be a scriptural one, I am not without hopes of
making it worthy.

LITERATURE

          ADDRESS AT THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND BANQUET, LONDON, MAY 4, 1900

          Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to the
          toast “Literature.”

MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately with this toast without
assistance from me. Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced any
theories that needed refutation or correction I would have attended to
them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is
in the habit of making I would have dealt with them.

In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his statements. I could not
have made such statements if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate
is the only way I can approximate to the truth. You cannot have a theory
without principles. Principles is another name for prejudices. I have no
prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else.

I am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because
there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have
entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are
prejudices.

I propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. I am in favor
of everything everybody is in favor of. What you should do is to satisfy
the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a
President.

There could not be a broader platform than mine. I am in favor of
anything and everything—of temperance and intemperance, morality and
qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver.

I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I want to try the
great position of ruler of a country. I have been in turn reporter,
editor, publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. I have worked my way up, and
wish to continue to do so.

I read to-day in a magazine article that Christendom issued last year
fifty-five thousand new books. Consider what that means! Fifty-five
thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. We are
going to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later.
Therefore, double your subscriptions to the literary fund!

DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLUB, AT
          SHERRY'S, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 20, 1900

          Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast “The Disappearance of
          Literature.”  Doctor Gould presided, and in introducing
          Mr. Clemens said that he (the speaker), when in Germany, had to
          do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was
          taking what the Germans thought undue liberties with their
          language.

It wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in Germany. It
wasn't necessary at all. Instead of that he ought to have impressed upon
those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered them. Their language
had needed untangling for a good many years. Nobody else seemed to want
to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a
pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up
their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when
it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's
just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down
here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away
over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just
shovel in German. I maintain that there is no necessity for apologizing
for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation.

We have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature.
That's no new thing. That's what certain kinds of literature have been
doing for several years. The fact is, my friends, that the fashion in
literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts
or go out of business. Professor Winchester here, if I remember fairly
correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels
produced to-day would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott. That
may be his notion. Maybe he is right; but so far as I am concerned, I
don't care if they don't.

Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern
epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he's right. He talked as if he was
pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would
suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever
read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you
just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester
says, and it meets his definition of a classic—something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of
literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess
that's true. The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two
ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and
you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes
a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years.

But as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance
of literature, they didn't say anything about my books. Maybe they think
they've disappeared. If they do, that just shows their ignorance on the
general subject of literature. I am not as young as I was several years
ago, and maybe I'm not so fashionable, but I'd be willing to take
my chances with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of
literature to the Century Publishing Company. And I haven't got much of
a pull here, either. I often think that the highest compliment ever
paid to my poor efforts was paid by Darwin through President Eliot, of
Harvard College. At least, Eliot said it was a compliment, and I always
take the opinion of great men like college presidents on all such
subjects as that.

I went out to Cambridge one day a few years ago and called on President
Eliot. In the course of the conversation he said that he had just
returned from England, and that he was very much touched by what he
considered the high compliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he
went on to tell me something like this:

“Do you know that there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom,
where the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? One is a
plant he is growing and studying while it grows” (it was one of those
insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for
the particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) “and the other some books that
lie on the night table at the head of his bed. They are your books, Mr.
Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep.”

My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it
the highest one that was ever paid to me. To be the means of soothing to
sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like Darwin's was
something that I had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I never
hope to be able to do it again.

THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER

          AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900

          Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily News, as
          president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens as the principal
          ornament of American literature.

I must say that I have already begun to regret that I left my gun at
home. I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with
just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will
certainly use a gun on that chairman. It is my privilege to compliment
him in return. You behold before you a very, very old man. A cursory
glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. His features seem to
reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts—they seem to bear the
traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for
the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-school of a life that
may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or
will riz—I mean to say, will rise. His private character is altogether
suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has not. If you
examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features,
because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor—mere
effects of a great spirit upon a weak body—mere accidents of a great
career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues,
and he practises them all—secretly—always secretly. You all know him
so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. Gentlemen,
Colonel Brown.

THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO MR. CARNEGIE AT THE DEDICATION
          OF THE NEW YORK ENGINEERS' CLUB, DECEMBER 9, 1907

          Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who,
          quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day
          when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small
          change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes.

It seems to me that I was around here in the neighborhood of the Public
Library about fifty or sixty years ago. I don't deny the circumstance,
although I don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was
not to be printed until I am dead, unless I'm dead now. I had that $3 in
change, and I remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. I
have prospered since. Now I have plenty of money and a disposition to
squander it, but I can't. One of those trust companies is taking care of
it.

Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall be out after
nightfall this winter, I must say that I have come here with a mission,
and I would make my errand of value.

Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie to-night. I was
expecting them. They are very gratifying to me.

I have been a guest of honor myself, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is
experiencing now. It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments
and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of
us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of
our condemnation.

Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is fairly scintillating with
fictitious innocence. You would think, looking at him, that he had
never committed a crime in his life. But no—look at his pestiferious
simplified spelling. You can't any of you imagine what a crime that has
been. Torquemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old fellow shed some
blood in the Inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to
the entire race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was,
just the same. He's got us all so we can't spell anything.

The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end.
He meant well, but he attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the
disease. He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. There's not
a vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can
hitch anything to. Look at the “h's” distributed all around. There's
“gherkin.” What are you going to do with the “h” in that? What the
devil's the use of “h” in gherkin, I'd like to know. It's one thing I
admire the English for: they just don't mind anything about them at all.

But look at the “pneumatics” and the “pneumonias” and the rest of them.
A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving
us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of
this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken
thief. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about
fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't
spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs.

Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell “pterodactyl,” not
even the prisoner at the bar. I'd like to hear him try once—but not
in public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic
entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try in private, and when
he got through trying to spell “pterodactyl” you wouldn't know whether
it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or
walked with its wings. The chances are that he would give it tusks and
make it lay eggs.

Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for him—if
he'll take the risk. If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a system
of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every shade
of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in any
tongue that we could not spell accurately. That would be competent,
adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair
punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of
simplified spelling. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell
me unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with r-o-w,
b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful
wedlock and don't know their own origin.

Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of
inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. Spelling reform
has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is the whole tribe of
them, “row” and “read” and “lead”—a whole family who don't know who they
are. I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one.

If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of
comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of
a man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to
recall the lady hog and the future ham.

It's a rotten alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie to get after it, and
leave simplified spelling alone.

Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco
earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never
have had if spelling had been left all alone.

Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and made him more comfortable
than he would have been had he received only compliment after
compliment, and I wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all
right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.

SPELLING AND PICTURES

          ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AT THE
          WALDORF-ASTORIA, SEPTEMBER 18, 1906

I am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified
spelling. I have come here because they cannot all be reached except
through you. There are only two forces that can carry light to all the
corners of the globe—only two—the sun in the heavens and the Associated
Press down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean
it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around. You speak with
a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and
intellects, as you—except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without
your help. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified
forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole
spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties
are at an end.

Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the
world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and
angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out
of Associated Press despatches. And so I beg you, I beseech you—oh,
I implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this daily,
constantly, persistently, for three months—only three months—it is all
I ask. The infallible result?—victory, victory all down the line. For by
that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted to
the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged forms
will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. And we shall
be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and
diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no
man addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose
some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not doubt
it. We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places
with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change
and happy in it. We do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and
tushes after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while.

Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world? That is the idea. It is
my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit. We all
do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest
is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private
interests. In 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to
make a noise, I was indifferent to it; more—I even irreverently scoffed
at it. What I needed was an object-lesson, you see. It is the only way
to teach some people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was scrambling
along, earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a
word, compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present.
I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron
contract. One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to
write ten pages—on this revolting text: “Considerations concerning the
alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous
superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the
unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects.”

Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled
railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family
in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so
as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor
can ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got
graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, “Read that text,
Jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud.” He read
it: “Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal
extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the
Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its
plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects.”

I said, “You want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer
thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?”

He said, “A word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you
going to do about it?”

I said, “Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What's an average
English word?”

He said, “Six letters.”

I said, “Nothing of the kind; that's French, and includes the spaces
between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half.
By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary
and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can
put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not
another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is
worth eighty-four dollars to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your
magazine page with long words as it does with short ones-four hours.
Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours.
I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family's
sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents,
because I can get the same money for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,'
because I can get the same price for 'cop.' And so on and so on. I never
write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can
humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;
I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene text, please; count
the words.”

He counted and said it was twenty-four. I asked him to count the
letters. He made it two hundred and three.

I said, “Now, I hope you see the whole size of your crime. With my
vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five
letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your
inhuman twenty-four I would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents.
Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three
hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same
labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. I do not wish to
work upon this scandalous job by the piece. I want to be hired by the
year.” He coldly refused. I said:

“Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you
ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness.”
 Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I
was not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an
anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten
to the heart with holoaophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God
forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours.

From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member
of the heaven-born institution, the International Association for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Carnegie's
Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work....

Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally,
sanely—yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the
essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely
to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words
of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome
forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a
letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she
never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There
isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces the fonetics to the last
gasp—it squeezes the surplusage out of every word—there's no spelling
that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And
as for the punctuation, there isn't any. It is all one sentence, eagerly
and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The
letter is absolutely genuine—I have the proofs of that in my possession.
I can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter
presently and comfort your eyes with it. I will read the letter:

“Miss dear freind I took some Close into the armerry and give them to
you to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to treble you
but i got to have one of them Back it was a black oll wolle Shevyott
With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and palsy
menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it
belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about it i thoght she was
willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to
Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has
got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For
her i gels you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i
torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful
about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off
seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to
take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And
see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for
it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True
freind

“i liked your appearance very Much”

Now you see what simplified spelling can do.

It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions
like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print
all your despatches in it.

Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:

I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of
the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think
I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little
while that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with
these old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about
it at all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as
I keep the Sabbath.

There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography,
and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its
present condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their
literature in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish,
and we keep the forms as they are while we have got one million people
coming in here from foreign countries every year and they have got
to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back
and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the
language, if they ever do learn. This is merely sentimental argument.

People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and
a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has
been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it
because of its ancient and hallowed associations.

Now, I don't see that there is any real argument about that. If that
argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the
flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so
long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness
for them on account of the associations. Why, it is like preserving a
cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it
by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity.

I think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our
family cancer, and I wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut
out and let the family cancer go.

Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young
person like yourselves. I am exhausted by the heat of the day. I must
take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry
it away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of
the righteous. There is nothing much left of me but my age and my
righteousness, but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you
always keep your youth.

BOOKS AND BURGLARS

          ADDRESS TO THE REDDING (CONN.) LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
          OCTOBER 28, 1908

Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the
burglars who happened along and broke into my house—taking a lot of
things they didn't need, and for that matter which I didn't need—had
first made entry into this institution.

Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their
dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing
moral truths and getting a moral uplift. The whole course of their
lives would have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their
immoral way and were sent to jail.

For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress.

And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. Now, I
have known so many burglars—not exactly known, but so many of them have
come near me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed to allow
them credit for whatever good qualities they possess.

Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I just now think of, is
their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's
sleep.

Noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their
visitation is to murder sleep later on.

Now we are prepared for these visitors. All sorts of alarm devices have
been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has
been electrified. The burglar who steps within this danger zone will
set loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our
elaborate system of defences. As for the fate of the trespasser, do not
seek to know that. He will never be heard of more.

AUTHORS' CLUB

          ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS, LONDON,
          JUNE, 1899

          Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.

It does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much. It
only pleases and delights me. I have not gone beyond the age when
embarrassment is possible, but I have reached the age when I know how to
conceal it. It is such a satisfaction to me to hear Sir Walter Besant,
who is much more capable than I to judge of my work, deliver a judgment
which is such a contentment to my spirit.

Well, I have thought well of the books myself, but I think more of them
now. It charms me also to hear Sir Spencer Walpole deliver a similar
judgment, and I shall treasure his remarks also. I shall not discount
the praises in any possible way. When I report them to my family they
shall lose nothing. There are, however, certain heredities which come
down to us which our writings of the present day may be traced to. I,
for instance, read the Walpole Letters when I was a boy. I absorbed
them, gathered in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away to be
used by-and-by. One does that so unconsciously with things one really
likes. I am reminded now of what use those letters have been to me.

They must not claim credit in America for what was really written in
another form so long ago. They must only claim that I trimmed this,
that, and the other, and so changed their appearance as to make them
seem to be original. You now see what modesty I have in stock. But it
has taken long practice to get it there.

But I must not stand here talking. I merely meant to get up and give my
thanks for the pleasant things that preceding speakers have said of me.
I wish also to extend my thanks to the Authors' Club for constituting me
a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit
of your legal adviser.

I believe you keep a lawyer. I have always kept a lawyer, too, though I
have never made anything out of him. It is service to an author to
have a lawyer. There is something so disagreeable in having a personal
contact with a publisher. So it is better to work through a lawyer—and
lose your case. I understand that the publishers have been meeting
together also like us. I don't know what for, but possibly they are
devising new and mysterious ways for remunerating authors. I only wish
now to thank you for electing me a member of this club—I believe I have
paid my dues—and to thank you again for the pleasant things you have
said of me.

Last February, when Rudyard Kipling was ill in America, the sympathy
which was poured out to him was genuine and sincere, and I believe
that which cost Kipling so much will bring England and America closer
together. I have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection
and respect between the two countries. I hope it will continue to grow,
and, please God, it will continue to grow. I trust we authors will leave
to posterity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friendship between
England and America that will count for much. I will now confess that I
have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a publication. I
have brought it here to lay at your feet. I do not ask your indulgence
in presenting it, but for your applause.

Here it is: “Since England and America may be joined together in
Kipling, may they not be severed in 'Twain.'”

BOOKSELLERS

          Address at banquet on Wednesday evening, May 20, 1908, of the
          American Booksellers' Association, which included most of the
          leading booksellers of America, held at the rooms of the Aldine
          Association, New York.

This annual gathering of booksellers from all over America comes
together ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss business;
therefore I am required to talk shop. I am required to furnish a
statement of the indebtedness under which I lie to you gentlemen for
your help in enabling me to earn my living. For something over forty
years I have acquired my bread by print, beginning with The Innocents
Abroad, followed at intervals of a year or so by Roughing It, Tom
Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so on. For thirty-six years my books were sold
by subscription. You are not interested in those years, but only in the
four which have since followed. The books passed into the hands of my
present publishers at the beginning of 1900, and you then became the
providers of my diet. I think I may say, without flattering you, that
you have done exceedingly well by me. Exceedingly well is not too strong
a phrase, since the official statistics show that in four years you have
sold twice as many volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my
publishers bound you and them to sell in five years. To your sorrow you
are aware that frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be
five or ten years old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred
copies, and after an added ten or twenty years ceases to sell. But you
sell thousands of my moss-backed old books every year—the youngest of
them being books that range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old, and
the oldest reaching back to thirty-five and forty.

By the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for
50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they
sold them or not. It is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for
it was your business to unload 250,000 volumes upon the public in five
years if you possibly could. Have you succeeded? Yes, you have—and more.
For in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000
volumes, and 240,000 besides.

Your sales have increased each year. In the first year you sold 90,328;
in the second year, 104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth
year—which was last year—you sold 160,000. The aggregate for the four
years is 500,000 volumes, lacking 11,000.

Of the oldest book, The Innocents Abroad,—now forty years old—you
sold upward of 46,000 copies in the four years; of Roughing It—now
thirty-eight years old, I think—you sold 40,334; of Tom Sawyer, 41,000.
And so on.

And there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying to me: the Personal
Recollections of Joan of Arc is a serious book; I wrote it for love, and
never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me in
that matter. In your hands its sale has increased each year. In 1904 you
sold 1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574.

“MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE”

          On October 5, 1906, Mr. Clemens, following a musical recital by
          his daughter in Norfolk, Conn., addressed her audience on the
          subject of stage-fright.  He thanked the people for making
          things as easy as possible for his daughter's American debut as
          a contralto, and then told of his first experience before the
          public.

My heart goes out in sympathy to any one who is making his first
appearance before an audience of human beings. By a direct process of
memory I go back forty years, less one month—for I'm older than I look.

I recall the occasion of my first appearance. San Francisco knew me
then only as a reporter, and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as