Mark Twain on Religion: What Is Man, the War Prayer, Thou Shalt Not Kill, the Fly, Letters From the Earth

by Mark Twain

  I said, reproachfully, "Superintendent, why do you do that?"

  "Do what?"

  "Play these tricks."

  "What harm is it?"

  "Harm? It could make that poor devil jump overboard."

  "No, he's not as far gone as that."

  "For a while he was. He is a good fellow, and it was a pity to scare him so.

  However, there are other matters that I am more concerned about just now."

  "Can I help?"

  "Why, yes, you can; and I don't know anyone else that can."

  "Very well, go on."

  "By the dead reckoning we have come twenty-three hundred miles."

  "The actual distance is twenty-three-fifty."

  "Straight as a dart in the one direction -- mainly."

  "Apparently."

  "Why do you say apparently? Haven't we come straight?"

  "Go on with the rest. What were you going to say?"

  "This. Doesn't it strike you that this is a pretty large drop of water?"

  "No. It is about the usual size -- six thousand miles across."

  "Six thousand miles!"

  "Yes."

  "Twice as far as from New York to Liverpool?"

  “Yes."

  "I must say it is more of a voyage than I counted on. And we are not a great deal more than halfway across, yet. When shall we get in?"

  "It will be some time yet."

  "That is not very definite. Two weeks?"

  "More than that."

  I was getting a little uneasy.

  "But how much more? A week?"

  "All of that. More, perhaps."

  "Why don't you tell me? A month more, do you think?"

  "I am afraid so. Possibly two -- possibly longer, even."

  I was getting seriously disturbed by now.

  "Why, we are sure to run out of provisions and water."

  "No, you'll not. I've looked out for that. It is what you are loaded with."

  "Is that so? How does that come?"

  "Because the ship is chartered for a voyage of discovery. Ostensibly she goes to England, takes aboard some scientists, then sails for the South Pole."

  "I see. You are deep."

  "I understand my business."

  I turned the matter over in my mind a moment, then said, "It is more of a voyage than I was expecting, but I am not of a worrying disposition, so I do not care, so long as we are not going to suffer hunger and thirst."

  "Make yourself easy, as to that. Let the trip last as long as it may, you will not run short of food and water, I go bail for that."

  "All right, then. Now explain this riddle to me. Why is it always night?"

  "That is easy. All of the drop of water is outside the luminous circle of the microscope except one thin and delicate rim of it. We are in the shadow; consequently in the dark."

  "In the shadow of what?"

  "Of the brazen end of the lens holder."

  "How can it cover such a spread with its shadow?"

  "Because it is several thousand miles in diameter. For dimensions, that is nothing. The glass slide which it is pressing against, and which forms the bottom of the ocean we are sailing upon, is thirty thousand miles long, and the length of the miscroscope barrel is a hundred and twenty thousand. Now then, if --"

  "You make me dizzy. I --"

  "If you should thrust that glass slide through what you call the 'great' globe, eleven thousand miles of it would stand out on each side -- it would be like impaling an orange on a table knife. And so --"

  "It gives me the headache. Are these the fictitious proportions which we and our surroundings and belongings have acquired by being reduced to microscopic objects?"

  "They are the proportions, yes -- but they are not fictitious. You do not notice that you yourself are in any way diminished in size, do you?"

  "No, I am my usual size, as far as I can see."

  “The same with the men, the ship and everything?"

  "Yes -- all natural."

  "Very good; nothing but the laws and conditions have undergone a change. You came from a small and very insignificant world. The one you are in now is proportioned according to microscopic standards -- that is to say, it is inconceivably stupendous and imposing."

  It was food for thought. There was something overpowering in the situation, something sublime. It took me a while to shake off the spell and drag myself back to speech. Presently I said, "I am content; I do not regret the voyage -- far from it. I would not change places with any man in that cramped little world. But tell me -- is it always going to be dark?"

  "Not if you ever come into the luminous circle under the lens. Indeed you will not find that dark!"

  "If we ever. What do you mean by that? We are making steady good time; we are cutting across this sea on a straight course."

  "Apparently."

  "There is no apparently about it."

  "You might be going around in a small and not rapidly widening circle."

  "Nothing of the kind. Look at the telltale compass over your head."

  "I see it."

  "We changed to this easterly course to satisfy everybody but me. It is a pretense of aiming for England -- in a drop of waterl Have you noticed that needle before?"

  "Yes, a number of times."

  "Today, for instance?"

  "Yes -- often.”

  "Has it varied a jot?"

  "Not a jot."

  "Hasn't it always kept the place appointed for it -- from the start?"

  "Yes, always."

  "Very well. First we sailed a northerly course; then tilted easterly; and now it is more so. How is that going around in a circle?"

  He was silent. I put it at him again. He answered with lazy indifference, "I merely threw out the suggestion."

  "All right, then; cornered; let it stand at that. Whenever you happen to think of an argument in support of it, I shall be glad to hear about it."

  He did not like that very well, and muttered something about my being a trifle airy. I retorted a little sharply, and followed it up by finding fault with him again for playing tricks on Turner. He said Turner called him a blatherskite. I said, "No matter; you let him alone, from this out. And moreover, stop appearing to people -- stop it entirely."

  His face darkened. He said, "I would advise you to moderate your manner. I am not used to it, and I am not pleased with it."

  The rest of my temper went, then. I said, angrily, "You may like it or not, just as you choose. And moreover, if my style doesn't suit you, you can end the dream as soon as you please -- right now, if you like."

  He looked me steadily in the eye for a moment, then said, with deliberation, "The dream? Are you quite sure it is a dream? "

  It took my breath away.

  "What do you mean? Isn't it a dream?"

  He looked at me in that same way again; and it made my blood chilly, this time.

  Then he said, "I give you ten years to get over that superstition in!"

  It was as if he had hit me, it stunned me so. Still looking at me his lip curled itself into a mocking smile, and he wasted away like a mist and disappeared.

  I sat a long time thinking uncomfortable thoughts.

  We are strangely made. We think we are wonderful creatures. Part of the time we think that, at any rate. And during that interval we consider with pride our mental equipment, with its penetration, its power of analysis, its ability to reason out clear conclusions from confused facts, and all the lordly rest of it; and then comes a rational interval and disenchants us. Disenchants us and lays us bare to ourselves, and we see that intellectually we are really no great things; that we seldom really know the thing we think we know; that our best-built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

  So little a time before, I knew that this voyage was a dream, and nothing more; a wee little puff or two of doubt had blown against that certainty, unhelped by fact or argument, and already it was dissolving away. It
seemed an incredible thing, and it hurt my pride of intellect, but it had to be confessed. When I came to consider it, these ten days had been such intense realities! -- so intense that by comparison the life I had lived before them seemed distant, indistinct, slipping away and fading out in a far perspective -- exactly as a dream does when you sit at breakfast trying to call back its details. I grew steadily more and more nervous and uncomfortable -- and a little frightened, though I would not quite acknowledge this to myself.

  Then came this disturbing thought: if this transformation goes on, how am I going to conceal it from my wife? Suppose she should say to me, "Henry, there is something the matter with you, you are acting strangely; something is on your mind that you are concealing from me; tell me about it, let me help, you." What answer could I make?

  I was bound to act strangely if this went on -- bound to bury myself in deeps of troubled thought; I should not be able to help it. She had a swift eye to notice, where her heart was concerned, and a sharp intuition, and I was an impotent poor thing in her hands when I had things to hide and she had struck the trail.

  I have no large amount of fortitude, staying power. When there is a fate before me I cannot rest easy until I know what it is. I am not able to wait. I want to know, right way. So, I would call Alice, now, and take the consequences. If she drove me into a corner and I found I could not escape, I would act according to my custom -- come out and tell her the truth. She had a better head than mine, and a surer instinct in grouping facts and getting their meaning out of them. If I was drifting into dangerous waters, now, she would be sure to detect it and as sure to set me right and save me. I would call her, and keep out of the corner if I could; if I couldn't, why -- I couldn't, that is all.

  She came, refreshed with sleep, and looking her best self; that is to say, looking like a girl of nineteen, not a matron of twenty-five; she wore a becoming wrapper, or tea gown, or whatever it is called, and it was trimmed with ribbons and limp stuff -- lace, I suppose; and she had her hair balled up and nailed to its place with a four-pronged tortoise-shell comb. She brought a basket of pink and gray crewels with her, for she was crocheting a jacket -- for the cat, probably, judging by the size of it. She sat down on the sofa and set the basket on the table, expecting to have a chance to get to work by and by; not right away, because a kitten was curled up in it asleep, fitting its circle snugly, and the repose of the children's kittens was a sacred thing and not to be disturbed. She said, "I noticed that there was no motion -- it was what waked me, I think -- and I got up to enjoy it, it is such a rare thing."

  “Yes, rare enough, dear; we do have the most unaccountably strange weather."

  "Do you think so, Henry? Does it seem strange weather to you?"

  She looked so earnest and innocent that I was rather startled, and a little in doubt as to what to say. Any sane person could see that it was perfectly devilish weather and crazy beyond imagination, and so how could she feel uncertain about it?

  "Well, Alice, I may be putting it too strong, but I don't think so; I think a person may call our weather by any hard name he pleases and be justified."

  "Perhaps you are right, Henry. I have heard the sailors talk the same way about it, but I did not think that that meant much, they speak so extravagantly about everything. You are not always extravagant in your speech -- often you are, but not always -- and so it surprised me a little to hear you." Then she added tranquilly and musingly, "I don't remember any different weather."

  It was not quite definite.

  "You mean on this voyage, Alice."

  "Yes, of course. Naturally. I haven't made any other."

  She was softly stroking the kitten -- and apparently in her right mind. I said cautiously, and with seeming indifference, "You mean you haven't made any other this year. But the time we went to Europe -- well, that was very different weather."

  "The time we went to Europe, Henry?"

  "Certainly, certainly -- when Jessie was a year old."

  She stopped stroking the kitty, and looked at me inquiringly.

  "I don't understand you, Henry."

  She was not a joker, and she was always truthful. Her remark blew another wind of doubt upon my wasting sand-edifice of certainty. Had I only dreamed that we went to Europe? It seemed a good idea to put this thought into words.

  "Come, Alice, the first thing you know you will be imagining that we went to Europe in a dream."

  She smiled, and said, "Don't let me spoil it, Henry, if it is pleasant to you to think we went. I will consider that we did go, and that I have forgotten it."

  "But, Alice dear, we did go!"

  "But, Henry dear, we didn't go!"

  She had a good head and a good memory, and she was always truthful. My head had been injured by a fall when I was a boy, and the physicians had said at the time that there could be ill effects from it some day. A cold wave struck me, now; perhaps the effects had come. I was losing confidence in the European trip. However, I thought I would make another try.

  "Alice, I will give you a detail or two; then maybe you will remember."

  "A detail or two from the dream?"

  "I am not at all sure that it was a dream; and five minutes ago I was sure that it wasn't. It was seven years ago. We went over in the Batavia. Do you remember the Batavia?"

  "I don't, Henry."

  "Captain Moreland. Don't you remember him?"

  "To me he is a myth, Henry."

  "Well, it beats anything. We lived two or three months in London, then six weeks in a private hotel in George Street, Edinburgh -- Veitch's. Come!"

  "It sounds pleasant, but I have never heard of these things before, Henry."

  "And Dr. John Brown, of Rab and His Friends -- you were ill, and he came every day; and when you were well again he still came every day and took us all around while he paid his visits, and we waited in his carriage while he prescribed for his patients. And he was so dear and lovely. You must remember all that, Alice."

  "None of it, dear; it is only a dream."

  "Why, Alice, have you ever had a dream that remained as distinct as that, and which you could remember so long?"

  "So long? It is more than likely that you dreamed it last night."

  "No indeed! It has been in my memory seven years."

  "Seven years in a dream, yes -- it is the way of dreams. They put seven years into two minutes, without any trouble -- isn't it so?"

  I had to acknowledge that it was.

  "It seems almost as if it couldn't have been a dream, Alice; it seems as if you ought to remember it."

  "Wait! It begins to come back to me." She sat thinking a while, nodding her head with satisfaction from time to time. At last she said, joyfully, "I remember almost the whole of it, now."

  "Good!"

  "I am glad I got it back. Ordinarily I remember my dreams very well; but for some reason this one --"

  " This one, Alice? Do you really consider it a dream, yet?"

  "I don't consider anything about it, Henry, I know it; I know it positively."

  The conviction stole through me that she must be right, since she felt so sure.

  Indeed I almost knew she was. I was privately becoming ashamed of myself now, for mistaking a clever illusion for a fact. So I gave it up, then, and said I would let it stand as a dream. Then I added, "It puzzles me; even now it seems almost as distinct as the microscope."

  "Which microscope?"

  "Well, Alice, there's only the one."

  "Very well, which one is that? "

  "Bother it all, the one we examined this ocean in, the other day."

  "Where?"

  "Why, at home -- of course."

  "What home?"

  "Alice, it's provoking -- why, our home. In Springport."

  "Dreaming again. I've never heard of it."

  That was stupefying. There was no need of further beating about the bush; I threw caution aside, and came out frankly. "Alice, what do you call the life we are leading in this ship? Isn't it a
dream?"

  She looked at me in a puzzled way and said, "A dream, Henry? Why should I think that?"

  "Oh, dear me, I don't know! I thought I did, but I don't. Alice, haven't we ever had a home? Don't you remember one?"

  "Why, yes -- three. That is, dream-homes, not real ones. I have never regarded them as realities."

  "Describe them."

  She did it, and in detail; also our life in them. Pleasant enough homes, and easily recognizable by me. I could also recognize an average of two out of seven of the episodes and incidents which she threw in. Then I described the home and the life which (as it appeared to me) we had so recently left. She recognized it -- but only as a dream-home. She remembered nothing about the microscope and the children's party. I was in a corner; but it was not the one which I had arranged for.

  "Alice, if those were dream-houses, how long have you been in this ship? You say this is the only voyage you have ever made."

  "I don't know. I don't remember. It is the only voyage we have made -- unless breaking it to pick up this crew of strangers in place of the friendly dear men and officers we had sailed with so many years makes two voyages of it. How I do miss them --

  Captain Hall, and Williams the sailmaker, and Storrs the chief mate, and --"

  She choked up, and the tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Soon she had her handkerchief out and was sobbing.

  I realized that I remembered those people perfectly well. Damnation! I said to myself, are we real creatures in a real world, all of a sudden, and have we been feeding on dreams in an imaginary one since nobody knows when -- or how is it? My head was swimming.

  "Alice! Answer me this. Do you know the Superintendent of Dreams?"

  "Certainly."

  "Have you seen him often?"

  "Not often, but several times."