by Mark Twain
Some things you can’t find out; but you will never know you can’t by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can’t find out. And it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. If there wasn’t anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and I don’t know but more so. The secret of the water was a treasure until I got it; then the excitement all went away, and I recognized a sense of loss.
By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing it, for there isn’t any way to prove it—up to now. But I shall find a way—then that excitement will go. Such things make me sad; because by and by when I have found out everything there won’t be any more excitements, and I do love excitements so! The other night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it.
At first I couldn’t make out what I was made for, but now I think it was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank the Giver of it all for devising it. I think there are many things to learn yet—I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks. I hope so. When you cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn’t. It comes down, every time. I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why it is? Of course it doesn’t come down, but why should it seem to? I suppose it is an optical illusion. I mean, one of them is. I don’t know which one. It may be the feather, it may be the clod; I can’t prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take his choice.
By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last. I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night. That sorrow will come—I know it. I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears.
AFTER THE FALL
When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and I shall not see it any more.
The Garden is lost, but I have found him, and am content. He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth and sex. If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know, and do not really much care to know; so I suppose that this kind of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one’s love for other reptiles and animals. I think that this must be so. I love certain birds because of their song; but I do not love Adam on account of his singing—no, it is not that; the more he sings the more I do not get reconciled to it. Yet I asked him to sing, because I wish to learn to like everything he is interested in. I am sure I can learn, because at first I could not stand it, but now I can. It sours the milk, but it doesn’t matter; I can get used to that kind of milk.
It is not on account of his brightness that I love him—no, it is not that. He is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is, for he did not make it himself; he is as God made him, and that is sufficient. There was a wise purpose in it, that I know. In time it will develop, though I think it will not be sudden; and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is.
It is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his delicacy that I love him. No, he has lacks in these regards, but he is well enough just so, and is improving.
It is not on account of his industry that I love him—no, it is not that. I think he has it in him, and I do not know why he conceals it from me. It is my only pain. Otherwise he is frank and open with me, now. I am sure he keeps nothing from me but this. It grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but I will put it out of my mind; it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full to overflowing.
It is not on account of his education that I love him—no, it is not that. He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things, but they are not so.
It is not on account of his chivalry that I love him—no, it is not that. He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex, I think, and he did not make his sex. Of course I would not have told on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make my sex.
Then why is it that I love him? Merely because he is masculine, I think.
At bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love him without it. If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go on loving him. I know it. It is a matter of sex, I think.
He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities. If he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should love him; and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until I died.
Yes, I think I love him merely because he is mine and is masculine. There is no other reason, I suppose. And so I think it is as I first said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes—none knows whence—and cannot explain itself. And doesn’t need to.
It is what I think. But I am only a girl, and the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I have not got it right.
FORTY YEARS LATER
It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together—a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.
But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me—life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be repeated.
AT EVE’S GRAVE
ADAM: Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.
(1893, 1905)
THE ESQUIMAU MAIDEN’S ROMANCE
“YES, I WILL tell you anything about my life that you would like to know, Mr. Twain,” she said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest eyes rest placidly upon my face, “for it is kind and good of you to like me and care to know about me.”
She had been absently scraping blubber-grease from her cheeks with a small bone-knife and transferring it to her fur sleeve, while she watched the Aurora Borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky and wash the lonely snow-plain and the templed icebergs with the rich hues of the prism, a spectacle of almost intolerable splendor and beauty; but now she shook off her reverie and prepared to give me the humble little history I had asked for.
She settled herself comfortably on the block of ice which we were using as a sofa, and I made ready to listen.
She was a beautiful creature. I speak from the Esquimau point of view. Others would have thought her a trifle over-plump. She was just twenty years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching girl in her tribe. Even now, in the open air, with her cumbersome and shapeless fur coat and trousers and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face at least was apparent; but her figure had to be taken on trust. Among all the guests who came and went, I had seen no girl at her father’s hospitable trough who could be called her equal. Yet she was not spoiled. She was sweet and natural and sincere, and if she was aware that she was a belle, there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed that knowledge.
She had been
my daily comrade for a week now, and the better I knew her the better I liked her. She had been tenderly and carefully brought up, in an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the polar regions, for her father was the most important man of his tribe and ranked at the top of Esquimau cultivation. I made long dog-sledge trips across the mighty ice-floes with Lasca—that was her name—and found her company always pleasant and her conversation agreeable. I went fishing with her, but not in her perilous boat: I merely followed along on the ice and watched her strike her game with her fatally accurate spear. We went sealing together; several times I stood by while she and the family dug blubber from a stranded whale, and once I went part of the way when she was hunting a bear, but turned back before the finish, because at bottom I am afraid of bears.
However, she was ready to begin her story now, and this is what she said:
“Our tribe had always been used to wander about from place to place over the frozen seas, like the other tribes, but my father got tired of that two years ago, and built this great mansion of frozen snow-blocks—look at it; it is seven feet high and three or four times as long as any of the others—and here we have stayed ever since. He was very proud of his house, and that was reasonable; for if you have examined it with care you must have noticed how much finer and completer it is than houses usually are. But if you have not, you must, for you will find it has luxurious appointments that are quite beyond the common. For instance, in that end of it which you have called the ‘parlor,’ the raised platform for the accommodation of guests and the family at meals is the largest you have ever seen in any house—is it not so?”
“Yes, you are quite right, Lasca; it is the largest; we have nothing resembling it in even the finest houses in the United States.” This admission made her eyes sparkle with pride and pleasure. I noted that, and took my cue.
“I thought it must have surprised you,” she said. “And another thing: it is bedded far deeper in furs than is usual; all kinds of furs—seal, sea-otter, silver-gray fox, bear, marten, sable—every kind of fur in profusion; and the same with the ice-block sleeping-benches along the walls, which you call ‘beds.’ Are your platforms and sleeping-benches better provided at home?”
“Indeed, they are not, Lasca—they do not begin to be.” That pleased her again. All she was thinking of was the number of furs her esthetic father took the trouble to keep on hand, not their value. I could have told her that those masses of rich furs constituted wealth—or would in my country—but she would not have understood that; those were not the kind of things that ranked as riches with her people. I could have told her that the clothes she had on, or the every-day clothes of the commonest person about her, were worth twelve or fifteen hundred dollars, and that I was not acquainted with anybody at home who wore twelve-hundred-dollar toilets to go fishing in; but she would not have understood it, so I said nothing. She resumed:
“And then the slop-tubs. We have two in the parlor, and two in the rest of the house. It is very seldom that one has two in the parlor. Have you two in the parlor at home?”
The memory of those tubs made me gasp, but I recovered myself before she noticed, and said with effusion:
“Why, Lasca, it is a shame of me to expose my country, and you must not let it go further, for I am speaking to you in confidence; but I give you my word of honor that not even the richest man in the city of New York has two slop-tubs in his drawing-room.”
She clapped her fur-clad hands in innocent delight, and exclaimed:
“Oh, but you cannot mean it, you cannot mean it!”
“Indeed, I am in earnest, dear. There is Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is almost the richest man in the whole world. Now, if I were on my dying bed, I could say to you that not even he has two in his drawing-room. Why, he hasn’t even one—I wish I may die in my tracks if it isn’t true.”
Her lovely eyes stood wide with amazement, and she said, slowly, and with a sort of awe in her voice:
“How strange—how incredible—one is not able to realize it. Is he penurious?”
“No—it isn’t that. It isn’t the expense he minds, but—er—well, you know, it would look like showing off. Yes, that is it, that is the idea; he is a plain man in his way, and shrinks from display.”
“Why, that humility is right enough,” said Lasca, “if one does not carry it too far—but what does the place look like?”
“Well, necessarily it looks pretty barren and unfinished, but—”
“I should think so! I never heard anything like it. Is it a fine house—that is, otherwise?”
“Pretty fine, yes. It is very well thought of.”
The girl was silent awhile, and sat dreamily gnawing a candle-end, apparently trying to think the thing out. At last she gave her head a little toss and spoke out her opinion with decision:
“Well, to my mind there’s a breed of humility which is itself a species of showing-off, when you get down to the marrow of it; and when a man is able to afford two slop-tubs in his parlor, and don’t do it, it may be that he is truly humble-minded, but it’s a hundred times more likely that he is just trying to strike the public eye. In my judgment, your Mr. Vanderbilt knows what he is about.”
I tried to modify this verdict, feeling that a double slop-tub standard was not a fair one to try everybody by, although a sound enough one in its own habitat; but the girl’s head was set, and she was not to be persuaded. Presently she said:
“Do the rich people, with you, have as good sleeping-benches as ours, and made out of as nice broad ice-blocks?”
“Well, they are pretty good—good enough—but they are not made of ice-blocks.”
“I want to know! Why aren’t they made of ice-blocks?”
I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expensiveness of ice in a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man or your ice bill will weigh more than your ice. Then she cried out:
“Dear me, do you buy your ice?”
“We most surely do, dear.”
She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said:
“Oh, I never heard of anything so silly! My, there’s plenty of it—it isn’t worth anything. Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight, right now. I wouldn’t give a fish-bladder for the whole of it.”
“Well, it’s because you don’t know how to value it, you little provincial muggins. If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could buy all the whales in the market with it.”
She looked at me doubtfully, and said:
“Are you speaking true?”
“Absolutely. I take my oath to it.”
This made her thoughtful. Presently she said, with a little sigh:
“I wish I could live there.”
I had merely meant to furnish her a standard of values which she could understand; but my purpose had miscarried. I had only given her the impression that whales were cheap and plenty in New York, and set her mouth to watering for them. It seemed best to try to mitigate the evil which I had done, so I said:
“But you wouldn’t care for whale-meat if you lived there. Nobody does.”
“What!”
“Indeed they don’t.”
“Why don’t they?”
“Wel-l-l, I hardly know. It’s prejudice, I think. Yes, that is it—just prejudice. I reckon somebody that hadn’t anything better to do started a prejudice against it, some time or other, and once you get a caprice like that fairly going, you know, it will last no end of time.”
“That is true—perfectly true,” said the girl, reflectively. “Like our prejudice against soap, here—our tribes had a prejudice against soap at first, you know.”
I glanced at her to see if she was in earnest. Evidently she was. I hesitated, then said, cautiously:
“But pardon me. They had a prejudice against soap? Had?”—with falling inflection.
“Yes—but that was only at first; nobody would eat it.”
“Oh—I understand. I didn’t get your idea before.”
Sh
e resumed:
“It was just a prejudice. The first time soap came here from the foreigners, nobody liked it; but as soon as it got to be fashionable, everybody liked it, and now everybody has it that can afford it. Are you fond of it?”
“Yes, indeed! I should die if I couldn’t have it—especially here. Do you like it?”
“I just adore it! Do you like candles?”
“I regard them as an absolute necessity. Are you fond of them?”
Her eyes fairly danced, and she exclaimed:
“Oh! Don’t mention it! Candles!—and soap!—”
“And fish-interiors!—”
“And train-oil!—”
“And slush!—”
“And whale-blubber!—”
“And carrion! and sour-krout! and beeswax! and tar! and turpentine! and molasses! and—”
“Don’t—oh, don’t—I shall expire with ecstasy!—”
“And then serve it all up in a slush-bucket, and invite the neighbors and sail in!”
But this vision of an ideal feast was too much for her, and she swooned away, poor thing. I rubbed snow in her face and brought her to, and after a while got her excitement cooled down. By and by she drifted into her story again:
“So we began to live here, in the fine house. But I was not happy. The reason was this: I was born for love; for me there could be no true happiness without it. I wanted to be loved for myself alone. I wanted an idol, and I wanted to be my idol’s idol; nothing less than mutual idolatry would satisfy my fervent nature. I had suitors in plenty—in over-plenty, indeed—but in each and every case they had a fatal defect; sooner or later I discovered that defect—not one of them failed to betray it—it was not me they wanted, but my wealth.”
