Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  Then Mr. Clemens told his “yarn.”

  It was a yarn about a walking tour with the Rev. Joseph Twichell that the public has found entertaining. The college women appeared to be entertained by it.

  MARK TWAIN ADORED BY THE COLLEGE GIRLS AT WOMEN’S UNIVERSITY CLUB.

  MARK TWAIN WAS WREATHED IN GIRLS.

  Five Hundred at Women’s University Club Hung About Their Universal Sweetheart.

  * * *

  COULDN’T SEE THEM ALL, SO HE MOUNTED A CHAIR.

  * * *

  Fed Him on Ices to Keep Up His Drooping Energies Between “Repeating” Delegations.

  * * *

  Mark Twain has the college-girl habit!

  He is not discriminating about the college. He loves them all! He admitted it yesterday at the Women’s University Club to about five hundred of them. If he melted into momentary tenderness over Barnard he excused it by saying that, if not his greatest, it was his latest love.

  From 4 to 6 Mr. Clemens was wreathed about with girls, and as happy as a king. He looked into their faces with quizzical eyes, laid a detaining hand on a shoulder now and again, while he invented a story to draw a smile from a pair of pretty lips. And when he could not see enough of them he mounted a chair to have his horizon bounded by girls—girls in Easter bonnets and charming frocks; girls all blushes and delight in the presence of their universal sweetheart.

  His Heart Is True.

  “On the 19th of this month,” said Mark, “I am going to take my formal leave of the platform forevermore at Carnegie Hall. That is as far as appearing for pay is concerned. But I have not really left the platform at all. I shall proceed to get on it as often as I desire when the conditions are what I like. I mean when nobody who pays can get there, and nobody is in the house except young ladies from the colleges.”

  Shouts interrupted him.

  “I have labored for the public good,” continued Mr. Clemens, shaking his leonine mane prodigiously, “for thirty-five or forty years. I propose to work for my personal contentment the rest of the time.” His smile included them all. Mr. Clemens had not intended to address his girls collectively. As he explained, he “never liked to make a speech without preparation, because it was impossible to tell what kind of iniquity he might wander into on an empty stomach—that is, mind.” But the pressure was too much for him. He had come to be the guest of honor and have the privilege of talking to all the college women individually.

  There he stood at the head of the long drawing-room of the club-house on Madison Square North, with Miss Maida Castelhun, the President, a vision in black jetted lace over blue silk, to support him on the right—and the support was quite literal at times. Miss Cutting, of Vassar, in white, was at his left to make the introductions, while Miss Hervy, of the Entertainment Committee, fed Mr. Clemens’s drooping energies with occasional tid-bits from the refreshment room, and kept a vigilant eye out for “repeaters” among those who greeted him.

  Fed Him Charlottes.

  It was a beautiful sight to see Miss Hervy’s tall figure, the tail of her light gray gown thrown over her arm, bearing down through the throng like a ship under full sail with a charlotte russe held aloft in a white gloved hand.

  “Mr. Clemens must have this before he says another word,” she would exclaim and the line halted while the humorist meekly devoured her offering. He shamelessly encouraged the repeaters.

  “I met a lady I had seen the other day at Vassar,” he said, as he held a Vassar hand, “and found I had to construct things all over again, for she is now a grandmother. Perhaps I am seeing some of her grand-daughters now. It is terrible mixing, you know.”

  Some of them declared they had waited for this moment all their lives. One whispered as she passed:

  “I don’t have to say anything, do I?”

  “No,” replied Mr. Clemens, “I’m shy about that sort of thing, myself.”

  “Won’t you tell the Blue Jay story?”

  “I’ve been brought up on ‘Tom Sawyer.’”

  “Won’t you do us another ‘Prince and the Pauper’” were some of the speeches hailed upon him.

  One Touch of Nature.

  But the best was the little freshman who rushed up with dancing eyes, gave his hand an energetic squeeze and asked:

  “Say, have you had an ice in there?—they’re perfectly fine.”

  When Mark Twain promised to “yarn” for them, a small platform was brought in.

  “But I want a chair,” he said. “I can’t see what you are doing out there.”

  A dozen hands were extended to help him up and he told the story of Twichell and himself, when for three hours and a half he hunted for a lost sock in the desert of a German bedroom “like a modern Sahara.”

  Then he sat down on his chair and the girls grouped themselves at his feet.

  It is evident that this reporter was there. He didn’t see everything, and he didn’t hear everything, but he saw and heard the most of the show, and he saw and heard with considerable accuracy, too. He is right when he says I have the college-girl habit. I was never without it. Susy’s Biography shows, incidentally, that I had it twenty years ago and more. I had it earlier than that, as Smith College can testify. That Vassar episode was damaged by that old goat who was President there at the time, but nothing can ever damage the lovely vision of the Vassar girls of that mixed delightful and devilish day. It was a lovely vision, and it does not fade out of my memory.

  Day before yesterday all Vassar, ancient and modern, packed itself into the Hudson Theatre, and I was there. The occasion was a benefit arranged by Vassar and its friends to raise money to aid poor students of that College in getting through the college course. I was not aware that I was to be a feature of the show, and was distressed and most uncomfortably inflamed with blushes when I found it out. Really the distress and the blushes were manufactured, for at bottom I was glad. When the ladies started to lead me through the house to the stage, when the performance was over, I was so coy that everybody admired, and was moved by it. I do things like that with an art that deceives even the hardened and experienced cynic. It has taken me a long time and has cost me much practice to perfect myself in that art, but it was worth the trouble. It makes me the most winning old thing that ever went among confiding girls. I held a reception on that stage for an hour or two, and all Vassar, ancient and modern, shook hands with me. Some of the moderns were too beautiful for words, and I was very friendly with those. I was so hoping somebody would want to kiss me for my mother, but I didn’t dare to suggest it myself. Presently, however, when it happened, I did what I could to make it contagious, and succeeded. This required art, but I had it in stock. I seemed to take the old and the new as they came, without discrimination, but I averaged the percentage to my advantage, and without anybody’s suspecting, I think.

  Among that host I met again as many as half a dozen pretty old girls whom I had met in their bloom at Vassar that time that Susy and I visited the College so long ago. Yesterday, at the University Club, almost all the five hundred were of the young and lovely, untouched by care, unfaded by age. There were girls there from Smith, Wellesley, Radcliffe, Vassar and Barnard, together with a sprinkling of college girls from the South, from the Middle West and the Pacific coast.

  I delivered a moral sermon to the Barnard girls at Columbia University a few weeks ago, and now it was like being among old friends. There were dozens of Barnard girls there, scores of them, and I had already shaken hands with them at Barnard. As I have said, the reporter heard many things there yesterday, but there were several which he didn’t hear. One sweet creature wanted to whisper in my ear, and I was nothing loth. She raised her dainty form on tiptoe, lifting herself with a grip of her velvet hands on my shoulders and put her lips to my ear and said “How do you like being the belle of New York?” It was so true, and so gratifying, that it crimsoned me with blushes, and I could make no reply. The reporter lost that.

  Two girls, one from Maine, the other from Ohio, were
grandchildren of fellow-passengers who sailed with me in the Quaker City in the “Innocents Abroad” excursion thirty-nine years ago. We had a pleasant chat of course. Then a middle-aged lady shook hands and said,

  “In something approaching the same way, Mr. Clemens, I also am an old friend of yours, for one of my oldest and most intimate friends was also a fellow-passenger of yours in the Quaker City—Mrs. Faulkner.”

  By anticipation, my face was beginning to light up. That name blew it out as if it had been a candle. It was a pity that that lady hadn’t penetration enough to realize that this was a good time to drop the matter, or change the subject. But no, she had no more presence of mind than I should have had in her place. There was a pair of us there. She was out of presence of mind, and I couldn’t help her because I was out of it too. She didn’t know what to say, so she said the wrong thing. She said,

  “Why, don’t you remember Mrs. Faulkner?”

  I didn’t know what to say, and so I said the wrong thing. I exposed the fact that I didn’t remember that name. She tottered where she stood. I tottered where I stood. Neither of us could say anything more, and the fact that there was a pack and jam of eager young watchers and listeners all about us didn’t in the least modify the difficulty for us. She melted into the crowd and disappeared, leaving me pretty uncomfortable—and, if signs go for anything, she was uncomfortable herself. People are always turning up who have known me in the distant past, and sometimes it is so but usually it isn’t. This is the first time, however, that I have ever heard of a Quaker City passenger who had never seen that ship. There was no Mrs. Faulkner among the Quaker City’s people.

  Thursday, April 5, 1906

  Miss Mary Lawton the rising sun, Ellen Terry the setting sun—Ellen Terry’s farewell banquet, on fiftieth anniversary—Mr. Clemens’s cablegram—Mr. Clemens has fine new idea for a play; Mr. Hammond Trumbull squelches it—Orion Clemens is defeated as Secretary of State—At Mr. Camp’s suggestion Mr. Clemens speculates unfortunately—Mr. Camp offers to buy Tennessee Land for two hundred thousand dollars. Orion refuses—Mr. Clemens just discovers that he still owns a thousand acres of the Tennessee Land—Orion comes East, gets position on Hartford Evening Post—After various business ventures he returns to Keokuk and tries raising chickens.

  Am I standing upon the world’s back and looking east toward the rising sun and west toward the setting sun? That is a handsome figure! I wonder if it has been used before. It probably has. Most things that are said have been said before. In fact all things that are said have been said before. Moreover they have been said many millions of times. This is a sad thing for the human race that sits up nine nights in the week to admire its own originality. The race has always been able to think well of itself, and it doesn’t like people who throw bricks at its naïve self-appreciation. It is sensitive upon this point. The other day I furnished a sentiment in response to a man’s request—to wit:

  “The noblest work of God?” Man.

  “Who found it out?” Man.

  I thought it was very good, and smart, but the other person didn’t.

  But I must get back to the back of the world and look east and west again at those suns. One of them is Miss Mary Lawton, an American young lady who has been training herself for the stage; and at last we hope and believe we see an opening for her. We strongly believe that hers will be a great name some day. Fay Davis, a famous and popular actress who is playing the chief rôle in a serious and impressive drama called—never mind the name, I have forgotten it—wishes to retire from the piece as soon as a competent successor can be found; and at Daniel Frohman’s suggestion I cabled London two or three days ago and asked Charles Frohman if he would let Miss Lawton try that part. That is the sun which is apparently about to rise; the sun which is about to set is Ellen Terry, who has been a queen of the English stage for fifty years, and will retire from it on the 28th of this month, which will be the fiftieth anniversary. She will retire in due form at a great banquet in London, and cablegrams meet for the occasion will flow in upon the banqueteers from old friends of hers in America and other formerly distant regions of the earth—there are no distant regions now. The American cablegrams are being collected by a committee in New York, and by request I have furnished mine. To do these things by cable, at twenty-five cents a word, is the modern way and the only way. They could go by post at no expense, but it wouldn’t be good form. [Privately I will remark that they do go by mail—dated to suit the requirements.]

  Age has not withered, nor custom staled, the admiration and affection I have felt for you so many many years. I lay them at your honored feet with the strength and freshness of their youth upon them undiminished.

  She is a lovely character, as was also Sir Henry Irving, who lately departed this life. I first knew them thirty-four years ago in London, and thenceforth held them in high esteem and affection.

  When I ushered in that large figure, a while ago, about the world’s back and the rising and sinking suns, and exposed a timid doubt as to the freshness of that great figure, that timidity was the result of an experience of mine a quarter of a century ago. One day a splendid inspiration burst in my head and scattered my brains all over the farm—we were spending the summer at Quarry Farm that summer. That explosion fertilized the farm so that it yielded double crops for seven years. That wonderful inspiration of mine was what seemed to me to be the most novel and striking basic idea for a play that had ever been imagined. I was going to write that play at once, and astonish the world with it; and I did, indeed, begin upon the work immediately. Then it occurred to me that as I was not well acquainted with the history of the drama it might be well for me to make sure that this idea of mine was really new before I went further. So I wrote Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, and asked him if the idea had ever been used on the stage. Hammond Trumbull was the learned man of America at that time, and had been so regarded by both hemispheres for a good many years. I knew that he would know all about it. I waited a week and then his answer came. It covered several great pages of foolscap written in Trumbull’s small and beautiful hand, and the pages consisted merely of a list of titles of plays in which that new idea of mine had been used, in about sixty-seven countries. I do not remember how many thousand plays were mentioned in the list. I only remember that he hadn’t written down all the titles, but had only furnished enough for a sample. And I also remember that the earliest play in the invoice was a Chinese one and was upwards of twenty-five hundred years old.

  That figure of mine—standing on the back of the world and watching the rising and the declining suns—is really stately, is really fine, but I am losing confidence in it. Hammond Trumbull is dead. But if he were with us now he could probably furnish me with a few reams of samples.

  Orion Clemens—Resumed.

  There were several candidates for all the offices in the gift of the new State of Nevada save two—United States Senator, and Secretary of State. Nye was certain to get a Senatorship, and Orion was so sure to get the Secretaryship that no one but him was named for that office. But he was hit with one of his spasms of virtue on the very day that the Republican party was to make its nominations in the Convention, and refused to go near the Convention. He was urged, but all persuasions failed. He said his presence there would be an unfair and improper influence, and that if he was to be nominated the compliment must come to him as a free and unspotted gift. This attitude would have settled his case for him without further effort, but he had another attack of virtue on the same day, that made it absolutely sure. It had been his habit for a great many years to change his religion with his shirt, and his ideas about temperance at the same time. He would be a teetotaler for a while and the champion of the cause; then he would change to the other side for a time. On nomination day he suddenly changed from a friendly attitude toward whisky—which was the popular attitude—to uncompromising teetotalism, and went absolutely dry. His friends besought and implored, but all in vain. He could not be persuaded to cross the threshold
of a saloon. The paper next morning contained the list of chosen nominees. His name was not in it. He had not received a vote.

  His rich income ceased when the State government came into power. He was without an occupation. Something had to be done. He put up his sign as attorney at law, but he got no clients. It was strange. It was difficult to account for. I cannot account for it—but if I were going to guess at a solution I should guess that by the make of him he would examine both sides of a case so diligently and so conscientiously that when he got through with his argument neither he nor a jury would know which side he was on. I think that his client would find out his make in laying his case before him, and would take warning and withdraw it in time to save himself from probable disaster.

  I had taken up my residence in San Francisco about a year before the time I have just been speaking of. One day I got a tip from Mr. Camp, a bold man who was always making big fortunes in ingenious speculations and losing them again in the course of six months by other speculative ingenuities. Camp told me to buy some shares in the “Hale and Norcross.” I bought fifty shares at three hundred dollars a share. I bought on a margin, and put up 20 per cent. It exhausted my funds. I wrote Orion and offered him half, and asked him to send his share of the money. I waited and waited. He wrote and said he was going to attend to it. The stock went along up pretty briskly. It went higher and higher. It reached a thousand dollars a share. It climbed to two thousand, then to three thousand; then to twice that figure. The money did not come, but I was not disturbed. By and by that stock took a turn and began to gallop down. Then I wrote urgently. Orion answered that he had sent the money long ago—said he had sent it to the Occidental Hotel. I inquired for it. They said it was not there. To cut a long story short, that stock went on down until it fell below the price I had paid for it. Then it began to eat up the margin, and when at last I got out I was very badly crippled.