Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  A good many years afterward there was to be an Authors’ Reading at Chickering Hall, in New York, and I thought I would try that anecdote again, and see if the repetition would be effective with an audience wholly unacquainted with it, and who would be obliged to find the fun solely in the repetition, if they found it at all, since there would be not a shred of anything in the tale itself that could stir anybody’s sense of humor but an idiot’s. I sat by James Russell Lowell on the platform, and he asked me what I was going to read. I said I was going to tell a brief and wholly pointless anecdote in a dreary and monotonous voice, and that therein would consist my whole performance. He said,

  “That is a strange idea. What do you expect to accomplish by it?”

  I said,

  “Only a laugh. I want the audience to laugh.”

  He said “Of course you do—that is your trade. They will require it of you. But do you think they are going to laugh at a silly and pointless anecdote drearily and monotonously told?”

  “Yes,” I said, “they’ll laugh.”

  Lowell said “I think you are dangerous company. I am going to move to the other end of this platform and get out of the way of the bricks.”

  When my turn came I got up and exactly repeated—and most gravely and drearily—that San Francisco performance of so many years before. It was as deadly an ordeal as ever I have been through in the course of my checkered life. I never got a response of any kind until I had told that juiceless anecdote in the same unvarying words five times; then the house saw the point and annihilated the heart-breaking silence with a most welcome crash. It revived me, and I needed it, for if I had had to tell it four more times I should have died—but I would have done it, if I had had to get somebody to hold me up. The house kept up that crash for a minute or two, and it was a soothing and blessed thing to hear.

  Mr. Lowell shook me cordially by the hand, and said,

  “Mark, it was a triumph of art! It was a triumph of grit, too. I would rather lead a forlorn hope and take my chances of a soldier’s bloody death than try to duplicate that performance.”

  He said that during the first four repetitions, with that mute and solemn and wondering house before him, he thought he was going to perish with anxiety for me. He said he had never been so sorry for a human being before, and that he was cold, all down his spine, until the fifth repetition broke up the house and brought the blessed relief.

  The following post-card has been issued this morning to our summer resorters, and I think that if we fail in other ways, in our debate, the day will be saved anyhow by six or eight repetitions of that formula “How felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who—”

  At the Club, on Saturday, September the 1st, Mr. Mark Twain will reveal and explain the true secret of after-dinner speaking, and in a single lesson will teach novices, by a method of his own, how to speak successfully and acceptably upon any topic whatsoever, without embarrassment, without previous preparation, and even without knowledge of the subject.

  After his explanation there will be a debate between himself and his pupils, Messrs. George Brush and Joseph Smith, in illustration of his method.

  The exhibition will begin at 4 p.m.

  The pictures which Mr. Paine made on the portico here several weeks ago, have been developed, and are good. For the sake of the moral lesson which they teach, I wish to insert a set of them here for future generations to study, with the result, I hope, that they will reform, if they need it—and I expect they will. I am sending half a dozen of these sets to friends of mine who need reforming, and I have introduced the pictures to them with this formula:

  This series of photographs registers with scientific precision, stage by stage, the progress of a moral purpose through the mind of the human race’s Oldest Friend.

  At last we have heard again from my long-vanished little fourteen-year-old sweetheart of nearly fifty years ago. It had begun to look very much as if we had lost her again. She was drifting about among old friends in Missouri, and we couldn’t get upon her track. We supposed that she had returned to her home in California, where she teaches school, and we sent the check there. It traveled around during two months and finally found her, three or four days ago, in Columbia, Missouri. She has written a charming letter, and it is full of character. Because of the character exhibited, I find in her, once more at sixty-three, the little girl of fourteen of so long ago.

  When she went back up the river, on board the John J. Roe, in that ancient day which I have already spoken of in a previous chapter, the boat struck a snag in the night and was apparently booked to find the bottom of the Mississippi in a few minutes. She was rushed to the shore, and there was great excitement and much noise. Everybody was commanded to vacate the vessel instantly. This was done,—at least for the moment no one seemed to be missing. Then Youngblood, one of the pilots, discovered that his little niece was not among the rescued. He and old Davis, the mate, rushed aboard the sinking boat and hammered on Laura’s door, which they found locked, and shouted to her to come out—that there was not a moment to lose.

  She replied quite calmly that there was something the matter with her hoop-skirt, and she couldn’t come yet. They said,

  “Never mind the hoop-skirt. Come without it. There is no time to waste upon trifles.”

  But she answered, just as calmly, that she wasn’t going to come until the skirt was repaired and she was in it. She kept her word, and came ashore, at her leisure, completely dressed.

  I was thinking of this when I was reading her letter this morning, and the thought carried me so far back into the hoary past that for the moment I was living it over again, and was again a heedless and giddy lad, with all the vast intervening stretch of years abolished—and along with it my present condition, and my white head. And so, when I presently came upon the following passage in her letter it hit me with an astonishing surprise, and seemed to be referring to somebody else:

  But I must not weary you nor take up your valuable time with my chatter. I really forget that I am writing to one of the world’s most famous and sought-after men, which shows you that I am still roaming in the Forest of Arden.

  And so I am a hero to Laura Wright! It is wholly unthinkable. One can be a hero to other folk, and in a sort of vague way understand it, or at least believe it, but that a person can really be a hero to a near and familiar friend, is a thing which no hero has ever yet been able to realize, I am sure.

  She has been visiting the Youngbloods. It revives in me some ancient and tragic memories. Youngblood was as fine a man as I have known. In that day he was young, and had a young wife and two small children—a most happy and contented family. He was a good pilot, and he fully appreciated the responsibilities of that great position. Once when a passenger boat upon which he was standing a pilot’s watch was burned on the Mississippi, he landed the boat and stood to his post at the wheel until everybody was ashore and the entire after part of the boat, including the after part of the pilot-house, was a mass of flame; then he climbed out over the breast-board and escaped with his life, though badly scorched and blistered by the fire. A year or two later, in New Orleans, he went out one night to do an errand for the family and was never heard of again. It was supposed that he was murdered, and that was doubtless the case, but the matter remains a mystery yet.

  That old mate, Davis, was a very interesting man. He was past sixty, and his bush of hair and whiskers would have been white if he had allowed them to have their own way, but he didn’t. He dyed them, and as he only dyed them four times a year he was generally a curious spectacle. When the process was successful, his hair and whiskers were sometimes a bright and attractive green; at other times they were a deep and agreeable purple; at still other times they would grow out and expose half an inch of white hair. Then the effect was striking, particularly as regards his whiskers, because in certain lights the belt of white hair next to his face would become nearly invisible; then his bush of whiskers did no
t seem to be connected with his face at all, but quite separated from it and independent of it. Being a chief mate, he was a prodigious and competent swearer, a thing which the office requires. But he had an auxiliary vocabulary which no other mate on the river possessed, and it made him able to persuade indolent roustabouts more effectively than did the swearing of any other mate in the business, because while it was not profane, it was of so mysterious and formidable and terrifying a nature that it sounded five or six times as profane as any language to be found on the fo’castle anywhere in the river service. Davis had no education beyond reading and something which so nearly resembled writing that it was reasonably well calculated to deceive. He read, and he read a great deal, and diligently, but his whole library consisted of a single book. It was Lyell’s “Geology,” and he had stuck to it until all its grim and rugged scientific terminology was familiar in his mouth, though he hadn’t the least idea of what the words meant, and didn’t care what they meant. All he wanted out of those great words was the energy they stirred up in his roustabouts. In times of extreme emergency he would let fly a volcanic irruption of the old regular orthodox profanity mixed up and seasoned all through with imposing geological terms, then formally charge his roustabouts with being Old Silurian Invertebrates out of the Incandescent Anisodactylous Post-Pliocene Period, and damn the whole gang in a body to perdition.

  People are always wounding my dignity. Every now and then some ignorant person afflicts me in that way. I was once a lecturer, but I have reformed long ago. I have discarded all such degradations and have tried to make the world understand that I am now a stately person who has retired from all small things and sits upon a summit apart—a great and shining literary light who deals substantially with nothing on a lower plane than the sun and the constellations. And so when a letter such as came in this morning’s mail reaches me, it drags me down from my summit and humiliates me.

  Read this irreverent letter and reflect upon it. Think of a person proposing a tour in vaudeville to a man of my proportions! He wants to arrange a tour, he says, in which he could give me three consecutive weeks and one week of rest. He has no shame. He says he could give me as many weeks as I might desire, and that he would simply want a “sixteen to twenty minute monologue or lecture as you might choose to call it, and twice a day.”

  Why doesn’t he propose a clog-dance and done with it? He thinks I would enjoy such an engagement—thinks it will be a new field for me and show me a new set of faces; also he thinks the best part of the whole thing would be the “renumeration.” It is a good enough word, but it could not be more offensive to me if he had spelled it right. He thinks he can secure me a very “tidy sum” per week.

  But read the letter. I am wounded to the heart, and I cannot go on with it. If this man shall chance to hear of our Spontaneous Oratory experiment, he will probably affront me again.

  The Boyle Agency

  INTERNATIONAL

  VAUDEVILLE AND DRAMATIC

  31 WEST 31ST STREET

  NEW YORK August 24, 1906

  Samuel L. Clemmens, Esq., (Mark Twain)

  21 Fifth Avenue, New York

  My Dear Mr. Clemens:—

  I should like to suggest to you a tour in vaudeville. I shall be able to arrange a tour in which we could give you say three consecutive weeks and one week of rest. I could give you as many weeks as you might desire beginning September 24 or the first week of October. I make this explanation, as I feared you could consider vaudeville too strenuous. We would simply want a sixteen to twenty minute monologue or lecture as you might choose to call it, and twice a day. Some of the weeks would include Sunday and some of them would mean only six days. I am very sure that you would enjoy such an engagement. It will be a new field for you, and would show you a new set of faces. The best part of the whole thing would be the renumeration. I am very sure that I can secure for you a very tidy sum per week. I name, of course, Hammerstein’s and the Percy G. Williams’ houses in this city and Brooklyn, and the highest class vaudeville houses in other cities East of Chicago. Kindly give this matter your earnest thought and let me know what you think you would like for this kind of an engagement per week.

  Trusting that you are enjoying the best of health and that I may have a favorable reply from you, I am

  Very truly yours,

  B. Butler Boyle

  Monday, September 3, 1906

  The debate at the Dublin club house—Spontaneous Oratory good scheme for ocean liner entertainments—Susy’s Biography—The sum in arithmetic—Sour Mash, and the other cats—A tribute to General Grant.

  We carried out our project at the club on Saturday afternoon, and were very well satisfied with it. We had a narrow platform against one end of the hall, and on it three chairs in a row for the accommodation of myself and my pupils. I explained my system to the house—a system whereby I could teach the novice, with a single lesson, how to make impromptu speeches of a satisfactory and successful character upon any and all occasions without timidity, without embarrassment, and even without doubt or solicitude as to the result. I said that my two pupils—the artists George Brush and Joseph Smith—could not really be said to have received a lesson, as yet, but that the explanation which I had just been making would qualify them to get up and address this house, when called upon, and do it to the house’s contentment—because each of them had two or three anecdotes in his vest pocket, and inasmuch as the anecdotes are the essential feature of my system of Spontaneous Oratory, the resulting speeches would necessarily be successful. I said that my system had never been subjected to the severe test of a debate before, but that it would nevertheless be found able to competently meet this emergency.

  I said that we were now ready to begin as soon as the audience would favor us with a subject for discussion. After a brief conference with others, Professor Henderson offered us this question for debate:

  If it were decreed that one of the sexes must be exterminated, which one could best be spared?

  I said it was an admirable selection and offered a difficult question for settlement, but that its difficulties had no terrors for us; we should settle it, and settle it permanently, within an hour and a quarter.

  I elected to open the debate myself, and maintain that the planet could better get along without the men than without the women. I appointed Mr. Brush to attack this position and devote his best reasoning powers to a defence of the male sex’s superior claims to preservation. I appointed Mr. Smith to follow, on either side of the question or on both sides of it, according to his desire and the movements of his spirit.

  We carried the debate through with a good quality of seriousness; also with animation; with deep feeling at times, together with occasional outbreaks of vindictiveness and vituperation. Each man’s speech ended with an excellent anecdote which professed to illustrate what the speaker had just been saying, but didn’t illustrate it of course—didn’t illustrate what he had been saying nor what anybody else had been saying this year.

  Brush assumed the character and manner of an old German professor, and searched the deeps of the subject, assisting himself with irruptions of scientific terms clothed in the dead languages; and his grave mingling of earnestness and absurdity was a fine exhibition of art, and very effective.

  Mr. Smith assumed the precise and ornate style of the experienced disputant of the old-time village debating society, and exhibited with good art the confidence and complacency that are born of an established reputation.

  We got through in a short hour and a quarter, and then I was convinced that we had made a valuable discovery. I was sure that whereas country clubs usually find it difficult to provide fortnightly entertainments of a really entertaining sort with the home talent at their disposal, they need now only do debates, on our plan, to insure an excellent nonsense-entertainment every time.

  I am moved to offer our scheme to the attention of the sea-going public. It ought to be adopted in the liners, and given the place which has been occupied for g
enerations, on the night before reaching port, by those dreary exhibitions of ship-going talent—the trial by jury, which is always a witless and extravagant exhibition; and the “concert,” which consists of speeches made up of compliments to the ship and its officers, amateur music which does not enthuse, and over-impassioned recitations of “Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,” with other worn and ancient distresses. I believe there is nothing in all the range of steamship entertainments that is so empty, noisy, pointless and frantic, as the trial by jury. I have read one, lately, which some maniac took down in shorthand and published. Without doubt it was sufficiently stupid when it happened; it was sure to be still stupider when exposed to cold print. A better day is coming, I hope, when at last the recitations and the trial by jury will be abolished from the sea and the Spontaneous Debate elected to fill their place. To make those other things endurable, talent and experience in the performers is necessary; to make a Spontaneous Debate delightful, neither talent nor experience is necessary—nothing is necessary but a stream of earnest and incoherent words interrupted at intervals by an illustrative good anecdote which does not illustrate anything. Words are plenty; so are good anecdotes. These being present in any gathering of human beings, the Spontaneous Debate cannot fail.

  From Susy’s Biography.

  The other day we were all sitting, when papa told Clara and I that he would give us an arithmetic example; he began “If A byes a horse for $100—” “$200” Jean interrupted; the expression of mingled surprise and submission on papa face, as he turned to Jean and said “Who is doing this example, Jean?” was inexpressibly funny. Jean laughed and papa continued “If A byes a horse for $100—” “$200” Jean promptly interrupted; papa looked perplexed and mamma went into convulsions of laughter. It was plain to us all that papa would have to change his summ to $200. So he accordingly began “If A byes a horse for $200 and B byes a mule for $140 and they join in co-partnership and trade their creatures for a piece of land at $480 how long will it take a lame man to borrow a silk umbrella?”