Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  Susy does not furnish the answer—and now, after the lapse of twenty years, I find that I am not able to furnish it myself. It is one of those losses which we may mourn but cannot repair.

  Papa’s great care now is Sour Mash (the cat) and he will come way down from his study on the hill to see how she is getting along.

  It was quite natural for me to do it, for I had a great admiration for Sour Mash, and a great affection for her, too. She was one of the institutions of Quarry Farm for a good many years. She had an abundance of that noble quality which all cats possess, and which neither man nor any other animal possesses in any considerable degree—independence. Also she was affectionate, she was loyal, she was plucky, she was enterprising, she was just to her friends and unjust to her enemies—and she was righteously entitled to the high compliment which so often fell from the lips of John T. Lewis—reluctantly, and as by compulsion, but all the more precious for that:

  “Other Christians is always worrying about other people’s opinions, but Sour Mash don’t give a damn.”

  Indeed she was just that independent of criticism, and I think it was her supreme grace. In her industries she was remarkable. She was always busy. If she wasn’t exterminating grasshoppers she was exterminating snakes—for no snake had any terrors for her. When she wasn’t catching mice she was catching birds. She was untiring in her energies. Every waking moment was precious to her; in it she would find something useful to do—and if she ran out of material and couldn’t find anything else to do she would have kittens. She always kept us supplied, and her families were of a choice quality. She herself was a three-colored tortoise-shell, but she had no prejudices of breed, creed, or caste. She furnished us all kinds, all colors, with that impartiality which was so fine a part of her make. She allowed no dogs on the premises except those that belonged there. Visitors who brought their dogs along always had an opportunity to regret it. She hadn’t two plans for receiving a dog guest, but only one. She didn’t wait for the formality of an introduction to any dog, but promptly jumped on his back and rode him all over the farm. By my help she would send out cards, next day, and invite that dog to a garden party, but she never got an acceptance. The dog that had enjoyed her hospitalities once was willing to stand pat.

  A few months after the last “Prince and Pauper” we started for the farm. The farm is Aunt Susy’s home and where we stay in the summer. It is situated on the top of a high hill overlooking the vally of Elmira. In the winter papa sent way to Kansas for a little donkey for us to have at the farm, and when we got to the farm we were delighted to find the donky in good trimm and ready to have us ride her. But she has proved to be very balky and to have to make her go by walking in front of her with a handful of crackers.

  The creature was no bigger than a calf, yet when she chose to balk she could not be budged from her position by any arts that the children were master of. I said it was because they were not decided enough with her; that they lacked confidence in their power to move her and she was aware of it and took advantage of the situation. I said that all she needed on her back was a person equipped with confidence and decision of character—then she would know her place. I jumped on the creature’s back, by way of an object lesson, but went over her head in the same instant and landed on my own back. The children were astonished, but I said it was nothing, I could do it every time.

  In those days I was more musical than I am now in my old age, and could out-bray any donkey in the region, and give him points. The children admired this performance beyond measure, and they often had me at it and raising the echoes of the hills and the valleys. They were always eager to have me show off my talent before company, but I was diffident and got out of it upon one pretense or another. They wanted me to set my bray to poetry, and I did it; did it most grandly, too, in their opinion, for they were charitable critics. It was wonderfully good poetry, just as poetry, but was prodigiously improved by the bray. The donkey’s name was Cadichon. I cannot call to mind who furnished that name, but it was the children that furnished the pronunciation. They called it Kiditchin, with the emphasis on the middle syllable.

  From Susy’s Biography.

  Papa wrote a little poem about her which I have and will put in here, it is partly German and partly English.

  Kiditchin.

  O du lieb’ Kiditchin, Du bist ganz bewitchin, Waw-----he!

  In summer days Kiditchin Thou’rt dear from nose to britchin Waw-----he!

  No dought thoult get a switchin When for mischief thou’rt itchin’ Waw-----he!

  But when youre good Kiditchin You shall feast in James’s kitchen Waw-----he!

  O now lift up thy song— Thy noble note prolong,— Thou living Chinese gong!

  Waw--he! waw--he-waw! Sweetest donkey man ever saw.

  There are eleven cats at the farm here now, and papa’s favorite a Tortoise Shell he has named “Sour Mash” and a little spotted one “Famine.” It is very pretty to see what papa calls the cat prosession it was formed in this way. Old Minnie-cat headed, (the mother of all the cats) next to her came aunt Susie, then Clara on the donkey, accompanied by a pile of cats, then papa and Jean hand in hand and a pile of cats brought up the rear, Mamma and I made up the audience.

  Our varius occupations are as follows. Papa rises about ½ past 7 in the morning, breakfasts at eight, writes plays tennis with Clara and me and tries to make the donkey go in the morning, does varius things in P.M., and in the evening plays tennis with Clara and me and amuses Jean and the donkey.

  Mamma rises about ¼ to eight, breakfasts at eight, teaches Jean German reading from 9–10, reads German with me from 10–11—Then she reads studdies or visits with aunt Susie for a while, and then she reads to Clara and I till lunch time things connected with English history for we hope to go to England next summer, while we sew. Then we have lunch. She studdies for about half an hour or visits with aunt Susie, then reads to us an hour or more, then studdies writes reads and rests till supper time. After supper she sits out on the porch and works till eight o’clock, from eight o’clock till bedtime she plays whist with papa and after she has retired she reads and studdies German for a while.

  Clara and I do most every thing from practicing to donkey riding and playing tag, while Jean’s time is spent in asking mamma what she can have to eat.

  It is Jean’s birth day to day. She is 5 yrs. old. Papa is away to-day and he telegraphed Jean that he wished her 65 happy returns. Papa has just written something about General Grant. I will put it in here.*

  General Grant.

  Any one who has had the privilege of knowing General Grant personaly will recognize how justly General Beale recently outlined his great, simple, beautiful nature. Thirteen hundred years ago, as the legends of King Arthur’s Round table have it, Sir Launcelot, the flower of Cristian chivalry, the knight without a peer, lay dead in the castle of Joyous Gard. With a loving and longing heart his brother the knight Sir Ector de Maris had been seeking him patiently for seven lagging years, and now he arrived at this place at nightfall and heard the chanting of monks over the dead. In the quaint and charming English of nearly four hundred years ago the story says,—

  “And when Sir Ector heard such noise and light in the quire of Joyous Gard he alight, and put his horse from him, and came into the quire and there he saw men sing and weep. And all they knew Sir Ector but he knew not them. Then went Sir Bors unto Sir Ector and told him how there lay his brother Sir Launcelot dead: and then Sir Ector threw his shield, sword, and helm from him; and when he beheld Sir Launcelot’s visage, he fell down in a swoon: and when he awaked it were hard for any tongue to tell the doleful complaints that he made for his brother.”

  Then follows his tribute—a passage whose noble and simple eloquence had not its equal in English literature until the Gettysburg Speech took its lofty place beside it. The words drew a portrait 13 centuries ago; they draw its twin to-day without the alteration of a syllable:

  “Ah Launcelot, thou were head of all Christian kn
ights! And now I dare say, thou Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, that thou were never matched of earthly knight’s hands; and thou were the courtliest knight that ever bare shield; and thou were the truest friend to thy friend that ever bestrode horse; and thou were the truest lover, of a sinful man, that ever loved woman; and thou were the kindest man that ever strake with sword; and thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in rest.”

  * Written by request—for Susy’s Biography. S.L.C.

  Tuesday, September 4, 1906

  The supremacy of the house-fly.

  There is one thing which fills me with wonder and reverence every time I think of it—and that is the confident and splendid fight for supremacy which the house-fly makes against the human being. Man, by his inventive ingenuity, has in the course of the ages, by help of diligence and determination, found ways to acquire and establish his mastery over every living creature under the vault of heaven—except the house-fly. With the house-fly he has always failed. The house-fly is as independent of him to-day as he was when Adam made his first grab for one and didn’t get him. The house-fly defies all man’s inventions for his subjugation or destruction. No creature was ever yet devised that could meet man on his own level and laugh at him and defy him, except the house-fly. In ancient times man’s dominion over animated nature was not complete; but, detail by detail, as the ages have drifted by, his inventive genius has brought first one and then another of the unconquerables under his dominion: first the elephant and the tiger, and then the lion, the hippopotamus, the bear, the crocodile, the whale, and so on. One by one man’s superiors in fight have succumbed and hauled down the flag. Man is confessed master of them all, now. There isn’t one of them—there isn’t a single species—that can survive if man sets himself the task of exterminating it—the house-fly always excepted. Nature cannot construct a monster on so colossal a scale that man can’t find a way to exterminate it as soon as he is tired of its society. Nature cannot contrive a creature of the microscopicalest infinitesimality and hide it where man cannot find it—find it and kill it. Nature has tried reducing microbes to the last expression of littleness, in the hope of protecting and preserving by this trick a hundred deadly diseases which she holds in warmer affection than she holds any benefit which she has ever conferred upon man, but man has circumvented her and made her waste her time and her effort. She has gone on pathetically and hopefully reducing her microbes until at last she has got them down so fine that she can conceal a hundred million of them in a single drop of a man’s blood—but it is all in vain. When man is tired of his microbes he knows how to find them and exterminate them. It is most strange, but there stands the simple truth: of all the myriad of creatures that inhabit the earth, including the Christian dissenter, not one is beyond the reach of the annihilatory ingenuity of scientific man—except the house-fly.

  It is a most disastrous condition. If all the troublesome and noxious creatures in the earth could be multiplied a hundred-fold, and the house-fly exterminated as compensation, man should be glad and grateful to sign the contract. We should be infinitely better off than we are now. One house-fly, all by itself, can cause us more distress and misery and exasperation than can any dozen of the other vexations which Nature has invented for the poisoning of our peace and the destruction of our comfort. All human ingenuities have been exhausted in the holy war against the fly, and yet the fly remains to-day just what he was in Adam’s time—independent, insolent, intrusive, and indestructible. Flypaper has accomplished nothing. The percentage of flies that get hitched to it is but one in the hundred, and the other ninety-nine assemble as at a circus and enjoy the performance. Slapping flies with a wet towel results in nothing valuable beyond the exercise. There are not two marksmen in fifty that can hit a fly with a wet towel at even a short range, and this method brings far more humiliation than satisfaction, because there is an expression about the missed fly which is so eloquent with derision that no operator with sensitive feelings can continue his labors after his self-respect is gone—a result which almost always follows his third or fourth miss. Anger and eagerness disorder his aim. Under these influences he delivers a slat which would get a dog every time, yet misses the fly mysteriously and unaccountably—does not land on the fly’s territory at all. Then the fly smiles that cold and offensive smile which is sacred to the fly, and the man is conquered, and gives up the contest. Poisonous powders have been invented for the destruction of noxious insects; they kill the others, but the fly prefers them to sugar. No method of actually exterminating the fly and getting your house thoroughly rid of him has ever been discovered. When our modern fashion of screening all the doors and windows was introduced, it was supposed that we were now done with the fly, and that we had defeated him at last, along with the mosquito. It was not so. Those other creatures have to stay outside nowadays, but the fly remains a member of the family just as before.

  A week or two ago we hunted down every fly in my bedroom and took his life; then we closed the doors and kept them closed night and day. I believed I was now rid of the pest for good and all, and I was jubilant. It was premature. When I woke the next morning there was a congregation of flies all about me waiting for breakfast—flies that had been visiting the hog-pen, and the hospital, and all places where disease, decay, corruption and death are to be found, and had come with their beaks and their legs fuzzy with microbes gathered from wounds and running sores and ulcers, and were ready and eagerly waiting to wipe off these accumulations upon the butter, and thus accomplish the degraded duty wherewith Nature—man’s persistent and implacable enemy—had commissioned them.

  It was matter for astonishment. The screens were perfect; the doors had been kept closed; how did the creatures get into the room? Upon consultation it was determined that they must have come down the chimney, since there was certainly no other entrance to the place available. I was jubilant once more, for now I believed that we could infallibly beat the fly. Militarily speaking, we had him in the last ditch. That was our thought. At once we had a fine wire screen constructed and fitted closely and exactly into the front of the fireplace, whereby that entrance was effectually closed. During the day we destroyed all the flies in the room. At night we laid the wood fire and placed the screen. Next morning I had no company for breakfast and was able to eat it in peace at last. The fire had been lighted and was flaming hospitably and companionably up. Then presently I saw that our guess as to how the flies got in had been correct, for they had now begun to come down the chimney, in spite of the fire and smoke, and assemble on the inside of the screen. It was almost unbelievable that they had ventured to descend through all that fire and smoke, but that is what they had done. I suppose there is nothing that a fly is afraid of. His daring makes all other courage seem cheap and poor. Now that I know that he will go through fire to attain his ends it is my conviction that there are no perils for him in this earth that he does not despise.

  But for my deep prejudices, I should have admired those daring creatures. I should have felt obliged to admire them. And indeed I would have admired them anyway if they could have departed a little from the inborn insolence and immodesty of their nature and behaved themselves in a humble and winning Christian way for once. But they were flies, and they couldn’t do that. Their backs were scorching with the heat—I knew it, I could see it—yet with an ill-timed and offensive ostentation they pretended to like it. It is a vain, mean-spirited and unpleasant creature. You cannot situate a fly in any circumstances howsoever shameful and grotesque that he will not try to show off.

  We assailed the screen with brooms and wet towels and things and tried to dislodge those flies and drive them into the fire, but it only amused them. A fly can get amusement out of anything you can start. They took it for a game, and they played it with untiring assiduity and enjoyment. As always, they came out a
head. As always, man gave it up and the fly prevailed. It was cold, and by and by we were obliged to take away the screen so that we could mend the fire. Then they all plunged into the room with a hurrah and said they were glad to see us, and explained that they would have come earlier but that they had been delayed by unforeseen circumstances.

  However, we have hopes. By noon the fire had been out a couple of hours, the screen had been replaced, and there were no flies on the inside of it. This meant a good deal—it seemed to mean a good deal, at any rate—and so we have a new scheme now. When we start a fire mornings, hereafter, we shan’t mend it again that day. I will freeze, rather. As many flies may come down and gather on the screen and show off as may desire to do it, but there they will remain. We shan’t admit them to the room again, and when the fire goes down they will retire up the chimney and distribute elsewhere the wanton and malicious persecutions for which they were created.