Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  In time, the President of the Art Committee of the club rose and began with that aged and long-ago discredited remark that there were not to be any speeches on this occasion, but only friendly and chatty conversation; then he went on, in the ancient and long-ago discredited fashion, and made a speech himself—a speech which was well calculated to make any sober hearer ashamed of the human race. If a stranger had come in at that time he might have supposed that this was a divine service, and that the Divinity was present. He would have gathered that Mr. Clark was about the noblest human being the great republic had yet produced, and the most magnanimous, the most self-sacrificing, the most limitlessly and squanderingly prodigal benefactor of good causes living in any land to-day. And it never occurred to this worshipper of money, and money’s possessor, that in effect Mr. Clark had merely dropped a dime into the League’s hat. Mr. Clark couldn’t miss his benefaction any more than he could miss ten cents.

  When this wearisome orator had finished his devotions, the President of the Union League got up and continued the service in the same vein, vomiting adulations upon that jailbird which, estimated by any right standard of values, were the coarsest sarcasms, although the speaker was not aware of that. Both of these orators had been applauded all along, but the present one ultimately came out with a remark which I judged would fetch a cold silence, a very chilly chill; he revealed the fact that the expenses of the club’s loan exhibition of the Senator’s pictures had exceeded the income from the tickets of admission; then he paused—as speakers always do when they are going to spring a grand effect—and said that at that crucial time Senator Clark stepped forward, of his own motion, and put his hand in his pocket and handed out fifteen hundred dollars wherewith to pay half of the insurance on the pictures, and thus the club’s pocket was saved whole. I wish I may never die, if the worshippers present at this religious service did not break out in grateful applause at that astonishing statement; and I wish I may never permanently die, if the jailbird didn’t smile all over his face and look as radiantly happy as he will look some day when Satan gives him a Sunday vacation in the cold-storage vault.

  Finally, while I was still alive, the President of the club finished his dreary and fatiguing marketing of juvenile commonplaces, and introduced Clark, and sat down. Clark rose to the tune of the “Star-Spangled Banner”—no, it was “God Save the King,” frantically sawed and thumped by the fiddlers and the piano; and this was followed by “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” sung by the whole strength of the happy worshippers. A miracle followed. I have always maintained that no man could make a speech with nothing but a compliment for a text, but I know now that a reptile can. Senator Clark twaddled, and twaddled, and twaddled along for a full half hour with no text but those praises which had been lavished upon his trifling generosities; and he not only accepted at par all these silly praises, but added to them a pile—praising his own so-called generosities and magnanimities with such intensity and color that he took the pigment all out of those other men’s compliments and made them look pallid and shadowy. With forty years’ experience of human assfulness and vanity at banquets, I have never seen anything of the sort that could remotely approach the assfulness and complacency of this coarse and vulgar and incomparably ignorant peasant’s glorification of himself.

  I shall always be grateful to Jones for giving me the opportunity to be present at these sacred orgies. I had believed that in my time I had seen at banquets all the different kinds of speech-making animals there are, and also all the different kinds of people that go to make our population, but it was a mistake. This was the first time I had ever seen men get down in the gutter and frankly worship dollars, and their possessors. Of course I was familiar with such things, through our newspapers, but I had never before heard men worship the dollar with their mouths, or seen them on their knees in the act.

  Palm Readings.

  The editor of Harper’s Monthly has submitted prints of my hands to several New York palmists of the first repute, (hiding my name from them, of course), with a view to testing their art. Ostensibly that is the idea. This is the second time an editor has tried this plan of getting at supposed concealed places in my character. Mr. Stead tried it nine years ago. He sent prints of my hands—without revealing my name—to seven English palmists, and published the results. The “readings” were smoothly worded, but cautious, very cautious and wary. Wary, and cleverly indefinite. It could not be denied that they fitted me; but they would have fitted the rest of the human race just as well. The sentences had a deceptively smart look of saying something, but upon examination that apparent something faded out and vanished, like breath from a razor. In the whole accumulation there was only one dead-certain and absolutely definite assertion—to wit: “The possessor of these hands is destitute of the sense of humor.”

  I believed this to be an error. I believed that this chiropodist had something the matter with him. Certainly it was curious, most curious. By reputation—and notoriously—I possessed that missing quality; and not only possessed it, but in extravagant, exaggerated, and even monstrous bulk; yet my hand, while naïvely giving away all my minor and hardly-discernible characteristics, had been able to entirely hide my sole prominent hump from the watchful expert. It was as if a blind naturalist should feel and name all the little animals in the menagerie and then overlook the elephant. None of the seven palmists found the elephant—full grown. Several of them found him, but only dog-size.

  An examination of the following estimates of me will show that the New York palmists have overlooked the elephant, too. This persuades me that the human hand is not to be trusted, except in minor matters. I think Shakspeare’s hand would have glibly and frankly given away all of Shakspeare’s inconspicuous and inconsequential qualities, but kept his main secret loyally unrevealed. I wonder why a hand acts like that? There doesn’t seem to be any sense in it; nor any fairness. To return to the experience of nine years ago.

  “Destitute of the sense of humor.” I could not seem to get over the pain of that unkind verdict. And besides, it was as good as repeated, and rubbed in, by the ominous and offensive silence of the six other verdicts: they gave me a fair and reasonable share of all the other qualities, but never mentioned humor at all. A friend came in—he was a stern and hard person, and as cold as a frog—and he asked me what I was crying about, and I told him about those lies and slanders, and he said I ought to be ashamed of myself to be such a baby at sixty; and then he went on and pointed out to me a thing which I had not thought of before—to wit, the vast force, the cumulative force, the convincing force of a unanimous verdict, when arrived at by seven dispassionate and unbribed experts, each working independently of the others, in the fear of God, none of them aware of my name, and all of them with reputations to sustain and families to support. He said that to any intelligent person such a verdict must be final and conclusive; he said that this verdict could not be a lie, but could be an “exposure”—and was. He said he had always believed I was not a humorist, and that I would some day be found out, and now it had happened. He said that by low artifices I had been deceiving and robbing the people for a quarter of a century; then, after an uncomfortable pause, he asked me if I could hold up my hand and look him in the eye and say this was not so. I tried to do it; but because I couldn’t, on account of rheumatism and strabismus, he said I stood self-convicted. What he chose to call my “confession” awakened his pity, and he urged me to reform and begin a better life, but I tried to appease him with argument. I said it might be that the palmists had been misled by my hand; that if they had known whose hand it was they might have noticed things in it which they had overlooked this time; and I even offered to go in person before another jury of palmists and make a new and fairer trial, and see how it would come out. But he said it was a foolish idea, and brushed it away. Still, I think there was reason in it. It is so with the phrenologist: he can tell better when he knows you. I am sure of this; for in London, once, I went to Fowler as “John B. Smith�
�� and he found no humor in me—said there was an excavation where the humor-bump should have been—yet when I went to him three months later as “Mark Twain” he said frankly and with enthusiasm that there was a pyramid in that place. Now, since knowing me helped a phrenologist, why might it not help a palmist?

  Reading by Niblo.

  1. According to the science of Palmistry, this is a Philosophic type of hand.

  2. The subject is beyond doubt a great Student, a Thinker and Reformer, broad minded, with a liberal religious sentiment without reference to creed or form.

  3. He is progressive and far-seeing, courageous in an emergency, but frequently timid where there is no need of action or quick thought. With him an emergency is an inspiration.

  4. His sense of justice is very keen; harshness to others amounting to personal injury to himself. He is sensitive, impressionable and reticent, hence is not easily understood by his associates.

  5. Disposition ordinarily is excellent. He is submissive rather than aggressive, yet radical and determined at heart. His manner is gentle, only becoming brusque or nonchalant when stirred to self defence.

  6. Independence is the special prerogative of this hand. True the shattered line of Fate marks many hours of darkness and discouragement, but his pride and determination invariably lead him forth into the light, and the harassed spirit rises higher and stronger because of Fate’s very resistance. This gift of buoyancy is not only an endowment of the spirit, but an inheritance of the flesh as well.

  7. He is proud, honest and sincere, of a generous nature, with more respect to actions than to the results, ambitious of doing and achieving, and possessing great determination in the line of his efforts. His own success is not sufficient but all for whom he cares must push on with him.

  8. Self reliance, internal courage, with an intuitive knack of sounding public sentiment render him capable of becoming a successful leader in the financial and political world, a supporter of any and all innovations that tend toward advancement.

  9. An absolute reverence for confidence reposed, is one of the strongest characteristics of this man.

  10. Loss of faith would not entail pessimism, however, for he is not one who requires a fixed creed to buoy him up. His superabundant buoyancy of spirit, often compels success where a less confident heart would fail. “The World turns aside to let him pass who knows whither he is going”—and this man knows. His early life is not marked fortunate; menaced by reverses until near his 16th year. After that period excellent things were in store for him.

  11. His line of intuition is distinctly marked, showing keen judgment, an excellent judge of character, especially regarding matters of honor or dishonor.

  12. The strong line of benevolence is indicative of a charitable nature, giving only for the sake of giving. His hand is expressive of considerable wealth, due in a great measure to his own efforts in life.

  13. Fortunately he is not constitutionally frail. Excellently endowed with physical force, he will reach beyond the proverbial limit of life without serious interruption. This strong hold on life he inherits. His death will not take place in the land of his birth.

  14. Judging from the condition of the heart line, together with the splendidly developed mount of Venus, his loves are strong and his emotions intense. There will be two great affections satisfied in his life.

  15. His mental tastes are extremely refined, fond of gratifying the senses to this extent—appreciates beauty, harmony, color, form, etc.

  16. He will meet with his greatest success in middle life, the early years serve merely to “Sow the Seed,” enrich the mind and sound the resources of this naturally vacillating individual.

  Respectfully,

  Niblo.

  I am required to edit Mr. Niblo’s Report.

  1. Philosophic mind. True.

  2.a. Student of morals, and of man’s nature—in that sense, yes, I am a student, for that study is interesting and enticing, and requires no painful research, no systematic labor, no midnight-oil effects. But I have never been a student of anything which required of me wearying and distasteful labor. It is for this reason that the relations between me and the multiplication table are strained.

  b. The rest of the paragraph is true, in detail and in mass. In the line of high philosophics I was always a thinker, but was never regarded by the world as the thinker until the course of nature retired Mr. Spencer from the competition.

  3.a. “Progressive and far-seeing.” I acknowledge it.

  b. “Courageous in an emergency.” That is too general. There are many kinds of emergencies: we are all good in one or two kinds; some are good in several kinds; but the person who is prompt and plucky in all emergencies is—well, non-existent. He has never lived. If a man were drowning, I would promptly jump in after him; but if he were falling from a tenth-story window I shouldn’t know enough to stand from under. You perceive? I am a good and confident swimmer, and have had several emergency-experiences in the water which were of an educating kind, but I have never had a person try to fall on me out of a sky-scraper. Do you get the idea? The philosophy of it is this: emergency-courage is rather a product of experience than a birthright. No person, when new and fresh, has emergency-courage enough to set a grip on his purse the first time he is offered a chance to cheaply buy a patent that is going to revolutionize steam—no, it is the subsequent occasions that find him ready with his gun. I repeat—the palmist has been too general. He should have named the kind of emergencies which find my courage ready and unappalled. I am not saying he could not have done this; and there is one thing which in fairness I must concede: that where brevity is required of the palmist, he is obliged to generalize, he cannot particularize.

  4. Again. Generalized, this is true of no one; particularized, it is true of everybody. Mr. Harshness to Henry A. Butters of Long Valley would not grieve my spirit, the spectacle of the King of the Belgians dangling from the gibbet where he belongs would make me grateful. I (along with the whole race) am sensitive (to ridicule and insult); impressionable (where the sex is concerned); reticent (where inconvenient truths are required of me).

  5. Again. Generalized thus, this fits the great majority of the human race—including me. It fits the worm, too—to a dot. Read it carefully over, and you will see.

  6. I hope that the first sentence is true. Independence of mind is so rare in the world that it may almost be said to be non-existent. I have never known a man who possessed it in any considerable degree. Many thoughtless and shallow people despise the cat—but the cat has it; the cat is the only creature that greatly and grandly possesses it. The last sentence of the paragraph—like the first one—is sharply definite, and is as true as it is definite. I am sure that my buoyancy of spirit is above the average, but is it soberly believable that that fact is set down in the lines of my hand, as by print? My sister, who died at a great age, had the same spirit all her life: would Mr. Niblo have discovered it in her hand? My mother, who died at a great age (eighty-eight), possessed it; it never failed her between the cradle and the grave. Was it written down in her hand? My brother, who died at a great age, possessed not a vestige of it. He moved through a cloud of gloom and depression all his days. Could Mr. Niblo have read that pathetic secret in his hand? I wish I had prints of the family’s hands; I would submit them to judgment with a warm curiosity.

  7. We are all proud, in one way or another; we are all honest in some ways and dishonest in others; we are all sincere at times and insincere at other times; we are all ambitious, along one or two narrow lines, but indifferent along all the others. We must throw No. 7 into the generalization-basket.