Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

by Mark Twain

  A bird of a breed not of my acquaintance used to begin a sad and wearisome and monotonous piping in the shrubbery near the window a full hour before the dawn, every morning. He had no company; he conducted this torture all alone, and added it to my stock. He never stopped for a moment. I have experienced few things that were more maddening than that bird’s lamentings. During all that dreary siege I began to watch for the dawn long before it came; and I watched for it like the duplicate, I think, of the lonely castaway on an island in the sea, who watches the horizon for ships and rescue. When the first faint gray showed through the window-blinds I felt as no doubt that castaway feels when the dim threads of the looked-for ship appear against the sky.

  I was well and strong, but I was a man and afflicted with a man’s infirmity—lack of endurance. But neither of those young women was well nor strong; still I never found either of them sleepy or unalert when I came on watch; yet, as I have said, they divided seventeen hours of watching between them in every twenty-four. It is a marvelous thing. It filled me with wonder and admiration; also with shame, for my dull incompetency. Of course the physicians begged those daughters to permit the employment of professional nurses, but they would not consent. The mere mention of such a thing grieved them so that the matter was soon dropped, and not again referred to.

  All through her life Mrs. Clemens was physically feeble, but her spirit was never weak. She lived upon it all her life, and it was as effective as bodily strength could have been. When our children were little she nursed them through long nights of sickness, as she had nursed her father. I have seen her sit up and hold a sick child upon her knees and croon to it and sway it monotonously to and fro to comfort it, a whole night long, without complaint or respite. But I could not keep awake ten minutes at a time. My whole duty was to put wood on the fire. I did it ten or twelve times during the night, but always had to be called every time, and was always asleep again before I finished the operation, or immediately afterward.

  1861

  No, there is nothing comparable to the endurance of a woman. In military life she would tire out any army of men, either in camp or on the march. I still remember with admiration that woman who got into the overland stage-coach somewhere on the plains, when my brother and I crossed the continent in the summer of 1861, and who sat bolt upright and cheerful, stage after stage, and showed no wear and tear. In those days, the one event of the day in Carson City was the arrival of the overland coach. All the town was usually on hand to enjoy the event. The men would climb down out of the coach doubled up with cramps, hardly able to walk; their bodies worn, their spirits worn, their nerves raw, their tempers at a devilish point; but the women stepped out smiling and apparently unfatigued.

  From Susy’s Biography.

  After grandpapa’s death mamma and papa went back to Bufalo; and three months afterward dear little Langdon was born. Mamma named him Langdon after grandpapa, he was a wonderfully beautiful little boy, but very, very delicate. He had wonderful blue eyes, but such a blue that mamma has never been able to describe them to me so that I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye. His delicate health was a constant anxiety to mamma, and he was so good and sweet that that must have troubled her too, as I know it did.

  He was prematurely born. We had a visitor in the house and when she was leaving she wanted Mrs. Clemens to go to the station with her. I objected. But this was a visitor whose desire Mrs. Clemens regarded as law. The visitor wasted so much precious time in taking her leave that Patrick had to drive in a gallop to get to the station in time. In those days the streets of Buffalo were not the model streets which they afterward became. They were paved with large cobblestones, and had not been repaired since Columbus’s time. Therefore the journey to the station was like the Channel passage in a storm. The result to Mrs. Clemens was a premature confinement, followed by a dangerous illness. In my belief there was but one physician who could save her. That was the almost divine Mrs. Gleason, of Elmira, who died at a great age two years ago, after being the idol of that town for more than half a century. I sent for her and she came. Her ministrations were prosperous, but at the end of a week she said she was obliged to return to Elmira, because of imperative engagements. I felt sure that if she could stay with us three days more Livy would be out of all danger. But Mrs. Gleason’s engagements were of such a nature that she could not consent to stay. This is why I placed a private policeman at the door with instructions to let no one pass out without my privity and consent. In these circumstances, poor Mrs. Gleason had no choice—therefore she stayed. She bore me no malice for this, and most sweetly said so when I saw her silken white head and her benignant and beautiful face for the last time, which was three years ago.

  Before Mrs. Clemens was quite over her devastating illness, Miss Emma Nye, a former schoolmate of hers, arrived from South Carolina to pay us a visit, and was immediately taken with typhoid fever. We got nurses—professional nurses of the type of that day, and of previous centuries—but we had to watch those nurses while they watched the patient, which they did in their sleep, as a rule. I watched them in the daytime, Mrs. Clemens at night. She slept between medicine-times, but she always woke up at the medicine-times and went in and woke up the nurse that was on watch and saw the medicines administered. This constant interruption of her sleep seriously delayed Mrs. Clemens’s recovery. Miss Nye’s illness proved fatal. During the last two or three days of it, Mrs. Clemens seldom took her clothes off, but stood a continuous watch. Those two or three days are among the blackest, the gloomiest, the most wretched of my long life.

  The resulting periodical and sudden changes of mood in me, from deep melancholy to half insane tempests and cyclones of humor, are among the curiosities of my life. During one of these spasms of humorous possession I sent down to my newspaper office for a huge wooden capital M and turned it upside-down and carved a crude and absurd map of Paris upon it, and published it, along with a sufficiently absurd description of it, with guarded and imaginary compliments of it bearing the signatures of General Grant and other experts. The Franco-Prussian war was in everybody’s mouth at the time, and so the map would have been valuable—if it had been valuable. It wandered to Berlin, and the American students there got much satisfaction out of it. They would carry it to the big beer halls and sit over it at a beer table and discuss it with violent enthusiasm and apparent admiration, in English, until their purpose was accomplished, which was to attract the attention of any German soldiers that might be present. When that had been accomplished, they would leave the map there and go off, jawing, to a little distance and wait for results. The results were never long delayed. The soldiers would pounce upon the map and discuss it in German and lose their tempers over it and blackguard it and abuse it and revile the author of it, to the students’ entire content. The soldiers were always divided in opinion about the author of it, some of them believing he was ignorant, but well-intentioned; the others believing he was merely an idiot.

  Friday, February 16, 1906

  Susy’s Biography mentions little Langdon—The change of residence

  from Buffalo to Hartford—Mr. Clemens tells of the sale of his Buffalo

  paper to Mr. Kinney—Speaks of Jay Gould, McCall, and Rockefeller.

  From Susy’s Biography.

  While Langdon was a little baby he used to carry a pencil in his little hand, that was his great plaything; I believe he was very seldom seen without one in his hand. When he was in Aunt Susy’s arms and would want to go to mamma he would hold out his hands to her with the backs of his hands out toward her instead of with his palmes out. (About a year and five months) after Langdon was born I was born, and my chief occupation then was to cry, so I must have added greatly to mamma’s care. Soon after little Langdon was born (a year) papa and mamma moved to Hartford to live. Their house in Bufalo reminded them too much of dear grandpapa, so they moved to Hartford soon after he died.

  Soon after little Langdon was born a friend of mamma’s came to visit her (Emma Ni
gh) and she was taken with the typhoid fever, while visiting mamma. At length she became so delirious, and so hard to take care of that mamma had to send to some of her friends in Elmira to come and help take care of her. Aunt Clara came, (Miss Clara L. Spaulding). She is no relation of ours but we call her Aunt Clara because she is such a great friend of mamma’s. She came and helped mamma take care of Emma Nigh, but in spite of all the good care that she received, she grew worse and died.

  Susy is right. Our year and a half in Buffalo had so saturated us with horrors and distress that we became restless and wanted to change, either to a place with pleasanter associations or with none at all. In accordance with the hard terms of that fearful law—the year of mourning—which deprives the mourner of the society and comradeship of his race when he most needs it, we shut ourselves up in the house and became recluses, visiting no one and receiving visits from no one. There was one exception—a single exception. David Gray—poet, and editor of the principal newspaper,—was our intimate friend, through his intimacy and mine with John Hay. David had a young wife and a young baby. The Grays and the Clemenses visited back and forth frequently, and this was all the solace the Clemenses had in their captivity.

  When we could endure imprisonment no longer, Mrs. Clemens sold the house and I sold my one-third interest in the newspaper, and we went to Hartford to live. I have some little business sense now, acquired through hard experience and at great expense; but I had none in those days. I had bought Mr. Kinney’s share of that newspaper (I think the name was Kinney) at his price—which was twenty-five thousand dollars. Later I found that all that I had bought of real value was the Associated Press privilege. I think we did not make a very large use of that privilege. It runs in my mind that about every night the Associated Press would offer us five thousand words at the usual rate, and that we compromised on five hundred. Still that privilege was worth fifteen thousand dollars, and was easily salable at that price. I sold my whole share in the paper—including that solitary asset—for fifteen thousand dollars. Kinney (if that was his name) was so delighted at his smartness in selling a property to me for twenty-five thousand that was not worth three-fourths of the money, that he was not able to keep his joy to himself, but talked it around pretty freely and made himself very happy over it. I could have explained to him that what he mistook for his smartness was a poor and driveling kind of thing. If there had been a triumph, if there had been a mental exhibition of a majestic sort, it was not his smartness; it was my stupidity; the credit was all due to me. He was a brisk and ambitious and self-appreciative young fellow, and he left straightway for New York and Wall Street, with his head full of sordid and splendid dreams—dreams of the “get rich quick” order; dreams to be realized through the dreamer’s smartness and the other party’s stupidity.

  Jay Gould had just then reversed the commercial morals of the United States. He had put a blight upon them from which they have never recovered, and from which they will not recover for as much as a century to come. Jay Gould was the mightiest disaster which has ever befallen this country. The people had desired money before his day, but he taught them to fall down and worship it. They had respected men of means before his day, but along with this respect was joined the respect due to the character and industry which had accumulated it. But Jay Gould taught the entire nation to make a god of the money and the man, no matter how the money might have been acquired. In my youth there was nothing resembling a worship of money or of its possessor, in our region. And in our region no well-to-do man was ever charged with having acquired his money by shady methods.

  The gospel left behind by Jay Gould is doing giant work in our days. Its message is “Get money. Get it quickly. Get it in abundance. Get it in prodigious abundance. Get it dishonestly if you can, honestly if you must.”

  This gospel does seem to be almost universal. Its great apostles, to-day, are the McCurdys, McCalls, Hydes, Alexanders, and the rest of that robber gang who have lately been driven out of their violated positions of trust in the colossal insurance companies of New York. President McCall was reported to be dying day before yesterday. The others have been several times reported, in the past two or three months, as engaged in dying. It has been imagined that the cause of these death-strokes was sorrow and shame for the robberies committed upon the two or three million policy holders and their families, and the widow and the orphan—but every now and then one is astonished to find that it is not the outraged conscience of these men that is at work; they are merely sick and sore because they have been exposed.

  Yesterday—as I see by the morning paper—John A. McCall quite forgot about his obsequies and sat up and became impressive, and worked his morals for the benefit of the nation. He knew quite well that anything which a prodigiously rich man may say—whether in health or moribund—will be spread by the newspapers from one end of this continent to the other and be eagerly read by every creature who is able to read. McCall sits up and preaches to his son—ostensibly to his son—really to the nation. The man seems to be sincere, and I think he is sincere. I believe his moral sense is atrophied. I believe he really regards himself as a high and holy man. And I believe he thinks he is so regarded by the people of the United States. He has been worshiped because of his wealth, and particularly because of his shady methods of acquiring it, for twenty years. And I think he has become so accustomed to this adulation, and so beguiled and deceived by it, that he does really think himself a fine and great and noble being, and a proper model for the emulation of the rising generation of young men.

  John D. Rockefeller is quite evidently a sincere man. Satan, twaddling sentimental sillinesses to a Sunday-school, could be no burlesque upon John D. Rockefeller and his performances in his Cleveland Sunday-school. When John D. is employed in that way he strikes the utmost limit of grotesqueness. He can’t be burlesqued—he is himself a burlesque. I know Mr. Rockefeller pretty well, and I am convinced that he is a sincere man.

  I also believe in young John D.’s sincerity. When he twaddles to his Bible Class every Sunday, he exposes himself just after his father’s fashion. He stands up and with admirable solemnity and confidence discusses the Bible with the inspiration and the confidence of an idiot—and does it in all honesty and good faith. I know him, and I am quite sure he is sincere.

  McCall has the right and true Rockefeller whang. He snivels owlishly along and is evidently as happy and as well satisfied with himself as if there wasn’t a stain upon his name, nor a crime in his record. Listen—here is his little sermon:

  FEBRUARY 16, 1906.

  WORK, WORK, SAYS McCALL.

  Tells of His Last Cigar in a Talk with His Son.

  Special to The New York Times.

  LAKEWOOD, Feb. 15.—John A. McCall felt so much better to-day that he had a long talk with his son, John C. McCall, and told many incidents of his career.

  “John,” he said to his son, “I have done many things in my life for which I am sorry, but I’ve never done anything of which I feel ashamed.

  “My counsel to young men who would succeed is that they should take the world as they find it, and then work—work!”

  Mr. McCall thought the guiding force of mankind was will power, and in illustration he said:

  “Some time ago, John, your mother and I were sitting together, chatting. I was smoking a cigar. I liked a cigar, and enjoyed a good, quiet smoke. She objected to it.

  “ ‘John,’ said she, ‘why don’t you throw that cigar away?’

  “I did so.

  “ ‘John,’ she added, ‘I hope you’ll never smoke again.’

  “The cigar I threw away was my last. I determined to quit then and there, and did so. That was exactly thirty-five years ago.”

  Mr. McCall told his son many stories of his business life and seemed in a happier frame of mind than usual. This condition was attributed partly to the fact that he received hundreds of telegrams to-day congratulating him on his statement of yesterday reiterating his friendship for Andrew Hamilto
n.

  “Father received a basketful of dispatches from friends in the North, South, East, and West commending him for his statement about his friend Judge Hamilton,” said young Mr. McCall to-night. “The telegrams came from persons who wished him good health and recovery. It has made him very happy.”

  Mr. McCall had a sinking spell at 3 o’clock this morning, but it was slight, and he recovered before it was deemed necessary to send for a physician.

  Milk and bouillons are now his sole form of nourishment. He eats no solids and is rapidly losing weight.

  Drs. Vanderpoel and Charles L. Lindley held a conference at the McCall house at 5 o’clock this evening, and later told Mrs. McCall and Mrs. Darwin P. Kingsley, his daughter, that Mr. McCall’s condition was good, and that there was no immediate danger.

  John C. McCall gave out this statement to-night: “Mr. McCall has had a very favorable day and is somewhat better.”

  Following it comes the kind of bulletin which is given out, from day to day, when a king or other prodigious personage has had a favorable day, and is somewhat better—a fact which will interest and cheer and comfort the rest of the human race, nobody can explain why.

  The sons and daughters of Jay Gould move, to-day, in what is regarded as the best society—the aristocratic society—of New York. One of his daughters married a titled Frenchman, ten or twelve years ago, a noisy and silly ruffian, gambler, and gentleman, and agreed to pay his debts, which amounted to a million or so. But she only agreed to pay the existing debts, not the future ones. The future ones have become present ones now, and are colossal. To-day she is suing for a separation from her shabby purchase, and the world’s sympathy and compassion are with her, where it belongs.