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

by Mark Twain

  I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father’s lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. (Laughter.) It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn’t answer for everybody that’s trying to get to be seventy.

  I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you’ve got—meaning the chairman—if you’ve got one: I am making no charges. (Laughter.) I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn’t break my bonds. (Laughter.)

  To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. (Laughter.) I early found that those were too expensive for me. I have always bought cheap cigars—reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven now. (Laughter.) Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes, it’s seven. But that includes the barrel. (Laughter.) I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? (Laughter.)

  As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. (Laughter.) This dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. (Laughter.) You let it alone.

  Since I was seven years old I have seldom taken a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. (Laughter.) Not that I needed them, for I don’t think I did; it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. (Laughter.) We had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. (Laughter.) The rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things, because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. (Laughter.) I had it all. By the time the drug-store was exhausted my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with me since. But you know very well it would be foolish for the average child to start for seventy on that basis. It happened to be just the thing for me, but that was merely an accident; it couldn’t happen again in a century. (Laughter.)

  I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; I was always tired. (Laughter.) But let another person try my way, and see where he will come out.

  I desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim: We can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you.

  I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me to recommend it. Very few would succeed: you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can’t get them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your box. Morals are an acquirement—like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis—no man is born with them. I wasn’t myself, I started poor. I hadn’t a single moral.

  There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. (Laughter.) Yes, I started like that—the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. (Laughter.) I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the—I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn’t fit anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World’s Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral she had stopped growing, because she hadn’t any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. (Laughter.) She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her—ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was—I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for, without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she’s a brontosaur. (Laughter.) Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match.

  Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian—I mean, you take the sterilized Christian (laughter), for there’s only one. Dear sir, I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that. (Laughter.)

  Threescore years and ten!

  It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling’s military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-call but “lights out.” You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer—and without prejudice—for they are not legally collectable.

  The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter through the deserted streets—a desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more—if you shrink at thought of these things, you need only reply, “Your invitation honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart.” (Prolonged applause.)

  SPEECH AT THE PLAYERS, 3 JANUARY 1906

  On 3 January 1906 Clemens spoke at a dinner at The Players club, held to celebrate his renewed membership; his text was a version of the “Wapping Alice” story (SLC 1981; see AD, 10 Jan 1906, and the note at 256.5–6). The text reproduced here is from a book published in 1943 by the club’s majordomo, Walter Oettel, entitled Walter’s Sketch Book of the Players (Oettel 1943, 54–57). The source of Oettel’s text is not known. The mention of Clemens’s “slow drawling way” suggests that someone at the dinner took down the speech in shorthand, but it is also possible that Clemens gave Oettel his manuscript.

  “She was,” he said, in his slow drawling way, “an English importation of Mrs. Clemens. She came well-recommended, and was duly installed as cook in our household. She was a prepossessing maiden of thirty years, well-liked by all the family.

  “During the summer months the family went abroad. I and a few of the servants, including English
Mary, remained at home. The house underwent renovation that summer, and among other improvements, a burglar alarm system was installed—the annunciator of the alarm being placed in my bedroom.

  “One night, shortly after the system was completed, the alarm sounded. It was repeated three nights in succession, but no trace of an intruder could be found. Each time the indicator showed that a window in the basement had been tampered with. Believing it to be of little or no importance, I thought no more of it until the alarm was repeated on the fourth night. I then decided to investigate thoroughly. Putting on my robe and slippers, I quietly descended the stairs. On reaching the basement I found that Mary had company—a big strapping young fellow about twenty-five years of age. Of course I apologized for intruding, and returned to my room. The next morning I sent for Mary, to give her a mild scolding, and likewise to lend her a key to the basement door so that her evening caller might enter without causing a commotion in my room.

  “It was a few months later that English Mary came to me one morning with tears in her eyes. She asked me for advice, informing me that her young friend, the handsome young Swede, was about to leave her. She confessed that circumstances made it imperative that he marry her at once. They loved each other devotedly, and she had long expected to become his wife. I told her to cheer up, I would do what I could. She was to advise me when he called that night.

  “The servants were told to be in readiness to help me out of any particular difficulty. I telephoned my friend, the Chief of Police, to have a man shadow the young Romeo, to allow him to enter the house but not to leave it. Also, he must have an officer at my door at ten o’clock. In addition, I secured the services of a clerical friend for the evening.

  “I stationed the police officer at the right of my library door, and told him to enter if I rang the bell three times. The clergyman hid himself in a little room on the side of my bedroom. (This was, by the way, the hottest place in the whole house.) I explained to my friend that I expected a wedding party, and wanted him to tie the knot. I had ordered good things to eat and drink to celebrate the event—for I anticipated a victory.

  “The young man arrived very early, to say good-bye. Mary persuaded him to come up to speak to me also. He entered my room, carrying himself in a most flippant manner. I liked the fellow, however. Despite his self-assurance, he had an open countenance which a woman of Mary’s type could not resist.

  “First, I asked his name, and he told me. As to his prospects in life, he said he expected to earn a good living at his trade, carpentering. I told him that he owed it to Mary to propose an immediate marriage. He said he would think it over.

  “ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you have exactly five minutes to think it over. You have your choice of two things, marriage or prison.’ I pulled out my watch and put it on the table beside me, and lit a fresh cigar.

  “He said that he was going then, but he would let me know his decision the next day. ‘One minute,’ I said. ‘When you entered this room I locked the door and put the key in my pocket. You have now three minutes to think. In the meantime let me tell you that an indictment for housebreaking is hanging over you for entering my house, night after night. Five years in prison is the penalty for that offense. There is a police officer in the next room, waiting to take you into custody. Now, I want you and Mary to be happy. She loves you, and she is soon to be the mother of your child. She has a good home here, and I want you to share it with her. You may have the best room in the house until the family comes back. Mary will make a good wife to you. A clergyman is waiting in the next room, the servants are ready to witness your marriage, and everything is ready for a fine wedding. We can all have a big time.’

  “Well, the fellow made a number of excuses, but I disposed of them all. Finally he consented to be married peaceably. I called Mary, the rest of the servants, and the minister. English Mary became a bride that night. The policeman stood up with her, and we all had a jolly time after the ceremony.

  “The couple lived with us for three months before starting their own home. We left Hartford the next year, and it was not until two years later that I returned to the city. I was walking from the depot when I saw a man driving a team of spirited horses. He seemed to be gazing at me. Suddenly he drew up near me and asked: ‘Don’t you know me, Mr. Clemens? I am Frank, Mary’s husband.’ I expressed my gladness at seeing him, and inquired about Mary and the baby.

  “ ‘Mr. Clemens,’ he said, ‘it was the best thing you ever did—to make me marry Mary. She has been a fine wife to me. She had a little money saved and with that she started me in business. This is my rig; I am a contractor and builder now. You must come to see us. . . As to my family—there was never a baby, or any suspicion of any.’ ”

  PREVIOUS PUBLICATION

  Below is a list of each piece in this volume and its publication history. All works cited by an abbreviation such as MTA, by SLC and a date, or by NAR (North American Review) and an installment number are fully defined in References. The term “partial publication” indicates that the text may be merely an excerpt, or be nearly complete. Charles Neider, the editor of The Autobiography of Mark Twain (AMT), reordered and recombined excerpts to such an extent that all publication in his volume is considered partial. At the end of this appendix is a list of the “Chapters from My Autobiography” published in NAR installments between 7 September 1906 and December 1907. Except for the subtitle “Random Extracts from It” (which Clemens himself enclosed in brackets), bracketed titles have been editorially supplied for works that Clemens left untitled.

  Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations, 1870–1905

  [The Tennessee Land]: MTA, 1:3–7, partial; AMT, 22–24.

  [Early Years in Florida, Missouri]: SLC 1922a, 274–75; MTA, 1:7–10; AMT, 1–3.

  [The Grant Dictations]

  The Chicago G.A.R. Festival: MTA, 1:13–19; AMT, 241–45.

  [A Call with W. D. Howells on General Grant]: MTA, 1:24–27.

  Grant and the Chinese: MTA, 1:20–24.

  Gerhardt: previously unpublished.

  About General Grant’s Memoirs: MTA, 1:27–57, 57–68, partial.

  [The Rev. Dr. Newman]: MTA, 1:68–70.

  The Machine Episode: MTA, 1:70–78, partial.

  Travel-Scraps I: previously unpublished.

  [Four Sketches about Vienna]

  [Beauties of the German Language]: MTA, 1:164–66.

  [Comment on Tautology and Grammar]: MTA, 1:172–74.

  [A Group of Servants]: SLC 2009, 61–69.

  [A Viennese Procession]: MTA, 1:166–71.

  My Debut as a Literary Person: SLC 1899d; SLC 1900b, 84–127; SLC 1903a, 11–47.

  Horace Greeley: MTE, 347–48.

  Lecture-Times: MTA, 1:147–53, partial; AMT, 161, 166–69.

  Ralph Keeler: MTA, 1:154–64; AMT, 161–62, 163–66.

  Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX: NAR 2, 453–56, partial; NAR 17, 4–12, partial; MTA, 1:125–43; AMT, 37–43, 44–47; SLC 2004, 157–60, partial.

  Scraps from My Autobiography. Private History of a Manuscript That Came to Grief: MTA, 1:175–89, partial.

  [Reflections on a Letter and a Book]: SLC 1922c, 312–15, partial.

  [Something about Doctors]: previously unpublished.

  [Henry H. Rogers]: MTA, 1:250–56, partial.

  [Anecdote of Jean]: previously unpublished.

  Autobiography of Mark Twain

  An Early Attempt: previously unpublished.

  My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It]: NAR 1, 322–30, partial; NAR 13, 449–63, partial; SLC 1922a, 275–76, partial; MTA, 1:81–115, partial; AMT, 1, 3–21, 24–25; SLC 2004, 61–62, 97–99, partial.

  The Latest Attempt: MTA, 1:193.

  The Final (and Right) Plan: SLC 1922a, 273; MTA, 1:xviii.

  Preface. As from the Grave (section I): MTA, 1:xv–xvi; AMT, xxviii.

  Preface. As from the Grave (sections II and III): previously unpublished.

  [The Florentine Dictations]

/>   [John Hay]: NAR 12, 344–46, partial; MTA, 1:232–38.

  Notes on “Innocents Abroad”: NAR 20, 465–71; MTA, 1:238–46; AMT, 143, 147–51.

  [Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich]: NAR 2, 456–59; MTA, 1:246–50; AMT, 288–90.

  [Villa di Quarto]: MTA, 1:195–232, partial; AMT, 314–22.

  Note for the Instruction of Future Editors and Publishers of This Autobiography: AMT, xi.