A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings

by Twain, Mark, Griffin, Benjamin

  Moreover, he had a mysterious influence over animals—so the children believed. He conferred a human intelligence upon Abner the tomcat—so he made them believe. He told them he had instructed Abner that four pressures of the button was his ring, and he said Abner would obey that call. The children marveled, and wanted it tried. George went to the kitchen to set the door open, so that Abner could enter the dining room; then we rang for him, and sure enough he appeared. The children were lost in astonishment at Abner’s promptness and willingness, for they had not noticed that there was something about the humping plunge of his entrance that was suggestive of assistance from behind. Then they wondered how he could tell his ring from the other rings—could he count? Probably. We could try experiments and draw conclusions. Abner was removed. Two pressures brought no Abner, it brought Rosa; three brought some one else; five got no response, there being no such ring in the list; then, under great excitement No. 4 was tried once more, and once more Abner plunged in with his suspicious humping impulse. That settled it: Abner could count, and George was the magician that had expanded his intelligence.

  “How did you do it, George!”

  That was the question; but George reserved the secret of his occult powers. His reputation was enlarged; Abner’s, too, and Abner’s needed it; if any one had gone around, before that, selecting bright cats by evidence of personal aspect, Abner would not have been elected. He was grave, but it was the gravity of dulness, of mental vacancy, his face was quite expressionless, and even had an arid look.

  It will not be imagined that George became a moneyed man on his wages of thirty dollars a month. No, his money came from betting. His first speculations in that field were upon horses. It was not chance-work; he did not lay a bet until he knew all that a smart and diligent person could learn about the horses that were to run and the jockeys that were to ride them; then he laid his bets fearlessly. Every day, in the Hartford racing-season, he made large winnings; and while he waited at breakfast next morning he allowed the fact and the amount to escape him casually. Mainly for Susy’s benefit, who had been made to believe that betting was immoral, and she was always trying to wean George from it, and was constantly being beguiled, by his arts, into thinking his reform was imminent, and likely to happen at any moment. Then he would fall—and report a “pile” at break fast; reform again, and fall again before night; and so on, enjoying her irritations and reproaches, and her solemn warnings that disaster would overtake him yet. If he made a particularly rich haul, we knew it by the ostentatious profundity of his sadnesses and depressions as he served at break fast next morning,—a trap set for Susy. She would notice his sadness, presently, and say, eagerly and hopefully, “It has happened, George, I told you it would, and you are served just right—how much did you lose?—I hope ever so much; nothing else can teach you.” George’s sigh would be ready, and also his confession, along with a properly repentant look—

  “Yes, Miss Susy, I had hard luck—something was wrong, I can’t make out what it was, but I hope and believe it will learn me. I only won eight hundred dollars.”

  George reported all his victories to us, but if he ever suffered a loss on a horse-race we never found it out; if he had a secret of the kind it was not allowed to escape him, by either his tongue or his countenance.

  By and by he added elections to his sources of income. Again he was methodical, systematic, pains-taking, thorough. Before he risked a dollar on a candidate or against him, he knew all about the man and his chances. He searched diligently, he allowed no source of information to escape a levy. For many years several chief citizens arrived at our house every Friday evening in the home-season, to play billiards—Governor Robinson, Mr. Edward M. Bunce, Mr. Charles E. Perkins, Mr. Sam. Dunham, and Mr. Whitmore. As a rule, one or two of the team brought their wives, who spent the evening with Mrs. Clemens in the library. These ladies were sure to arrive in that room without their husbands: because they and the rest of the gentlemen were in George’s clutches in the front hall, getting milked of political information. Mrs. Clemens was never able to break up this scandalous business, for the men liked George, they admired him, too, so they abetted him in his misconduct and were quite willing to help him the best they could.

  He was as successful with his election bets as he was with his turf ventures. In both cases his idea was that a bet was not won until it was won; therefore it required watching, down to the last moment. This principle saved him from financial shipwreck, on at least one occasion. He had placed a deal of money on Mr. Blaine, and considered it perfectly safe, provided nothing happened. But things could happen, and he kept a watchful eye out, all the time. By and by came that thunderclap out of the blue, “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” and Mr. Blaine fell, fatally smitten by the friendly tongue of a clerical idiot. From one of his subsidized information sources George learned of it three hours before it had gotten currency in Hartford, and he allowed no grass to grow under his feet. Within that time he had covered his Blaine bets out of sight with bets at one to two against him. He came out of that close place a heavy winner.

  He was an earnest Republican, but that was a matter to itself; he did not allow politics to intrude itself into his business.

  George found that in order to be able to bet intelligently upon State and National elections it was necessary to be exhaustively posted in a wide array of details competent to affect results. Experience presently wrung from him this tardy justice toward me—

  “Mrs. Clemens, when I used to see Mr. Clemens setting around with a pen and talking about his ‘work,’ I never said anything, it warn’t my place, but I had my opinions about that kind of language, jist the same. But since I’ve took up with the election business I reconnize ’t I was ignorant and foolish. I’ve found out, now, that when a man uses these” (holding out his big hands), “it’s—well, it’s any po’ thing you’ve a mind to call it; but when he uses these” (tapping his forehead), “it’s work, sho’s you bawn, and even that ain’t hardly any name for it!”

  As an instance of what George could do on the turf, I offer this. Once in the summer vacation I arrived without notice in Hartford, entered the house by the front door without help of a latch-key, and found the place silent and the servants absent. Toward sunset George came in the back way, and I was a surprise for him. I reproached him for leaving the house unprotected, and said that at least one sentinel should have been left on duty. He was not troubled, not crushed. He said the burglar alarm would scare any one away who tried to get in. I said—

  “It wasn’t on. Moreover, any one could enter that wanted to, for the front door was not even on the latch. I just turned the knob and came in.”

  He paled to the tint of new leather, and reeled in his tracks. Then, without a word he flew up the stairs three steps at a jump, and presently came panting down, with a fat bundle in his hand. It was money—greenbacks.

  “Goodness, what a start you did give me, Mr. Clemens!” he said. “I had fifteen hundred dollars betwixt my mattresses. But she’s all right.”

  He had been away six days at Rochester, and had won it at the races.

  In Hartford he did a thriving banking business in a private way among his people—for a healthy commission. And he lost nothing, for he did not lend on doubtful securities.

  I was back, for a moment, in 1893, when we had been away two years in Europe; George called at the hotel, faultlessly dressed, as was his wont, and we walked up town together, talking about “the Madam” and the children, and incidentally about his own affairs. He had been serving as a waiter a couple of years, at the Union League Club, and acting as banker for the other waiters, forty in number, of his own race. He lent money to them by the month, at rather high interest, and as security he took their written orders on the cashier for their maturing wages, the orders including interest and principal.

  Also, he was lending to white men outside; and on no kinds of security but two—gold watches and diamonds. He had about a hatful of these trifles in the Cl
ub safe. The times were desperate, failure and ruin were everywhere, woe sat upon every countenance, I had seen nothing like it before, I have seen nothing like it since. But George’s ark floated serene upon the troubled waters, his white teeth shone through his pleasant smile in the old way, he was a prosperous and happy person, and about the only one thus conditioned I met in New York.

  To save ciphering, he was keeping deposits in three banks. He kept his capital in one, his interest-accumulations in another, and in the third he daily placed every copper, every nickel and every piece of silver received by him between getting up and going to bed, from whatever source it might come, whether as tips, or in making change, or even as capital resulting from the paying back of small loans. This third deposit was a sacred thing, the sacredest George had. It was for the education of his sole child, a little daughter nine months old.

  It had been accumulating since the child’s birth. George said—

  “It’ll be a humping lot by and by, Mr. Clemens, when she begins to need it. I’ve had to pull along the best I could without any learning but what little I could pick up as I had a chance; but I know the power an education is, and when I used to see little Miss Susy and Miss Clara and Miss Jean pegging away in the schoolroom, and Miss Foote learning them everything in the world, I made up my mind that if ever I had a little daughter I’d educate her up to the eye-lids if I starved for it!”

  As I have suggested before, mamma and papa and the governess do their share—such as it is—in moulding a child, and the servants and other unconsidered circumstances do their share; and a potent share it is. George had unwittingly helped to train our little people, and now it appeared that in the meantime they had been as unwittingly helping to train him. We—one and all—are merely what our training makes us; and in it all our world takes a hand.

  I am reminded that I, also, contributed a trifle once to George’s training in the early days there at home in Hartford. One morning he appeared in my study in a high state of excitement, and wanted to borrow my revolver. He had had a rupture with a colored man, and was going to kill him on sight. I was surprised; for George was the best-natured man in the world, and the humanest; and now here was this bad streak in him and I had never suspected it. Presently, as he talked along, I got new light. The bad streak was bogus. I saw that at bottom he didn’t want to kill any one—he only wanted some person of known wisdom and high authority to persuade him out of it; it would save his character with his people; they would see that he was properly bloodthirsty, but had been obliged to yield to wise and righteous counsel. So I reserved my counsel; I put new cartridges in the revolver, and handed it to him, saying—

  “Keep cool, and don’t fire from a distance. Close in on him and make sure work. Hit him in the breast.”

  He was visibly surprised—and disappointed. He began lamely to hedge, and I to misunderstand. Before long he was hunting for excuses to spare the man, and I was zealously urging him to kill him. In the end he was giving me an earnest sermon upon my depraved morals, and trying to lift me to a higher spiritual level. Finally he said—

  “Would you kill him, Mr. Clemens? If you was in my place would you, really?”

  “Certainly. Nothing is so sweet as revenge. Now here is an insulter who has no wife and no children—”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Clemens, he’s got a wife and four little children.”

  I was outraged, then—apparently—and turned upon him and said, indignantly—

  “You-u-u—scoundrel! You knew that all the time? Do you mean to tell me that you actually had it in your hard nature to break the hearts and reduce to poverty and misery and despair those innocent creatures for something somebody else had done?”

  It was George’s turn to be staggered, and he was. He said, remorsefully—

  “Mr. Clemens, as I’m a standing here I never seen it in that light before! I was a going to take it out of the wrong ones, that hadn’t ever done me any harm—I never thought of that before! Now, sir, they can jist call me what they want to—I’ll stand it.”

  On our way up town that day in New York I turned in at the Century building, and made George go up with me. The array of clerks in the great counting-room glanced up with curiosity—a white man and a negro walking together was a new spectacle to them. The glance embarrassed George, but not me, for the companionship was proper: in some ways he was my equal, in some others my superior; and besides, deep down in my interior I knew that the difference between any two of those poor transient things called human beings that have ever crawled about this world and then hid their little vanities in the compassionate shelter of the grave was but microscopic, trivial, a mere difference between worms. In the first editorial room I introduced “Mr. Griffin” to Mr. Buel and Mr. Johnson, and embarrassed all three. Conversation was difficult. I went into the main editorial room and found Mr. Gilder there. He said—

  “You are just the man!” He handed me a type-written manuscript. “Read that first paragraph and tell me what you think of it.”

  I looked around; George was decamping. I called him back, introduced him to Mr. Gilder, and said—

  “Listen to this, George.” I read the paragraph and asked him how its literary quality struck him. He very modestly gave his opinion in a couple of sentences, and I returned the manuscript to Gilder with the remark that that was my opinion also. Conversation was difficult again—which was satisfactory to me, for I was there to make an impression. This accomplished, I left, and on my way was gratified to notice that many employes put in a casual appearance here and there and yonder and took a sight of George and me.

  Passing the St. Nicholas editorial room Mr. Clarke hailed me and said—

  “Come in, Mark, I’ve got something to show you.”

  I made George come in, too. The thing to be shown was a design for a new cover for St. Nicholas. Mr. Clarke said—

  “What do you think of it?”

  I examined it a while, then handed it without comment to George, introduced him, and asked for his opinion. With diffidence, but honestly, he gave it; I endorsed it, and returned the design to Clarke. Conversation not fluent. Mr. Carey of the general business department appeared, and proposed refreshments. Down in Union Square George dropped behind, but I brought him forward, introduced him to Carey, and placed him between us. There had been a prize fight the night before, between a white man and a negro. Presently I said—

  “George, what did you get out of that fight last night?”

  “Six hundred dollars, sir.”

  Carey glanced across me at him with interest, and said—

  “Did you bet on the winner?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He was the white man. Was it quite patriotic to bet against your own color?”

  “Betting is business, sir, patriotism is sentiment. They don’t belong together. In politics I’m colored; in a bet I put up on the best man, I ain’t particular about his paint. That white man had a record; so had the coon, but ’twas watered.”

  Carey was evidently impressed. When we arrived at Carey’s refreshment place George politely excused himself and went his way. Presently Carey said—

  “What’s the game? That’s no commonplace coon. Who is that?”

  I said it was a long story—“wait till we get back to the Century.”

  There the editorial people listened to the history of George Griffin, and were sorry they hadn’t been acquainted with it before he came—they would have “shaken hands, and been glad to; wouldn’t I bring him again?”

  We sailed for Europe in 1891. Shortly afterward George, concluding that we were not coming back soon—knowing it, in fact—applied for a place at the Union League Club. He was a stranger. He was asked—

  “Recommendation?”

  He had a gilt-edged one in his pocket from us, but he kept it there, and answered simply—

  “Sixteen years in the one family—in Hartford.”

  “Sixteen years. Then you ought to be able to prove that. By the fami
ly, or some known person. Isn’t there someone who can speak for you?”

  “Yes, sir—anybody in Hartford.”

  “Meaning everybody?”

  “Yes, sir—from Senator Hawley down.”

  That was George’s style. He had a reputation, and he wanted the fact known. There were plenty of Hartford members of the Union League Club, and he knew what they would say. He served there until his death in 1897, faithfully corresponding with the family all the while, and returning with interest the children’s affection for him. Susy passed to her rest the year before George died. He was performing his duties in the Club until toward midnight of the 7th May, then complained of a pain at his heart and went to bed. He was found dead in his bed in the morning.