Moments with Mark Twain

THE IMMORTAL RACE

If the statistics are right the Jews constitute but _one per cent._ of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are always away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

_FROM_ “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” (1898)

THE C. S. HEALER

She was middle-aged, and large and bony, and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand, and hung the articles up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it without hurry and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity but without passion:

“Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its dumb servants.”

I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence, she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms.

“One does not _feel_” she explained; “there is no such thing as feeling: therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent is a contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it.”

“But if it hurts, just the same——”

“It doesn’t. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of reality. Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannot hurt.”

In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said “Ouch!” and went tranquilly on with her talk. “You should never allow yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you are feeling; you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit others to talk about disease or pain or death or similar non-existences in your presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty imaginings.”

Just at that point the _Stubenmädchen_ trod on the cat’s tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat profanity. I asked, with caution:

“Is a cat’s opinion about pain valuable?”

“A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from mind only; the lower animals being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without mind, opinion is impossible.”

“She merely _imagined_ she felt a pain—the cat?”

“She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is an effect of mind; without mind there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination.”

“Then she had a _real_ pain?”

“I have already told you there is no such _thing_ as real pain.”

“It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the cat.”

_FROM_ “ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER” (1903)

THE HOME PRODUCT

Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we know the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule. Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it—indeed, you almost get tired of it. As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only—people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles, ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time.

THE CHARM OF UNCERTAINTY

There is a great, a peculiar charm about reading news scraps in a language which you are not acquainted with—the charm that always goes with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. A dictionary would soil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a vale of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for the benefaction. Would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious word? Would you be properly grateful?

_FROM_ “EVE’S DIARY” (1905)

HER CHIEF DESIRE

It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together—a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.

But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me—life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered while my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be repeated.

AT EVE’S GRAVE

Adam: Wheresoever she was, _there_ was Eden.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1905)

For forty years his English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great qualities—clearness, compression, verbal exactness, and enforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing—he is, in my belief, without his peer in the English-writing world. _Sustained._ I intrench myself behind that protecting word. There are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas Howell’s moon sails cloudless skies all night and all the nights.

MISCELLANEOUS (1905–9)

MAKING THE OYSTER

You can’t make an oyster out of nothing, nor you can’t do it in a day. You’ve got to start with a vast variety of invertebrates, the belemnites, trilobites, jubusites, amalekites, and that sort of fry, and put them in to soak in a primary sea and observe and wait what will happen. Some of them will turn out a disappointment; the belemnites and the amalekites and such will be failures, and they will die out and become extinct in the course of the nineteen million years covered by the experiment; but all is not lost, for the jubusites will develop gradually into encrinites and stalactites and blatherskites, and one thing and another, as the mighty ages creep on and the periods pile their lofty crags in the primordial seas, and at last the first grand stages in the preparation of the world for man stands completed, the oyster is done. Now an oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a man has, so it is probable that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million years was a preparation for _him_. That would be just like an oyster, and, anyway, this one could not know at that early date that he was only an incident in the scheme, and that there was some more to the scheme yet. (Mark Twain—A Biography).

THE FATALITY OF SEQUENCE

When the first living atom found itself afloat on the great Laurentian sea the first act of that first atom led to the _second_ act of that first atom, and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life, until, if the steps could be traced, it would be shown that the first act of that first atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing in my dressing gown at this instant, talking to you. (Mark Twain—A Biography).

LIFE’S TURNING POINT

Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary guild. Adam’s _temperament_ was the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam would _never_ be able to disobey. It said, “Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable.” The later command, to let the fruit alone was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his _temperament_—which he did not create and had no authority over. For the _temperament_ is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named Man is merely its shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger’s temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep’s temperament is, Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands _can’t_ be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of _temperament_, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments. Not in _them_, poor helpless young creatures—afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and _be melted_. What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam and Eve had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place. That splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled _them_ to eat the apple.

CLOSE OF SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY SPEECH

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 collectible.

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 homecomings from the banquet and the lights and laughter through the deserted street—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 the 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 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart.”

THE FUTURE LIFE

(Mark Twain often allowed his fancy to play with the idea of the orthodox heaven, its curiosities of architecture and its employments of continuous prayer, psalm-singing, and harpistry).

“What a childish notion it was,” he said, “and how curious that only a little while ago human beings were so willing to accept such fragile evidences about a place of so much importance. If we should find somewhere to-day an ancient book containing an account of a beautiful and blooming tropical paradise secreted in the center of eternal icebergs—an account written by men who did not even claim to have seen it themselves—no geographical society on earth would take any stock in that book, yet that account would be quite as authentic as any we have of heaven. If God has such a place prepared for us, and really wanted us to know it, He could have found some better way than a book, so liable to alterations and misinterpretations. God has had no trouble to prove to man the laws of the constellations and the construction of the world, and such things as that, none of which agree with His so-called book. As to a hereafter, we have not the slightest evidence that there is any—_no_ evidence that appeals to logic and reason. I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life.”

Then, after a long pause, he added:

“And yet—I am strongly inclined to expect one.” (Mark Twain—A Biography).

RELIGION

I would not interfere with any one’s religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one’s religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life—hence it is a valuable possession to him.

_FROM_ “THE DEATH OF JEAN” (1909)

It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean’s coffin stands where her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy’s coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother’s stood five years and a half ago; and where mine will stand, after a little time.

_FROM_ “ONE OF HIS LATEST MEMORANDA” (1909)

THE IMPARTIAL FRIEND

Death—the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure—the rich and the poor—the loved and the unloved.

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Footnote 1:

Through an exchange of clothing with the little prince Tom Canty suddenly found himself royalty, and upon the death of Henry VIII is now king.

Footnote 2:

Miles Hendon, who has taken the real prince—now a wanderer—under his protection. In the course of their adventures the two have landed in prison.

Footnote 3:

Nigger Jim is a runaway slave to whom Huck affords protection.

Footnote 4:

Huck and Nigger Jim, drifting down the Mississippi on their raft have been struck by a steamboat. Jim has disappeared but Huck, making his way to shore, has been taken in by Col. Grangerford, whose family is in bitter feud with the Shepherdsons.

Edmund Clarence Stedman declared this chapter of Huck Finn’s adventures to be “as dramatic and powerful an episode as I know in modern literature.”

Footnote 5:

Buck Grangerford, a boy of about Huck’s age.

Footnote 6:

On his arrival at the Grangerford home Huck had given his name as George Jackson.

Footnote 7:

The Yankee and his captor have arrived at Camelot and are in King Arthur’s castle.

Footnote 8:

The Yankee with the maid, Alisande, a great talker, is on the way to rescue the imprisoned princesses.

Footnote 9:

The King and the Yankee travelling in disguise have fallen into the clutches of a slave-dealer.

THE END

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. P. 44, changed "even the" to "even in the". 2. P. 49, changed "never revoked" to "never been revoked". 3. P. 126, changed "“Oh, don’t _I_!”" to "“Oh, don’t _I_!” said Joe,". 4. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 5. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 6. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter. 7. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.