Mark Twain A Biography Part 184

This in the morning; but at three or four in the afternoon a thousand little patches of white clouds, like handfuls of wool, come drifting noiselessly, one after another, into the crater, like a procession of shrouded phantoms, and circle round and round the vast sides, and settle gradually down and mingle together until the colossal basin is filled to the brim with snowy fog and all its seared and desolate wonders are hidden from sight.

And then you may turn your back to the crater and look far away upon the broad valley below, with its sugar-houses glinting like white specks in the distance, and the great sugar-fields diminished to green veils amid the lighter-tinted verdure around them, and abroad upon the limitless ocean. But I should not say you look down; you look up at these things.

You are ten thousand feet above them, but yet you seem to stand in a basin, with the green islands here and there, and the valleys and the wide ocean, and the remote snow-peak of Mauna Loa, all raised up before and above you, and pictured out like a brightly tinted map hung at the ceiling of a room.

You look up at everything; nothing is below you. It has a singular and startling effect to see a miniature world thus seemingly hung in mid-air.

But soon the white clouds come trooping along in ghostly squadrons and mingle together in heavy ma.s.ses a quarter of a mile below you and shut out everything-completely hide the sea and all the earth save the pinnacle you stand on. As far as the eye can reach, it finds nothing to rest upon but a boundless plain of clouds tumbled into all manner of fantastic shapes-a billowy ocean of wool aflame with the gold and purple and crimson splendors of the setting sun! And so firm does this grand cloud pavement look that you can hardly persuade yourself that you could not walk upon it; that if you stepped upon it you would plunge headlong and astonish your friends at dinner ten thousand feet below.

Standing on that peak, with all the world shut out by that vast plain of clouds, a feeling of loneliness comes over a man which suggests to his mind the last man at the flood, perched high upon the last rock, with nothing visible on any side but a mournful waste of waters, and the ark departing dimly through the distant mists and leaving him to storm and night and solitude and death!

NOTICE OF MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE

"THE TROUBLE IS OVER"

"The inimitable Mark Twain, delivered himself last night of his first lecture on the Sandwich Islands, or anything else.

"Some time before the hour appointed to open his head the Academy of Music (on Pine Street) was densely crowded with one of the most fas.h.i.+onable audiences it was ever my privilege to witness during my long residence in this city. The Elite of the town were there, and so was the Governor of the State, occupying one of the boxes, whose rotund face was suffused with a halo of mirth during the whole entertainment. The audience promptly notified Mark by the usual sign--stamping--that the auspicious hour had arrived, and presently the lecturer came sidling and swinging out from the left of the stage. His very manner produced a generally vociferous laugh from the a.s.semblage. He opened with an apology, by saying that he had partly succeeded in obtaining a band, but at the last moment the party engaged backed out. He explained that he had hired a man to play the trombone, but he, on learning that he was the only person engaged, came at the last moment and informed him that he could not play. This placed Mark in a bad predicament, and wis.h.i.+ng to know his reasons for deserting him at that critical moment, he replied, 'That he wasn't going to make a fool of himself by sitting up there on the stage and blowing his horn all by himself.' After the applause subsided, he a.s.sumed a very grave countenance and commenced his remarks proper with the following well-known sentence: 'When, in the course of human events,' etc. He lectured fully an hour and a quarter, and his humorous sayings were interspersed with geographical, agricultural, and statistical remarks, sometimes branching off and reaching beyond, soaring, in the very choicest language, up to the very pinnacle of descriptive power."

APPENDIX E

FROM "THE JUMPING FROG" BOOK (MARK TWAIN'S FIRST PUBLISHED VOLUME)

(See Chapters lviii and lix)

I. ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT

"Mark Twain" is too well known to the public to require a formal introduction at my hands. By his story of the Frog he scaled the heights of popularity at a single jump and won for himself the 'sobriquet' of The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope. He is also known to fame as The Moralist of the Main; and it is not unlikely that as such he will go down to posterity. It is in his secondary character, as humorist, however, rather than in the primal one of moralist, that I aim to present him in the present volume. And here a ready explanation will be found for the somewhat fragmentary character of many of these sketches; for it was necessary to s.n.a.t.c.h threads of humor wherever they could be found--very often detaching them from serious articles and moral essays with which they were woven and entangled. Originally written for newspaper publication, many of the articles referred to events of the day, the interest of which has now pa.s.sed away, and contained local allusions, which the general reader would fail to understand; in such cases excision became imperative. Further than this, remark or comment is unnecessary. Mark Twain never resorts to tricks of spelling nor rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too rich and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But there are few who can resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard, good sense which form the staple of his writing.

J. P.

II. FROM ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

"MORAL STATISTICIAN"--I don't want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a gla.s.s of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc....

Of course you can save money by denying yourself all these vicious little enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it?

What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use in acc.u.mulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnis.h.i.+ng good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good-humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cus.h.i.+on, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue-officers a true statement of your income. Now you all know all these things yourself, don't you?

Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a clean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your ceaseless and villainous "moral statistics"? Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars and then came back, in my absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor-stove.

III. FROM "A STRANGE DREAM"

(Example of Mark Twain's Early Descriptive Writing)

... In due time I stood, with my companion, on the wall of the vast caldron which the natives, ages ago, named 'Hale mau mau'--the abyss wherein they were wont to throw the remains of their chiefs, to the end that vulgar feet might never tread above them. We stood there, at dead of night, a mile above the level of the sea, and looked down a thousand feet upon a boiling, surging, roaring ocean of fire!--shaded our eyes from the blinding glare, and gazed far away over the crimson waves with a vague notion that a supernatural fleet, manned by demons and freighted with the d.a.m.ned, might presently sail up out of the remote distance; started when tremendous thunder-bursts shook the earth, and followed with fascinated eyes the grand jets of molten lava that sprang high up toward the zenith and exploded in a world of fiery spray that lit up the somber heavens with an infernal splendor.

"What is your little bonfire of Vesuvius to this?"

My e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n roused my companion from his reverie, and we fell into a conversation appropriate to the occasion and the surroundings. We came at last to speak of the ancient custom of casting the bodies of dead chieftains into this fearful caldron; and my comrade, who is of the blood royal, mentioned that the founder of his race, old King Kamehameha the First--that invincible old pagan Alexander--had found other sepulture than the burning depths of the 'Hale mau mau'. I grew interested at once; I knew that the mystery of what became of the corpse of the warrior king hail never been fathomed; I was aware that there was a legend connected with this matter; and I felt as if there could be no more fitting time to listen to it than the present. The descendant of the Kamehamehas said:

The dead king was brought in royal state down the long, winding road that descends from the rim of the crater to the scorched and chasm-riven plain that lies between the 'Hale mau mau' and those beetling walls yonder in the distance. The guards were set and the troops of mourners began the weird wail for the departed. In the middle of the night came a sound of innumerable voices in the air and the rush of invisible wings; the funeral torches wavered, burned blue, and went out. The mourners and watchers fell to the ground paralyzed by fright, and many minutes elapsed before any one dared to move or speak; for they believed that the phantom messengers of the dread G.o.ddess of Fire had been in their midst. When at last a torch was lighted the bier was vacant--the dead monarch had been spirited away!

APPENDIX F

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD (See Chapter lx)

NEW YORK "HERALD" EDITORIAL ON THE RETURN OF THE "QUAKER CITY"

PILGRIMAGE, NOVEMBER 19, 1867.

In yesterday's Herald we published a most amusing letter from the pen of that most amusing American genius, Mark Twain, giving an account of that most amusing of all modern pilgrimages--the pilgrimage of the 'Quaker City'. It has been amusing all through, this Quaker City affair. It might have become more serious than amusing if the s.h.i.+p had been sold at Jaffa, Alexandria, or Yalta, in the Black Sea, as it appears might have happened. In such a case the pa.s.sengers would have been more effectually sold than the s.h.i.+p. The descendants of the Puritan pilgrims have, naturally enough, some of them, an affection for s.h.i.+ps; but if all that is said about this religious cruise be true they have also a singularly sharp eye to business. It was scarcely wise on the part of the pilgrims, although it was well for the public, that so strange a genius as Mark Twain should have found admission into the sacred circle. We are not aware whether Mr. Twain intends giving us a book on this pilgrimage, but we do know that a book written from his own peculiar standpoint, giving an account of the characters and events on board s.h.i.+p and of the scenes which the pilgrims witnessed, would command an almost unprecedented sale. There are varieties of genius peculiar to America. Of one of these varieties Mark Twain is a striking specimen. For the development of his peculiar genius he has never had a more fitting opportunity. Besides, there are some things which he knows, and which the world ought to know, about this last edition of the Mayflower.

APPENDIX G

MARK TWAIN AT THE CORRESPONDENTS CLUB, WAs.h.i.+NGTON

(See Chapter lxiii)

WOMAN A EULOGY OF THE FAIR s.e.x.

The Was.h.i.+ngton Correspondents Club held its anniversary on Sat.u.r.day night. Mr. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, responded to the toast, "Woman, the pride of the professions and the jewel of ours." He said:

Mr. President,--I do not know why I should have been singled out to receive the greatest distinction of the evening--for so the office of replying to the toast to woman has been regarded in every age.

[Applause.] I do not know why I have received this distinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club.

But, be this as it may, Mr. President, I am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen any one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a heartier good--will to do the subject justice, than I. Because, Sir, I love the s.e.x. [Laughter.] I love all the women, sir, irrespective of age or color. [Laughter.]

Human intelligence cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. She sews on our b.u.t.tons [laughter]; she mends our clothes [laughter]; she ropes us in at the church fairs; she confides in us; she tells us whatever she can find out about the private affairs of the neighbors; she gives good advice, and plenty of it; she gives us a piece of her mind sometimes--and sometimes all of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our children. (Ours as a general thing.)--[this last sentence appears in Twain's published speeches and may have been added later.

D.W.]

In all relations of life, sir, it is but just and a graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick. [Great laughter.]

Wheresoever you place woman, sir--in whatsoever position or estate--she is an ornament to that place she occupies, and a treasure to the world.

[Here Mr. Twain paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that the applause should come in at this point. It came in. Mr. Twain resumed his eulogy.] Look at the n.o.ble names of history! Look at Cleopatra! Look at Desdemona! Look at Florence Nightingale! Look at Joan of Arc! Look at Lucretia Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed. "Well," said Mr. Twain, scratching his head, doubtfully, "suppose we let Lucretia slide."] Look at Joyce Heth! Look at Mother Eve! I repeat, sir, look at the ill.u.s.trious names of history! Look at the Widow Machree! Look at Lucy Stone! Look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton! Look at George Francis Train! [Great laughter.] And, sir, I say with bowed head and deepest veneration, look at the mother of Was.h.i.+ngton! She raised a boy that could not lie--could not lie. [Applause.] But he never had any chance.