Autobiography of Mark Twain (113 page)

“Mr. Twichell, do you take me for a God damned papist?”

Mr. Rogers said to me, aside, “This relieves me from my burden of uneasiness.”

Twichell, with his big heart, his wide sympathies, and his limitless benignities and charities and generosities, is the kind of person that people of all ages and both sexes fly to for consolation and help in time of trouble. He is always being levied upon by this kind of persons. Years ago—many years ago—a soft-headed young donkey who had been reared under Mr. Twichell’s spiritual ministrations sought a private interview—a very private interview—with him, and said,

“Mr. Twichell, I wish you would give me some advice. It is a very important matter with me. It lies near my heart, and I want to proceed wisely. Now it is like this: I have been down to the Bermudas on the first vacation I have ever had in my life, and there I met a most charming young lady, native of that place, and I fell in love with her, Mr. Twichell. I fell in love with her, oh so deeply! Well, I can’t describe it, Mr. Twichell. I can’t describe it. I have never had such feelings before, and they just consume me; they burn me up. When I got back here I found I couldn’t think of anybody but that girl. I wanted to write to her, but I was afraid. I was afraid. It seemed too bold. I ought to have taken advice, perhaps—but really I was not myself. I
had
to write—I couldn’t help it. So I wrote to her. I wrote to her as guardedly as my feelings would
allow—but I had the sense all the time that I was too bold—I was too bold—she wouldn’t like it. I—well, sometimes I would almost think maybe she would answer; but then there would come a colder wave and I would say—‘No, I shall never hear from her—she will be offended.’ But at last, Mr. Twichell, a letter
has
come. I don’t know how to contain myself. I want to write again, but I may spoil it—I may spoil it—and I want your advice. Tell me if I had better venture. Now here she has written—here is her letter, Mr. Twichell. She says this: she says—she says—‘You say in your letter you wish it could be your privilege to see me half your time. How would you like it to see me
all
the time?’ What do you think of that, Mr. Twichell? How does that strike you? Do you think she is not offended? Do you think that that indicates a sort of a shadowy leaning toward me? Do you think it, Mr. Twichell? Could you say that?”

“Well,” Twichell said, “I would not like to be too sanguine. I would not like to commit myself too far. I would not like to put hopes into your mind which could fail of fruition, but, on the whole—on the whole—daring is a good thing in these cases. Sometimes daring—a bold front—will accomplish things that timidity would fail to accomplish. I think I would write her—guardedly of course—but write her.”

“Oh Mr. Twichell, oh you don’t know how happy you do make me. I’ll write her right away. But I’ll be guarded. I’ll be careful—careful.”

Twichell read the rest of the letter—saw that this girl was just simply throwing herself at this young fellow’s head and was going to capture him by fair means or foul, but capture him. But he sent the young fellow away to write the guarded letter.

In due time he came with the girl’s second letter and said,

“Mr. Twichell, will you read that? Now read that. How does that strike you? Is she kind of leaning my way? I wish you could say so, Mr. Twichell. You see there, what she says. She says—‘You offer to send me a present of a ring—’ I did it, Mr. Twichell! I declare it was a bold thing—but—but—I couldn’t help it—I did that intrepid thing—and that is what she says: ‘You offer to send me a ring. But my father is going to take a little vacation excursion in the New England States and he is going to let me go with him. If you should send the ring here it might get lost. We shall be in Hartford a day or two; won’t it be safer to wait till then and you put it on my finger yourself?’

“What do you think of that, Mr. Twichell? How does it strike you? Is she leaning? Is she leaning?”

“Well,” Twichell said, “I don’t know about that. I must not be intemperate. I must not say things too strongly, for I might be making a mistake. But I think—I think—on the whole I think she is leaning—I do—I think she is leaning—”

“Oh Mr. Twichell, it does my heart so much good to hear you say that! Mr. Twichell, if there was anything I could do to show my gratitude for those words—well, you see the condition I am in—and to have you say that—”

Twichell said “Now wait a minute—now let’s not make any mistake here. Don’t you know that this is a most serious position? It can have the most serious results upon two lives. You know there is such a thing as a mere passing fancy that sets a person’s soul on fire for the moment. That person thinks it is love, and that it is permanent love—that it is real love. Then he finds out, by and by, that it was but a momentary insane passion—and then perhaps he has
committed himself for life, and he wishes he was out of that predicament. Now let us make sure of this thing. I believe that if you try, and conduct yourself wisely and cautiously—I don’t feel sure, but I believe that if you conduct yourself wisely and cautiously you can beguile that girl into marrying you.”

“Oh Mr. Twichell, I can’t express—”

“Well never mind expressing anything. What I am coming at is this: let us make sure of our position. If this is
real
love, go ahead! If it is nothing but a passing fancy, drop it right here, for both your sakes. Now tell me, is it real love? If it is real love how do you arrive at that conclusion? Have you some way of proving to your entire satisfaction that this
is
real, genuine, lasting, permanent love?”

“Mr. Twichell, I can tell you this. You can just judge for yourself. From the time that I was a baby in the cradle, up, Mr. Twichell, I have had to sleep close to my mother, with a door open between, because I have always been subject to the most horrible nightmares, and when they break out my mother has to come running from her bed and appease me and comfort me and pacify me. Now then, Mr. Twichell, from the cradle up, whenever I got hit with those nightmare convulsions I have always sung out Mamma, Mamma, Mamma. Now I sing out Mary Ann, Mary Ann, Mary Ann.”

So they were married. They moved to the West and we know nothing more about the romance.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, Decoration Day happened to be more like the Fourth of July for temperature than like the 30th of May. Twichell was orator of the day. He pelted his great crowd of old Civil War soldiers for an hour in the biggest church in Hartford, while they mourned and sweltered. Then they marched forth and joined the procession of other wilted old soldiers that were oozing from other churches, and tramped through clouds of dust to the cemetery and began to distribute the flags and the flowers—a tiny flag and a small basket of flowers to each military grave. This industry went on and on and on, everybody breathing dust—for there was nothing else to breathe; everybody streaming with perspiration; everybody tired and wishing it was over. At last there was but one basket of flowers left, only one grave still undecorated. A fiery little Major whose patience was all gone, was shouting,

“Corporal Henry Jones, Company C, Fourteenth Connecticut Infantry—”

No response. Nobody seemed to know where that corporal was buried.

The Major raised his note a degree or two higher.

“Corporal Henry
Jones
, Company C, Fourteenth Connecticut Infantry!—doesn’t anybody know where that man is buried?”

No response. Once, twice, three times, he shrieked again, with his temper ever rising higher and higher,—

“Corporal Henry JONES! Company C! Fourteenth Connecticut Infantry!—doesn’t ANYBODY know where that man is buried?”

No response. Then he slammed the basket of flowers on the ground and said to Twichell,

“Proceed with the finish.”

The crowd massed themselves together around Twichell with uncovered heads, the silence and solemnity interrupted only by subdued sneezings, for these people were buried in the dim
cloud of dust. After a pause Twichell began an impressive prayer, making it brief to meet the exigencies of the occasion. In the middle of it he made a pause. The drummer thought he was through, and let fly a rub-a-dub-dub—and the little Major stormed out
“Stop
that drum!” Twichell tried again. He got almost to the last word safely, when somebody trod on a dog and the dog let out a howl of anguish that could be heard beyond the frontier. The Major said,

“God damn that dog!”—and Twichell said,

“Amen.”

That is, he said it as a finish to his own prayer, but it fell so exactly at the right moment that it seemed to include the Major’s, too, and so he felt greatly honored, and thanked him.

Friday, March 16, 1906

Schoolmates of sixty years ago—Mary Miller, one of Mr. Clemens’s first sweethearts—Artimisia Briggs, another—Mary Lacy, another—Jimmy McDaniel, to whom Mr. Clemens told his first humorous story—Mr. Richmond, Sunday-school teacher, afterwards owner of Tom Sawyer’s cave, which is now being ground into cement—Hickman, the showy young captain—Reuel Gridley and the sack of flour incident—The Levin Jew boys called Twenty-two—George Butler, nephew of Ben Butler—The incident of getting into bed with Will Bowen to catch the measles, and the successful and nearly fatal case which resulted.

1845

We will return to those school children of sixty years ago. I recall Mary Miller. She was not my first sweetheart, but I think she was the first one that furnished me a broken heart. I fell in love with her when she was eighteen and I was nine, but she scorned me, and I recognized that this was a cold world. I had not noticed that temperature before. I believe I was as miserable as even a grown man could be. But I think that this sorrow did not remain with me long. As I remember it, I soon transferred my worship to Artimisia Briggs, who was a year older than Mary Miller. When I revealed my passion to her she did not scoff at it. She did not make fun of it. She was very kind and gentle about it. But she was also firm, and said she did not want to be pestered by children.

And there was Mary Lacy. She was a schoolmate. But she also was out of my class because of her advanced age. She was pretty wild and determined and independent. She was ungovernable, and was considered incorrigible. But that was all a mistake. She married, and at once settled down and became in all ways a model matron and was as highly respected as any matron in the town. Four years ago she was still living, and had been married fifty years.

Jimmy McDaniel was another schoolmate. His age and mine about tallied. His father kept the candy shop and he was the most envied little chap in the town—after Tom Blankenship (“Huck Finn”)—for although we never saw him eating candy, we supposed that it was, nevertheless, his ordinary diet. He pretended that he never ate it, and didn’t care for it because there was nothing forbidden about it—there was plenty of it and he could have as much of it as he wanted. Still there was circumstantial evidence that suggested that he only scorned candy in
public to show off, for he had the worst teeth in town. He was the first human being to whom I ever told a humorous story, so far as I can remember. This was about Jim Wolf and the cats; and I gave him that tale the morning after that memorable episode. I thought he would laugh his remaining teeth out. I had never been so proud and happy before, and I have seldom been so proud and happy since. I saw him four years ago when I was out there. He was working in a cigar-making shop. He wore an apron that came down to his knees and a beard that came nearly half as far, and yet it was not difficult for me to recognize him. He had been married fifty-four years. He had many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and also even posterity, they all said—thousands—yet the boy to whom I had told the cat story when we were callow juveniles was still present in that cheerful little old man.

Artimisia Briggs got married not long after refusing me. She married Richmond, the stone mason, who was my Methodist Sunday-school teacher in the earliest days, and he had one distinction which I envied him: at some time or other he had hit his thumb with his hammer and the result was a thumb-nail which remained permanently twisted and distorted and curved and pointed, like a parrot’s beak. I should not consider it an ornament now, I suppose, but it had a fascination for me then, and a vast value, because it was the only one in the town. He was a very kindly and considerate Sunday-school teacher, and patient and compassionate, so he was the favorite teacher with us little chaps. In that school they had slender oblong pasteboard blue tickets, each with a verse from the Testament printed on it, and you could get a blue ticket by reciting two verses. By reciting five verses you could get three blue tickets, and you could trade these at the bookcase and borrow a book for a week. I was under Mr. Richmond’s spiritual care every now and then for two or three years, and he was never hard upon me. I always recited the same five verses every Sunday. He was always satisfied with the performance. He never seemed to notice that these were the same five foolish virgins that he had been hearing about every Sunday for months. I always got my tickets and exchanged them for a book. They were pretty dreary books, for there was not a bad boy in the entire bookcase. They were
all
good boys and good girls and drearily uninteresting, but they were better society than none, and I was glad to have their company and disapprove of it.

1849

Twenty years ago Mr. Richmond had become possessed of Tom Sawyer’s cave in the hills three miles from town, and had made a tourist-resort of it. But that cave is a thing of the past now. In 1849 when the gold seekers were streaming through our little town of Hannibal, many of our grown men got the gold fever, and I think that all the boys had it. On the Saturday holidays in summertime we used to borrow skiffs whose owners were not present and go down the river three miles to the cave hollow, (Missourian for “valley”), and there we staked out claims and pretended to dig gold, panning out half a dollar a day at first; two or three times as much, later, and by and by whole fortunes, as our imaginations became inured to the work. Stupid and unprophetic lads! We were doing this in play and never suspecting. Why, that cave hollow and all the adjacent hills were made of gold! But we did not know it. We took it for dirt. We left its rich secret in its own peaceful possession and grew up in poverty and went wandering about the world struggling for bread—and this because we had not the gift of prophecy. That region was all dirt and rocks to us, yet all it needed was to be ground up and scientifically handled and it was gold. That is to say, the whole region was a cement mine—and they make
the finest kind of Portland cement there now, five thousand barrels a day, with a plant that cost two million dollars.