THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900
Col.
AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900
Col.
Twain - Speeches
I said he was doing
well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it. He is like
I used to be. There were times when I was careless--careless in my dress
when I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you
are going away without her superintendence. Once when my wife could not
go with me (she always went with me when she could--I always did meet
that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a long time ago, in
Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not go; but, in her
anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made preparation.
She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors at the White
House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, "If I should tell you
now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before you get to
Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and you
will find it in your dress-vest pocket when you are dressing at the
Arlington--when you are dressing to see the President. " I never thought
of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it
out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "Don't wear your arctics
in the White House. "
You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness,
complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments,
although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one side of Mr.
Rogers that has not been mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will
touch upon that. There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk
papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side
of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr.
Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a right to
feel that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it,
he rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful
Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from
scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as
well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine
years of age. She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has
existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.
That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his
character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand
daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is
supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. But
the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and
its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God.
I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been
allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I
don't look at him I can tell it now.
In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which
I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will
remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back;
my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books
have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights,
and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my
creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and
persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end
of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made;
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a
borrowed one at that.
You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is
always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are
only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without
exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,
JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor. "
The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to
fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity. All
things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am among
strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of
thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well. I
built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from
the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from
under his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in
his case and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't
there to see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for
that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down
the paper Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly;
I rolled, I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers,
I carried them around at dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then
an object of interest to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all
the bites I ever received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year.
I enveloped the papers that were for the mail--we had a hundred
town subscribers and three hundred and fifty country ones; the town
subscribers paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages and
cord-wood--when they paid at all, which was merely sometimes, and then
we always stated the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we
forgot it they stopped the paper. Every man on the town list helped
edit the thing--that is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited;
dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time the
boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. We were just infested with
critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. We had one subscriber
who paid cash, and he was more trouble than all the rest. He bought
us once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. He used to modify our
politics every which way, and he made us change our religion four times
in five years. If we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to
stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction.
That man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long
primer, and sign them "Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some
other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come
in and say he had changed his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech,
because he hadn't any--and order it to be left out. We couldn't afford
"bogus" in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the
signature, credited the article to the rival paper in the next village,
and put it in. Well, we did have one or two kinds of "bogus. " Whenever
there was a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked off for
half a day, and then to make up for short matter we would "turn over
ads"--turn over the whole page and duplicate it. The other "bogus" was
deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody ever read; so we kept
a galley of it standing, and kept on slapping the same old batches of it
in, every now and then, till it got dangerous. Also, in the early days
of the telegraph we used to economize on the news. We picked out the
items that were pointless and barren of information and stood them on
a galley, and changed the dates and localities, and used them over and
over again till the public interest in them was worn to the bone. We
marked the ads, but we seldom paid any attention to the marks afterward;
so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad was equally eternal. I have seen
a "td" notice of a sheriff's sale still booming serenely along two years
after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole circumstance
become ancient history. Most of the yearly ads were patent-medicine
stereotypes, and we used to fence with them.
I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse
bills on the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we
always stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was
not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and
symbols that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi
Valley; and I can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the
summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a
hatful of handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do
a temperance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs not complex;
all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he
was satisfied. But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,
and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will
"make even" and stop.
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr.
Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. So many members
surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: "Is this genuine
popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme? "
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a most difficult thing for
any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. I don't know
what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say
a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.
If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind
chairmen say of me. In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty
as if he was envious of me. I would like to have one man come out
flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it
were true. I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking,
that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by
saying complimentary things.
I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well
as any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented. And
there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know
all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you
things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented.
The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you
live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and
pleasant. To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy.
Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But,
oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair. I have
made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am.
Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is
nothing of the sort. I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy.
Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits
of mine, and then he will make a speech.
I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as
the two put together.
When that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another
story told. At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found
him. He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all
sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but
when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he
was a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence
with which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis.
I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to
the members of my family. They don't believe them, but I like to tell
them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can.
I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am
praised any more than I am entitled to be.
READING-ROOM OPENING
On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address
preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London.
I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the
legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with
intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the
community so desires.
If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand
in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of the
healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it
taxes itself for its mental food.
A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up
through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. What would we
do without newspapers?
Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster
was made known to the entire world. This reminds me of an episode
which occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford,
Connecticut.
The clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any. He
did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates around
for collection. I complained to the governor of his lack of financial
trust in me, and he replied: "I would trust you myself--if you had a
bell-punch. "
You have paid me many compliments, and I like to listen to compliments.
I indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of England
and America. He also alluded to my name, of which I am rather fond.
A little girl wrote me from New Zealand in a letter I received
yesterday, stating that her father said my proper name was not Mark
Twain but Samuel Clemens, but that she knew better, because Clemens was
the name of the man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not
Mark. She was sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark is in the Bible and
Twain is in the Bible.
I was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and
as I now know my name to be a scriptural one, I am not without hopes of
making it worthy.
LITERATURE
ADDRESS AT THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND BANQUET, LONDON, MAY 4, 1900
Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to the
toast "Literature. "
MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately with this toast without
assistance from me. Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced any
theories that needed refutation or correction I would have attended to
them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is
in the habit of making I would have dealt with them.
In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his statements. I could not
have made such statements if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate
is the only way I can approximate to the truth. You cannot have a theory
without principles. Principles is another name for prejudices. I have no
prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else.
I am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because
there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have
entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are
prejudices.
I propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. I am in favor
of everything everybody is in favor of. What you should do is to satisfy
the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a
President.
There could not be a broader platform than mine. I am in favor of
anything and everything--of temperance and intemperance, morality and
qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver.
I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I want to try the
great position of ruler of a country. I have been in turn reporter,
editor, publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. I have worked my way up, and
wish to continue to do so.
I read to-day in a magazine article that Christendom issued last year
fifty-five thousand new books. Consider what that means! Fifty-five
thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. We are
going to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later.
Therefore, double your subscriptions to the literary fund!
DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLUB, AT
SHERRY'S, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 20, 1900
Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast "The Disappearance of
Literature. " Doctor Gould presided, and in introducing
Mr. Clemens said that he (the speaker), when in Germany, had to
do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was
taking what the Germans thought undue liberties with their
language.
It wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in Germany. It
wasn't necessary at all. Instead of that he ought to have impressed upon
those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered them. Their language
had needed untangling for a good many years. Nobody else seemed to want
to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a
pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up
their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when
it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's
just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down
here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away
over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just
shovel in German. I maintain that there is no necessity for apologizing
for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation.
We have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature.
That's no new thing. That's what certain kinds of literature have been
doing for several years. The fact is, my friends, that the fashion in
literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts
or go out of business. Professor Winchester here, if I remember fairly
correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels
produced to-day would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott. That
may be his notion. Maybe he is right; but so far as I am concerned, I
don't care if they don't.
Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern
epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he's right. He talked as if he was
pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would
suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever
read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you
just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester
says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of
literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess
that's true. The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two
ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and
you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes
a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years.
But as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance
of literature, they didn't say anything about my books. Maybe they think
they've disappeared. If they do, that just shows their ignorance on the
general subject of literature. I am not as young as I was several years
ago, and maybe I'm not so fashionable, but I'd be willing to take
my chances with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of
literature to the Century Publishing Company. And I haven't got much of
a pull here, either. I often think that the highest compliment ever
paid to my poor efforts was paid by Darwin through President Eliot, of
Harvard College. At least, Eliot said it was a compliment, and I always
take the opinion of great men like college presidents on all such
subjects as that.
I went out to Cambridge one day a few years ago and called on President
Eliot. In the course of the conversation he said that he had just
returned from England, and that he was very much touched by what he
considered the high compliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he
went on to tell me something like this:
"Do you know that there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom,
where the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? One is a
plant he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those
insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for
the particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) "and the other some books that
lie on the night table at the head of his bed. They are your books, Mr.
Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep. "
My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it
the highest one that was ever paid to me. To be the means of soothing to
sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like Darwin's was
something that I had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I never
hope to be able to do it again.
THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900
Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily News, as
president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens as the principal
ornament of American literature.
I must say that I have already begun to regret that I left my gun at
home. I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with
just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will
certainly use a gun on that chairman. It is my privilege to compliment
him in return. You behold before you a very, very old man. A cursory
glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. His features seem to
reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts--they seem to bear the
traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for
the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-school of a life that
may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or
will riz--I mean to say, will rise. His private character is altogether
suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has not. If you
examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features,
because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor--mere
effects of a great spirit upon a weak body--mere accidents of a great
career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues,
and he practises them all--secretly--always secretly. You all know him
so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. Gentlemen,
Colonel Brown.
THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO MR. CARNEGIE AT THE DEDICATION
OF THE NEW YORK ENGINEERS' CLUB, DECEMBER 9, 1907
Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who,
quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day
when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small
change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes.
It seems to me that I was around here in the neighborhood of the Public
Library about fifty or sixty years ago. I don't deny the circumstance,
although I don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was
not to be printed until I am dead, unless I'm dead now. I had that $3 in
change, and I remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. I
have prospered since. Now I have plenty of money and a disposition to
squander it, but I can't. One of those trust companies is taking care of
it.
Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall be out after
nightfall this winter, I must say that I have come here with a mission,
and I would make my errand of value.
Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie to-night. I was
expecting them. They are very gratifying to me.
I have been a guest of honor myself, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is
experiencing now. It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments
and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of
us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of
our condemnation.
Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is fairly scintillating with
fictitious innocence. You would think, looking at him, that he had
never committed a crime in his life. But no--look at his pestiferious
simplified spelling. You can't any of you imagine what a crime that has
been. Torquemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old fellow shed some
blood in the Inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to
the entire race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was,
just the same. He's got us all so we can't spell anything.
The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end.
He meant well, but he attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the
disease. He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. There's not
a vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can
hitch anything to. Look at the "h's" distributed all around. There's
"gherkin. " What are you going to do with the "h" in that? What the
devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, I'd like to know. It's one thing I
admire the English for: they just don't mind anything about them at all.
But look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them.
A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving
us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of
this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken
thief. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about
fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't
spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs.
Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not
even the prisoner at the bar. I'd like to hear him try once--but not
in public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic
entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try in private, and when
he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether
it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or
walked with its wings. The chances are that he would give it tusks and
make it lay eggs.
Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for him--if
he'll take the risk. If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a system
of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every shade
of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in any
tongue that we could not spell accurately. That would be competent,
adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair
punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of
simplified spelling. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell
me unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with r-o-w,
b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful
wedlock and don't know their own origin.
Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of
inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. Spelling reform
has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is the whole tribe of
them, "row" and "read" and "lead"--a whole family who don't know who they
are. I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one.
If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of
comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of
a man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to
recall the lady hog and the future ham.
It's a rotten alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie to get after it, and
leave simplified spelling alone.
Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco
earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never
have had if spelling had been left all alone.
Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and made him more comfortable
than he would have been had he received only compliment after
compliment, and I wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all
right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.
SPELLING AND PICTURES
ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AT THE
WALDORF-ASTORIA, SEPTEMBER 18, 1906
I am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified
spelling. I have come here because they cannot all be reached except
through you. There are only two forces that can carry light to all the
corners of the globe--only two--the sun in the heavens and the Associated
Press down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean
it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around. You speak with
a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and
intellects, as you--except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without
your help. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified
forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole
spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties
are at an end.
Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the
world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and
angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out
of Associated Press despatches. And so I beg you, I beseech you--oh,
I implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this daily,
constantly, persistently, for three months--only three months--it is all
I ask. The infallible result? --victory, victory all down the line. For by
that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted to
the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged forms
will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. And we shall
be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and
diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no
man addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose
some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not doubt
it. We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places
with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change
and happy in it. We do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and
tushes after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while.
Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world? That is the idea. It is
my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit. We all
do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest
is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private
interests. In 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to
make a noise, I was indifferent to it; more--I even irreverently scoffed
at it. What I needed was an object-lesson, you see. It is the only way
to teach some people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was scrambling
along, earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a
word, compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present.
I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron
contract. One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to
write ten pages--on this revolting text: "Considerations concerning the
alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous
superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the
unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects. "
Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled
railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family
in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so
as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor
can ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got
graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, "Read that text,
Jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud. " He read
it: "Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal
extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the
Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its
plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects. "
I said, "You want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer
thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal? "
He said, "A word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you
going to do about it? "
I said, "Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What's an average
English word? "
He said, "Six letters. "
I said, "Nothing of the kind; that's French, and includes the spaces
between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half.
By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary
and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can
put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not
another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is
worth eighty-four dollars to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your
magazine page with long words as it does with short ones-four hours.
Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours.
I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family's
sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents,
because I can get the same money for 'city. ' I never write 'policeman,'
because I can get the same price for 'cop. ' And so on and so on. I never
write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can
humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;
I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene text, please; count
the words. "
He counted and said it was twenty-four. I asked him to count the
letters. He made it two hundred and three.
I said, "Now, I hope you see the whole size of your crime. With my
vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five
letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your
inhuman twenty-four I would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents.
Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three
hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same
labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. I do not wish to
work upon this scandalous job by the piece. I want to be hired by the
year. " He coldly refused. I said:
"Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you
ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness. "
Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I
was not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an
anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten
to the heart with holoaophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God
forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours.
From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member
of the heaven-born institution, the International Association for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Carnegie's
Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work. . . .
Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally,
sanely--yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the
essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely
to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words
of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome
forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a
letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she
never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There
isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces the fonetics to the last
gasp--it squeezes the surplusage out of every word--there's no spelling
that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And
as for the punctuation, there isn't any. It is all one sentence, eagerly
and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The
letter is absolutely genuine--I have the proofs of that in my possession.
I can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter
presently and comfort your eyes with it. I will read the letter:
"Miss dear freind I took some Close into the armerry and give them to
you to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to treble you
but i got to have one of them Back it was a black oll wolle Shevyott
With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and palsy
menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it
belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about it i thoght she was
willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to
Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has
got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For
her i gels you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i
torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful
about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off
seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to
take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And
see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for
it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True
freind
"i liked your appearance very Much"
Now you see what simplified spelling can do.
It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions
like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print
all your despatches in it.
Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:
I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of
the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think
I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little
while that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with
these old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about
it at all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as
I keep the Sabbath.
There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography,
and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its
present condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their
literature in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish,
and we keep the forms as they are while we have got one million people
coming in here from foreign countries every year and they have got
to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back
and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the
language, if they ever do learn. This is merely sentimental argument.
People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and
a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has
been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it
because of its ancient and hallowed associations.
Now, I don't see that there is any real argument about that. If that
argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the
flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so
long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness
for them on account of the associations. Why, it is like preserving a
cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it
by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity.
I think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our
family cancer, and I wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut
out and let the family cancer go.
Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young
person like yourselves. I am exhausted by the heat of the day. I must
take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry
it away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of
the righteous. There is nothing much left of me but my age and my
righteousness, but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you
always keep your youth.
BOOKS AND BURGLARS
ADDRESS TO THE REDDING (CONN. ) LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
OCTOBER 28, 1908
Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the
burglars who happened along and broke into my house--taking a lot of
things they didn't need, and for that matter which I didn't need--had
first made entry into this institution.
Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their
dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing
moral truths and getting a moral uplift. The whole course of their
lives would have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their
immoral way and were sent to jail.
For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress.
And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. Now, I
have known so many burglars--not exactly known, but so many of them have
come near me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed to allow
them credit for whatever good qualities they possess.
Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I just now think of, is
their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's
sleep.
Noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their
visitation is to murder sleep later on.
Now we are prepared for these visitors. All sorts of alarm devices have
been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has
been electrified. The burglar who steps within this danger zone will
set loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our
elaborate system of defences. As for the fate of the trespasser, do not
seek to know that. He will never be heard of more.
AUTHORS' CLUB
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS, LONDON,
JUNE, 1899
Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.
It does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much.
well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it. He is like
I used to be. There were times when I was careless--careless in my dress
when I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you
are going away without her superintendence. Once when my wife could not
go with me (she always went with me when she could--I always did meet
that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a long time ago, in
Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not go; but, in her
anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made preparation.
She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors at the White
House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, "If I should tell you
now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before you get to
Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and you
will find it in your dress-vest pocket when you are dressing at the
Arlington--when you are dressing to see the President. " I never thought
of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it
out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "Don't wear your arctics
in the White House. "
You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness,
complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments,
although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one side of Mr.
Rogers that has not been mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will
touch upon that. There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk
papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side
of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr.
Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a right to
feel that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it,
he rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful
Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from
scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as
well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine
years of age. She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has
existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.
That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his
character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand
daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is
supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. But
the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and
its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God.
I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been
allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I
don't look at him I can tell it now.
In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which
I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will
remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back;
my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my
copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books
have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support
you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights,
and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my
creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and
persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end
of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made;
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a
borrowed one at that.
You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is
always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are
only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without
exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S,
JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor. "
The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to
fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity. All
things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am among
strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of
thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well. I
built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from
the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from
under his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in
his case and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't
there to see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for
that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down
the paper Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly;
I rolled, I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers,
I carried them around at dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then
an object of interest to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all
the bites I ever received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year.
I enveloped the papers that were for the mail--we had a hundred
town subscribers and three hundred and fifty country ones; the town
subscribers paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages and
cord-wood--when they paid at all, which was merely sometimes, and then
we always stated the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we
forgot it they stopped the paper. Every man on the town list helped
edit the thing--that is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited;
dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time the
boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. We were just infested with
critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. We had one subscriber
who paid cash, and he was more trouble than all the rest. He bought
us once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. He used to modify our
politics every which way, and he made us change our religion four times
in five years. If we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to
stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction.
That man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long
primer, and sign them "Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some
other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come
in and say he had changed his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech,
because he hadn't any--and order it to be left out. We couldn't afford
"bogus" in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the
signature, credited the article to the rival paper in the next village,
and put it in. Well, we did have one or two kinds of "bogus. " Whenever
there was a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked off for
half a day, and then to make up for short matter we would "turn over
ads"--turn over the whole page and duplicate it. The other "bogus" was
deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody ever read; so we kept
a galley of it standing, and kept on slapping the same old batches of it
in, every now and then, till it got dangerous. Also, in the early days
of the telegraph we used to economize on the news. We picked out the
items that were pointless and barren of information and stood them on
a galley, and changed the dates and localities, and used them over and
over again till the public interest in them was worn to the bone. We
marked the ads, but we seldom paid any attention to the marks afterward;
so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad was equally eternal. I have seen
a "td" notice of a sheriff's sale still booming serenely along two years
after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole circumstance
become ancient history. Most of the yearly ads were patent-medicine
stereotypes, and we used to fence with them.
I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse
bills on the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we
always stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was
not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and
symbols that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi
Valley; and I can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the
summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a
hatful of handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do
a temperance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs not complex;
all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he
was satisfied. But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers,
and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will
"make even" and stop.
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr.
Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. So many members
surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: "Is this genuine
popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme? "
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a most difficult thing for
any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. I don't know
what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say
a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.
If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind
chairmen say of me. In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty
as if he was envious of me. I would like to have one man come out
flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it
were true. I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking,
that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by
saying complimentary things.
I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well
as any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented. And
there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know
all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you
things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented.
The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you
live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and
pleasant. To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy.
Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But,
oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair. I have
made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am.
Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is
nothing of the sort. I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy.
Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits
of mine, and then he will make a speech.
I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as
the two put together.
When that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another
story told. At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found
him. He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all
sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but
when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he
was a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence
with which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis.
I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to
the members of my family. They don't believe them, but I like to tell
them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can.
I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am
praised any more than I am entitled to be.
READING-ROOM OPENING
On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address
preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London.
I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the
legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with
intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the
community so desires.
If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand
in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of the
healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it
taxes itself for its mental food.
A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up
through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. What would we
do without newspapers?
Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster
was made known to the entire world. This reminds me of an episode
which occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford,
Connecticut.
The clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any. He
did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates around
for collection. I complained to the governor of his lack of financial
trust in me, and he replied: "I would trust you myself--if you had a
bell-punch. "
You have paid me many compliments, and I like to listen to compliments.
I indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of England
and America. He also alluded to my name, of which I am rather fond.
A little girl wrote me from New Zealand in a letter I received
yesterday, stating that her father said my proper name was not Mark
Twain but Samuel Clemens, but that she knew better, because Clemens was
the name of the man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not
Mark. She was sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark is in the Bible and
Twain is in the Bible.
I was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and
as I now know my name to be a scriptural one, I am not without hopes of
making it worthy.
LITERATURE
ADDRESS AT THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND BANQUET, LONDON, MAY 4, 1900
Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to the
toast "Literature. "
MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately with this toast without
assistance from me. Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced any
theories that needed refutation or correction I would have attended to
them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is
in the habit of making I would have dealt with them.
In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his statements. I could not
have made such statements if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate
is the only way I can approximate to the truth. You cannot have a theory
without principles. Principles is another name for prejudices. I have no
prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else.
I am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because
there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have
entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are
prejudices.
I propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. I am in favor
of everything everybody is in favor of. What you should do is to satisfy
the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a
President.
There could not be a broader platform than mine. I am in favor of
anything and everything--of temperance and intemperance, morality and
qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver.
I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I want to try the
great position of ruler of a country. I have been in turn reporter,
editor, publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. I have worked my way up, and
wish to continue to do so.
I read to-day in a magazine article that Christendom issued last year
fifty-five thousand new books. Consider what that means! Fifty-five
thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. We are
going to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later.
Therefore, double your subscriptions to the literary fund!
DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLUB, AT
SHERRY'S, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 20, 1900
Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast "The Disappearance of
Literature. " Doctor Gould presided, and in introducing
Mr. Clemens said that he (the speaker), when in Germany, had to
do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was
taking what the Germans thought undue liberties with their
language.
It wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in Germany. It
wasn't necessary at all. Instead of that he ought to have impressed upon
those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered them. Their language
had needed untangling for a good many years. Nobody else seemed to want
to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a
pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up
their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when
it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's
just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down
here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away
over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just
shovel in German. I maintain that there is no necessity for apologizing
for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation.
We have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature.
That's no new thing. That's what certain kinds of literature have been
doing for several years. The fact is, my friends, that the fashion in
literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts
or go out of business. Professor Winchester here, if I remember fairly
correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels
produced to-day would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott. That
may be his notion. Maybe he is right; but so far as I am concerned, I
don't care if they don't.
Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern
epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he's right. He talked as if he was
pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would
suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever
read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you
just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester
says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of
literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess
that's true. The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two
ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and
you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes
a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years.
But as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance
of literature, they didn't say anything about my books. Maybe they think
they've disappeared. If they do, that just shows their ignorance on the
general subject of literature. I am not as young as I was several years
ago, and maybe I'm not so fashionable, but I'd be willing to take
my chances with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of
literature to the Century Publishing Company. And I haven't got much of
a pull here, either. I often think that the highest compliment ever
paid to my poor efforts was paid by Darwin through President Eliot, of
Harvard College. At least, Eliot said it was a compliment, and I always
take the opinion of great men like college presidents on all such
subjects as that.
I went out to Cambridge one day a few years ago and called on President
Eliot. In the course of the conversation he said that he had just
returned from England, and that he was very much touched by what he
considered the high compliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he
went on to tell me something like this:
"Do you know that there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom,
where the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? One is a
plant he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those
insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for
the particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) "and the other some books that
lie on the night table at the head of his bed. They are your books, Mr.
Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep. "
My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it
the highest one that was ever paid to me. To be the means of soothing to
sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like Darwin's was
something that I had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I never
hope to be able to do it again.
THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900
Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily News, as
president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens as the principal
ornament of American literature.
I must say that I have already begun to regret that I left my gun at
home. I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with
just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will
certainly use a gun on that chairman. It is my privilege to compliment
him in return. You behold before you a very, very old man. A cursory
glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. His features seem to
reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts--they seem to bear the
traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for
the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-school of a life that
may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or
will riz--I mean to say, will rise. His private character is altogether
suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has not. If you
examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features,
because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor--mere
effects of a great spirit upon a weak body--mere accidents of a great
career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues,
and he practises them all--secretly--always secretly. You all know him
so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. Gentlemen,
Colonel Brown.
THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO MR. CARNEGIE AT THE DEDICATION
OF THE NEW YORK ENGINEERS' CLUB, DECEMBER 9, 1907
Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who,
quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day
when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small
change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes.
It seems to me that I was around here in the neighborhood of the Public
Library about fifty or sixty years ago. I don't deny the circumstance,
although I don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was
not to be printed until I am dead, unless I'm dead now. I had that $3 in
change, and I remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. I
have prospered since. Now I have plenty of money and a disposition to
squander it, but I can't. One of those trust companies is taking care of
it.
Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall be out after
nightfall this winter, I must say that I have come here with a mission,
and I would make my errand of value.
Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie to-night. I was
expecting them. They are very gratifying to me.
I have been a guest of honor myself, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is
experiencing now. It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments
and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of
us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of
our condemnation.
Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is fairly scintillating with
fictitious innocence. You would think, looking at him, that he had
never committed a crime in his life. But no--look at his pestiferious
simplified spelling. You can't any of you imagine what a crime that has
been. Torquemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old fellow shed some
blood in the Inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to
the entire race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was,
just the same. He's got us all so we can't spell anything.
The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end.
He meant well, but he attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the
disease. He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. There's not
a vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can
hitch anything to. Look at the "h's" distributed all around. There's
"gherkin. " What are you going to do with the "h" in that? What the
devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, I'd like to know. It's one thing I
admire the English for: they just don't mind anything about them at all.
But look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them.
A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving
us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of
this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken
thief. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about
fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't
spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs.
Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not
even the prisoner at the bar. I'd like to hear him try once--but not
in public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic
entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try in private, and when
he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether
it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or
walked with its wings. The chances are that he would give it tusks and
make it lay eggs.
Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for him--if
he'll take the risk. If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a system
of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every shade
of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in any
tongue that we could not spell accurately. That would be competent,
adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair
punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of
simplified spelling. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell
me unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with r-o-w,
b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful
wedlock and don't know their own origin.
Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of
inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. Spelling reform
has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is the whole tribe of
them, "row" and "read" and "lead"--a whole family who don't know who they
are. I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one.
If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of
comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of
a man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to
recall the lady hog and the future ham.
It's a rotten alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie to get after it, and
leave simplified spelling alone.
Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco
earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never
have had if spelling had been left all alone.
Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and made him more comfortable
than he would have been had he received only compliment after
compliment, and I wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all
right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.
SPELLING AND PICTURES
ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AT THE
WALDORF-ASTORIA, SEPTEMBER 18, 1906
I am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified
spelling. I have come here because they cannot all be reached except
through you. There are only two forces that can carry light to all the
corners of the globe--only two--the sun in the heavens and the Associated
Press down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean
it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around. You speak with
a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and
intellects, as you--except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without
your help. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified
forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole
spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties
are at an end.
Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the
world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and
angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out
of Associated Press despatches. And so I beg you, I beseech you--oh,
I implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this daily,
constantly, persistently, for three months--only three months--it is all
I ask. The infallible result? --victory, victory all down the line. For by
that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted to
the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged forms
will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. And we shall
be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and
diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no
man addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose
some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not doubt
it. We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places
with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change
and happy in it. We do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and
tushes after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while.
Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world? That is the idea. It is
my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit. We all
do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest
is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private
interests. In 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to
make a noise, I was indifferent to it; more--I even irreverently scoffed
at it. What I needed was an object-lesson, you see. It is the only way
to teach some people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was scrambling
along, earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a
word, compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present.
I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron
contract. One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to
write ten pages--on this revolting text: "Considerations concerning the
alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous
superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the
unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects. "
Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled
railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family
in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so
as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor
can ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got
graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, "Read that text,
Jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud. " He read
it: "Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal
extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the
Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its
plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects. "
I said, "You want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer
thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal? "
He said, "A word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you
going to do about it? "
I said, "Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What's an average
English word? "
He said, "Six letters. "
I said, "Nothing of the kind; that's French, and includes the spaces
between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half.
By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary
and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can
put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not
another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is
worth eighty-four dollars to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your
magazine page with long words as it does with short ones-four hours.
Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours.
I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family's
sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents,
because I can get the same money for 'city. ' I never write 'policeman,'
because I can get the same price for 'cop. ' And so on and so on. I never
write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can
humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;
I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene text, please; count
the words. "
He counted and said it was twenty-four. I asked him to count the
letters. He made it two hundred and three.
I said, "Now, I hope you see the whole size of your crime. With my
vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five
letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your
inhuman twenty-four I would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents.
Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three
hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same
labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. I do not wish to
work upon this scandalous job by the piece. I want to be hired by the
year. " He coldly refused. I said:
"Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you
ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness. "
Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I
was not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an
anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten
to the heart with holoaophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God
forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours.
From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member
of the heaven-born institution, the International Association for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Carnegie's
Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work. . . .
Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally,
sanely--yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the
essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely
to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words
of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome
forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a
letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she
never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There
isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces the fonetics to the last
gasp--it squeezes the surplusage out of every word--there's no spelling
that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And
as for the punctuation, there isn't any. It is all one sentence, eagerly
and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The
letter is absolutely genuine--I have the proofs of that in my possession.
I can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter
presently and comfort your eyes with it. I will read the letter:
"Miss dear freind I took some Close into the armerry and give them to
you to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to treble you
but i got to have one of them Back it was a black oll wolle Shevyott
With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and palsy
menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it
belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about it i thoght she was
willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to
Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has
got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For
her i gels you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i
torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful
about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off
seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to
take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And
see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for
it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True
freind
"i liked your appearance very Much"
Now you see what simplified spelling can do.
It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions
like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print
all your despatches in it.
Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:
I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of
the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think
I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little
while that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with
these old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about
it at all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as
I keep the Sabbath.
There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography,
and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its
present condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their
literature in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish,
and we keep the forms as they are while we have got one million people
coming in here from foreign countries every year and they have got
to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back
and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the
language, if they ever do learn. This is merely sentimental argument.
People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and
a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has
been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it
because of its ancient and hallowed associations.
Now, I don't see that there is any real argument about that. If that
argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the
flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so
long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness
for them on account of the associations. Why, it is like preserving a
cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it
by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity.
I think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our
family cancer, and I wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut
out and let the family cancer go.
Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young
person like yourselves. I am exhausted by the heat of the day. I must
take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry
it away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of
the righteous. There is nothing much left of me but my age and my
righteousness, but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you
always keep your youth.
BOOKS AND BURGLARS
ADDRESS TO THE REDDING (CONN. ) LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
OCTOBER 28, 1908
Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the
burglars who happened along and broke into my house--taking a lot of
things they didn't need, and for that matter which I didn't need--had
first made entry into this institution.
Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their
dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing
moral truths and getting a moral uplift. The whole course of their
lives would have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their
immoral way and were sent to jail.
For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress.
And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. Now, I
have known so many burglars--not exactly known, but so many of them have
come near me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed to allow
them credit for whatever good qualities they possess.
Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I just now think of, is
their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's
sleep.
Noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their
visitation is to murder sleep later on.
Now we are prepared for these visitors. All sorts of alarm devices have
been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has
been electrified. The burglar who steps within this danger zone will
set loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our
elaborate system of defences. As for the fate of the trespasser, do not
seek to know that. He will never be heard of more.
AUTHORS' CLUB
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS, LONDON,
JUNE, 1899
Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant.
It does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much.
