Autobiography of Mark Twain Read online

  The flea never associates with me—has never shown even a passing desire for my company, and so I have none but the friendliest feeling toward him. The mosquito troubles me but little, and I feel nothing but a mild dislike for him. Of all the animals that inhabit the earth, the air, and the waters, I hate only one—and that is the house-fly. But I do hate him. I hate him with a hatred that is not measurable with words. I always spare the snake and the spider, and the others, and would not intentionally give them pain, but I would go out of my way, and put aside my dearest occupation, to kill a fly, even if I knew it was the very last one. I can even bear to see a fly suffer, for an entire minute—even two minutes, if it is one that I have spent an hour hunting around the place with a wet towel—but that is the limit. I would like to see him suffer a year, and would do it, and gladly, if I could restrict the suffering to himself; but after it reaches a certain point, and the bulk of it begins to fall to my share, I have to call a halt and put him out of his misery, for I am like the rest of my race—I am merciful to a fellow-creature upon one condition only: that its pain shall not confer pain upon me.

  I have watched the human race with close attention for five and twenty years now, and I know beyond shadow of doubt that we can stand the pain of another creature straight along, without discomfort, until its pain gives us pain. Then we become immediately and creditably merciful. I suppose it is a pity that we have no higher motive for sparing pain to a fellow creature, still it is the cold truth—we have no higher one. We have no vestige of pity, not a single shred of it, for any creature’s misery until it reaches the point where the contemplation of it inflicts misery upon ourselves. This remark describes every human being that has ever lived.

  After improving my marksmanship with considerable practice with a towel, this morning, I slapped a couple of flies into the wash-bowl. With deep satisfaction I watched them spin around and around in the water. Twice they made land and started to climb up the bowl, but I shoved them back with fresh satisfaction and plunged them under with my finger, with more satisfaction. I went on gloating over their efforts to get out of their trouble. Twice more they made land, and in both instances I restored them to their activities in the water. But at last their struggles relaxed and the forlorn things began to exhibit pitiful signs of exhaustion and despair. This pathetic spectacle gave me pain, and I recognized that I had reached my limit. I cared not a rap for their sufferings so long as they furnished enjoyment for me, but when they began to inflict pain upon me, that was another matter. The conditions had become personal. I was human, and by the law of my make it was not possible for me to allow myself to suffer when I could prevent it. I had to put the flies out of their troubles, I couldn’t help it. I turned a soap-dish over them, and when I looked under it half an hour later I perceived that the spiritual part of them had ascended to the happy hunting grounds of their fathers.

  Wednesday, September 5, 1906

  Items from the Children’s Record, showing their different characteristics.

  It is years since I have examined the Children’s Record. I have turned over a few of its pages this morning. This book is a record in which Mrs. Clemens and I registered some of the sayings and doings of the children, in the long ago, when they were little chaps. Of course we wrote these things down at the time because they were of momentary interest—things of the passing hour, and of no permanent value—but at this distant day I find that they still possess an interest for me and also a value, because it turns out that they were registrations of character. The qualities then revealed by fitful glimpses, in childish acts and speeches, remained as a permanency in the children’s characters in the drift of the years, and were always afterward clearly and definitely recognizable.

  There is a masterful streak in Jean that now and then moves her to set my authority aside for a moment and end a losing argument in that prompt and effective fashion. And here in this old book I find evidence that she was just like that before she was quite four years old.

  From the Children’s Record.

  Quarry Farm,

  July 7, 1884.

  Yesterday evening our cows (after being inspected and worshiped by Jean from the shed roof for an hour,) wandered off down into the pasture, and left her bereft. I thought I was going to get back home, now, but that was an error. Jean knew of some more cows, in a field somewhere, and took my hand and led me thitherward. When we turned the corner and took the right-hand road, I saw that we should presently be out of range of call and sight; so I began to argue against continuing the expedition, and Jean began to argue in favor of it—she using English for light skirmishing, and German for “business.” I kept up my end with vigor, and demolished her arguments in detail, one after the other, till I judged I had her about cornered. She hesitated a moment, then answered up sharply:

  “Wir werden nichts mehr darüber sprechen!” (We won’t talk any more about it!)

  It nearly took my breath away; though I thought I might possibly have misunderstood. I said:

  “Why, you little rascal! Was hast du gesagt?”

  But she said the same words over again, and in the same decided way. I suppose I ought to have been outraged; but I wasn’t, I was charmed. And I suppose I ought to have spanked her; but I didn’t, I fraternized with the enemy, and we went on and spent half an hour with the cows.

  That incident is followed in the Record by the following paragraph, which is another instance of a juvenile characteristic maintaining itself into mature age. Susy was persistently and conscientiously truthful throughout her life, with the exception of one interruption covering several months, and perhaps a year. This was while she was still a little child. Suddenly—not gradually—she began to lie; not furtively, but frankly, openly, and on a scale quite disproportioned to her size. Her mother was so stunned, so nearly paralysed for a day or two, that she did not know what to do with the emergency. Reasonings, persuasions, beseechings, all went for nothing; they produced no effect; the lying went tranquilly on. Other remedies were tried, but they failed. There is a tradition that success was finally accomplished by whipping. I think the Record says so, but if it does it is because the Record is incomplete. Whipping was indeed tried, and was faithfully kept up during two or three weeks, but the results were merely temporary; the reforms achieved were discouragingly brief.

  Fortunately for Susy, an incident presently occurred which put a complete stop to all the mother’s efforts in the direction of reform. This incident was the chance discovery in Darwin of a passage which said that when a child exhibits a sudden and unaccountable disposition to forsake the truth and restrict itself to lying, the explanation must be sought away back in the past; that an ancestor of the child had had the same disease, at the same tender age; that it was irremovable by persuasion or punishment, and that it had ceased as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had come, when it had run its appointed course. I think Mr. Darwin said that nothing was necessary but to leave the matter alone and let the malady have its way and perish by the statute of limitations.

  We had confidence in Darwin, and after that day Susy was relieved of our reformatory persecutions. She went on lying without let or hindrance during several months, or a year; then the lying suddenly ceased, and she became as conscientiously and exactingly truthful as she had been before the attack, and she remained so to the end of her life.

  The paragraph in the Record to which I have been leading up is in my handwriting, and is of a date so long posterior to the time of the lying-malady that she had evidently forgotten that truth-speaking had ever had any difficulties for her.

  Mama was speaking of a servant who had been pretty unveracious, but was now “trying to tell the truth.” Susy was a good deal surprised, and said she shouldn’t think anybody would have to try to tell the truth.

  In the Record the children’s acts and speeches quite definitely define their characters. Susy’s indicated the presence of mentality—thought—and they were generally marked by gravity. She was timid, on her p
hysical side, but had an abundance of moral courage. Clara was sturdy, independent, orderly, practical, persistent, plucky—just a little animal, and very satisfactory. Charles Dudley Warner said Susy was made of mind, and Clara of matter.

  When Motley, the kitten, died, some one said that the thoughts of the two children need not be inquired into, they could be divined: that Susy was wondering if this was the end of Motley, and had his life been worth while; whereas Clara was merely interested in seeing to it that there should be a creditable funeral.

  In those days Susy was a dreamer, a thinker, a poet and philosopher, and Clara——well, Clara wasn’t. In after years a passion for music developed the latent spirituality and intellectuality in Clara, and her practicality took second and, in fact, even third place, with the result that nowadays she loses purses and fans, and neglects things, and forgets orders, with a poet’s facility. Jean was from the beginning orderly, steady, diligent, persistent; and remains so. She picked up languages easily, and kept them.

  After ten years of unremitting labor under the best masters, domestic and foreign, Clara will make her public début as a singer on the concert stage seventeen days hence.

  Susy aged eleven, Jean three. Susy said the other day when she saw Jean bringing a cat to me of her own motion, “Jean has found out already that mamma loves morals and papa loves cats.”

  It is another of Susy’s remorselessly sound verdicts.

  As a child, Jean neglected my books. When she was nine years old Will Gillette invited her and the rest of us to a dinner at the Murray Hill Hotel in New York, in order that we might get acquainted with Mrs. Leslie and her daughters. Elsie Leslie was nine years old, and was a great celebrity on the stage. Jean was astonished and awed to see that little slip of a thing sit up at table and take part in the conversation of the grown people, capably and with ease and tranquillity. Poor Jean was obliged to keep still, for the subjects discussed never happened to hit her level; but at last the talk fell within her limit and she had her chance to contribute to it. “Tom Sawyer” was mentioned. Jean spoke gratefully up and said,

  “I know who wrote that book—Harriet Beecher Stowe!”

  One evening Susy had prayed, Clara was curled up for sleep; she was reminded that it was her turn to pray now. She said “Oh one’s enough,” and dropped off to slumber.

  Clara five years old. We were in Germany. The nurse, Rosa, was not allowed to speak to the children otherwise than in German. Clara grew very tired of it; by and by the little creature’s patience was exhausted, and she said “Aunt Clara, I wish God had made Rosa in English.”

  November 30, 1878. Clara four years old, Susy six. This morning when Clara discovered that this is my birthday, she was greatly troubled because she had provided no gift for me, and repeated her sorrow several times. Finally she went musing to the nursery and presently returned with her newest and dearest treasure, a large toy horse, and said “You shall have this horse for your birthday, papa.”

  I accepted it with many thanks. After an hour she was racing up and down the room with the horse, when Susy said,

  “Why Clara, you gave that horse to papa, and now you’ve tooken it again.”

  Clara. “I never give it to him for always; I give it to him for his birthday.”

  In Geneva, in September, I lay abed late one morning, and as Clara was passing through the room I took her on my bed a moment. Then the child went to Clara Spaulding and said,

  “Aunt Clara, papa is a good deal of trouble to me.”

  “Is he? Why?”

  “Well, he wants me to get in bed with him, and I can’t do that with jelmuls (gentlemen)—I don’t like jelmuls anyway.”

  “What, you don’t like gentlemen! Don’t you like Uncle Theodore Crane?”

  “Oh yes, but he’s not a jelmul, he’s a friend.”

  Friday, September 7, 1906

  The statement made at the banquet of the Ends of the Earth Club, “We are of the Anglo-Saxon race,” etc.—Our public and private mottoes and morals—Mr. Clemens’s tribute to British Premier Campbell-Bannerman on his seventieth birthday—Meeting Labouchere—Anecdote of the lost deed which was to have been presented to Prince of Wales.

  For good or for evil, we continue to educate Europe. We have held the post of instructor for more than a century and a quarter now. We were not elected to it, we merely took it. We are of the Anglo-Saxon race. At the banquet, last winter, of that organization which calls itself the Ends of the Earth Club, the chairman, a retired regular army officer of high grade, proclaimed in a loud voice, and with fervency,

  “We are of the Anglo-Saxon race, and when the Anglo-Saxon wants a thing he just takes it.”

  That utterance was applauded to the echo. There were perhaps seventy-five civilians present and twenty-five military and naval men. It took those people nearly two minutes to work off their stormy admiration of that great sentiment; and meanwhile the inspired prophet who had discharged it—from his liver, or his intestines, or his esophagus, or wherever he had bred it—stood there glowing and beaming and smiling, and issuing rays of happiness from every pore—rays that were so intense that they were visible, and made him look like the old-time picture in the almanac of the man who stands discharging signs of the zodiac in every direction, and so absorbed in happiness, so steeped in happiness, that he smiles and smiles, and has plainly forgotten that he is painfully and dangerously ruptured and exposed amidships, and needs sewing up right away.

  The soldier man’s great utterance, interpreted by the expression which he put into it, meant, in plain English—

  “The English and the Americans are thieves, highwaymen, pirates, and we are proud to be of the combination.”

  Out of all the English and Americans present, there was not one with the grace to get up and say he was ashamed of being an Anglo-Saxon, and also ashamed of being a member of the human race, since the race must abide under the presence upon it of the Anglo-Saxon taint. I could not perform this office. I could not afford to lose my temper and make a self-righteous exhibition of myself and my superior morals that I might teach this infant class in decency the rudiments of that cult, for they would not be able to grasp it; they would not be able to understand it.

  It was an amazing thing to see—that boyishly frank and honest and delighted outburst of enthusiasm over the soldier prophet’s mephitic remark. It looked suspiciously like a revelation—a secret feeling of the national heart surprised into expression and exposure by untoward accident; for it was a representative assemblage. All the chief mechanisms that constitute the machine which drives and vitalizes the national civilization were present—lawyers, bankers, merchants, manufacturers, journalists, politicians, soldiers, sailors—they were all there. Apparently it was the United States in banquet assembled, and qualified to speak with authority for the nation and reveal its private morals to the public view.

  The initial welcome of that strange sentiment was not an unwary betrayal, to be repented of upon reflection; and this was shown by the fact that whenever, during the rest of the evening, a speaker found that he was becoming uninteresting and wearisome, he only needed to inject that great Anglo-Saxon moral into the midst of his platitudes to start up that glad storm again. After all, it was only the human race on exhibition. It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of morals in stock—the private and real, and the public and artificial.

  Our public motto is “In God We Trust,” and when we see those gracious words on the trade-dollar (worth sixty cents) they always seem to tremble and whimper with pious emotion. That is our public motto. It transpires that our private one is “When the Anglo-Saxon wants a thing he just takes it.” Our public morals are touchingly set forth in that stately and yet gentle and kindly motto which indicates that we are a nation of gracious and affectionate multitudinous brothers compacted into one—“e pluribus unum.” Our private morals find the light in the sacred phrase “Come, step lively!”

  We imported our imperialism from
monarchical Europe; also our curious notions of patriotism—that is, if we have any principle of patriotism which any person can definitely and intelligibly define. It is but fair then, no doubt, that we should instruct Europe, in return for these and the other kinds of instruction which we have received from that source.

  Something more than a century ago we gave Europe the first notions of liberty it had ever had, and thereby largely and happily helped to bring on the French Revolution and claim a share in its beneficent results. We have taught Europe many lessons since. But for us, Europe might never have known the interviewer; but for us certain of the European states might never have experienced the blessing of extravagant imposts; but for us the European Food Trust might never have acquired the art of poisoning the world for cash; but for us her Insurance Trusts might never have found out the best way to work the widow and orphan for profit; but for us the long delayed resumption of Yellow Journalism in Europe might have been postponed for generations to come. Steadily, continuously, persistently, we are Americanizing Europe, and all in good time we shall get the job perfected. At last, after long waiting, London journalism has adopted our fashion of gathering sentiments from everywhere whenever anything happens that a sentiment can be coined out of. Yesterday arrived this cablegram: