Sketches New and Old, Part 7. Read online

  RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR--[Written about 1870.]

  A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of NewYork, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on anindependent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantageover these gentlemen, and that was--good character. It was easy to seeby the newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a goodname, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter yearsthey had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at thevery moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret,there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort "riling" the deeps of myhappiness, and that was--the having to hear my name bandied about infamiliar connection with those of such people. I grew more and moredisturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer camequick and sharp. She said:

  You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed of--not one. Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with them.

  It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night.But, after all, I could not recede.

  I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight. As I was lookinglistlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph,and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.

  PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?

  I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge!I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn'tknow a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I wascrazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything atall. The next morning the same paper had this--nothing more:

  SIGNIFICANT.--Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin China perjury.

  [Mem.--During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me inany other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."]

  Next came the Gazette, with this:

  WANTED TO KNOW.--Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his "trunk" (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and feathered him, and rode him on a rail; and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp. Will he do this?

  Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never wasin Montana in my life.

  [After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as, "Twain, the MontanaThief."]

  I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift adesired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it.One day this met my eye:

  THE LIE NAILED.--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in fact. It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander. When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no! let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish the perpetrators of the deed).

  The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bedwith despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the"outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breakingfurniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came,and taking off such property as they could carry when they went.And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slanderedMr. Blank's grandfather. More: I had never even heard of him ormentioned him up to that day and date.

  [I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from alwaysreferred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."]

  The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:

  A SWEET CANDIDATE.--Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass-meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two places--sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The voice of the people demands in thunder tones, "WHO WAS THAT MAN?"

  It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it wasreally my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Threelong years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine orliquor or any kind.

  [It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I sawmyself, confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issueof that journal without a pang--notwithstanding I knew that withmonotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]

  By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of mymail matter. This form was common:

  How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which was beging. POL. PRY.

  And this:

  There is things which you Have done which is unbeknowens to anybody but me. You better trot out a few dots, to yours truly, or you'll hear through the papers from HANDY ANDY.

  This is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader wassurfeited, if desirable.

  Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesalebribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case ofblackmailing to me.

  [In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain the FilthyCorruptionist" and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."]

  By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to allthe dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders ofmy party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent anylonger. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the followingappeared in one of the papers the very next day:

  BEHOLD THE MAN!--The independent candidate still maintains silence. Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been indorsed a
nd reindorsed by his own eloquent silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted. Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him--ponder him well--and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his mouth in denial of any one of them!

  There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deephumiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless chargesand mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for thevery next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity,and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all itsinmates, because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw meinto a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to gethis property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened.This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accusedof employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the foodfor the foundling' hospital when I warden. I was wavering--wavering.And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecutionthat party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children,of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rushonto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs andcall me PA!

  I gave it up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equalto the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the state of New York,and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness ofspirit signed it, "Truly yours, once a decent man, but now

  "MARK TWAIN, LP., M.T., B.S., D.T., F.C., and L.E."