Roughing It, Mark Twain [dark books to read .TXT] 📗

yours, and you must declare yourself their author, that you published them knowing them to be false, and that your motives were malicious.”

“Hold, Mr. Winters. Your language is insulting and your demand an enormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or coerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch, at your request.”

“Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I am here for a very different purpose.”

“Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strong excitement. If insult is repeated I shall either leave the room or call in Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me outside the door.”

“No, you won’t, sir. You may just as well understand it at once as not. Here you are my man, and I’ll tell you why! Months ago you put your property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing it on prosecution for libel.”

“It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into personal property, such as I could trust safely to others, and chiefly to escape ruin through possible libel suits.”

“Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the law, may God help your soul if you don’t make precisely such a retraction as I have demanded. I’ve got you now, and by ⸻ before you can get out of this room you’ve got to both write and sign precisely the retraction I have demanded, and before you go, anyhow⁠—you ⸻ ⸻ low-lived ⸻ lying ⸻ ⸻, I’ll teach you what personal responsibility is outside of the law; and, by ⸻, Sheriff Cummings and all the friends you’ve got in the world besides, can’t save you, you ⸻, etc.! No, sir. I’m alone now, and I’m prepared to be shot down just here and now rather than be villified by you as I have been, and suffer you to escape me after publishing those charges, not only here where I am known and universally respected, but where I am not personally known and may be injured.”

I confess this speech, with its terrible and but too plainly implied threat of killing me if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrified me, especially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest possible pitch of passion, and instinct told me that any reply other than one of seeming concession to his demands would only be fuel to a raging fire, so I replied:

“Well, if I’ve got to sign⁠—,” and then I paused some time. Resuming, I said, “But, Mr. Winters, you are greatly excited. Besides, I see you are laboring under a total misapprehension. It is your duty not to inflame but to calm yourself. I am prepared to show you, if you will only point out the article that you allude to, that you regard as ‘charges’ what no calm and logical mind has any right to regard as such. Show me the charges, and I will try, at all events; and if it becomes plain that no charges have been preferred, then plainly there can be nothing to retract, and no one could rightly urge you to demand a retraction. You should beware of making so serious a mistake, for however honest a man may be, everyone is liable to misapprehend. Besides you assume that I am the author of some certain article which you have not pointed out. It is hasty to do so.”

He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a Tribune article, headed “What’s the Matter with Yellow Jacket?” saying “That’s what I refer to.”

To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper and looked it over for awhile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped, cooling. I then resumed saying, “As I supposed. I do not admit having written that article, nor have you any right to assume so important a point, and then base important action upon your assumption. You might deeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the People, I notified the world that no information as to the authorship of any article would be given without the consent of the writer. I therefore cannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you exact it.”

“If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?”

“I must decline to say.”

“Then, by ⸻, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly.”

“Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I notice is, that you regard them as ‘charges’ at all, when their context, both at their beginning and end, show they are not. These words introduce them: ‘Such an investigation [just before indicated], we think might result in showing some of the following points.’ Then follow eleven specifications, and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation ‘might exonerate those who are generally believed guilty.’ You see, therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this you seem to have overlooked.”

While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider candidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it that they were charges, and “By ⸻,” he would make me take them back as charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I then appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor, calling his attention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted.

He replied, “if they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations,” whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely such as he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who did write the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist in my face with more cursings and epithets.

When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me