The $30,000 Bequest, Mark Twain [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

peacefully, as only they sleep

who have earned their rest. He was in all respects a remarkable man.

He held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history;

and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew.

If he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery

of America.

 

The above r’esum’e of his biography I believe to be substantially

correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice

in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety.

One fault I find in all the notices of his death I have quoted,

and this ought to be correct. In them he uniformly and impartially

died at the age of 95. This could not have been. He might have

done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued

it indefinitely. Allowing that when he first died, he died at

the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864.

But his age did not keep pace with his recollections. When he died

the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the Pilgrims,

which took place in 1620. He must have been about twenty years

old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert

that the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood

of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this

life finally.

 

Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his

sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his

biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation.

 

P.S.—I see by the papers that this imfamous old fraud has just

died again, in Arkansas. This makes six times that he is known

to have died, and always in a new place. The death of Washington’s

body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it’s charm is gone;

the people are tired of it; let it cease. This well-meaning

but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the

expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands

of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that

a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them.

Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer

the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time,

publish to the world that General Washington’s favorite colored

body-servant has died again.

***

WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE “TWO-YEAR-OLDS”

 

All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion

nowadays of saying “smart” things on most occasions that offer,

and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything

at all. Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings,

the rising generation of children are little better than idiots.

And the parents must surely be but little better than the children,

for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile

imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals.

I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of

personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so

many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said

anything smart when I was a child. I tried it once or twice, but it

was not popular. The family were not expecting brilliant remarks

from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest.

But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might

have happened to me if I had dared to utter some of the smart things

of this generation’s “four-year-olds” where my father could hear me.

To have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end

would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning.

He was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity.

If I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said them in

his hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed. He would,

provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not,

for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first

and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has

been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he

hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life.

If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right;

but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I

had done.

 

I made one of those remarks ordinarily called “smart things”

before that, but it was not a pun. Still, it came near causing a

serious rupture between my father and myself. My father and mother,

my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present,

and the conversation turned on a name for me. I was lying there

trying some India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring

to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on

people’s fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would

enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else.

Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on

your nurse’s finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying

to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience

and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut?

To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. And they did,

to some children. But I digress. I was lying there trying the

India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the clock and noticing

that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old,

and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so

unsparingly lavished upon me. My father said:

 

“Abraham is a good name. My grandfather was named Abraham.”

 

My mother said:

 

“Abraham is a good name. Very well. Let us have Abraham for one

of his names.”

 

I said:

 

“Abraham suits the subscriber.”

 

My father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said:

 

“What a little darling it is!”

 

My father said:

 

“Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name.”

 

My mother assented, and said:

 

“No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names.”

 

I said:

 

“All right. Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly.

Pass me that rattle, if you please. I can’t chew India-rubber rings

all day.”

 

Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication.

I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost.

So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children

when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon

by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt

had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had

gone too far. I took a vicious bite out of an India-rubber ring,

and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten’s head, but said nothing.

Presently my father said:

 

“Samuel is a very excellent name.”

 

I saw that trouble was coming. Nothing could prevent it. I laid

down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle’s

silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier,

the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine,

and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter

and break when I needed wholesome entertainment. Then I put on my

little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one

hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor.

I said to myself, Now, if the worse comes to worst, I am ready.

Then I said aloud, in a firm voice:

 

“Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel.”

 

“My son!”

 

“Father, I mean it. I cannot.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name.”

 

“My son, this is unreasonable. Many great and good men have been

named Samuel.”

 

“Sir, I have yet to hear of the first instance.”

 

“What! There was Samuel the prophet. Was not he great and good?”

 

“Not so very.”

 

“My son! With His own voice the Lord called him.”

 

“Yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!”

 

And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me.

He overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was

over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other

useful information; and by means of this compromise my father’s

wrath was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might

have become a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable.

But just judging by this episode, what would my father have done

to me if I had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat,

sickly things these “two-years-olds” say in print nowadays?

In my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family.

***

AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE

 

I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston ADVERTISER:

 

AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN

 

Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been

descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all.

We have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with

terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter’s way of telling a story,

and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned

his INNOCENTS ABROAD to the book-agent with the remark that “the

man who could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot.”

But Mark Twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string

of trophies. The SATURDAY REVIEW, in its number of October 8th,

reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in England,

and reviews it seriously. We can imagine the delight of the humorist

in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing

in itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article

in full in his next monthly Memoranda.

 

(Publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority

for reproducing the SATURDAY REVIEW’S article in full in these pages.

I dearly wanted to do it, for I cannot write anything half so

delicious myself. If I had a cast-iron dog that could read this

English criticism and preserve his austerity, I would drive him

off the door-step.)

 

(From the London “Saturday Review.”)

 

REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS

 

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. A Book of Travels. By Mark Twain.

London: Hotten, publisher. 1870.

 

Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we

finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.

Macaulay died too soon—for none but he could mete out complete

and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence,

the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance

of this author.

 

To say that the INNOCENTS ABROAD is a curious book, would be to

use the faintest language—would be to speak of the Matterhorn

as a neat elevation or of Niagara as being “nice” or “pretty.”

“Curious” is too tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity

of this work. There is no word that is large enough or long enough.

Let us, therefore, photograph a passing glimpse of book and author,

and trust the rest to