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

of the little ones take care.

 

The oldest he was years not six,

 

And the youngest only eleven months old,

 

But often she had left them there alone,

 

As, by the neighbors, I have been told.

 

How can she bear to see the place.

 

Where she so oft has left them there,

 

Without a single one to look to them,

 

Or of the little ones to take good care.

 

Oh, can she look upon the spot,

 

Whereunder their little burnt bones lay,

 

But what she thinks she hears them say,

 

”Twas God had pity, and took us on high.’

 

And there may she kneel down and pray,

 

And ask God her to forgive;

 

And she may lead a different life

 

While she on earth remains to live.

 

Her husband and her children too,

 

God has took from pain and woe.

 

May she reform and mend her ways,

 

That she may also to them go.

 

And when it is God’s holy will,

 

O, may she be prepared

 

To meet her God and friends in peace,

 

And leave this world of care.

- - -

1. Written in 1870.

***

THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED

 

The man in the ticket-office said:

 

“Have an accident insurance ticket, also?”

 

“No,” I said, after studying the matter over a little. “No, I

believe not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today.

However, tomorrow I don’t travel. Give me one for tomorrow.”

 

The man looked puzzled. He said:

 

“But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel

by rail—”

 

“If I am going to travel by rail I sha’n’t need it. Lying at home

in bed is the thing I am afraid of.”

 

I had been looking into this matter. Last year I traveled twenty

thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I traveled

over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail;

and the year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of ten

thousand miles, exclusively by rail. I suppose if I put in all

the little odd journeys here and there, I may say I have traveled

sixty thousand miles during the three years I have mentioned.

AND NEVER AN ACCIDENT.

 

For a good while I said to myself every morning: “Now I

have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much

increased that I shall catch it this time. I will be shrewd,

and buy an accident ticket.” And to a dead moral certainty I

drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started

or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort of daily bother,

and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month.

I said to myself, “A man CAN’T buy thirty blanks in one bundle.”

 

But I was mistaken. There was never a prize in the the lot.

I could read of railway accidents every day—the newspaper

atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way.

I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business,

and had nothing to show for it. My suspicions were aroused, and I

began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery.

I found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual

that had ever had an accident or made a cent. I stopped buying

accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was astounding.

THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME.

 

I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all

the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters,

less than THREE HUNDRED people had really lost their lives by those

disasters in the preceding twelve months. The Erie road was set

down as the most murderous in the list. It had killed forty-six—

or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the

number was double that of any other road. But the fact straightway

suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did

more business than any other line in the country; so the double

number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise.

 

By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester

the Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day—16 altogether;

and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million

in six months—the population of New York City. Well, the Erie kills

from 13 to 23 persons of ITS million in six months; and in the same

time 13,000 of New York’s million die in their beds! My flesh crept,

my hair stood on end. “This is appalling!” I said. “The danger

isn’t in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds.

I will never sleep in a bed again.”

 

I had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of

the Erie road. It was plain that the entire road must transport

at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day. There are

many short roads running out of Boston that do fully half as much;

a great many such roads. There are many roads scattered about the

Union that do a prodigious passenger business. Therefore it was fair

to presume that an average of 2,500 passengers a day for each road

in the country would be almost correct. There are 846 railway

lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are 2,115,000. So the

railways of America move more than two millions of people every day;

six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting

the Sundays. They do that, too—there is no question about it;

though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction

of my arithmetic; for I have hunted the census through and through,

and I find that there are not that many people in the United States,

by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least.

They must use some of the same people over again, likely.

 

San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are 60

deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter—if they

have luck. That is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight

times as many in New York—say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health

of the two places is the same. So we will let it stand as a fair

presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that

consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die

every year. That amounts to one-fortieth of our total population.

One million of us, then, die annually. Out of this million ten

or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned,

or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way,

such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations,

getting buried in coal-mines, falling off housetops, breaking

through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines,

or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46;

the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each;

and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that

appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds!

 

You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds.

The railroads are good enough for me.

 

And my advice to all people is, Don’t stay at home any more than

you can help; but when you have GOT to stay at home a while,

buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights.

You cannot be too cautious.

 

[One can see now why I answered that ticket-agent in the manner

recorded at the top of this sketch.]

 

The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble

more than is fair about railroad management in the United States.

When we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen

thousand railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life

and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is,

NOT that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth,

but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred!

***

PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III

 

I never can look at those periodical portraits in THE GALAXY magazine

without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist.

I have seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time—

acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of Europe—

but never any that moved me as these portraits do.

 

There is a portrait of Monsignore Capel in the November number,

now COULD anything be sweeter than that? And there was Bismarck’s,

in the October number; who can look at that without being purer

and stronger and nobler for it? And Thurlow and Weed’s picture

in the September number; I would not have died without seeing that,

no, not for anything this world can give. But look back still

further and recall my own likeness as printed in the August number;

if I had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared,

I would have got up and visited the artist.

 

I sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that I

can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning.

I know them all as thoroughly as if I had made them myself; I know

every line and mark about them. Sometimes when company are present

I shuffle the portraits all up together, and then pick them out

one by one and call their names, without referring to the printing

on the bottom. I seldom make a mistake—never, when I am calm.

 

I have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till

my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor.

But first one thing and then another interferes, and so the thing

is delayed. Once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind

of light they needed in the attic. The old simpleton! it is as dark

as a tomb up there. But she does not know anything about art,

and so she has no reverence for it. When I showed her my “Map of

the Fortifications of Paris,” she said it was rubbish.

 

Well, from nursing those portraits so long, I have come at last

to have a perfect infatuation for art. I have a teacher now,

and my enthusiasm continually and tumultuously grows, as I learn

to use with more and more facility the pencil, brush, and graver.

I am studying under De Mellville, the house and portrait painter.

[His name was Smith when he lived in the West.] He does any kind

of artist work a body wants, having a genius that is universal,

like Michael Angelo. Resembles that great artist, in fact.

The back of his head is like this, and he wears his hat-brim tilted

down on his nose to expose it.

 

I have been studying under De Mellville several months now.

The first month I painted fences, and gave general satisfaction.

The next month I white-washed a barn. The third, I was doing

tin roofs; the forth, common signs; the fifth, statuary to stand

before cigar shops. This present month is only the sixth, and I am

already in portraits!

 

The humble offering which accompanies these remarks [see figure]—

the portrait of his Majesty William III., King of Prussia—

is my fifth attempt in portraits, and my greatest success.

It has received unbounded praise from all classes of the community,

but that which gratifies me most is the frequent and cordial verdict

that