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

that man. He has not yet been begotten,

and in fact he is not begettable.

 

You may take any of the printed groups, and there isn’t a person

in the dim background who isn’t visibly trying to be vivid; if it

is a crowd of ten thousand—ten thousand proud, untamed democrats,

horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle—

there isn’t one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn’t one

who isn’t plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning,

with the intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing

and keeping it if he shall find so much of his person in it as his

starboard ear.

 

We all love to get some of the drippings of Conspicuousness, and we

will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can’t get any more.

We may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can’t pretend

it to ourselves privately—and we don’t. We do confess in public

that we are the noblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit,

and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places

of our souls we recognize that, if we ARE the noblest work, the less

said about it the better.

 

We of the North poke fun at the South for its fondness of titles—

a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they

are genuine or pinchbeck. We forget that whatever a Southerner

likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of

predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people.

There is no variety in the human race. We are all children,

all children of the one Adam, and we love toys. We can soon acquire

that Southern disease if some one will give it a start. It already

has a start, in fact. I have been personally acquainted with over

eighty-four thousand persons who, at one time or another in their lives,

have served for a year or two on the staffs of our multitudinous

governors, and through that fatality have been generals temporarily,

and colonels temporarily, and judge-advocates temporarily; but I

have known only nine among them who could be hired to let the title

go when it ceased to be legitimate. I know thousands and thousands

of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century;

but I am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter

if you failed to call them “Governor” in it. I know acres and acres

of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days,

but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not

raise if you addressed them as “Mr.” instead of “Hon.” The first thing

a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude,

and get itself photographed. Each member frames his copy and takes

it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous

place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire

what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around

to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure

in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated

with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, “It’s me!”

 

Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room

in Washington with his letters?—and sit at his table and let on

to read them?—and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?—

keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see

if he is being observed and admired?—those same old letters

which he fetches in every morning? Have you seen it? Have you

seen him show off? It is THE sight of the national capital.

Except one; a pathetic one. That is the ex-Congressman: the poor

fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory

and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought

to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself

away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers,

and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed,

ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise;

dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety,

hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed,

the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates.

Have you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that

is left of his departed distinction—the “privilege of the floor”;

and works it hard and gets what he can out of it. That is the saddest

figure I know of.

 

Yes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily

scoff at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we

only had his chance—ah! “Senator” is not a legitimate title.

A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you

or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington,

there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to

that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it—

which you may do quite unrebuked. Then those same Senators smile

at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the South!

 

Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may.

And we work them for all they are worth. In prayer we call

ourselves “worms of the dust,” but it is only on a sort of tacit

understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par. WE—

worms of the dust! Oh, no, we are not that. Except in fact;

and we do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves.

 

As a race, we do certainly love a lord—let him be Croker, or a duke,

or a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the

head of our group. Many years ago, I saw a greasy youth in overalls

standing by the HERALD office, with an expectant look in his face.

Soon a large man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

That was what the boy was waiting for—the large man’s notice.

The pat made him proud and happy, and the exultation inside of him

shone out through his eyes; and his mates were there to see the pat

and envy it and wish they could have that glory. The boy belonged

down cellar in the press-room, the large man was king of the

upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. The light in the boy’s

face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group.

The pat was an accolade. It was as precious to the boy as it would

have been if he had been an aristocrat’s son and the accolade had

been delivered by his sovereign with a sword. The quintessence

of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values;

in truth there was no difference present except an artificial one—

clothes.

 

All the human race loves a lord—that is, loves to look upon

or be noticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness;

and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals,

descend to man’s level in this matter. In the Jardin des Plantes

I have see a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend

of an elephant that I was ashamed of her.

***

EXTRACTS FROM ADAM’S DIARY

 

MONDAY.—This new creature with the long hair is a good deal

in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about.

I don’t like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay

with the other animals… . Cloudy today, wind in the east;

think we shall have rain… . WE? Where did I get that word—

the new creature uses it.

 

TUESDAY.—Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing

on the estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls—

why, I am sure I do not know. Says it LOOKS like Niagara Falls.

That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility.

I get no chance to name anything myself. The new creature names

everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest.

And always that same pretext is offered—it LOOKS like the thing.

There is a dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it

one sees at a glance that it “looks like a dodo.” It will have to

keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it

does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than

I do.

 

WEDNESDAY.—Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not

have it to myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I

tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with,

and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise

such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress.

I wish it would not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a

cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so.

I have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange

sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming

solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this new sound

is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear,

first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to sounds

that are more or less distant from me.

 

FRIDAY. The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do.

I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty—

GARDEN OF EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any

longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and rocks

and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. Says it

LOOKS like a park, and does not look like anything BUT a park.

Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named NIAGARA

FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me.

And already there is a sign up:

 

KEEP OFF

 

THE GRASS

 

My life is not as happy as it was.

 

SATURDAY.—The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going

to run short, most likely. “We” again—that is ITS word; mine, too,

now, from hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning.

I do not go out in the fog myself. This new creature does.

It goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet.

And talks. It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.

 

SUNDAY.—Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying.

It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest.

I had already six of them per week before. This morning found

the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.

 

MONDAY.—The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right,

I have no objections. Says it is to call it by, when I want it

to come. I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently

raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word

and will bear repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She.

This is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were

nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk.

 

TUESDAY.—She has littered the whole estate with execrable names

and offensive signs: