Plymouth Rock–go home, and try to learn to behave!
However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I honor and appreciate your
Pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and I endorse and
adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine once–a man of sturdy
opinions, of sincere make of mind, and not given to flattery. He said:
“People may talk as they like about that Pilgrim stock, but, after all’s
said and done, it would be pretty hard to improve on those people; and,
as for me, I don’t mind coming out flatfooted and saying there ain’t any
way to improve on them–except having them born in, Missouri!”
COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES
DELIVERED AT THE LOTOS CLUB, JANUARY 11, 1908
In introducing Mr. Clemens, Frank R. Lawrence, the President
of the Lotos Club, recalled the fact that the first club dinner
in the present club-house, some fourteen years ago, was in
honor of Mark Twain.
I wish to begin this time at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether;
that is to say, I wish to thank you for this welcome that you are giving,
and the welcome which you gave me seven years ago, and which I forgot to
thank you for at that time. I also wish to thank you for the welcome you
gave me fourteen years ago, which I also forgot to thank you for at the
time.
I hope you will continue this custom to give me a dinner every seven
years before I join the hosts in the other world–I do not know which
world.
Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Porter have paid me many compliments. It is very
difficult to take compliments. I do not care whether you deserve the
compliments or not, it is just as difficult to take them. The other
night I was at the Engineers’ Club, and enjoyed the sufferings of
Mr. Carnegie. They were complimenting him there; there it was all
compliments, and none of them deserved. They say that you cannot live
by bread alone, but I can live on compliments.
I do not make any pretence that I dislike compliments. The stronger the
better, and I can manage to digest them. I think I have lost so much by
not making a collection of compliments, to put them away and take them
out again once in a while. When in England I said that I would start to
collect compliments, and I began there and I have brought some of them
along.
The first one of these lies–I wrote them down and preserved them–
I think they are mighty good and extremely just. It is one of Hamilton
Mabie’s compliments. He said that La Salle was the first one to make a
voyage of the Mississippi, but Mark Twain was the first to chart, light,
and navigate it for the whole world.
If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [Life on
the Mississippi], it would have been money in my pocket. I tell you, it
is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have them ring
true. It’s an art by itself.
Here is another compliment by Albert Bigelow Paine, my biographer. He is
writing four octavo volumes about me, and he has been at my elbow two and
one-half years.
I just suppose that he does not know me, but says he knows me. He says
“Mark Twain is not merely a great writer, a great philosopher, a great
man; he is the supreme expression of the human being, with his strength
and his weakness.” What a talent for compression! It takes a genius in
compression to compact as many facts as that.
W. D. Howells spoke of me as first of Hartford, and ultimately of the
solar system, not to say of the universe:
You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame reaches
to Neptune and Saturn; that will satisfy even me. You know how modest
and retiring Howells seems to be, but deep down he is as vain as I am.
Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Oxford, whose gown was red.
He had been invited to an exercise at Columbia, and upon inquiry had been