next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so
they made me stand up and sing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” till I
dropped-at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That’s what I’ve
been through, my friend. When I woke at seven, they were leaving, thank
goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on, and his’n under his
arm. Says I, ‘Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with
them?’ He says, ‘Going to make tracks with ’em; because:
“‘Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.’
As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours–and I’m
going to move; I ain’t suited to a littery atmosphere.”
I said to the miner, “Why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious
singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these
were impostors.”
The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he, “Ah!
impostors, were they? Are you?”
I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not travelled on my
‘nom de guerre’ enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved to
contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the
details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I
believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular
fact on an occasion like this.
…………………….
From Mark Twain’s Autobiography.
January 11, 1906.
Answer to a letter received this morning:
DEAR MRS. H.,–I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that
curious passage in my life. During the first year or, two after it
happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were
so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled,
established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my
mind–and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have
lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse,
vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and
your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to
look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to
delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy
of it.
It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am
not able to discover it. If it isn’t innocently and ridiculously
funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two
from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in
Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C., of Concord,
Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing but
death terminates. The C.’s were very bright people and in every way
charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice
and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break of
mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those
people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it
almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C.’s were indignant about
the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They poured out
their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty attitude of the
people who were present at that performance, and about the Boston
newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the matter.
That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond
imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year or two,
and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of it
–which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought of it
I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy a thing.
Well, the C.’s comforted me, but they did not persuade me to continue to