WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN

submitted to–everybody recognizes it as a DUTY.

O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for DUTY’S sake?

Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.

O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax

is not ALL compassion, charity, benevolence?

Y.M. Well–perhaps not.

O.M. Is ANY of it?

Y.M. I–perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.

O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you

get prompt and effective service from the servants?

Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants?

Why, you wouldn’t get any of all, to speak of.

O.M. Couldn’t THAT work as an impulse to move you to pay

the tax?

Y.M. I am not denying it.

O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty’s-sake with

a little self-interest added?

Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point:

we pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we

go away with a pain at the heart if we think we have been stingy

with the poor fellows; and we heartily wish we were back again,

so that we could do the right thing, and MORE than the right

thing, the GENEROUS thing. I think it will be difficult for you

to find any thought of self in that impulse.

O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find

service charged in the HOTEL bill does it annoy you?

Y.M. No.

O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?

Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.

O.M. The EXPENSE, then, is not the annoying detail. It is

a fixed charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a

murmur. When you came to pay the servants, how would you like it

if each of the men and maids had a fixed charge?

Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!

O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade MORE than you had

been in the habit of paying in the form of tips?

Y.M. Indeed, yes!

O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn’t really

compassion nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it

isn’t the AMOUNT of the tax that annoys you. Yet SOMETHING

annoys you. What is it?

Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know WHAT to pay, the

tax varies so, all over Europe.

O.M. So you have to guess?

Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and

thinking, and calculating and guessing, and consulting with other

people and getting their views; and it spoils your sleep nights,

and makes you distraught in the daytime, and while you are

pretending to look at the sights you are only guessing and

guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried and

miserable.

O.M. And all about a debt which you don’t owe and don’t

have to pay unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of

the guessing?

Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be

unfair to any of them.

O.M. It has quite a noble look–taking so much pains and using up

so much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant

to whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.

Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious

motive back of it it will be hard to find.

O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?

Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he

gives you a look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to

rectify your mistake there, with people looking, but afterward

you keep on wishing and wishing you HAD done it. My, the shame

and the pain of it! Sometimes you see, by the signs, that you

have it JUST RIGHT, and you go away mightily satisfied.

Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you

have given him a good deal MORE than was necessary.

O.M. NECESSARY? Necessary for what?

Y.M. To content him.

O.M. How do you feel THEN?

Y.M. Repentant.

O.M. It is my belief that you have NOT been concerning

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