WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN

think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which

history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men

have committed. To usurp a usurpation–that is all it amounts

to, isn’t it?

A prince is not to us what he is to a European, of course.

We have not been taught to regard him as a god, and so one good

look at him is likely to so nearly appease our curiosity as to

make him an object of no greater interest the next time. We want

a fresh one. But it is not so with the European. I am quite

sure of it. The same old one will answer; he never stales.

Eighteen years ago I was in London and I called at an

Englishman’s house on a bleak and foggy and dismal December

afternoon to visit his wife and married daughter by appointment.

I waited half an hour and then they arrived, frozen. They

explained that they had been delayed by an unlooked-for

circumstance: while passing in the neighborhood of Marlborough

House they saw a crowd gathering and were told that the Prince of

Wales was about to drive out, so they stopped to get a sight of

him. They had waited half an hour on the sidewalk, freezing with

the crowd, but were disappointed at last–the Prince had changed

his mind. I said, with a good deal of surprise, “Is it possible

that you two have lived in London all your lives and have never

seen the Prince of Wales?”

Apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they

exclaimed: “What an idea! Why, we have seen him hundreds of

times.”

They had seem him hundreds of times, yet they had waited

half an hour in the gloom and the bitter cold, in the midst of a

jam of patients from the same asylum, on the chance of seeing him

again. It was a stupefying statement, but one is obliged to

believe the English, even when they say a thing like that. I

fumbled around for a remark, and got out this one:

“I can’t understand it at all. If I had never seen General

Grant I doubt if I would do that even to get a sight of him.”

With a slight emphasis on the last word.

Their blank faces showed that they wondered where the

parallel came in. Then they said, blankly: “Of course not. He

is only a President.”

It is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent

interest, an interest not subject to deterioration. The general

who was never defeated, the general who never held a council of

war, the only general who ever commanded a connected battle-front

twelve hundred miles long, the smith who welded together the

broken parts of a great republic and re-established it where it

is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies present and to

come, was really a person of no serious consequence to these

people. To them, with their training, my General was only a man,

after all, while their Prince was clearly much more than that–a

being of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and

being of no more blood and kinship with men than are the serene

eternal lights of the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles

of commerce that sputter and die and leave nothing behind but a

pinch of ashes and a stink.

I saw the last act of “Tannh:auser.” I sat in the gloom and

the deep stillness, waiting–one minute, two minutes, I do not

know exactly how long–then the soft music of the hidden

orchestra began to breathe its rich, long sighs out from under

the distant stage, and by and by the drop-curtain parted in the

middle and was drawn softly aside, disclosing the twilighted wood

and a wayside shrine, with a white-robed girl praying and a man

standing near. Presently that noble chorus of men’s voices was

heard approaching, and from that moment until the closing of the

curtain it was music, just music–music to make one drunk with

pleasure, music to make one take scrip and staff and beg his way

round the globe to hear it.

To such as are intending to come here in the Wagner season

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *