 This is Section 102 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 102, Alta, California, November 15, 1868. Letter from Mark Twain, from the special correspondent of the Alta. A Lively Boat Race, The Wicked, Wickedest Man, On the Wing, Something About Chicago, Story of a Rail, Personal Gossip. International Boat Race, Hartford, October 22, 1868. I went up to Springfield, Massachusetts yesterday afternoon to see the International Boat Race between the Ward Brothers and the St. John's crew of New Brunswick. We left here at noon and reached Springfield in about an hour. It was raining. It seems like wasting good dictionary words to say that, because it is raining here pretty much all the time, and when it is not absolutely raining it is letting on to do it. I assembled on the bank of the river along with a rather moderate multitude of other people, moderate considering the greatness of the occasion, and waited. A flat boat was anchored in mid-stream, and on it were collected the judges, the boats crews, and some twenty of their friends. A dozen skiffs and shells were hovering in the vicinity. The conversation of the crowd about me seemed to promise that I had made this journey to little purpose, since all the talk was to the effect that the idea of anybody attempting to conquer the Ward Brothers on the water was simply absurd. Everybody appeared to think that the St. John's gentlemen would be so badly beaten that it could hardly be proper to speak of the contest as a race at all. My sympathies always go with the racer that is beaten anyhow, and so I began to warm toward those New Brunswick strangers in advance. The cries of two to one on the wards, ten to one on the wards, hundred to five on the wards, I felt like resenting as so many personal affronts. Only two shells were brought to the front, long, narrow things like telegraph poles, shaved and sharpened down to ore blades at both ends. The contestants took their places. The four St. John's boys dressed in pink shirts and red skull caps, and the four wards in white shirts and with white handkerchiefs bound round their heads. They were all fine-looking men. They rode away a hundred yards, easily and comfortably. I had never seen such grace, such poetry of motion, thrown into the handling of an ore before. They ranged up alongside each other now, abreast the judges. A voice shouted, Are you ready? And the two shells almost leapt bodily out of the water. They darted away as if they had been shot from a bow. The water fairly foamed in their wake. The wards had a little lead at the start and made frantic exertions to increase the advantage. But it was soon evident that, instead of gaining, they were losing. The race was to be a very long one, three miles, and repeat. When the shells were disappearing around a point of land half a mile away, the St. John's were already a trifle ahead. The people in my vicinity made light of this circumstance, however. They said, Them wards knew what they were about. They were playing this thing. When the boats hove in sight again, them wards would be in the lead. And so the betting against my martyrs went on just as before. Finally, somebody suggested that appearances seemed to indicate that the race was sold. It had its effect. The most enthusiastic shortly began to show a failing confidence, and to drop anxious remarks about the chances of the race having really been betrayed and sold out by the wards. Notwithstanding all this talk was so instructive, the next twenty minutes hung heavily on my hands. There was nothing in the world to look at but five hundred umbrellas, and occasionally a fleeting glimpse of the water. And even umbrellas lose their interest in the long run. I find there is nothing exciting about umbrellas. Nothing thrilling. One's pulse beats just as calmly in the presence of umbrellas as if they were not there. And they don't really amount to anything for scenery, being monotonous when there are so many. But in the midst of these reflections, someone shouted, Here they come! Woop! St. John's ahead! For fifty dollars it's the wards. Fifty to twenty-five it's the wards. Take them both. Hundred to a hundred it's—three cheers, four—oh, the suffering Moses, the St. John's, are ahead! It was so. It was easy to distinguish the pink shirts now, flashing back and forth. On they came, dividing the water like a knife, and the white shirts far in the rear. In a few minutes they came flying past the judge's stand, every man of them as fresh and bright and full of life as when they started, and handling the oars with the same easy grace as before. A cheer went up for the gallant triumph, but there was little heart in it. The people on the shore were defeated, in pride and in pocket, as well as the opposing contestants. The wards came in rather more than a hundred yards behind, and they looked worn and tired. The race was over, and Great Britain had beaten America. Time? Thirty-nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds. There was but one consolation, and that was that in a six-mile race on the same water last year, the wards made it in thirty-nine, thus beating the present time by thirty-eight seconds. The wards went into the contest yesterday in inferior condition. Their mainstay, Joshua, had been sick, and was still unwell. However, these boys behaved in an entirely becoming manner. They said that they were badly beaten, and fairly beaten, and they wanted no excuses made to modify their defeat or diminish the brilliancy of the St. John's victory. The wickedest man. I do not know whether you have taken as much interest in the wickedest man in New York, as the people in the States have, but of course you have given him some of your attention. If you remember, he was a creation, or rather a discovery, of Mr. Oliver Dyer in Packard's Monthly. He was represented as being descended from excellent stock, the son of a minister, I think, and the brother of several ministers, and as being an educated man himself, and one who remembered, feelingly, the home teachings and Christian precepts of his youth. A man who made it his voluntary business to keep order at street corner preachings, and was always ready to enforce respect for the word and its messengers with his precinct fist. Yet this lost ram, let us be consistent if we are nothing else, and surely there was little of the sheep in John Allen, lost or otherwise. This lost ram tipped one of the vilest sailor dance houses in all Water Street, a den where congregated women so low, that it would be complementary to them, to class them with the beasts of the field and the stye, and where sailors came to caress them and pant out upon them model and endearments from hearts swimming in gin and reeking with affection and blasphemy, and then get entirely and unspeakably drunk and be shanghaid. This magazine article showed John Allen up in all his depravity and all his native goodness of heart, which was concealed under it. The article was copied, praised, discussed far and near, and in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, John Allen was famous. His den was crowded day and night with citizens and strangers, curious to see what manner of man the very wickedest in a city of a million people could possibly be. Mr. Dyer came out promptly, while the excitement was up, with a new article in which he showed how the wickedest man's heart was touched, his pride humbled, his depravity shaken to its very foundations, how he had not only allowed the city missionaries to pray and sing in his dance-house, but had sung with them himself. His women had sung also, and had even shed tears when the familiar hymns brought home and old friends in the sinless childhood back to their sorrowing memories. What must naturally follow these things? John Allen's conversion, of course. It was announced—also the closing of his den and his resolve to elevate his rescued life to the reclamation of Water Street. Then there were daily and nightly prayer meetings, exhortations and sermons at John Allen's, and the daily papers duly reported them and kept up the excitement. Reformation became popular. Kit Byrne threw open his dog-pid in its interest, and in the afternoon, day after day, petitions to the throne of grace ascended from the arena where five hundred rats had met their fate an hour before, and where the blood of the slain still mottled the sawdust. The person, hungry for fame and jealous of John Allen's brilliant fortune, advertised in ill-tempered language that in the matter of awful and deliberate wickedness the boasted John Allen was an innocent lamb to him, and proceeded to prove it by a series of evidences, either one of which ought to be sufficient to damn him without even a glance at the others. This man was naturally incensed at the injustice that had been done him, and outraged by the spectacle of another man wearing laurels to which he himself was alone entitled, as the guardian of a long lifetime earnestly and unselfishly devoted to the commission of peculiarly revolting crimes. To such a mind the reflection that after all his life had been a failure could not be other than agonizing. He invited attention to his case, insisted on throwing his doors open to prayer, flaunted his superior sins before the public, and went on railing at the feeble imposter, John Allen. What was the natural result of all this state of things? Simply that religion was dragged in the dirt, where one person was brought seriously to read his Bible, fifty non-combatants were made mockers and scoffers. I will venture to say that even Elder Knapp, in all his long and well-meant war against sin, has hardly done as much harm as this revival in Water Street, New York. A religion that comes of thought and study and deliberate conviction sticks best. The revitalized convert, who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawned suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before. I was coming down the street in New York the other day when I met Mr. Packard. He was innocently proud of the convert made by his magazine, and proposed that we go and see the animal. So we went down to John Allen's. He was not in. An old man sat at one side of a table in the front room, and a young man at the other side of it. There were only two rooms, and both were small, and rude enough in appearance for any wicked man's den. All the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with white canvas on which were painted hymns in large letters, and precepts from the testament which were suited to the place, if there be any precepts in the testament suited to such a place. A prayer meeting had closed about an hour before. The old man had been present and was still mad about it. He said, Do you know this Mr. Dyer as he calls himself? I said I had not met him yet. Well, when you do meet him you'll meet a man that's put himself out of the way in the vilest and most malignant manner to traduce and vilify and hold up to public abuse and derision a better man than he ever dared to be, the wickedest man in New York. He never saw the day when he was worthy to unloose the latches of John Allen's shoes. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, and those are my sentiments about this Dyer. He has made a man a reproach and a byword who never had done any crime greater than the modest minding of his own affairs. He has ruined him in estate, in prospects and in reputation. He has broken up his business and turned him adrift upon the world. I wish I could get my eye on this precious Mr. Dyer. And after doing all this, which he did out of pure speculation and with the hope of putting money in his pocket by lecturing around the country and trotting John Allen out as his frightful example, he put his foot in it. Because I wouldn't let John Allen make an ass of himself. I said if there was money in it let John Allen play frightful example on his own hook and pocket the flimsy. So Mr. Oliver Dyer had to run his little swindle by himself and take his chances, and he took Cooper Institute and filled it full of head- head missionaries, and made a whooping failure of it, and be damned to him and all that are like him, I say. John Allen went to Bridgeport and Stamford to lecture on his own account, and he'd have done well enough only he got drunk as a paper and knocked the whole thing west, you know. I was afraid of it. I was, really. I was afraid of it. And the last thing I said to John Allen with my arms around his neck and the tears in my eyes was, John, if you love me, John, don't come the frightful example too strong. But he did, you know, and busted, rot them missionaries. The young man at the other side of the table remarked that he had acted as Allen's agent, and that the Tribune had accused him of being drunk also, and likewise another Water Street convert who had gone along to introduce Allen to the audiences, but these statements were untrue. About this time the wickedest man himself arrived—a tall, plain, bony fellow with a good-natured look in his eye, a Water Street air all about him, and a touch of Irish in his face. He stood in the door, and a crowd of vagabonds on the sidewalk daped and stared at him in stupid admiration. He said, Don't this sort of thing ever stir up the devil in you, or maybe you don't mind it, being used to being notorious? I thanked him for the compliment, and said I wasn't notorious enough to have become an object for people to stare at. Note, one line of text missing from microfilm. At me till I want to knock their heads off, why they come here and march right in and ask me—well, you stand off there and I'll show you how they do. There now, that's about right. Then the speaker stepped into the street and returned with his hat in his hand, and walked up gingerly and said, Are you the wickedest man in New York? Yes. John Allen? Yes. You? Yes. Good God! And then they walk around me this way, and then sidle around tetherway, and examine the back of my head, and stoop down and feel my legs, and then they go off mumbling to themselves, as if they can't possibly understand it anyhow. Now you know that bothered me like sin at first, but it don't now. I've learned a trick. When they ask me questions I ask them another. I'm like the Irishman. The priest met him one day, and says, How's this, Paddy, that you've not been to church of late? Be me so, I've seen at your reverence, he can't answer you. But if toer the Protestant blaggard over, Biant, I could do it. Very well, then, Paddy, says the priest, walking away a bit. Now I'm coming toward your representative of the Protestant minister, and so you can answer me, Paddy. How is it that you've not been to church of late? Moin to old business, and get out of this, you damned old Protestant limb of the devil! We are instructed to judge not, but I still question the genuineness of John Allen's conversion. The ways of the worldly sit easy upon him yet. And now I pick up a New York paper, and find that he has been up before the police court for keeping a disorderly house, and from what I can gather from the tenor of the article he seems to have opened his dance-house again. If so, the belongings of religion have been innocently prostituted by its own servants, to the advertising of one of the worst sin factories in all New York, one which has now tenfold power to attract idlers and breed depravity. The wisdom of this water-street revival may be gravely questioned. At large. I have spent six weeks moving from city to city lately, doing nothing whatever but visiting friends. It is very, very pleasant work, and not hard. If there was a salary attached I would never do anything else. What a world of valuable information I could furnish about New York, Brooklyn, Elmira, Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis, if I had only been on a tour of observation! But I observed nothing except that Chicago changes so fast that every time you visit it, it seems like going to a new city. They are erecting many fine buildings in St. Louis, but they are erecting many more and finer in Chicago. Chicago is a wonderful place. It probably numbers among its citizens more active, bold, thoroughly enterprising men than any city in the Union saved New York. It is the center, as you know, of a vast railway system which drains the country in every direction. Other communities have what they consider their own legitimate country about them to back them up, and they regard their sovereignty over such regions as unimpeachable. Chicago recognizes no such sovereignty. She marches right into the enemy's country with her railroads, with an audacity which is delightful, and in a very short time she breaks down the divine right prejudices of that region and takes the trade. It is a maxim in less feverish communities that whenever a railroad to any place makes itself a necessity it will be built, that is, whenever there shall be trade enough to warrant it. Chicago has changed all that. Wherever she finds a place to build a railroad to, she builds a railroad to that place. She creates trade there afterwards easily enough. She, out of every five men you meet in Chicago, have a live, shrewd, cosmopolitan look in their faces. These are the sort of people who have made the city what it is, and will yet double its wealth, its population, and its importance. I will remark in passing that the Sherman House is a good hotel, but I have seen better. They gave me a room there, a way up. I do not know exactly how high. But water boils up there at a hundred and sixty-eight degrees. I went up in a dumb waiter which was attached to a balloon. It was not a suitable place for a bedchamber, but it was a promising altitude for an observatory. The furniture consisted of a table, a campstool, a washbowl, a German dictionary, and a patent medicine almanac for 1842. I do not know whether there was a bed or not. I didn't notice. However, I was glad I got that room, for I stayed there an hour and took notes of an instructive conversation which was going on in an adjacent apartment. I overheard the following legend. No, she wouldn't marry me. You were misinformed. It was broken off, and in the saddest way. I was not in the least to blame upon my word and honour, though neither the girl nor her father the deacon ever believed me or ever forgave me. It was during the big election canvas when Lincoln ran the first time. Two-thirds of the deacon's honest soul were in religion, and the other third was in politics—Lincoln man. I never was a scoffer at religion in my life, but he half believed I was. Well, there was to be a political pow-wow in the village church where he lived on a Thursday night, and he was to preside. I never thought anything about the matter, but Williams hailed me one afternoon, offered me a seat in his buggy, and away we started. It was Wednesday, cursed the almanac, but we never thought of it. Going into town some devilish instinct put it into my head that it would help my case along if I marched into church with a rail on my shoulder, seeing that the deacon and the girl would both be there. So I got a rail, and we came into town shouting and making a grand to-do generally. As we went by the church windows I caught a glimpse of her bonnet and plenty other bonnets, and I was happy. I shouldered my rail and marched in. The house full of men and women were all quiet, and the old deacon was standing up in the altar saying something—splendid. I went a-booming up the aisle with my rail, swinging my hat and whooping, Hooray for old Abe! Hooray for the Illinois rail splitter! But never a yelp out of that audience. I quit, right in my tracks. The deacon said, Sir, we were engaged in addressing the Throne of Grace. This unseemly exhibition is ill-fitted to the solemnities of a prayer meeting. I never felt so sick in my life, John. I never felt so much like taking a walk, and don't you know, as I stood up there, before that congregation, I'd have given a million dollars for somebody to take that rail out for me. But no! I had to sneak out with it myself. I threw it down and went up to where there was a bored fence and practice climbing backwards and forwards through a knot hole for—as much as an hour. But my goose was cooked, you know. It was all up between me and that family. And so endeth the legend. Perhaps I had no right to listen to it, but I did anyhow. I visited the Tomb of Washington, in Chicago, and also the birth places of Homer and Michael Angelo, and then adjourned to Cleveland, a stirring, enterprising young city of a hundred thousand inhabitants. Did you know that they claim three hundred thousand for Chicago? Cleveland is the center of a great coal, iron, and petroleum trade, and this is necessarily bound to move steadily onward, being impelled by such stable and long-winded helpers as commerce and manufactures. Cleveland contains one of the finest streets in America, Euclid Avenue. Euclid is buried at one end of it—the old original Euclid that invented the algebra—misfortune overtake him. It is devoted to dwelling-houses entirely, and it costs you one hundred thousand dollars to come in. Therefore none of your poor white trash can live in that street. You have to be redolent of that odor of sanctity which comes with cash. The dwellings are very large, are often pretty pretentious in the matter of architecture, and the grassy and flowery yards they stand in are something marvellous, being from one to three hundred feet front and nine hundred feet deep, a front on the avenue and another front on Lake Erie. I had a very good time visiting. In another city I fell out of a wagon backwards and broke my neck in two places. Another time I fell on the river, and when I was coming up the bank I got kicked by a horse. All together I had a splendid time. I have to lecture a great deal in the West this winter, and I expect to have some more fun. Personal The New York Tribune of this morning has double-leaded sensation dispatches about the earthquakes in California, and from the way they lead, I think the matter must have been much more serious than the great eighth of October earthquake of sixty-five. I shall be uncomfortable and anxious till the morrow's papers arrive, for our latest intelligence is that more shocks are anticipated. The California earthquakes are all the talk to-day. Webb, C.H., is pegging away at his patent adding-machine. A New York wholesale merchant of sense, standing and character tells me that the machine is so simple, so quick with its work, and so manifestly useful, that it will be in every counting room in the city in less than five years. He says there cannot be any question, but Webb will make a fortune out of it. I have not seen Webb to speak to him since I have been back to the States, but I hear of him occasionally. He still corresponds with the Springfield Republican. I saw Mr. Sam Bowles in Springfield yesterday. He is just back from his trip to the mountains. He says his interest in the Pacific Coast remains unabated. E.R. Sill, who was a Californian—don't know what or where he is now—is widely spoken of in Eastern Press as the rising young poet of the day, and his name is already so familiarized to the public ear as to enable the papers to print little news paragraphs concerning Mr. Sill's movements without adding an explanation of who Mr. Sill is. Frank Fuller, ex-acting Governor of Utah, is located at 19 Park Place, New York, and is making money hand over fist in the manufacture and sale of a patent odorless India rubber cloth, which is coming greatly into fashion for buggy tops and such things. He has a great many friends on the coast, and this news will not grieve them. Mark Twain End of Section 102 This is Section 103 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 103, Alta, California, November 22, 1868. Letter from Mark Twain, special correspondence of the Alta, California. Some personal explanations—a Connecticut legend, a revolutionary newspaper relic. Curious souvenirs of old times. Concerning McGrawty. Who is McGrawty? Hartford, October 28, 1868. E. Pluribus Unum. I have a boil on one side of my nose and a cold on the other, and whether I sneeze or blow, it is all one. I get the lock-jaw, anyhow. I never fully comprehended before how inscrutable are the ways of Providence. For my feeble, finite wisdom is utterly stumped with the simple problem of what great and good end is to be accomplished by the conferring of this boil and this cold on me both at the same time. But Providence understands it easy enough. The ways of Providence are too inscrutable for the subscriber. I have not been working very hard, but I have got this book of mine ready for the engravers and electro-typers at last, though it will not be issued from the publishing house till March. Not knowing what else to name it, I have called it the New Pilgrim's Progress. I am told that Bancroft is to be the agent for it on the Pacific Coast and in China. This reminds me that I see by the papers that I am going to China in the spring. I was not quite certain of it before, but I am now, I suppose. I start out lecturing the fifteenth of November, and as my engagements extend far into March, I shall have ample time to think it all over. I have seen a New England forest in October. And so I suppose I have looked upon almost the fairest vision the earth affords. The first trees to change were the maples, which doffed their robes of green, and took to themselves a brilliant bloody red. And shortly the long walls of shining emerald that bordered the roads were splendid with these random bursts of flame. A distant prospect gave to a forest the resemblance of a garment splotched with blood. The chestnuts changed next, but more slowly. And day after day their rich green panoply fainted away and dissolved into a soft sunset blending of dainty tints, of gold and purple, touched with a crimson blush here and there. And finally some frosty morning came out in the imperial yellow of China, and stood ready, with the mistaken wisdom of trees the world over, to undress for winter. A great forest mottled from end to end with these changing splendors, these opaline minglings of exquisite dyes, subdued and softened by distance, seems etherealized, stripped of the grossness of earth, and suffused with the tender grace of pictures we see in dreams. Indigent nomenclature legend. Don't direct any more letters to me at Hartford until I find out which Hartford I live in. They mix such things here in New England. I think I am in Hartford proper, but no man may hope to be certain, because right here in one nest we have Hartford and Old Hartford and New Hartford, and West Hartford and East Hartford, and Hartford on the Hill, and Hartford around generally. It is the strangest thing, this paucity of names in Yankee land, you find that it is not a matter confined to Hartford, but is a distemper that afflicts all New England. They get a name that suits them, and then hitch-distinguished handles to it, and hang them on all the villages round about. It reminds me of the man who said that Adam went on naming his descendants until he ran out of names, and then said gravely, Let the rest be called Smith. Down there at New Haven they have Old Haven, West Haven, South Haven, West by South West Haven, and East by East, Nor East, Half, East Haven, and the oldest men in the world can't tell which one of them Yale College is in. The boys in New England are smart, but after they have learned everything else, they have to devote a couple of years to the geography of New Haven before they can enter college, and then half of them can't do it till they go to Seavoage and learn how to box the compass. That is why there are so many more New England sailors than any other. Some of them spend their whole lives in the whaling service trying to fit themselves for college. This class of people have colonized the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is well known that nine-tenths of the old salts there became old salts just in this way. Their lives a failure. They have lived in vain. They have never been able to get the hang of the New Haven geography. In this connection they tell a story of a stranger who was coming up the Connecticut River and was trying his best to sleep. But every now and then the boat would stop and a man would thrust his head into the room. First he sung out, Hadam! and then East Hadam! and then Hadam Neck! and then North Hadam! and then Great Hadam! Little Hadam! Old Hadam! New Hadam! Irish Hadam! Dutch Hadam! Hadam Hadam! and then the stranger jumped out of bed all excited and says, I am a Methodist preacher, full of grace and forty years in service without guile. I am a meek and lowly Christian. But damn these Hadams! I wish the devil Hadam, I say! A relic. The gentlemen of the current have given me a facsimile copy of the first issue of that paper. It is about twice as large as a sheet of full-scap and bears the date October 29, 1764, something over a hundred years ago. In its columns under date of Boston October 8, for it will be remembered that news traveled slowly in those days, I find broad hints of the dissatisfaction among the colonists, which was within the next ten or eleven years to breathe the American Revolution. READ There seems to be a disposition in many of the inhabitants of this and the neighbouring governments to clothe themselves with their own manufacture. British taxation without representation was worrying them. Again, it is now out of fashion to put on mourning at the funeral of the nearest relation, which will make a saving to this town of twenty thousand sterling per annum. It is surprising how suddenly, as well as how generally, an old custom is abolished. It shows, however, the good sense of the town, for it is certainly prudent to retrench our extravagant expenses while we have something left to subsist ourselves rather than be driven to it by fatal necessity. We hear that the laudable practice of frugality is now introducing itself in all the neighbouring towns, an instance of which we have from Charlestown, at a funeral there the beginning of last week, which the relatives and others attended, without any other mourning than which is prescribed in a recent agreement. Indeed, we are told that all the funerals of last week were conducted on the new plan of frugality. Nothing but frugality can now save distressed northern colonies from impending ruin. It ought to be a consolation to the good people of a certain province that the greatest man in it exhibits the most rigid example of this political as well as moral virtue. Who could he have been? Has his greatness totally passed from history and the memories of men? War is boldly hinted at in this paragraph. It is now confidently affirmed by some that the severity of a new a-t of pat is to be imputed to letters, representations, narratives, etc., transmitted to the m-m-e about two years ago by persons of eminence this side of the water, and that some copies of letters are actually in this town and others soon expected. To whatever cause these severities are owing, it behooves the colonies to represent their grievances in the strongest point of light and to unite in such measures as will be effectual to obtain redress. Cannot you fancy the ancient editor of the Connecticut current of a hundred years ago in round Benjamin Franklin spectacles, wig and queue, lace cuffs, coat pocket flaps like a cellar door, long waistcoat, knee-bridges, stockings, low-quarter shoes with buckles on them like a window-sash, a man gravely culling news from Boston three weeks old, and, per latest advices about Colonel Bouquet's forces having crossed the river at Pittsburgh full thirty days gone by, and thrilling rumors of war from Madrid, London, Versailles, Stockholm and The Hague, with the mildews of four awful months on them, and venerable canards, one hundred days out from Naples telling how between three and four hundred thousand citizens had lately died of plague in that little kingdom, a man exalting over his little old sensation dispatches and latest dates, and never, strangely enough, never having a vision of 1868 flash through his complacent brain with its revelations of telegraphs and locomotives. I say, can't you fancy this old muff sitting at his desk and getting off this bit of sarcasm, and holding it up and cocking his eye at it, and reading it over, and chuckling to himself, and reading it again, and calling in the devil, and inflicting it on him, and then sending it to the printers perfectly satisfied that it is the best, and the boldest, and the awfulest crusher that ever thundered from the press, can't you? Thus we hear that if any persons can tell of any valuable reversions in the gift of the crown undisposed of, they may have a good premium for such intelligence, as there are some few of the children of the gentlemen now in power still unprovided for. Then the rusty old flintlock gossips pleasantly about the servant of an Irish merchant having been successfully palming himself off on the Parisians as the Prince of Angola, lately, about a year before, no doubt, and in stunning sensation italics he puts in the sheriff's proclamation commanding the contumacious John Wilkes, Esquire, to appear before the Lord, the King of Westminster, to answer for certain trespasses, contempts, and misdemeanours, whereof he has been convicted, and then in smaller type exalts in the fact that that old-time head centre is safe in France, and will not be likely to honour the Lord the King's pleasant invitation. In default of a better mining excitement he tells of a piece of ore containing diverse particles of silver, which has been found in Florida and sent to England for assay, and probably much illuminated wildcat stock, changed hands there on the strength of it, and he asserts that the late report of the French having ceded New Orleans to the Spaniards is without foundation. But he always comes back to his pet hobby sooner or later, hints of war with the mother-country. Hear him! The northern colonists have sense enough, at least the sense of feeling, and can tell where the shoe pinches. The delicate ladies begin to find by experience that the shoes made at Lin are much easier than those of the make of Mr. Hoes of London. What has become of the noted shoemaker of Essex? Yes, what has become of him, and what has become of both of you since you are so brash about it? It is an even bet that where you are now you don't toot your horn any louder than the noted shoemaker of Essex does, but I will let him give it one more blast before I tumble him back into his dusty grave to sleep another century. It is feared by many who wish well to Great Britain that the new Eight of Pete will greatly distress if not totally ruin some of her own manufacturers. It is the thought that by means of this Eight less of her woolen clothes to the amount of some thousand sterling will be purchased in this cold climate the ensuing winter. He is a good deal worried for fear Great Britain will damage her prosperity if one lets him tell it. I will publish his joke now and then boost him back among the damned where he belongs. I will print this joke in simplified justice to him that people may see who originated it and so give him the credit due, unless he stole it himself from some still more ancient periodical. For to this day it keeps turning up every now and then in the country newspapers with an aggravating pretense of being new and original. A surprising concatenation of events to one man in one week published a Sunday, married a Monday, had a child a Tuesday, stole a horse a Wednesday, banished a Thursday, died a Friday, buried a Saturday, all in one week. There you are. In our day, since we know nothing of banishment, which he did, and since we do know something of divorcement, which he didn't, we substitute the one for the other naturally enough when we steal the joke. I will now let this old buffer go. I don't wish to be too hard on him lest I meet his musty ghost prowling about his ancient haunts in Hartford here some night. Where be his comrades? Wither went he to take his ale. Who was he anyhow? Where is McGroarty? But perhaps you don't know McGroarty. McGroarty was a great man once, but that was some time ago. It was when he ran for a delegate from Utah against Mr. Hooper. Somebody told him to buy a barrel of whiskey and run against Hooper, and told him whiskey was as good as talent, as long as he could get the one and hadn't the other. And McGroarty did it. He ran against Hooper, treated the saints and the Gentiles. He made the best fight he could, and didn't win. He came near it, though. He got 105 votes, and Hooper himself only got 15,608. There was really only a difference of 14,000 and some odd. A negro by the name of Psy got the rest of the votes, six. Hooper was declared elected, and McGroarty was advised to contest the election, which he did, but he failed to give notice of his reasons within thirty days, as provided by a congressional law, and that made his contest null and void properly. Still, when a man comes near being great, comes as near it as McGroarty did, comes within fourteen or fifteen thousand of it. It isn't in human nature to give it up. And so McGee infested Washington all last winter trying to get his dispute before the House of Representatives. But it wasn't any use. Congress was a conniver at all manner of inhumanity, and was only glad of a chance to keep this light out now, that it was put out. Congress said, send along the negro, let Psy have a show, out with this Malaysian Gentile. This after he had got his speech all ready for the floor of the House. It was particularly mean of Congress to do such a thing at such a time, because the speech had to be inflicted on somebody, and so that McGroarty went around Washington all last winter reading it, to everybody he could catch in a close place. People were driven crazy by it. People shot each other on account of it. Thousands and thousands of suicides resulted from it. McGroarty ended by going crazy himself, I heard, though many said he was crazy enough in the first place to make a good member of Congress. But they didn't take him in. That is what I am quarreling about. They left his light to shine under a bushel. Never saw a bushel in such a shape that a light could shine under it. But suppose it possible, nevertheless. They left his light to shine that way, merely because he didn't have fifteen thousand votes instead of Hooper. That sort of mean partiality is a thing that I despise. And so McGroarty was lost to the nation. What makes me inquire about him now, however, is that a rumor has reached me from a friend in Washington that Mr. McGroarty is going to run on the Democratic ticket for Congress in California, and I thought if I could help him to a vote or two in memory of that speech of his, it would be as little as one of the few survivors of it could do. I feel grateful, and so long as he is running for anything anywhere, I am ready to help him along, and whenever he has got a fresh speech and is reading it, I will wade right through the midst of his dead and dying to hear it. Count on me, McGroarty. Mark Twain. End of Section 103. This is Section 104 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 104, Alta, California, July 25, 1869. Letter from Mark Twain. A first visit to Boston. Special correspondence of the Alta, California. Sunday in Boston. First impressions. The straight streets of modern Athens. NASBY. The antiquities. Boston notions. A polite people. Some examples of the trait. New York, July 1869. Editors, Alta. I reached Boston about seven in the morning on a certain Sunday. There was no need of an almanac whereby to discover that Sunday was the day. No, there was Sunday in the still air. There was Sunday in the absence of hurrying feet and anxious faces. There was Sunday in the trim, special occasion looking of such apparel as drifted into view here and there. There was Sunday in the dreamy lonesomeness that brooded over all things, and presently there came floating up out of the distance, the muffled murmur of a bell. There was no need of an almanac. I was the last man out of the sleeping-car. There was not a hack in sight nor an omnibus or any vehicle whatsoever, except a small boy. He volunteered to carry my valise to the hotel for the sum of thirty cents. I scrutinized him narrowly, for I was in a strange city, and he might be one of those plausible outlaws who lie in wait near depots and decoy the unsuspecting to obscure dens and murder them for the sake of their teeth, which they sell to the dentists, and their hair, which they sell to the wig-makers, and their finger-bones, which they sell to the ivory-makers. I have often heard of such people, and I always try to avoid them, for I do not wish to be retailed when I am dead. This boy said his name was James, the ominous name of all the bad little boys in the Sunday school books. With many misgivings I placed myself in his power. I delivered to him my baggage, and began my reluctant march in his wake, oppressed by the knowledge that if this boy meant me harm, he could easily accomplish his fell purpose, for, of course, there were no policemen abroad at that hour of the morning. But I tried to console myself, with the reflection, that I had been in situations of deadly peril before and had escaped unscathed. I trudged after him, keeping a vigilant watch upon him all the time. It was not long before my suspicions were aroused. I waited and watched, and soon I felt convinced that his actions savored of a hidden villainy of some kind. I said, Boy, why do you wind around in this way? Why don't you go straight? Sir, why do you poke in and out, and wind around and about in this involved and sinuous way? Why don't you go straight? The boy turned and surveyed me impressively for many minutes, and then said, as if to himself, Go straight in Boston! Ain't he innocent, though? He then marched on. But I had lost all confidence, and so I took refuge in the first hotel I came to and discharged James, satisfied that no virtue could abide in a boy whose ways were so crooked. In going from the depot to the hotel we passed one spot seven different times, and approached it from a different direction every time. Modern Creighton Labyrinth I found a gentleman whose guest I was to be, Reverend Petroleum V. Nasby, and, henceforward, my two days' vacation had only pleasant experiences in it. Boston is just as delightful a city as there is in America, and one feels more tranquilly and satisfactorily at home in it, in three hours, than he could in New York in as many years. There is a comfortable air of goodwill and good fellowship in the aspect of the streets, the houses, the town in general, which it gets from the people, or in parts to them, I cannot tell which. One must keep a careful rain upon his gushing instincts, else he will shortly find himself loving Boston instead of merely admiring it, and such conduct as that would be undignified in a stranger. It only takes a little time to reconcile one to the awful crookedness of the streets, and only a little time longer to find in that crookedness a positive charm. The hard, straight, unrelenting lines one is used to in other cities gives way in Boston to graceful curves that go sweeping in and out in a pleasant and undulating way that impels a man to assume a luxurious wall-step in place of the driving forward march movement he has learned in unswerving and unbending Broadway. You cannot take in a whole Boston street with a single glance of the eye and then lose your interest because you have thus taken the edge off future discovery. On the contrary, every step reveals some portion of a building which you could not see before, some change in your vista, and some suggestion of pleasant variety yet to come, which not only keeps your interest alive, but heightens it and persuades you to go on. And so your street continues to open before you and close behind you, like a sure enough panorama, and you are as well pleased with it as if you had paid fifty cents admission. Many of these bending and circling ranks of buildings are architecturally handsome, and there is a Venetian picturesqueness of effect in the unfolding of their pillared and sculptured graces as you drift around the curves and watch them swing into view. Boston Antiquities One of the most engaging peculiarities of Boston is her reverence for her tradition, her relics, her antiquities. She still purrs complacently over her Boston Massacre, and thinks at the most gorgeous thing of the kind that ever happened, though Nazby says it only consisted in the crippling of three mulattoes and an Irishman, and they still point out three or four places where it occurred. I am not trying to detract from the sublimity of the Boston Massacre, though I do consider that for all Providence has been so partial, there are other places that are just as much entitled to a Massacre as Boston is. But I find no fault. San Francisco has earthquakes anyhow, therefore let Boston make much of her Massacre if she want to. Who cares? I don't think anything of Massacres. I scorn them. And then there is that old church, the Old South, I believe they call it, the one that has a British cannonball sticking in it. Boston thinks the world of that. The people tell you about it and point it out to you, and show off the moral advantages of it, till, in spite of your foreign prejudices, you are bound to confess that there is no happiness like having a church with a British cannonball stuck in it. Boston values that relic and cherishes it, and every time the Old South church wears out they build another and stick the cannonball in again, and go on overcoming the stranger with it as serenely as ever. And next they trot out Benjamin Franklin. I am opposed to slang, but there isn't any other expression that is descriptive enough for this emergency, and how they do believe in that venerable adventurer. If it had not been for him, with his incendiary, early to bed, and early to rise, and all that sort of foolishness, I wouldn't have been so harried and worried, and raked out of bed at such unseemly hours when I was young. The late Franklin was well enough in his way, but it would have looked more dignified in him to have gone on making candles, and letting other people get up when they wanted to. I do not see why he ever made candles, though, as celebrated a man as he was. I would have turned my celebrity to better account, but Boston thinks a great deal of Franklin. He was born in two different places in Boston, simultaneously, and he came the nearest to being twins that he ever did in his life. Boston shows both of those places reverently to the stranger, and thinks just as much of one of them as she does of the other. Franklin was always fond of the sports of his boyhood, and until he was an old man he used to go out and fly his kite every Sunday. If he had ever read the Sunday school books, he would have found out that it was dangerous to be tempting Providence in that way. He kept it up until at last, one beautiful Sabbath morning, he would have been struck by lightning and scattered all over the state, but for a door-key that happened to be hanging on his kite-string. It was not a creditable adventure for an old person like him, but the Boston people got around it by saying that he was trying to attract the lightning on purpose, and therefore he was flying his kite in the interest of science. That cat won't fight, to use the language of metaphor. When General Washington chops down the cherry trees and Benjamin Franklin breaks the Sabbath, it is all right, but suppose I were to do such a thing? My parents would make it an interesting occasion for me. And the Bostonians show you the ancient capital and Quincy Market, and the residence of old John W. Hancock, the gentleman whose signature to the Declaration of Independence it is comfort to come back to and read, after you have got the blind staggers trying to spell out the others, and they also show you old Fanel Hall, the Cradle of Liberty. You must learn to pronounce Quincy as if it were Quincy and Fanel as if it were Funnel. In this way you can palm yourself on the unsuspecting for a native, and so be respected. Presently they march you mysteriously to a pier, and standing uncovered, they point down at the water with impressive solemnity. That is where the Young Men's Christian Association, dressed as Mohawk Indians, threw the tea overboard in old colonial times. It was one of the most spirited things that ever was, and is justly admired to this day. There was only one narrow-minded bigot in the whole Commonwealth to refuse to swing his hat and say it was sublime. That was the gentleman who owned the tea. He never has collected a cent. When the Indians had finished their exploit, their moccasins were full of tea. This was carefully preserved and distributed around to be kept always in remembrance of the incident. Nothing is now held in greater reverence in Boston than these little parcels of tea. Nearly every family in New England is descended from those savages and has some of the tea. It is estimated that there is as much as sixty tons of it in Boston alone. I shall always respect these Indians, for tea is a poor insipid beverage, and it is a pity the Indians could not have lived forever to indulge their fancy for emptying it into the sea. But to the patriotic stranger, perhaps the most notable and interesting thing about Boston is the Stately Bunker Hill Monument, which has been erected on the summit of Bunker Hill to commemorate the battle of Bunker Hill, which was fought on another hill in a neighboring county. It is a very graceful and imposing structure, and is thirteen inches out of the perpendicular. This is the result of building it a little on the slant of the hill. One cannot stand on this sacred ground and feel no quickened impulse of the blood, no swelling of the heart, no exaltation. It was here that Warren fell. It was here that the angry tide of battle was to ebb and flow, and liberty flesh her maiden sword. It was here that Washington, careworn and anxious, leaned against the iron railing and prayed for night or blooker. Drawn up behind the monument, his little patriot band stood in stern array, awaiting the fateful onslaught of the British. At this juncture, when muscles and nerves were tense with expectancy, when every ear was listening, when every breath was clogged with restraint, and a distant vague suspense brooded in the air, it was learned that the battle was to be fought on Breeds Hill, instead of here, by request of the British commander, whose relations resided in that neighborhood and desired to witness it. It was thus that the battle of Bunker Hill came to be fought in another place. It was thus that this tranquil spot was spared those scenes of hell and sanguine carnage which did not occur here. The view from the top of the monument is one of the grandest the continent can afford. Toward the south, the eye wanders over silvery glimpses of the bay, fringed with a long array of masts delicately penciled against the sky. Beyond, the Blue Hills of Canada lift their filmy outlines above the level world of tinted forest, and out of their mist, Mount Washington thrusts its crown of ice and snow. Westward, the bright grain fields of New Hampshire stretch their emerald undulations toward the rising sun. In the shadowy east the sullen furnaces glow among the cavernous glens of Pennsylvania, and sadden the upper air with a sable pall of smoke, and in the distant north beyond the swelling sea of vegetation flecked with white villages, and threaded with sinuous brooks, beyond the dreamy belt where village and brook and forest melt together and lose their individuality. Away beyond ranges of hazy mountains that lap their purple waves together under the clouds, one catches fitful glimpses of that mysterious ocean that heaves its sailless tides about the pole, and on a clear day one can see the pole itself. Such, I learn, is the view that one may obtain from Bunker Hill Monument. I did not go up. Boston Politeness One of the most winning features of Boston is the politeness of the people. I do not refer to any class particularly. One is civilly treated by all. You would not enjoy stopping New Yorkers to ask the way to places. You would not get any habit of it, certainly, for you would get more curt answers than compliments. But you shortly learn in Boston to question whom you please on such matters. The native stops at once and maps your course out for you with a patience and a gentleness of speech that are as gratifying as they are unexpected and astonishing. Crooked streets are invaluable if this is the effect they have, for I do not know what else to attribute Boston's patient affability to, if it be not the schooling her citizens get in teaching lost strangers how to find themselves. We were inquiring the way pretty much all the time, but we did not get a crusty answer in a single instance. We made one inquiry of an Irishman, sitting on the ground with his back against a house. He got up to answer, and then it was plain that he was a distillery in disguise. He stretched out his hand to point, but it wavered and slewed around. He tried the other, and it slewed around also. He reeled magnificently at the same moment, and his cap slid off. In catching at his cap he tripped and fell in the gutter. He gathered himself up and apologized for the delay, and said he would tell us how to go, because he had the mumps and could not point good. Then he said, Go round that corner there, and turn to the right, and go two blocks, and then turn to the left, and go a block, and turn to the right, and go two blocks to the left, and then go straight till you turn to the right, and then he was tangled. He began over again and got tangled again. He tried it all over and checked it off on his fingers, but he got tangled in the same place. Then he reflected a while in painful perplexity, but suddenly he said, Got it now! Might have thought of it before. I'll go along and show you myself. And he did. I could not see much of Boston in a day and a half, of course, as we were simply idling about, visiting people in the greater part of the time, but what I did see of it has been very pleasant to remember. As it was early March that I was there, I cannot say anything about the great Peace Jubilee, for that enterprise had hardly been thought of at that time. In fact, I did not suggest it to Gilmore until about the first of April. Nazby is about thirty-five years old. He is compact, solid, heavy. He weighs a hundred and seventy or eighty, perhaps. There is nothing of a dainty look about him, but, on the contrary, he is as burly and vigorous as a theatrical blacksmith. His energy is invincible. After travelling all day and lecturing every night for months together, he was as fresh as ever. His attire is unfashionable, but he cares nothing for that. It does not fit, but that does not concern him. He is not graceful on the stage, but that does not distress him. He is not as handsome as I am, but more picturesque. Nazby has achieved a great success, and did it without other help than the talents that were born with him. His newspaper has a prodigious circulation. His letters take well. His books sell well. His lecture-field is the whole country. His lecture is the best thing he has written. It is a very unvarnished narrative of the Negro's career from the flood to the present day and bristles with satire. For instance, the interpolating of the word white in the state constitutions existing under a great general constitution which declares all men to be equal is neatly touched by a recommendation that the scripture be so altered at the same time as to make them pleasantly conform to men's notions. Thus, suffer little white children to come unto me, and forbid them not. The lecture is a fair and logical argument against slavery, and is the pleasantest to listen to I have ever heard upon that novel and interesting subject. It is necessarily severe upon the democracy, but not more so than one would expect from Nazby. The wonder is that anybody should expect anything else, but they do. In half the places I have lectured in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, and other states, I heard people talking acrimoniously about Nazby having given them an offensive political lecture instead of one upon some inoffensive subject. I wonder what on earth they did expect Nazby to talk about. Poetry no doubt. Well, Nazby is a good fellow and companionable, and we sat up till daylight reading Bret Hart's condensed novels and talking over western lecturing experiences. But lecturing experiences, deliciously toothsome and interesting as they are, must be recounted only in secret session with closed doors. Otherwise, what a telling magazine article one could make out of them. I lectured all over the states, during the entire winter, and far into the spring, and I am sure that my salary of twenty-six hundred dollars a month was only about half of my pay. The rest was jolly experiences. I am not sure, but that Nazby will go with me when I start to California about the first of August. California August 1st, 1869. Letter from Mark Twain. Special correspondence of the Alta California. Much married, story of the crown prince of Timbuktu, a California magazine abroad, blind Tom and his performances, where is the Avatar? Hartford, Connecticut, July 1869. Editors Alta! There is some little talk about a circumstance which happened the other day to an exalted Washington official. It seems to be my duty to record it. I will call the sufferer General George Belding, for the sake of convenience. He is said to be a right good man, but was always liberal in his views and a very sociable sort of person. He used to go about a good deal and among other places, he used to go up to Socrates, on the Hudson River Railroad, every now and then, and stay all night at a hotel kept by a mister and Mrs. Wagner. In due time he fell in love with a refined and cultivated young lady in Brooklyn, and immediately put himself upon his very best behavior. In the course of six months she married him, and gave it as her opinion that she was marrying perfection itself. The young couple were very happy. They began to frisk around and enjoy the honeymoon. Presently they ran up to Socrates and camped at Mr. Wagner's hotel. In the evening George was sitting on a sofa in the parlor, with his arm around his bride's shoulder, when Mrs. Wagner entered. She struck an attitude. She began to get angry in a minute. Then she said, Look here, my fine fellow! I've had as much of this as I'm going to stand. There you are down on that register as General George Belding and Lady again. You've done that thing sixteen times in eighteen months, and you've fetched a fresh trolip along every time. Young woman, march! Vamoose the ranch, you brazen faced hussy! It was a very sad circumstance now, wasn't it? Romance in Real Life The other day I saw in a dwelling in Hartford a well-executed portrait by Inman of an aged, bushy-headed, dignified darky of patriarchal aspect, and a question concerning it brought out its story. In 1790 a party of American and English gentlemen traveling in Africa fell into misfortune, got lost, and in their wanderings were exposed for many days to the perils of starvation, sunstroke, miasmatic fevers, snake-bite, mastication by wild beasts or wilder cannibals, as varied and picturesque a combination of deadly menaces as it often falls to the luck of one small party of strangers to stumble on in a new country. But variety is the spice of life, so they struggled on, fighting against hope until at last, when hunger and thirst and pain and fatigue had well conquered them, and they were ready to succumb to death and even welcome it as a deliverance, a stalwart young native suddenly appeared upon them, and they were saved. He was a crowned prince by hereditary right, and likewise by nature and merit. He was the eldest son of the king of Timbuktu, who was great and powerful, and lived in regal state, and wore a stove-pipe hat and a pair of spectacles upon solemn occasions when it was necessary to put on clothes. He was a good king and a good man. The prince brought his starvelings home, and the entire royal family turned out to welcome them. Comfortable quarters were provided for them in the palace, and for weeks the prince and his people nursed them, nourished them, doctored them, watched by their bedsides, and last the patience grew strong and well again, and then they thanked their generous benefactors from full hearts and bade them farewell, and journeyed away toward their homes beyond the sea. Thirty years after this, namely in 1820, one of the Americans of this party happened to be going along the street in Louisville, when in the person of a gray and venerable slave he recognized his preserver, the crowned prince of Timbuktu. The poor fellow had been taken prisoner in battle with a neighboring tribe and sold to the traders on the coast, and now for five and twenty years he had been doing service as an American slave. The American gentleman referred to made himself known, and he and his royal benefactor had a long talk over other days and stirring reminiscences, and then the gentleman naturally went forth in the world to lay the facts before humane people and achieve the prince's liberation. He published the details of his ancient adventure far and wide, and called upon all charitable souls to contribute their voices and their money to the good object. Henry Clay took hold of the matter and talked earnestly and eloquently in the unfortunate prince's behalf. So did Daniel Webster. So did other prominent men. And how long do you suppose it took to set that stricken and gallant old prince free? It took two years. I suppose they did not know how to do things in those days. I have seen a man start around with a subscription paper for a mere ordinary public benevolent institution of some kind in San Francisco, and collect coin enough in a single afternoon to buy up a whole tribe of crown princes. Highest market price, too. But in this old African's cause the money came in fifteen cents at a time, though in several shining cases a community came down with as much as two dollars all in one lump. And so, finally, they managed to scrape the stipulated amount together and buy the old royalist, though sooth to say, he was getting pretty mature before they accomplished it. The fact is, several obstructions were thrown in the way of the enterprise. The Louis-villains and Southerners generally tried to frown the thing down and stop its aggravating notoriety, for it attracted too much attention to the peculiar institution and made its smell too unsavory to have crowned heads found among its victims, and the grim story of how they came there detailed in the public prince. And then the owners of this royalty made stumbling blocks of themselves. They declined to part with him at all, at first. He was the only prince they had on the plantation, likely, and they didn't know where they could get another one, maybe. And when they did consent to sell, they put up the price on him. They were very loathed to part with him. Yet he was over sixty years old and of no particular account to anybody, unless it might be to the people of Timbuktu. They put up the price on him. They said, they weren't selling kings now at the ruling rates for field-hands, not as much as there were. They demanded full price for a king, and only ten percent off for damage, though in honest truth he was so old and rusty that he ought not to have ranked higher than a warchief, or maybe a first gentleman of the bed chamber in good repair. However, the prince was bought and paid for at last, and set at liberty, and he started around the country at once, telling his story, and collecting money to buy his wife with, for he had married in slavery. He was here in Hartford on this mission in 1822, when Inman painted the portrait of him, which I have spoken of. The old scion of royalty raised money enough at last, and bought his wife, and took her with him to Timbuktu, and remounted the throne the first chance he got. And I, for one, sincerely hope that after all his trials he is now peacefully enjoying the evening of his life, and eating and relishing unsalable niggers from neighbouring tribes who fall into his hand, and making a good thing out of other niggers from neighbouring tribes that are saleable. For virtues like his should be rewarded, and misfortunes like his should be compensated. The story I have told is a neat little romance, and is true. I have ornamented it, and furbished it up a little, here and there, but I have not marred or misstated any of the main facts. The Overland Monthly The Eastern press are unanimous in their commendation of your new magazine. Every paper and every periodical has something to say about it, and they lavish compliments upon it with a hardiness that is proof that they mean what they say. Even the nation, that is seldom satisfied with anything, takes frequent occasion to demonstrate that it is satisfied with the Overland. And every now and then it and other critical reviews of acknowledged authority take occasion to say that Bret Hart's sketch of the Luck of Roaring Camp is the best prose magazine article that has seen the light for many months on either side of the ocean. They never mention who wrote the sketch, of course, and I only guess at it, for they do not know. The Overland keeps its contributor's names in the dark. Hart's name would be very familiar in the land, but for this. However, the magazine itself is well known in high literary circles. I have heard it handsomely praised by some of the most ponderous of America's literary chiefs, and they displayed a complementary and appreciative familiarity with Hart's articles and those of Brooks, Samuel Williams, Bartlett, etc. But are you sure that California prizes the magazine as much as the Eastern people do? I stepped into the bookstore the other day to buy an Overland, and I made some inquiries about it. The bookseller said he always disposed of twenty-five or thirty copies without trouble, and he thought another establishment did as well. He said the sale in Hartford could be run up to a hundred copies right easily. He said he had twelve regular subscribers, and then I remembered that a good authority had told me that the magazine lay decaying under slow sale on all the news counters of San Francisco, and that when the canvassers first sallied out on its behalf, they got just twelve subscribers and the entire length of Montgomery Street. Is that true? Any canvasser could do better than that with it in any ten blocks in Hartford. About this time his Excellency the Lieutenant Governor came along and showed that he knew more about the Overland and the names and contributions of its writers than I did myself, and so I assumed a dignified silence. BLIND TOM One day last winter I was on my way from Galena to another Illinois town to fill a lecture engagement. I went into the smoking-car and sat down to meditate, but it was not a good meditating place. For pretty soon a burly Negro man on the opposite side of the car began to sway his body violently forward and back, and mimic with his mouth the hiss and clatter of the train in the most savagely excited way. Every time he came forward I was sure he was going to brain himself on the seat back in front of him, and every time he reversed I was certain he was going to throw a back somersault over his own seat. What a wild state he was in, clattering, hissing, whistling, blowing off gauge-cocks, ringing his bell, thundering over bridges with a row and a racket like everything going to pieces, whooping through tunnels, running over cows, heavens, I thought, will this devil never run his viewless express off the track and give us a rest? No, sir. For three dreadful hours he kept it up, and you may know by that what muscles and what wind he had. His wild eyes were sightless. For the most part he kept his head turned sideways and upward as blind people usually do, who get a dim ray of light from apparently above the eye somewhere. He kept his face constantly twisted and distorted out of all shape. When he spoke he talked excitedly to himself, in an idiotic way and incoherently, but never slowed down on his imaginary express train to do it. He looked about thirty, was coarsely and slouchily dressed, and was as ungainly in build and uncomely of countenance as any half-civilized plantation slave. After I had endured his furious entertainment until I was becoming as crazy as he was and getting ready to start an opposition express on my own hook, I inquired who this barbarian was and where he was bound for, and why he was not chained or throttled. They said it was blind Tom, the celebrated pianist, a harmless idiot to whom all sounds were music, and the imitation of them an unceasing delight. Even Discord had a charm for his exquisite ear. Even the groaning and clattering and hissing of a railway train was harmony to him. And this stalwart brute was to torture his muscles all day with this terrific exercise, and then instead of lying down at night to dive exhaustion, was to sit behind a grand piano and bewitch a multitude with the pathos, the tenderness, the gaiety, the thunder, the brilliant and varied inspiration of his music. A month or two ago I attended his performances three nights in succession. If ever there was an inspired idiot, this is the individual. He lorded it over the emotions of his audience like an autocrat. He swept them like a storm with his battle-pieces. He lulled them to rest again with melodies as tender as those we hear in dreams. He gladdened them with others that rippled through the charmed air as happily and cheerily as the riot the linets make in California woods. And now and then he threw in queer imitations of the tuning of discordant harps and fiddles, and the groaning and wheezing of bagpipes that sent the wrapped silence into tempests of laughter. And every time the audience applauded when a piece was finished, this happy innocent joined in and clapped his hands to, and with vigorous emphasis. It was not from egotism, but because it is his natural instinct to imitate pretty much every sound he hears. When anybody else plays, the music so crazes him with delight that he can only find relief in uplifting a leg, depressing his head halfway to the floor, and jumping around on one foot so fast that it almost amounts to spinning. And he claps his hands all the while, too. His head misses the piano about an inch or an inch and a half every time he comes around, but some astonishing instinct keeps him forever from hitting it. It must be instinct, because he cannot see, and he must surely grow too dizzy with his spinning to be able to measure the distances and know where he is going to and wither he is drifting. And when the volunteer is done, Tom stops spinning, sits down and plays the piece over exactly as the volunteer had played it, and puts in all the slips, mistakes, discords, corrections, and everything just where they occurred in the original performance. He will exactly reproduce the piece, no matter how fast it was played, or how slow, or whether he ever heard it before or not. The second night that I attended, two musical professors sat down together and played a duet, which they had composed themselves beforehand for the occasion. It was wonderfully tangled and complicated, wonderfully fast in movement, and was bristling with false notes. In the midst of it Yankee Doodle was interpolated, but so mutilated with intentional discords that one could not help writhing in his seat when they rattled it off. The bass was a brilliant piece of complication and fitted the composition about as well as it would have fitted any other tune, just about. When the piece was finished Tom stopped spinning and took the treble player's place alongside the bass performer, and clattered it furiously through with his nose in the air, and never missed a note of any kind, and when he faithfully put in the ludicrous discords in Yankee Doodle the house came down. Then the treble man came back and Tom took the wonderful bass and played it perfectly. Tom will play two tunes and sing a third at the same time, and let the audience choose the keys he shall perform in. I heard him play Fisher's Hornpipe with his right hand in two sharps, D, and Yankee Doodle with his left in three flats, E-flat, and sing Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the boys are marching in the key of C, all at the same time. It was a dreadful and disorganizing mixture of meaningless sounds, but you could easily discover that there was no deception, as the magicians say, by taking up the tunes one at a time and following them a little while, and then you would perceive that in time, movement, and melody, each was without fault. But the most surprising thing, this high-you muck-a-muck of all the Negro minstrels does, is to analyze musical sounds. If you will turn your back to the piano and let somebody strike a key at random here and there, you will see that you cannot call the name of two of the notes in succession except by pure guesswork, and when just one note is touched by itself, you cannot tell whether it was a black key or a white one. Blind Tom is your superior then, in some respects, for he can stand off at a distance and face the audience, with his back to the piano, and you may strike any key you please, and he will tell its name and its color, and two persons from the audience may select twenty keys, mixed so as to form a discord that will give you the lockjaw, and strike them suddenly and all at once with their four hands, and while the sound lingers in the air, the listening idiot will incline his head and make a fine assay of that sound, separate the web of discord into its individual elements, and then begin with the first note and rapidly call the name of every key of the twenty in succession and never make a mistake. And twenty more may be struck, and the fingers of the performers instantly sent scattering at random over the full compass of the piano, but by the time the flash of sound had died, Thomas has analyzed it and can name the notes that made it. All the schooling of a lifetime could not teach a man to do this wonderful thing, I suppose, but this blind, uninstructed idiot of nineteen does it without any trouble. Some archangel, cast out of upper heaven like another Satan, inhabits this coarse casket, and he comforts himself and makes his prison beautiful with thoughts and dreams and memories of another time and another existence that fire this dull clod with impulses and inspirations it no more comprehends than does the stupid worm, the stirring of the spirit within her, of the gorgeous captive whose wing she fetters and whose flight she stays. It is not blind Tom that does these wonderful things and plays this wonderful music. It is the other party. How is your avatar? Send us more news about Mr. Marriott's airship. The telegraph is too reticent. Some of our people take the remarks about the avatar for mere talk, and so pay little attention to it. Others receive in good faith what the telegraph says, and get up a good deal of enthusiasm about it. It is a subject that is bound to stir the pulses of any man one talks seriously to about, for in this age of inventive wonders all men have come to believe that in some genius's brain sleeps the solution of the grand problem of aerial navigation, and along with that belief is the hope that that genius will reveal his miracle before they die, and likewise a dread that he will poke off somewhere and die himself before he finds out that he has such a wonder lying dormant in his brain. We all know the air can be navigated, therefore hurry up your sails and bladders, satisfy us, let us have peace, and then with railroads, steamers, the ocean telegraph, the airship, with all these in motion and secured to us for all time we shall have only one single wonder left to work at and pry into and worry about, namely, commerce, or at least telegraphic communion with the people of Jupiter and the Moon. I am dying to see some of those fellows. We shall see what we shall see before we die. I have faith, a world of it. A telescope is building in Europe now which will distinctly show objects in the Moon two hundred and fifty feet in length, but I feel satisfied that the inhabitants of the Moon have telescopes still stronger, with which they read our newspapers, look down our chimneys, and pry into our private business, and I wish I might catch them at it once. I am certain that the Moon calves have been trying for a long time to communicate with us, else why are they always shying meteoric stones at us? It is to attract attention. That is the way I attract people's attention. I never hear of the falling of a meteoric stone, but I sigh to think of the disappointment of the philosopher who threw it when he sees that no notice is taken of it on earth, and the irritation which will follow the disappointment and make him say, Dang it! I wish I had broke a window! I love to revel in philosophical matters, especially astronomy. I study astronomy more than any other foolishness there is. I am a perfect slave to it. I am at it all the time. I have got more smoked glass than clothes. I am as familiar with the stars as the comets are. I know all the facts and figures, and have all the knowledge there is concerning them. I yelp astronomy, like a sun-dog, and paw the constellations like Ursa Major. When Horatio Nelson discovered the principle of attraction of gravitation by the falling of an apple-tree—however, we will not go into that. Tell us about the Avatar. We wish to hear that it is a success. Mark Twain. End of Section 105 This is Section 106 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Section 106 The Chicago Republican The Chicago Republican February 8, 1868 Letter from Mark Twain His ideas on poetical congressmen hints for the improvement of their style. The scandal against Judge Field. Adventure with a native of Kalamazoo, a Michigander at a reception. The Capitol Police. The Colorado Brothers. Mark Twain's description of the fashions at General Grant's reception. Special correspondence of the Chicago Republican. Washington, January 31. Congressional Poetry Congress is the most interesting body I have found yet. It does more crazy things and does them with a graver earnestness than any state legislature that exists, perhaps. But I did hope it would not drop into poetry. I did hope it would continue its dullness to prose. But it was not to be. Honorable Mungan of Ohio has set a disastrous example. He has allowed the sentiment that is in him to settle, and I herewith offer you the sediment. It is all properly caked and versified. Let me give also the three or four lines which preceded in the national intelligentser, and which have rather shaken my respect for that staid old journal. That regularly comes out in the most sensational and aggressive manner every morning with news it ought to have printed the day before. The intelligentser remarks as follows. The following lines are from the Pan of Honorable William Mungan, member of Congress from the Fifth District of Ohio, whose exquisite taste for poetry and art has not been blunted by his political duties. 2. An Absent One Time flies and still its rapid wings strikes on my thoughts with constant blows, touches my heart's most secret springs, and loves fond stream toward the flows. Flows like Niagara's rushing tide true as the needle to the pole, clear as the deep blue sea and wide as were the thoughts of Milton's soul. Absence from thee, my own dear wife, makes me, but know how good thou art, partner of sorrows, joys, and life, part of myself, the purer part. When shall that happy time arrive? When shall those days most wished forecome? When, side by side, we'll love and live to bless each other in our home. Now isn't that, Bosch? Do you observe that happy congressional grammatical inspiration whereby time flies and still its rapid wings strikes on this party's thoughts with constant blows, touches the said party's hearts most secret springs, and loves fond stream toward the other party flows? Isn't that criminal grammar? And don't you think that if you had a loves fond stream flowing out of you like Niagara's rushing tide, that you would feel a little alarmed about it and quit hatching poetry and proceed to let a contract for a breakwater or a cofferdam or something of that sort? I think you would. I think you would feel some solicitude about a freshet like that. And further concerning the second stanza, Mungen has no business to come here and try to disseminate the imposture that the deep blue sea is clear, because people who know things and are consequently wise know that the deep blue sea isn't any clearer than mungenical poetry. That is putting it rather strong, possibly, but fraud must be frowned down when it comes among us in the seductive garb of poetry, even though strong figures be required to do it. The needle isn't true to the pole, either. That is another attempted swindle on the public. Mariners are aware that the cases wherein the needle actually points to the pole are so rare as to be well worthy of remark. The width of Milton's thoughts has never been subjected to government survey and officially established, and so that metaphor must not be imposed upon a confiding public. If the figure had been transposed so as to make the width, refer to the sea, and the clearness to Milton's thoughts, nobody could have objected. The co-partnership notice in the third act is business, let it pass. I wish to speak only of the poetry. If it suits the congressional mind to mingle poetry and business together, it is competent for the congressional mind so to proceed. The solicitude as to when that happy time shall arrive might have been spared to the congressional mind by reference to the records which determine when the fortieth Congress shall cease from its labours, say the Fourth of March, 1869, wherefore be it resolved that all after the third stanza, common meter, be and the same is hereby stricken out, and these words inserted in lieu thereof, such substitute being considered to be in consonance and in keeping with the three preceding stanzas aforesaid, and as affording important information of which the excluded stanza is deficient. This is the house that Jack built. Congress adjourns the Fourth of March. Then never more shall we parties part. Pop goes the weasel. This is not poetical, but it has at least the merit of being instructive. The congressional mind had better quit soaring into poetry and go sailing into political economy, perhaps. Mr. Justice Field. A resolution was passed in the house several days ago to appoint a committee to investigate certain charges which had been preferred in a six-line newspaper item against one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States to the end that he might be impeached if such a course seemed justifiable. He will observe that the house not only so far forgot its dignity as to entertain that thing, coming in such unauthorized, anonymous, and altogether questionable shape, but discussed and acted upon it. Such conduct as this is ill advised, and is calculated to cheapen the respect due to this high tribunal. The impeachment of a judge of the Supreme Court is a grave matter, and should have a more respectable foundation than town gossip. Honorable Stephen Field was the judge referred to. It was stated in the newspaper item that he had said at a dinner, where he was a guest, that the Reconstruction Acts were unconstitutional, and that the Court would so decide them. Any man might have known that so absurd a charge as that, and one so out of all character, would prove utterly groundless, and such has been the result. If we had a party of chattering old maids on the bench, we might expect them to gad about their official business, but wise dignified old men do not do such things. I have inquired about the matter, and find that the circumstances are not worth detailing. They are not particularly creditable to the gentleman from whom the newspaper man probably got his information, either. Kalamazoo I went to the capital yesterday to see if there was anything going on there of a special interest to the North West. Senators and all other sources of information seemed busy. I secured an Illinois congressman at last, but he did not know anything of a special import, except that no move had yet been made this session, and doubtless none would be made at all during this congress in behalf of the ship canal, which it is proposed shall one day give Chicago direct communication with Europe by way of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. That was sufficient on that subject, of course. Then I went to the Chamber of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, I will remark that I am not a clerk of any committee, because I was told that Senator Trumbull would shortly be there. I was standing all by myself in the committee room reading a vast law book and wondering what it was about, and whether the plaintiff had done so and so, or whether it was the defendant, and which of them they found guilty, and how the mischief they ever knew he was guilty when the words were tangled up so, and noting, with gratification, the references to Perkins v. Bangs, Missouri Representative Third District, et cetera, whereby it was apparent that if one did not get mixed up enough in that book, there were others that could finish him, and wondering also at the bewildering tautology of the said aforesaid book, foresaid, when a youth to fortune and to fame unknown flourished in the most frisky way, and came to a halt before me. This young man had a mustache that dimmed the lightness of his countenance about as your breath dims the brightness of a razor, and he bored down into it with his fingers, and gave it a twist which was singularly gratifying to him, considering that no effect was produced upon the mustache by the operation. Then he tilted his little soup dish to the port side of his head, with his gloved hand, and said, Hello. I said, Hello. He looked surprised. Then he said, Do you belong here? I was just finishing a sentence about Perkins v. Banges. I finished it and observed, The weather is very fine. He whisked nervously up and down the room a couple of turns, and then stopped before me and said, Are you the clerk of the Judiciary Committee? I said in the urbanist manner, In view of the circumstance that on so short an acquaintance you betray so much solicitude concerning my business, I will venture to inquire what you may happen to want with the clerk of the Judiciary Committee. That is not answering my question. Are you the clerk of the Judiciary Committee? In view of the circumstance that on so short an acquaintance you betray so much solicitude concerning my business, I will venture to inquire again what you may happen to want with the clerk of the Judiciary Committee. That don't concern anybody but me. What I want to know is, Are you or are you not the clerk of the Judiciary Committee? In view, as I said before, of the circumstance that on so short an acquaintance you betray so much solicitude concerning my business, I will venture to inquire once again what you may happen to want with the clerk of the Judiciary Committee. He scratched his head in apparent perplexity for a matter of five seconds and then said with deliberation and impressive earnestness, Well, I'll be damned. I presume so. I hope so. Still, being a stranger you cannot expect me to take more than a passing interest in your future plans. He looked puzzled and a little chaffed. He said, Look here! Who are you? In view of the circumstance—Oh, curse the circumstance! Amen! He did not reply. He seemed worried and annoyed. Presently he started out and said by George he would go after the Michigan Senators and inquire into this thing. I said they were esteemed acquaintances of mine, and asked him to say that I was well. But he refused to do this, notwithstanding all my politeness, and was profane again. I never saw such a firebrand as he was. Now, what can that young fellow mean by going around asking respectable people if they are clerks of Senate committees? If my feelings are to be outraged in this way, I cannot stay in Washington. I don't like to be called hello by strangers with imaginary mustaches, either. This young party turned out to be an importation from Kalamazoo, and he wished to ship as a sub-clerk to the Judiciary Committee. He is a little fresh. It might have been better if he had stayed in the Kalamazoo-logical gardens until he got his growth, perhaps. Still, if his friends would like to have the opinion of a stranger concerning him, I think he will make a success here in one way or another. He has spirit and persistence. The only trouble is that he has most too much hello about him. He was at Mr. Colfax's reception last night, and if anybody was serenely and entirely at home in that brilliant gathering, and equal in all respects to the occasion, it was Kalamazoo, I think. He shouldered his way through the throng to shake hands with me, and I knew by the cheery tone of his voice that he had forgotten his anger, and regarded me in the light of a cherished old acquaintance, when he said, Hello, old Smarty! You here? In about an hour and a half that fellow was acquainted with everybody in the house. The Capitol Police. The days of the picturesque, blue, uniformed, brass-buttoned Capitol Police are numbered. They have cost the government $80,000 in the last year, and have not been worth the money. They came like shadows, most of them, but will not so depart. They have grown fat and comfortable, dozing in chairs and scratching their backs against marble pillars. They got good wages, and had two sumptuous uniforms allowed them every year. But retrenchment is the order of the day now, and the appropriation for all Capitol Police expenses is to be cut down to $5,000. That will well nigh exterminate the force. They are good men, and many of them have won a right to governmental consideration by the deeds they have done in the field. But the times are hard, and they must yield their places. If we had a little European siddacity, we would detail soldiers of the regular army to take care of the Capitol buildings, and then we need not pay even that $5,000 I have spoken of. Colorado at the Door. Colorado is memorializing Congress for admission as a state. The memorial sets forth that all classes and parties in Colorado desire a state government, including the Negroes, who are satisfied that the Constitution of the proposed state guarantees to them all the rights and privileges to which they are entitled. It furthermore sets forth that the territory's voting strength has augmented since the President ruled her out before by veto. Also that she pays a large internal revenue, that her postal receipts are great and are steadily increasing, and finally that her population is as numerous as those of the new states last admitted. It is possible that Colorado may get in this time. In this connection it is observable that in making this request the people of Colorado show an approximation to perfect unanimity of sentiment, which is surprising. A Chronicle editorial says, The people of Colorado seem now, for the first time, to be almost unanimous for admission. We learn that one man, who was a strong state man until defeated for United States Senator, and his brother, are now the only active opponents of the measure. Only two men against it. Only two resolute men against thirty thousand. This is a unanimity that would dishearten any ordinary brace of men. But it is not so in this case. These brothers are not only determined, but active. The spectacle of these two active partisans capering about the volcanic hills in solitary sublimity, while the badgered thirty thousand marched timidly to the polls to vote, is one that has an air of novelty about it to say the least. The Chronicle is friendly to the admission, but I am afraid that in so magnifying the agility of these two gymnastic chiefs it may be unwittingly damaging Colorado's chances in this second effort. The President will hardly open the door to her until the candidate for United States Senator and his brother shall be persuaded to quit performing on the hilltops and cease to bullyrag the unoffending thirty thousand with their pitiless opposition. Fashions. The fashions displayed by the ladies at the receptions of the great dignitaries of the government may be regarded as orthodox and reliable, of course. I do not enjoy receptions, and yet I go to them, and inflict all manner of crowding, suffocation, and general discomfort upon myself solely in order that I may be able to post the lady-readers of newspapers concerning what they ought to wear when they wish to be utterly and exhaustively fashionable. Not being perfect in the technicalities of millinery, this duty is always tedious and very laborious and fatiguing. I mention these things because I wish to be credited with at least the good will to do well, even though I may chance, through ignorance, to fail of success. At general Grant's reception the other night, the most fashionably dressed lady was Mrs. G. C. She wore a pink satin dress plain in front, but with a good deal of rake to it, to the train, I mean. It was said to be two or three yards long. One could see it creeping along the floor some little time after the woman was gone. Mrs. C. wore also a white bodice cut bias with pompadour sleeves, flounced with rushes, low neck with the inside handkerchief not visible, white kid gloves. She had on a pearl necklace which glinted lonely high up in the midst of that barren waist of neck and shoulders. Her hair was grizzled into a tangled chaparral forward of her ears, after it was drawn together and compactly bound and plated into a stump like a pony's tail, and furthermore was canted upward at a sharp angle and ingeniously supported by a red velvet cropper whose forward extremity was made fast with a half hitch around a hairpin on her poop-deck, which means, of course, the top of her head if you do not understand fashion technicalities. Her whole top hamper was neat and becoming. She had a beautiful complexion when she first came, but it faded out by degrees in the most unaccountable way. However, it was not lost for good. I found the most of it on my shoulder afterwards. I had been standing by the door when she had been squeezing in and out with the throng. There were other fashionably dressed ladies present, of course, but I only took notes of one as a specimen. The subject is one of great interests to ladies, and I would gladly enlarge upon it if I were more competent to do it justice. Mark Twain. End of section 106.