 As I understand it, what you desire is information about my first lie and how I got out of it. I was born in 1835. I am well along, and my memory is not as good as it was. If you had asked about my first truth it would have been easier for me and kinder of you, for I remember that fairly well. I remember it as if it were last week. The family think it was the week before, but that is flattery and probably has a selfish project back of it. When a person has become seasoned by experience and has reached the age of sixty-four, which is the age of discretion, he likes a family complement as well as ever, but he does not lose his head over it as in the old innocent days. I do not remember my first lie. It is too far back, but I remember my second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me, and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitted in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides. It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin, advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have done it. George Washington did it. Anybody would have done it. During the first half of my life, I never knew a child that was able to rise above that temptation and keep from telling that lie. Up to 1867 all the civilised children that were ever born into the world were liars, including George. Then the safety pin came in and blocked the game. But is that reform worth anything? No, for it is reformed by force and has no virtue in it. It merely stops that form of lying. It doesn't impair the disposition to lie by a shade. It is the cradle application of conversion by fire and sword, or of the temperance principle through prohibition. To return to that early lie, they found no pin, and they realised that another liar had been added to the world's supply. Formed by grace of a rare inspiration, a quite common place but seldom noticed fact was born in and upon their understandings that almost all lies are acts, and speech has no part in them. Then, if they examined a little further, they recognised that all people are liars from the cradle onwards, without exception, and that they begin to lie as soon as they wake in the morning and keep it up without rest or refreshment until they go to sleep at night. If they arrived at that truth it probably grieved them, did if they had been heedlessly and ignorantly educated by their books and teachers, for why should a person grieve over a thing which by the eternal law of his make he cannot help? He didn't invent the law, it is merely his business to obey it and keep still. Join the universal conspiracy and keep so still that he shall deceive his fellow conspirators into imagining that he doesn't know that the law exists. It is what we all do, we that know. I am speaking of the lie of silent assertion. We can tell it without saying a word, and we all do it, we that know. In the magnitude of its territorial spread it is one of the most majestic lies that the civilisations make at their sacred and anxious care to guard and watch and propagate. For instance, it would not be possible for a humane and intelligent person to invent a rational excuse for slavery, yet you will remember that in the early days of the emancipation agitation in the north the agitators got but small help or countenance from any one. Argue and plead and pray as they might, they could not break the universal stillness that reigned from pulpit and press all the way down to the bottom of society. The clammy stillness created and maintained by the lie of silent assertion. The silent assertion that there wasn't anything going on in which humane and intelligent people were interested. From the beginning of the Dreyfus case to the end of it, all France except a couple of dozen moral paladins lay under the smother of the silent assertion lie that no wrong was being done to a persecuted and unoffending man. The likesmother was over England lately, a good half of the population silently letting on that they were not aware that Mr Chamberlain was trying to manufacture a war in South Africa and was willing to pay fancy prices for the materials. Now there we have instances of three prominent ostensible civilizations working the silent assertion lie. Could one find other instances in the three countries? I think so. Not so very many perhaps, but say a billion. Just so as to keep within bounds. Are those countries working that kind of lie day in and day out in thousands and thousands of varieties without ever resting? Yes, we know that to be true. The universal conspiracy of the silent assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely labored in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel-slaveries and military-slaveries and religious-slaveries and has kept them alive, keeps them alive yet here and there and yonder all about the globe and will go on keeping them alive until the silent assertion lie retires from business, the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop. What I am arriving at is this. When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? Why should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue? Why should we want to be guile ourselves in that way? Why should we, without shame, help the nation lie and then be ashamed to do a little lying on our own account? Why shouldn't we be honest and honorable and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be consistent and either lie all the time or not at all? Why should we help the nation lie the whole day long and then object to telling one little individual private lie in our own interest to go to bed on? Just for the refreshment of it, I mean, and to take the rancid taste out of our mouth. Here in England they have the oddest ways. They won't tell a spoken lie, nothing can persuade them, except in a large moral interest like politics or religion, I mean, to tell a spoken lie to get even the poorest little personal advantage out of it is a thing which is impossible to them. They make me ashamed of myself sometimes. They are so bigoted that they will not even tell a lie for the fun of it. They will not tell it when it hasn't even a suggestion of damage or advantage in it for anyone. This has a restraining influence upon me in spite of reason, and I am always getting out of practice. Of course, they tell all sorts of little unspoken lies, just like anybody, but they don't notice it until their attention is called to it. They have got me so that sometimes I never tell a verbal lie now except in a modified form, and even in the modified form they don't approve of it. Still, that is, as far as I can go in the interest of the growing friendly relations between the two countries. I must keep some of my self-respect and my health. I can live on a pretty low diet, but I can't get along on no sustenance at all. Of course, there are times when these people have to come out with a spoken lie, for that is a thing which happens to everybody once in a while, and would happen to the angels if they came down here much. Particularly to the angels, in fact, for the lies I speak of are self-sacrificing ones told for a generous object, not a mean one, but even when these people tell a lie of that sort it seems to scare them and unsettle their minds. It is a wonderful thing to see and shows that they are all insane. In fact, it is a country which is full of the most interesting superstitions. I have an English friend of twenty-five years standing, and yesterday, when we were coming downtown on top of the bus, I happened to tell him a lie, a modified one, of course, a half-breed, a mulatto. I can't seem to tell any other kind now, the market is so flat. I was explaining to him how I got out of an embarrassment in Austria last year. I do not know what might have become of me if I hadn't happened to remember to tell the police that I belonged to the same family as the Prince of Wales. That made everything pleasant, and they let me go. And apologized, too, and were ever so kind and obliging and polite, and couldn't do too much for me, and explained how the mistake came to be made, and promised to hang the officer that did it, and hoped I would let bygones be bygones and not say anything about it, and I said they could depend on me. My friend said austerely, You call it a modified lie? Where is the modification? I explained that it lay in the form of my statement to the police. I didn't say I belonged to the royal family. I only said I belonged to the same family as the Prince, meaning the human family, of course, and if those people had had any penetration they would have known it. I can't go around furnishing brains to the police. It is not to be expected. How did you feel after that performance? Well, of course I was distressed to find that the police had misunderstood me, but as long as I had not told any lie I knew there was no occasion to sit up nights and worry about it. My friend struggled with the case several minutes, turning it over and examining it in his mind, then he said that so far as he could see the modification was itself a lie, it being a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact, and so I had told two lies instead of only one. I wouldn't have done it, said he. I have never told a lie, and I should be very sorry to do such a thing. Just then he lifted his hat and smiled a basket full of surprised and delighted smiles down at a gentleman who was passing in a henson. Who was that, gee? I don't know. Then why did you do that? Because I saw he thought he knew me and was expecting it of me. If I hadn't done it, he would have been hurt. I didn't want to embarrass him before the whole street. Well, your heart was right, gee, and your act was right. What you did was kindly and courteous and beautiful. I would have done it myself. But it was a lie. A lie? I didn't say a word. How do you make it out? I know you didn't speak, still you said to him, very plainly and enthusiastically in dumb show. Hello, you in town. Awful glad to see you, old fellow. When did you get back? Concealed in your actions was what you have called a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact, the act that you had never seen him before. You expressed joy in encountering him, a lie, and you made that reservation another lie. It was my pair over again. But don't be troubled, we all do it. Two hours later at dinner, when quite other matters were being discussed, he told how he had happened along once just in the nick of time to do a great service for a family who were old friends of his. The head of it had suddenly died in circumstances and surroundings of a ruinously disgraceful character. If known, the facts would break the hearts of the innocent family and put upon them a load of unendurable shame. There was no help but in a giant lie, and he girded up his loins and told it. The family never found out, gee? Never. In all these years they have never suspected. They were proud of him, and had always reason to be. They are proud of him yet, and to them his memory is sacred and stainless and beautiful. They had a narrow escape, gee. Indeed, they had. For the very next man that came along might have been one of these heartless and shameless truth-mongers. You have told the truth a million times in your life, gee, but that one golden lie atones for it all. Persevere! Some may think me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else. And I do not like the lie of bravado nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy. The latter was affected by Bryant, the former by Carlisle. Mr. Bryant said, Truth crushed to earth will rise again. I have taken medals at thirteen world's fairs and may claim to be not without capacity, but I never told as big a one as that. Mr. Bryant was playing to the gallery. We all do it. Carlisle said in substance this. I do not remember the exact words. This gospel is eternal, that a lie shall not live. I have a reverent affection for Carlisle's books and have read his revelation eight times, and so I prefer to think he was not entirely at himself when he told that one. To me it is plain that he said it in a moment of excitement when chasing Americans out of his backyard with brick-bats. They used to go there and worship. At bottom he was probably fond of it, but he was always able to conceal it. He kept bricks for them. But he was not a good shot and it is a matter of history that when he fired they dodged and carried off the brick, for as a nation we like relics, and so long as we get them we do not much care what the reliquary thinks about it. I am quite sure that when he told that large one about a lie not being able to live he had just missed an American and was over-excited. He told it above thirty years ago, but it is alive yet. Alive and very healthy and hearty and likely to outlive any fact in history. Carlisle was truthful when calm, but give him Americans enough and bricks enough and he could have taken medals himself. As regards that time that George Washington told the truth, a word must be said, of course, it is the principal jewel in the crown of America, and it is but natural that he should work it for all it is worth, as Milton says in his lay of the last minstrel. It was a timely and judicious truth, and I should have told it myself in the circumstances, but I should have stopped there. It was a stately truth, a lofty truth, a tower, and I think it was a mistake to go on and distract attention from its sublimity by building another tower alongside of it fourteen times as high. I refer to his remark that he could not lie. I should have fed that to the Marines, or left it to Carlisle. It is just in his style. It would have taken a medal at any European fair and would have got an honorable mention even at Chicago if it had been saved up. But let it pass. The father of his country was excited. I have been in those circumstances, and I recollect. With the truth he told I have no objection to offer, as already indicated. I think it was not premeditated, but an inspiration. With his fine military mind he had probably arranged to let his brother Edward in for the cherry-tree results, but by an inspiration he saw his opportunity in time and took advantage of it. By telling the truth he could astonish his father. His father would tell the neighbors. The neighbors would spread it. It would travel to all firesides. In the end it would make him president, and not only that, but first president. He was a far-seeing boy and would be likely to think of these things. Therefore to my mind he stands justified for what he did, but not for the other tower. It was a mistake. Still I don't know about that. Upon reflection I think perhaps it wasn't. For indeed it is that tower that makes the other one live. If he hadn't said I cannot tell a lie, there would have been no convulsion. That was the earthquake that rocked the planet. That is the kind of statement that lives forever, and a fact barnacle to it has a good chance to share its immortality. To sum up, on the whole I am satisfied with things the way they are. There is a prejudice against the spoken lie, but none against any other, and by examination and mathematical computation I find that the proportion of the spoken lie to the other varieties is as one to twenty-two thousand eight hundred and ninety-four. Therefore the spoken lie is of no consequence, and it is not worthwhile to go around fussing about it and trying to make believe that it is an important matter. The silent colossal national lie, that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples, that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at, but let us be judicious and let somebody else begin. And then, but I have wandered from my text. How did I get out of my second lie? I think I got out with honour, but I cannot be sure, for it was a long time ago, and some of the details have faded out of my memory. I recollect that I was reversed and stretched across someones knee. And that something happened. But I cannot now remember what it was. I think there was music, but it is all dim now and blurred by the lapse of time, and this may be only a senile fancy. Section 6 The Eskimo Maiden's Romance Yes, I will tell you anything about my life that you would like to know, Mr. Twain, she said, in her soft voice, and lighting her honest eyes rest placidly upon my face, for it is kind and good of you to like me and care to know about me. She had been absently scraping blubber grease from her cheeks with a small bone-knife and transferring it to her fur sleeve, while she watched the aurora borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky and wash the lonely snow-plane and the tempered icebergs with the rich hues of the prism, a spectacle of almost intolerable splendour and beauty. But now she shook off her reverie and prepared to give me the humble little history I had asked for. She settled herself comfortably on the block of ice, which we were using as a sofa, and I made ready to listen. She was a beautiful creature. I speak from the Eskimo point of view. Others would have thought her a trifle over plump. She was just twenty years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching girl in her tribe, even now in the open air with her cumbersome and shapeless fur coat and trousers and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face was at least apparent, but her figure had to be taken on trust. Among all the guests who came and went, I had seen no girl at her father's hospital trough who could be called her equal. Yet she was not spoiled. She was sweet and natural and sincere, and if she was aware that she was a bell, there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed that knowledge. She had been my daily comrade for a week now, and the better I knew her, the better I liked her. She had been tenderly and carefully brought up in an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the polar regions, for her father was the most important man of his tribe and ranked at the top of Eskimo civilization. I made long dog-sledge trips across the mighty ice-flows with Laska, that was her name, and found her company always pleasant and her conversation agreeable. I went fishing with her, but not in her perilous boat. I merely followed along on the ice and watched her strike her game with her fatally accurate spear. We went sealing together, several times I stood by, while she and the family dug blubber from a stranded whale, and once I went part of the way when she was hunting a bear, but turned back before the finish, because at bottom I am afraid of bears. However, she was ready to begin her story now, and this is what she said. Our tribe had always been used to wander about from place to place over the frozen seas like the other tribes, but my father got tired of that two years ago and built this great mansion of frozen snow-blocks. Look at it! It is seven feet high, and three or four times as long as any of the others, and here we have stayed ever since. He was very proud of his house, and that was reasonable, for if you have examined it with care you must have noticed how much finer and completer it is than houses usually are. If you have not, you must, for you will find it has luxurious appointments that are quite beyond the common. For instance, in that end of it which you have called the parlor, the raised platform for the accommodation of guests and the family at meals is the largest you have ever seen in any house, is it not so? Yes, you are quite right, Laska. It is the largest. We have nothing resembling it in even the finest houses in the United States. This admission made her eyes sparkle with pride and pleasure. I noted that, and took my cue. I thought it must have surprised you, she said, and another thing, it is bedded far deeper in furs than is usual, all kinds of furs, seal, sea otter, silver-gray fox, bear, martin, sable, every kind of fur in profusion, and the same with the ice-block sleeping benches along the walls which you call beds. Are your platforms and sleeping benches better provided at home? Indeed they are not, Laska. They did not begin to be. That pleased her again. All she was thinking of was the number of furs her aesthetic father took the trouble to keep on hand, not their value. I could have told her that those masses of rich furs constituted wealth, or would in my country. But she would not have understood that. Those were not the kind of things that ranked as riches with her people. I could have told her that the clothes she had on, or the everyday clothes of the commonest person about her, were worth twelve or fifteen hundred dollars, and that I was not acquainted with anybody at home who wore twelve hundred dollar toilets to go fishing in. But she would not have understood it, so I said nothing. And she resumed. And then the slop-tubs. We have two in the parlor, and two in the rest of the house. It is very seldom that one has two in the parlor. Have you two in the parlor at home? The memory of those tubs made me gasp. But I recovered myself before she noticed and said with a fusion, Why, Laska, it is a shame of me to expose my country, and you must not let it go further, for I am speaking to you in confidence. But I give you my word of honor that not even the richest man in the city of New York has two slop-tubs in his drawing-room. She clapped her fur-clad hands in innocent delight and exclaimed, Oh, but you cannot mean it! You cannot mean it! Indeed I am in earnest, dear. There is Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is almost the richest man in the whole world. Now, if I were on my dying bed, I could say to you that not even he has two in his drawing-room. Why, he hasn't even one. I wish I may die in my tracks if it isn't true. Her lovely eyes stood wide with amazement, and she said slowly and with a sort of awe in her voice. How strange! How incredible! One is not able to realize it. Is he penurious? No, it isn't that. It isn't the expense he minds, but—well, you know, it would look like showing off. Yes, that is it. That is the idea. He is a plain man in his way and shrinks from display. Why, that humility is right enough, said Laska, if one does not carry it too far. But what does the place look like? Well, necessarily it looks pretty barren and unfinished, but I should think so. I never heard anything like it. Is it a fine house? That is—otherwise? Pretty fine, yes. It is very well thought of. The girl was silent awhile and sat dreamily, gnawing a candle-end, apparently trying to think the thing out. At last she gave her head a little toss and spoke out her opinion with decision. Well, to my mind there is a breed of humility which is itself a species of showing off when you get down to the marrow of it, and when a man is able to afford two slop-tubs in his parlor and doesn't do it, it may be that he is truly humble-minded, but it's a hundred times more likely that he is just trying to strike the public eye. In my judgment your Mr. Vanderbilt knows what he is about. I tried to modify this verdict, feeling that a double slop-tub standard was not a fair one to try everybody by, although a sound enough one in its own habitat. But the girl's head was set, and she was not to be persuaded. Presently she said, To the rich people with you have as good sleeping benches as ours, and made out of as nice broad ice-blocks? Well, they are pretty good, good enough, but they are not made of ice-blocks. I want to know, why aren't they made of ice-blocks? I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expansiveness of ice in a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man, or your ice-bill will weigh more than your ice. Then she cried out, Dear me, do you buy your ice? We most surely do, dear. She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said, I never heard of anything so silly. My, there's plenty of it. It isn't worth anything. Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight right now. I wouldn't give a fish bladder for the whole of it. Well, it's because you don't know how to value it, you little provincial muggings. If you had it in New York in mid-summer, you could buy all the whales and the market with it. She looked at me doubtfully, and said, Are you speaking true? Absolutely, I take my oath to it. This made her thoughtful. Presently she said, with a little sigh, I wish I could live there. I had merely meant to furnish her a standard of values which she could understand, but my purpose had miscarried. I had only given her the impression that whales were cheap and plenty in New York, and set her mouth to watering for them. It seemed best to try to mitigate the evil which I had done, so I said, But you wouldn't care for whale-meat if you lived there, nobody does. What? Indeed they don't. Why don't they? Well, I hardly know. It's prejudice, I think. Yes, that is it. Just prejudice. I reckon somebody that hadn't anything better to do started a prejudice against it, some time or other, and once you get a caprice like that fairly going, you know it will last no end of time. That is true, perfectly true, said the girl reflectively. Like our prejudice against soap, here. Our tribes had a prejudice against soap, at first, you know. I glanced at her to see if she was in earnest. Evidently she was. I hesitated, then said cautiously. But, pardon me, they had a prejudice against soap? Had. With falling inflection. Yes, but that was only at first. Nobody would eat it. Oh, I understand. I didn't get your idea before. She resumed. It was just a prejudice. The first time soap came here from the foreigners, nobody liked it, but as soon as it got to be fashionable, everybody liked it, and now everybody has it that can afford it. Are you fond of it? Yes, indeed. I should die if I couldn't have it, especially here. Do you like it? I just adore it. Do you like candles? I regard them as an absolute necessity. Are you fond of them? Her eyes fairly danced, and she exclaimed, Oh, don't mention it. Candles, and soap, and fish interiors, and train oil, and slush, and whale blubber, and carrion, and sauerkraut, and beeswax, and tar, and turpentine, and molasses, and don't—oh, oh, don't! I shall expire with ecstasy, and then serve it all up in a slush bucket and invite the neighbors and sail in. But this vision of an ideal feast was too much for her, and she swooned away, poor thing. I rubbed snow in her face and brought her to, and after a while got her excitement cooled down. By and by she drifted into her story again. So we began to live here in the fine house, but I was not happy. The reason was this. I was born for love. For me there could be no true happiness without it. I wanted to be loved for myself alone. I wanted an idol, and I wanted to be my idol's idol. Nothing less than mutual idolatry would satisfy my fervent nature. I had suitors in plenty, in over-plenty indeed, but in each and every case they had a fatal defect. Sooner or later I discovered that defect. Not one of them failed to betray it. It was not me they wanted, but my wealth. Your wealth? Yes, for my father is much the richest man in this tribe, or in any tribe in these regions. I wondered what her father's wealth consisted of. It couldn't be the house, anybody could build its mate. It couldn't be the furs. They were not valued. It couldn't be the sledge, the dogs, the harpoons, the boat, the bone, fish-hooks and needles, and such things. No, these were not wealth. Then what could it be that made this man so rich and brought this swarm of sordid suitors to his house? It seemed to me, finally, that the best way to find out would be to ask. So I did it. The girl was so manifestly gratified by the question that I saw she had been aching to have me ask it. She was suffering fully as much to tell as I was to know. She snuggled confidentially up to me and said, Guess how much he is worth? You never can. I pretended to consider the matter deeply. She, watching my anxious and labouring countenance with a devouring and delighted interest, and when at last I gave it up and begged her to appease my longing by telling me herself how much this polar Vanderbilt was worth, she put her mouth close to my ear and whispered impressively, Twenty-two fish-hooks, not bone, but foreign, made of real iron. Then she sprang back dramatically to observe the effect. I did my level best not to disappoint her. I turned pale and murmured, Great Scott! It's as true as you live, Mr. Twain. Laska, you are deceiving me. You cannot mean it. She was frightened and troubled, she exclaimed. Mr. Twain, every word of it is true. Every word! You believe me. You do believe me, now, don't you? Say you believe me? Do say you believe me? I—well, yes, I do. I am trying to. But it was all so sudden. So sudden and prostrating. You shouldn't do such a thing in that sudden way. I'm so sorry if I had only thought—well, it's all right. And I don't blame you any more. For you are young and thoughtless, and, of course, you couldn't foresee what an effect. But, oh dear, I ought certainly to have known better why you see, Laska, if you had said five or six hooks to start with, and then gradually—oh, I see, I see—then gradually added one, and then two, and then—ah, why couldn't I have thought of that? Never mind, child, it's all right. I am better now. I shall be over it in a little while. But to spring the whole twenty-two on a person unprepared and not very strong anyway. Oh, it was a crime. But you forgive me. Say you forgive me. Do. After harvesting a good deal of very pleasant coaxing and petting and persuading, I forgave her, and she was happy again. By and by she got under way with her narrative once more. I presently discovered that the family treasury contained still another feature, a jewel of some sort, apparently, and that she was trying to get around speaking squarely about it lest I get paralyzed again. But I wanted to know about that thing, too, and urged her to tell me what it was. She was afraid. But I insisted, and said I would brace myself this time and be prepared, then the shock would not hurt me. She was full of misgivings, but the temptation to reveal that marvel to me and enjoy my astonishment and admiration was too strong for her. And she confessed that she had it on her person, and said that if I was sure I was prepared and so on and so on, and with that she reached into her bosom and brought out a battered square of brass, watching my eye anxiously the while. I fell over against her in a quite well acted faint, which delighted her heart and nearly frightened it out of her, too, at the same time. When I came to and got calm she was eager to know what I thought of her jewel. What do I think of it? I think it is the most exquisite thing I ever saw. Do you really? How nice of you to say that, but it is a love now, isn't it? Well, I should say so. I'd rather own it than the equator. I thought you would admire it, she said. I think it is so lovely, and there isn't another one in all these latitudes. People have come all the way from the open polar sea to look at it. Did you ever see one before? I said no. This was the first one I had ever seen. It cost me a pang to tell that generous lie, for I had seen a million of them in my time, this humble jewel of hers being nothing but a battered old New York Central baggage check. Land, said I, you don't go about with it on your person this way alone, and with no protection, not even a dog? Not so loud, she said. Nobody knows I carry it with me. They think it is in Papa's Treasury. That is where it generally is. Where is the Treasury? It was a blunt question, and for a moment she looked startled and a little suspicious. But I said, Oh, come! Don't you be afraid about me. At home we have seventy millions of people, and although I say it myself that shouldn't, there is not one person among them all but would trust me with untold fish-hooks. This reassured her, and she told me where the hooks were hidden in the house. Then she wandered from her course to brag a little about the size of the sheets of transparent ice that formed the windows of the mansion, and asked me if I had ever seen their like at home. And I came right out frankly and confessed that I hadn't, which pleased her more than she could find words to dress her gratification in. It was so easy to please her, and such a pleasure to do it, that I went on and said, Ah, Laska, you are a fortune girl. This beautiful house, this dainty jewel, that rich treasure, all this elegant snow and sumptuous icebergs, and limitless sterility, and public bears and walruses, and noble freedom, and largeness, and everybody's admiring eyes upon you, and everybody's homage and respect at your command without the asking, young, rich, beautiful, sought, courted, envied, not a requirement unsatisfied, not a desire ungratified, nothing to wish for that you cannot have, it is immeasurable good fortune. I have seen myriads of girls, but none of whom these extraordinary things could be truthfully said but you alone. And you are worthy. Worthy of it all, Laska, I believe it in my heart. It made her infinitely proud and happy to hear me say this, and she thanked me over and over again for that closing remark. And her voice and eyes showed that she was touched. Presently she said, Still, it is not all sunshine, there is a cloudy side. The burden of wealth is a heavy one to bear. Sometimes I have doubted if it were not better to be poor, at least not inordinately rich. It pains me to see neighbouring tribesmen stare as they pass by, and overhear them say reverently one to another, There, that is she, the millionaire's daughter. And sometimes they say sorrowfully, She is rolling in fish-hooks, and I have nothing. It breaks my heart. When I was a child, and we were poor, we slept with the door open, if we chose. But now, now we have to have a night watchman. In those days my father was gentle and courteous to all, but now he is austere and haughty and cannot abide familiarity. Once his family were his soul-thought, but now he goes about thinking of his fish-hooks all the time, and his wealth makes everybody cringing and obsequious to him. Formerly nobody laughed at his jokes, they being always stale and far-fetched and poor, and destitute of the one element that can really justify a joke, the element of humour. But now everybody laughs and cackles at these dismal things, and if any fails to do it my father is deeply displeased and shows it. Formerly his opinion was not sought upon any matter, and was not valuable when he volunteered it. It has that infirmity yet, but nevertheless it is sought by all and applauded by all, and he helps do the applauding himself, having no true delicacy and a plentiful want of tact. He has lowered the tone of all our tribe. Once they were a frank and manly race, now they are measly hypocrites and sodden with servility. In my heart of hearts I hate all the ways of millionaires. Our tribe was once plain, simple folk, and content with the bone-fish-hooks of their fathers. Now they are eaten up with avarice and would sacrifice every sentiment of honour and honesty to possess themselves of the debasing iron-fish-hooks of the foreigner. However I must not dwell on these sad things. As I have said, it was my dream to be loved for myself alone. At last this dream seemed about to be fulfilled. A stranger came by one day who said his name was Calula. I told him my name, and he said he loved me. My heart gave a great bound of gratitude and pleasure, for I had loved him at sight, and now I said so. He took me to his breast, and said he would not wish to be happier than he was now. We went strolling together far over the ice-flows, telling all about each other and planning, oh, the loveliest future. When we retired at last we sat down and ate, for he had soap and candles, and I had brought along some blubber. We were hungry, and nothing was ever so good. He belonged to a tribe whose haunts were far to the north, and I found that he had never heard of my father, which rejoiced me exceedingly. I mean he had heard of the millionaire, but had never heard his name, so you see he could not know that I was the heiress. You may be sure that I did not tell him. I was loved for myself at last, and was satisfied. I was so happy—oh, happier than you can think! By and by it was toward suppertime, and I led him home. As we approached our house he was amazed and cried out, How splendid! Is that your father's? It gave me a pang to hear that tone and see that admiring light in his eye, but the feeling quickly passed away, for I loved him so, and he looked so handsome and noble. All my family of aunts and uncles and cousins were pleased with him, and many guests were called in, and the house was shut up tight, and the ragged lamps lighted, and when everything was hot and comfortable and suffocating we began a joyous feast in celebration of my betrothal. When the feast was over my father's vanity overcame him, and he could not resist the temptation to show off his riches and let Kalula see what grand good fortune he had stumbled into, and mainly, of course, he wanted to enjoy the poor man's amazement. I could have cried, but it would have done no good to try to dissuade my father, so I said nothing, but merely sat there and suffered. My father went straight to the hiding-place in full sight of everybody, and got out the fish-hooks, and brought them, and flung them scatteringly over my head so that they fell in glittering confusion on the platform at my lover's knee. Of course the astounding spectacle took the poor lad's breath away. He could only stare in stupid astonishment and wonder how a single individual could possess such incredible riches. Then presently he glanced brilliantly up and exclaimed, Ah! it is you who are the renowned millionaire. My father and all the rest burst into shouts of happy laughter, and when my father gathered the treasure carelessly up as if it might be mere rubbish and of no consequence, and carried it back to its place, poor Kalula's surprise was a study. He said, Is it possible that you put such things away without counting them? My father delivered a vain, glorious horse-laugh, and said, Well, truly, a body may know you have never been rich, since a mere matter of a fish-hook or two is such a mighty matter in your eyes. Kalula was confused, and hung his head, and said, Ah! indeed, sir, I was never worth the value of the barb of one of those precious things, and I have never seen any man before who was so rich in them as to render the counting of his hoard worth while, since the wealthiest man I have ever known, till now, was possessed of but three. My foolish father roared again with jujune delight, and allowed the impression to remain that he was not accustomed to count his hooks and keep sharp watch over them. He was showing off, you see. Count them! Why, he counted them every day! I had met and got acquainted with my darling just at dawn. I had brought him home just at dark, three hours afterwards, for the days were shortening toward the six months night at that time. We kept up the festivities many hours. Then, at last, the guests departed, and the rest of us distributed ourselves along the walls on sleeping benches, and soon all were steeped in dreams but me. I was too happy, too excited to sleep. After I had lain quiet a long, long time, a dim form passed by me, and was swallowed up in the gloom that pervaded the farther end of the house. I could not make out who it was, or whether it was man or woman. Presently that figure or another one passed me going the other way. I wondered what it all meant, but wondering did no good, and while I was still wondering, I fell asleep. I do not know how long I slept, but at last I came suddenly broad awake and heard my father say in a terrible voice, By the great snow-god there's a fish-hook gone! Something told me that that meant sorrow for me, and the blood in my veins turned cold. The presentiment was confirmed in the same instant. My father shouted, Up, everybody! And seize the stranger! Then there was an outburst of cries and curses from all sides, and a wild rush of dim forms through the obscurity. I flew to my beloved's help. But what could I do but wait and ring my hands? He was already fenced away from me by a living wall. He was being bound hand and foot. Not until he was secured would they let me get to him. I flung myself upon his poor, insulted form, and cried my grief out upon his breast, while my father and all my family scoffed at me and heaped threats and shameful epithets upon him. He bore his ill usage with a tranquil dignity which endeared him to me more than ever, and made me proud and happy to suffer with him and for him. I heard my father order that the elders of the tribe be called together to try my Kalula for his life. What! I said. Before any search has been made for the lost hook? Lost hook! they all shouted, in derision, and my father added mockingly, Stand back, everybody, and be properly serious. She is going to hunt up that lost hook. Oh, without doubt she will find it. We're at they all laughed again. I was not disturbed. I had no fears, no doubts. I said, It is for you to laugh now. It is your turn. But ours is coming. Wait and see. I got a rag-lamp. I thought I should find that miserable thing in one little moment, and I said about that matter with such confidence that those people grew grace, beginning to suspect that perhaps they had been too hasty. But alas and alas! Oh, the bitterness of that search! There was deep silence while one might count his fingers ten or twelve times. Then my heart began to sink, and round me the mockings began again, and grew steadily louder and more assured until at last, when I gave up, they burst into volley after volley of cruel laughter. None will ever know what I suffered then. But my love was my support and my strength, and I took my rightful place at my Kalula's side, and put my arm about his neck and whispered in his ear, saying, You are innocent, my own, that I know, but say it to me yourself for my comfort, then I can bear whatever is in store for us. He answered, As surely as I stand upon the brink of death at this moment I am innocent. Be comforted, then, O bruised heart, be at peace, O thou breath of my nostrils, life of my life. Now, then, let the elders come. And as I said the words, there was a gathering sound of crunching snow outside, and then a vision of stooping forms filling in at the door, the elders. My father formally accused the prisoner and detailed the happenings of the night. He said that the watchman was outside the door, and that in the house were none but the family and the stranger. Would the family steal their own property? He paused. The elders sat silent many minutes. At last, one after another, said to his neighbor, This looks bad for the stranger. Sorrowful words for me to hear. Then my father sat down. O miserable, miserable me! At that very moment I could have proved my darling innocent, but I did not know it. The chief of the court asked, Is there any here to defend the prisoner? I rose and said, Why should he steal that hook or any or all of them in another day he would have been heir to the whole. I stood waiting. There was a long silence, the steam from the many breaths rising about me like a fog. At last one elder after another nodded his head slowly several times and muttered, There is force in what the child has said. O the heart lift that was in those words. So transient, but oh so precious I sat down. If any would say further, let him speak now or after hold his peace, said the chief of the court. My father rose and said, In the night a form passed by me in the gloom, going toward the treasury and presently returned. I think now it was the stranger. Oh, I was like to swoon. I had supposed that that was my secret. Not the grip of the great ice-god himself could have dragged it out of my heart. The chief of the court said sternly to my poor Kalula. Speak! Kalula hesitated, then answered, It was I. I could not sleep for thinking of the beautiful hooks. I went there and kissed them and fondled them to appease my spirit and drown it in a harmless joy. Then I put them back. I may have dropped one, but I stole none. Oh, a fatal admission to make in such a place. There was an awful hush. I knew he had pronounced his own doom, and that all was over. On every face you could see the words hieroglyphed. It is a confession, and paltry, lame, and thin. I sat drawing in my breath in faint gasps and waiting. Presently I heard the solemn words I knew were coming, and each word as it came was a knife in my heart. It is the command of the court that the accused be subjected to the trial by water. Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought trial by water to our land. It came generations ago from some far country that lies none knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with their lives sometimes, but it is not so with trial by water, which is an invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it the innocent are proved innocent without doubt or question, for they drown, and the guilty are proven guilty with the same certainty, for they do not drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said he is innocent, and he will go down under the waves, and I shall never see him more. I never left his side after that. I mourned in his arms all the precious hours, and he poured out the deep stream of his love upon me, and oh, I was so miserable and so happy. At last they tore him from me, and I followed sobbing after them, and saw them fling him into the sea. Then I covered my face with my hands. Oh, I know the deepest deeps of that word! The next moment the people burst into a shout of malicious joy, and I took away my hands startled. Oh, bitter sight! He was swimming! My heart turned instantly to stone, to ice. I said, he was guilty, and he lied to me. I turned my back in scorn, and went my way homeward. They took him far out to sea, and set him on an iceberg that was drifting southward in the great waters. Then my family came home, and my father said to me, Your thief sent his dying message to you, saying, Tell her I am innocent, and that all the days and all the hours and all the minutes while I starve and perish I shall love her, and think of her, and bless the day that gave me sight of her sweet face. Quite pretty, even poetical. I said, he is dirt. Let me never hear mention of him again, and oh, to think he was innocent all the time. Nine months, nine dull sad months went by, and at last came the day of the great annual sacrifice when all the maidens of the tribe washed their faces and combed their hair. With the first sweep of my comb out came the fatal fish-hook from where it had been all those months nestling, and I fell fainting into the arms of my remorseful father. Growning, he said, We murdered him, and I shall never smile again. He has kept his word. Listen, from that day to this not a month goes by that I do not comb my hair. But, oh, where is the good of it all now? So ended the poor maid's humble little tale, whereby we learned that since a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in straightened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy ten cents worth of fish-hooks and emigrate. End of Section 6. The Eskimo Maiden's Romance. This is Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy. Part 1 and 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy. Part 1 and 2. It is the first time, since the dawn days of creation, that a voice has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent confidence and command. 1. This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the appetite cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and broke some arms and legs in one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass. And they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farmhouses with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-colored flowers and cats. On the ground floor a large and light sitting-room separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition, and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure pile. That sentence is Germanic and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars. There was a village a mile away, and a horse-doctor lived there, but there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook. Mine was distinctly a surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was summering at that village, and she was a Christian science doctor and could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time, and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter. There was no hurry. She would give me absent treatment now and come in the morning. Meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and comfortable, and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I thought there must be some mistake. Did you tell her I walked off a cliff, seventy-five feet high? Yes. And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced? Yes. And struck another one and bounced again? Yes. And struck another one and bounced yet again? Yes. And broke the boulders? Yes. That accounts for it. She is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you tell her I got hurt, too? I did. I told her what you told me to tell her, that you are now, but an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp lock to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look like a hatrack. And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was nothing the matter with me? Those were her words. I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did she look like one who had fallen off precipices herself, and brings to the aid of abstract science the confirmation of personal experience? Bitta? It was too large a contract for the Stubborn Mudgeon's vocabulary. She couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket to pile my legs in, and another capable person to come and help me curse the time away. But I could not have any of these things. Why? She said you would need nothing at all. But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain. She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention to them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such things as hunger, and thirst, and pain. She does, does she? It is what she said. Does she seem to be in full and functional possession of her intellectual plant, such as it is? Bitta? Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up? Tie her up? There, good night. Run along. You are a good girl, but your mental gashir is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my delusions. Part 2 It was a night of anguish, of course. At least I supposed it was, for it had all the symptoms of it. But it passed at last, and the Christian scientist came, and I was glad. She was middle-aged, and large, and bony, and erect, and had an austere face, and a resolute jaw, and a Roman beak, and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly deliberate. She unpinned, and unhooked, and uncoupled her upholstries one by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand, and hung the articles up, peeled off her gloves, and disposed of them, got a book out of her handbag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity, but without passion, return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its dumb servants. I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken, but she detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so that she would understand the case. But that was another inconsequence, so she did not need to know those things. Moreover, my remark about how I felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms. One does not feel, she explained, there is no such thing as feeling, therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent is a contradiction. Matter has no existence, nothing exists but mind. The mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it. But if it hurts, just the same, but it doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of reality. Pain is unreal, hence pain cannot hurt. In making a sweeping gesture, to indicate the act of shooing the illusion of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said, ouch, and went tranquilly on with her talk. You should never allow yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you are feeling. You should never concede that you are ill, nor permit others to talk about disease or pain or death or similar non-existences in your presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty imaginings. Just at that point the stupid madshun trod on the cat's tail. And the cat let fly a frenzy of cat profanity. I asked with caution, is a cat's opinion about pain valuable? A cat has no opinion. Opinions proceed from the mind only. The lower animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind. Without mind opinion is impossible. She merely imagined she felt a pain, the cat. She cannot imagine a pain, for imagination is an effect of mind. Without mind there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination. Then she had a real pain. I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain. It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the cat. Because there being no such thing as real pain, and she not being able to imagine an imaginary thing, it would seem that God and His pity has compensated the cat with some kind of mysterious emotion. Usable when her tail is trodden on, which, for the moment, joins cat and Christian, in one common brotherhood of she broke in with an irritated piece, the cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognize and confess that there is no such thing as disease or pain or death. I am full of imaginary tortures, I said, but I do not think I could be any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get rid of them? There is no occasion to get rid of them since they do not exist. They are illusions, propagated by matter, and matter has no existence. There is no such thing as matter. Sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive. It seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on it. Explain. Well, for instance, if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter propagate things? In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were any such thing as a smile. It is quite simple, she said. The fundamental propositions of Christian science explain it, and they are summarized in the four following self-evident propositions. One, God is all in all. Two, God is good. Good is mind. Three, God, spirit, being all, nothing is matter. Four, life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil sin, disease. There. Now you see. It seemed nebulous. It did not seem to say anything about the difficulty in hand, how nonexistent matter can propagate illusions. I said with some hesitancy, does it explain? Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it. With a budding hope I asked her to do it backward. Very well. Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good, omnipotent God. Life matter is nothing all, being, spirit, God, mind, is good. Good is God. All in all is God. There. Do you understand now? It is plainer than it was before. Still, well, could you try it some more ways? As many as you like it always means the same. Interchanged in any way you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it means when put in any other way, because it is perfect. You can jumble it all up and it makes no difference. It always comes out the way it was before. It was a marvelous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de force it is without a mate. It defies alike the simple, the concrete, and the occult. It seems to be a corker. I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it. A what? A wonderful structure, combination, so to speak, or profound thoughts, unthinkable ones. It is true. Read backwards or forwards or perpendicularly or at any given angle these four propositions will always be found to agree in statement and proof. Ah, proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree. They agree with anyway they agree. I notice that. But what is it that they prove? I mean in particular. Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove one, God, principle, life, truth, love, soul, spirit, mind. Do you get that? I—well, I seem to. Go on, please. Two. Man. God's universal idea. Individual. Perfect. Eternal. Is it clear? It—I think so. Continue. Three. Idea. An image in mind. The immediate object of understanding. There it is. The whole sublime arcana of Christian science in a nutshell. Do you find a weak place in it anywhere? Well, no, it seems strong. Very well, there is more. Those three constitute the scientific definition of immortal mind. Next we have the scientific definition of mortal mind. Thus, first degree, depravity. One. Physical. Passions and appetites. Fear. Depraved will. Pride. Envy. Deceit. Hatred. Revenge. Sin. Disease. Death. Fantasms, madam. Unrealities, as I understand it. Everyone. Second degree. Evil disappearing. One. Moral. Honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear? Crystal. Third degree. Spiritual salvation. One. Spiritual. Faith, wisdom, power, purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and coordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this third degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian science, mortal mind disappears. Not earlier? No. Not until the teaching and preparation for the third degree are completed. It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian science effectively and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship, as I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the process of the second degree, because there would still be remains of mind left, and therefore, but I interrupted you. You were about to further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and disintegrations affected by the third degree. It is very interesting. Go on, please. Yes, as I was saying, in this third degree mortal mind disappears. Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as to make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. That God and his idea may be to us what divinity really is, and must of necessity be, all inclusive. It is beautiful. And with that exhaustive exactness your choice and arrangement of words confirms and establishes what you have claimed for the powers and functions of the third degree. The second could probably produce only temporary absence of mind. It is reserved to the third, to make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the second could have a kind of meaning, a sort of deceptive semblance of it, whereas it is only under the magic of the third that that defect would disappear. Also without doubt it is the third degree that contributes another remarkable specialty to Christian science, these ease and flow and lavishness of words and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must be a special reason for this. Yes, God all, all God, good God, non-matter, maturation, spirit, bones, truth. That explains it. There is nothing in Christian science that is not explicable, for God is one, time is one, individuality is one, and may be one of a series, one of many, as an individual man, individual horse, whereas God is one, not of a series, but one alone and without an equal. These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does Christian science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to incidental reflection? Christian science reverses the seeming relation of soul and body as astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar system and makes body tributary to mind. As it is in the earth which is in motion while the sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise one finds it impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so the body is but the humble servant of the restful mind, though it seems otherwise to finite sense, but we shall never understand this while we admit that soul is in body or mind in matter and that man is included in non-intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal, and man coexists with and reflects soul, for the all in all is the altogether, and the altogether embraces the all one, soul-mind, mind-soul, love, spirit, bones, liver, one of a series, alone and without an equal. It is very curious the effect which Christian science has upon the verbal bowels, particularly the third degree. It makes one think of a dictionary with the cholera, but I only thought this, I did not say it. What is the origin of Christian science? Is it a gift of God or did it just happen? In a sense it is a gift of God, that is to say its powers are from Him, but the credit of the discovery of the powers and what they are for is due to an American lady. Indeed, when did this occur? In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death disappeared from the earth to return no more for ever. That is, the fancies for which those terms stand disappeared. The things themselves had never existed, therefore as soon as it was perceived that there were no such things they were easily banished. The history and nature of the great discovery are set down in the book here, and did the lady write the book? Yes, she wrote it all herself. The title is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. For she explains the scriptures they were not understood before, not even by the twelve disciples. She begins thus, I will read it to you. But she had forgotten to bring her glasses. Well, it is no matter, she said. I remember the words, indeed all Christian scientists know the book by heart. It is necessary in our practice. We should otherwise make mistakes and do harm. She begins thus, in the year 1866 I discovered the science of metaphysical healing and named it Christian science, and she says, quite beautifully I think, through Christian science religion and medicine are inspired with a divine or nature and essence. Fresh opinions are given to faith and understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God. Her very words. It is elegant, and it is a fine thought to marrying religion to medicine instead of medicine to the undertaker in the old way, for religion and medicine properly belong together. They being the basis of all spiritual and physical health. What kind of medicine do you give for the ordinary diseases, such as we never give medicine in any circumstances whatever, we—but madam, it says I don't care what it says, don't wish to talk about it. I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention seemed in some way inconsistent, and there are no inconsistencies in Christian science. The thing is impossible, for the science is absolute. It cannot be otherwise, since it proceeds directly from the all in all and the everything in which, also soul, bones, truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is mathematics purified from material dross and made spiritual. I can see that, but it rests upon the immovable basis of an apodictical principle. The word flattened itself against my mind, trying to get in, and disordered me a little. And before I could inquire into its pertinency, she was already throwing the needed light. This apodictical principle is the absolute principle of scientific mind-healing, the sovereign omnipotence which delivers the children of men from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flashes ere to. Surely not every ill, every decay, every one. There are no exceptions. There is no such thing as decay. It is an unreality. It has no existence. But without your glasses, your failing eyesight does not permit you to—my eyesight cannot fail. Nothing can fail. The mind is master, and the mind permits no retrogression. She was under the inspiration of the third degree. Therefore there could be no profit in continuing this part of the subject. I shifted to other ground, and inquired further concerning the discoverer of the science. Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after a long study and calculation, like America? The comparisons are not respectful, since they refer to trivialities, but let it pass. I will answer in the discoverer's own words. God had been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a final revelation of the absolute principle of scientific mind-healing. Many years, how many? Eighteen centuries. All God, God good, good God, truth, bones, liver—one of a series alone and without equal. It is amazing. You may well say it, sir, yet it is but the truth. This American lady, our revered and sacred founder, is distinctly referred to and her coming prophesied in the Twelfth Chapter of the Apocalypse. She could not have been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning her name. How strange, how wonderful! I will quote her own words for her key to the scriptures. The Twelfth Chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in connection with this nineteenth century. There. Do you note that? Think. Note it well. But, um, what does it mean? Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again. In the opening of the sixth seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam, there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the present age, thus Revelation 12.1, and there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman closed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. That is our head, our chief, our discoverer of Christian science. Nothing can be plainer, nothing sureer. And note this, Revelation 12.6, and the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared of God. That is Boston. I recognize it, madam. These are sublime things and impressive. I never understood these passages before. Please go on with the—with the proofs. Very well. Listen. And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, closed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire, and he had in his hand a little book. A little book, merely a little book. Could words be modester? Yet how stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was? Was it? I hold it in my hand. Christian science. Love. Livers. Lights. Bones. Truth. Kidneys. One of a series. Alone and without equal. It is beyond imagination and wonder. Here are Founder's eloquent words. Then will a voice from harmony cry, Go and take the little book. Take it and eat it up, And it shall make thy belly bitter, But it shall be, in thy mouth, sweet as honey. Mortal obey the heavenly of angel. Take up divine science. Read it from beginning to end, study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet at its first taste, when it heals you, but murmur not over truth, if you find its digestion bitter. You now know the history of our dear and holy science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go now, but give yourself no uneasiness. I will give you absent treatment from now till I go to bed. End of Part 2 Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy This is Part 3 and 4 of Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain Section 8, Part 3 and 4 of Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and disappearing from view. The good word took a brisk start now and went on quite swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching this way and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every minute or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours and then stopped. The connections had all been made. All except dislocations. There were only seven of these—hips, shoulders, knees, neck. So that was soon over. One after another they slipped into their sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor. I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach ache and a cold in the head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands of a woman who I did not know and in whose ability to successfully treat mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified by the fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the first, along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of relief, and indeed the ache was even growing worse and worse and more and more bitter now, probably on account of the protracted abstention from food and drink. The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man, and full of hope and professional interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic, in fact quite horsy, and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment, but it was not in his line, so out of delicacy I did not press it. He looked at my teeth and examined my hawk, and said my age and general condition were favorable to energetic measures. Therefore he would give me something to turn the stomach ache into the butts, and the cold in the head into the blind staggers. Then he should be on his own beat and would know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran mash, and set a dipperful of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in twenty-four hours or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then took his leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and in any quantity I liked, but I was not hungry any more and did not care for food. I took up the Christian scientist book and read half of it, then took a dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences were full of interest and adventure, all through the rumblings and grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of the ache into the butts, and the cold into the blind staggers, I could note the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the drench and the literature, and often I could tell which was ahead and could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others were separate, though not when they were mixed. For when a brand mash and an eclectic drench are mixed together, they look just like the apodictical principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish was reached at last, the evolutions were complete and a fine success, but I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer materials. I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the stomach ache into the butts, but I think one could develop the blind staggers out of the literature by itself. Also that blind staggers produced in this way would be of a better quality and more lasting than any produced by the artificial processes of a horse-doctor. For of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often compel the effects of eloquence even when the words do not seem to have any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they understand the book. I know this, for I have talked with them. But in all cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world. Nothing actually existent, but mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their testimony. When these people talk about Christian science, they do as Mrs. Fuller did. They do not use their own language, but the books. They pour out the books showy incoherences and leave you to find out later that they were not originating, but merely quoting. They seem to know the volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible. Another Bible, perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental desolations of the third degree, and I feel sure that none but the membership of that degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it, you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and irracular speech delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get, but not the particulars. Or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a vigorous instrument which is making a noise it thinks is a tune, but which to persons not members of the band is only the martial tooting of a trombone, and merely stirs the soul through the noise but does not convey a meaning. The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a heavenly origin. They have no blood kin in the earth. It is more than human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finally superior, and so eerily content with one's performance, without ever presenting anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of evidence, and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it thunders out the startling words, I have proved, so and so. It takes the pope and all the great guns of his church in battery assembled to authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a soul and single un-clarified passage of Scripture. And this, at vast cost of time and study and reflection, but the author of this book is superior to all that. She finds the whole Bible in an un-clarified condition, and at small expense of time and no expense of mental effort, she clarifies it from lid to lid, reorganizes and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and establishes them with formulae which you cannot tell from let there be light, and here you have it. It is the first time since the dawn days of creation that a voice has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent confidence and command. End of Part 3 Part 4 A word upon a question of authorship. Not that quite, but rather a question of emendation and revision. We know that the Bible Annex was not written by Mrs. Eddy, but was handed down to her 1800 years ago by the Angel of the Apocalypse. But did she translate alone or did she have help? There seems to be evidence that she had help, for there are four several copyrights on it—1875, 1885, 1890, and 1894. It did not come down in English, for in that language it could not have acquired copyright. There were no copyright laws 18 centuries ago, and in my opinion no English language, at least up there. This makes it substantially certain that the Annex is a translation. Then was not the first translation complete? If it was, on what grounds were the later copyrights granted? I surmise that the first translation was poor, and that a friend or friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the sentences are smooth and plausible, though they do not mean anything. I think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English today, and this is argument that she never could. I am not able to guess who did the mending, but I think it was not done by any member of the Eddy Trust, nor by the editors of the Christian Science Journal, for their English is not much better than Mrs. Eddy's. However, as to the main point, it is certain that Mrs. Eddy did not doctor the Annex's English herself. Her original, spontaneous, undocked English furnishes ample proof of this. Here are samples from recent articles from her unappeasable pen. Double-columned with them are a couple of passages from the Annex. It will be seen that they throw light. The italics are mine. 1. What plague spot or bas-s-li were sick, gnawing, sick, at the heart of this metropolis, and bringing it on bended knee? Why it was an institute that had entered its vitals, sick, that, among other things, taught games, etc. Page 670, C. S. Journal. Article entitled A Narrative by Mary Baker G. Eddy. 2. Parks sprang up, sick. Electric street cars run, sick merrily through several streets, concrete sidewalks, and macadamized roads dotted, sick the place, etc. Ibbid. 3. Shorn, sick. Of its suburbs, it had indeed little left to admire, save to, sick, such as fancy, a skeleton above ground, breathing, sick, slowly through a barren, sick breast. Ibbid. 4. Therefore the efficient remedy is to destroy the patient's unfortunate belief, by both silently and audibly arguing the opposite facts in regard to harmonious being representing man as healthful instead of diseased, and showing that it is impossible for matter to suffer to feel pain or heat, to be thirsty or sick. Page 375, Annex. Man is never sick, for mind is not sick, and matter cannot be. A false belief is both the tempter and the tempted, the sin and the sinner, the disease and its cause. It is well to be calm in sickness, to be hopeful is still better. But to understand that sickness is not real, and that truth can destroy it is best of all, for it is the universal and perfect remedy. Chapter 12 Annex. You notice the contrast between the smooth, plausible, elegant, addled English of the doctored Annex, and the lumbering, ragged, ignorant output of the translator's natural spontaneous and unmedicated penwork. The English of the Annex has been slicked up by a very industrious and painstaking hand, but it was not Mrs. Eddie's. If Mrs. Eddie really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft was exactly in harmony with the English of her plague spot or basili, which were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no resemblance to the book as we have it now, now that the salaried polisher has wholly stoned all of the genuine Eddie tease out of it. Will the plague spot article go into a volume just as it stands? I think not. I think the polisher will take off his coat and vest and cravat, and demonstrate over it a couple of weeks and sweat it into a shape something like the following. And then Mrs. Eddie will publish it and leave people to believe that she did the polishing herself. One, what injury's influence was it that was affecting the city's morals? It was a social club which propagated an interest in idle amusements, disseminating a knowledge of games, et cetera. Two, by the magic of the new and nobler influence, the sterile spaces were transformed into wooded parks. The merry electric car replaced the melancholy bus, smooth concrete, the tempestuous plank sidewalk, the macadamized road, the primitive corduroy, et cetera. Three, its pleasant suburbs gone, there was little left to admire save the wrecked graveyard with its uncanny exposures. The annex contains one soul and solitary humorous remark. There is a most elaborate and voluminous index, and it is preceded by this note. This index will enable the student to find any thought or idea contained in the book. End of Part 4 of Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddie. And End of Section 8 of The Man Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is Part 5 and 6 of Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddie. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Section 9. Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddie. Part 5. No one doubts, certainly not I, that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill. They know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor will make the bread pill effective. Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look like it. In old times the king cured the king's evil by the touch of the royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footmen have done it? No, not in his own clothes. Disguised as the king could he have done it. I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure that it was not the king's touch that made the cure in any instance, but the patient's faith in the efficacy of a king's touch. Genuine and remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy, a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, Have faith! It is all that is necessary! And they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe tooth aches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practicing without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful, and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to know religious helps, know supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his makeup which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power issuing from himself. Within the last quarter of a century in America several sects of cures have appeared under various names, and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the mind cure, the faith cure, the prayer cure, the mental science cure, and the Christian science cure, and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old powerful instrument, the patient's imagination. Differing names but no difference in the process, but they do not give that instrument the credit. Each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others. They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it, and the faith cure and the prayer cure probably do no harm when they do no good since they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he wants to. But the others bar medicines and claim ability to cure every conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces alone. They claim ability to cure malignant cancer and other affections which have never been cured in the history of the race. There would seem to be an element of danger here, it has the look of claiming too much, I think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were claimed. I believe it might be shown that all the mind sects, except Christian science, have lucid intervals. Intervals in which they betray some diffidence, and in effect confess that they are not the equals of the deity. But if the Christian scientist even stops with being merely the equal of the deity, it is not clearly provable by his Christian science amended Bible. In the usual Bible the deity recognizes pain, disease, and death as facts, but the Christian scientist knows better, knows better and is not diffident about saying so. The Christian scientist was not able to cure my stomach ache and my cold, but the horse doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian science claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone and confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own way. The horse doctor charged me thirty croitzers, and I paid him. In fact I doubled it and gave him a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemized bill for a crate of broken bones mended in 234 places, one dollar per fracture. Nothing exists but mind. Nothing, she answered, all else is substanceless, all else is imaginary. I gave her an imaginary check, and now she is suing me for substantial dollars. It looks inconsistent. Part 6 Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now. Those of us who are not in the asylum and not demonstrably do there are nevertheless no doubt insane in one or two particulars. I think we must admit this, but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I think that when we all see one thing alike it is evidence that as regards that one thing our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are really several things which we do all see alike, things which we all accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level, that the sun gives light and heat, that fire consumes, that fog is damp, that six times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leave eight, that eight and seven are fifteen. These are perhaps the only things we are agreed about, but although they are so few they are of inestimable value because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them we know to be substantially sane, sufficiently sane, in the working essential sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them we know to be wholly insane and qualified for the asylum. Very well, the man who disputes none of them we can see to be entitled to go at large, but that is concession enough, we cannot go any further than that. For we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man is insane, just as insane as we are, just as insane as Shakespeare was, just as insane as the Pope is. We know exactly where to put our finger upon his insanity, it is where his opinion differs from ours. That is a simple rule and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unbiased Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane. Not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unbiased Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane because you never can prove anything to a lunatic, for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it. None but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect. In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad. To mention only a few. The atheist, the infidel, the agnostic, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Catholic and the other 115 Christian sects, the Presbyterian accepted, the 72 Mohammedan sects, the Buddhist, the Blavatsky Buddhist, the Nationalist, the Confucian, the Spiritualist, the 2000 East Indian sects, the Peculiar people, the Swedenborgians, the Shakers, the Millerites, the Mormons, the Lawrence Oliphant-Harrisites, the Grand Lamas people, the Monarchists, the Imperialists, the Democrats, the Republicans, but not the Mugwumps, the Mind-Curists, the Faith-Curists, the Mental Scientists, the Allopaths, the Homeopaths, the Electropaths, the—but there's no end to the list—there are millions of them, and all insane, each in his own way, insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but otherwise sane and rational. This should move us to be charitable toward one another's lunacies. I recognize that in his special belief the Christian scientist is insane, because he does not believe as I do, but I hail him as my mate and fellow because I am as insane as he, insane from his point of view, and his point of view is as authoritative as mine, and worth as much, that is to say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a great religious or political question the opinion of the dullest head in the world is worth the same as the opinion of the brightest head in the world—a brass farthing. How do we ride at this? Very simple. The affirmative opinion of a stupid man is neutralized by the negative opinion of his stupid neighbor. No decision is reached. The affirmative opinion of the intellectual giant Gladstone is neutralized by the negative opinion of the intellectual giant Cardinal Newman. No decision is reached. Opinions that prove nothing are, of course, without value. Any but a dead person knows that much. This obliges us to admit the truth of the unpalatable proposition just mentioned above, that in disputed matters political and religious, one man's opinion is worth no more than his peers, and hence it follows that no man's opinion possesses any real value. It is a humbling thought, but there's no way to get around it. All opinions upon these great subjects are brass farthing opinions. It is a mere plain simple fact, as clear and as certain as that eight and seven make fifteen, and by it we recognize that we are all insane as concerns those matters. If we were sane we should all see a political or religious doctrine alike. There would be no dispute. It would be a case of eight and seven, just as it is in heaven, where all are sane and none insane. There there is but one religion, one belief, the harmony is perfect, there is never a discordant note. Under protection of these preliminaries I suppose I may now repeat without offence that the Christian scientist is insane. I mean him no discourtesy, and I am not charging, nor even imagining, that he is insainer than the rest of the human race. I think he is more picturesquely insane than some of us. At the same time I am quite sure that in one important and splendid particular he is saner than is the vast bulk of the race. Why is he insane? I told you before, it is because his opinions are not ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other. It is the only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It is merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his little book, the one described in the previous article. The little book exposed in the sky eighteen centuries ago by the flaming angel of the Apocalypse, and handed down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy of New Hampshire, and translated by her word for word into English, with help of a polisher, and now published and distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a clear profit per volume above cost of seven hundred percent, a profit which distinctly belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse and let him collect it if he can, a little book which the C. S. very frequently calls by just that name, and always enclosed in quotation marks to keep its high origin exultantly in mind, a little book which explains and reconstructs and new paints and decorates the Bible and puts a mansard roof on it and a lightning rod and all the other modern improvements, a little book which for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly to it, and with half a century will hitch it in the rear, and thenceforth travel tandem itself in the lead in the coming great march of Christian scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet. Perhaps I am putting the tandem arrangement too far away, perhaps five years might be nearer the mark than fifty. For a Viennese lady told me last night that in the Christian Science Mosque in Boston she noticed some things which seemed to me to promise a shortening of the interval. On one side there was a display of texts from the New Testament signed with the saviour's initials J. C., and on the opposite side a display of texts from the little book signed with the author's mere initials, no, signed with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddie's name in full. Perhaps the angel of the apocalypse likes this kind of piracy. I made this remark lightly to a Christian scientist this morning, but he did not receive it lightly, but said it was justing upon holy things. He said there was no piracy, for the angel did not compose the book, he only brought it. God composed it. I could have retorted that it was a case of piracy just the same, that the displayed texts should be signed with the author's initials, and that to sign them with the translator's train of names was another case of jesting upon holy things. However I did not say these things, for this scientist was a large person, and although by his own doctrine we have no substance but our fictions and unrealities, I knew he could hit me an imaginary blow which would furnish me an imaginary pain, which could last me a week. The lady said that in that mosque there were two pulpits, and one of them was a man with a former Bible, and the other a woman with Mrs. Eddie's apocalyptic annex, and from these books the man and the woman were reading verse and verse about. Hungry ones thronged to hear the Bible read in connection with the textbook of Christian science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker G. Eddie. These are our holy preachers. They are the Word of God. Christian Science Journal, October 1898. Are these things picturesque? The Viennese lady told me that in a chapel of the mosque there was a picture or image of Mrs. Eddie, and that before it burns a never extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do you think it will be before the Christian scientist will be worshipping that image and praying to it? How long do you think it will be before it is claimed that Mrs. Eddie is a redeemer, a Christ, or Christ's equal? Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as our mother. How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the throne beside the Virgin, and later a step higher? First marry the Virgin and marry the Matron, later with a change of precedence, marry the Matron and marry the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his brushes. The new renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in the altar canvases a thousand times as much as the popes and their church ever spent on the old masters. For their riches were as poverty as compared with what is going to pour into the treasure chest of the Christian scientist's papacy by and by, let us not doubt it. We will examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A favorite subject of the new old master will be the first verse of the twelfth chapter of Revelation, a verse which Mrs. Eddie says, in her annex to the scriptures, has one distinctive feature which has special reference to the present age, and to her, as is rather pointedly indicated, and there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman closed with the sun and the moon under her feet, etc. The woman closed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddie. Is it insanity to believe that Christian scientism is destined to make the most formidable show that any new religion has made in the world since the birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that within a century from now it may stand second to Rome only in numbers and power in Christendom? If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove it is so, just yet, I think. There seems argument that it may come true. The Christian science boom is not yet five years old, yet already it has five hundred churches and one million members in America. It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally good one. Moreover, it is latterly spreading with a constantly accelerating swiftness. It has a better chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency than any other existing ism, for it has more to offer than any other. The past teaches us that, in order to succeed, a movement like this must not be a mere philosophy, it must be a religion. Also, that it must not claim entire originality, but content itself with passing for an improvement on an existing religion and show its hand later when strong and prosperous, like Mohammedanism. Next, there must be money, and plenty of it. Next, the power and authority and capital must be concentrated in the grip of a small and irresponsible clique, with nobody outside privileged to ask questions or find fault. Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook with some new and attractive advantages over the baits offered by the other religions. A new movement equipped with some of these endowments, like spiritualism, for instance, may count upon a considerable success. A new movement equipped with the bulk of them, like Mohammedanism, for instance, may count upon a widely extended conquest. Mormonism had all the requisites but one. It had nothing new and nothing valuable to bait with, and, besides, it appealed to the stupid and the ignorant only. Spiritualism lacked the important detail of concentration of money and authority in the hands of an irresponsible clique. The above equipment is excellent, admirable, powerful, but not perfect. There is yet another detail which is worth the whole of it, put together, and more. A detail which has never been joined, in the beginning of a religious movement, to a supremely good working equipment since the world began, until now, a new personage to worship. Christianity had the Savior, but at first and for generations it lacked money and concentrated power. In Mrs. Eddy Christian Science possesses the new personage for worship and, in addition, here in the very beginning, a working equipment that has not a flaw in it. In the beginning Mohammedanism had no money, and it has never had anything to offer its client but heaven. Nothing here below that was valuable. In addition to heaven hereafter, Christian Science has present health and a cheerful spirit offer for cash, and in comparison with his bribe all other this world bribes are poor and cheap. You recognize that this estimate is admissible, do you not? To whom does Bellamy's nationalism appeal? Necessarily to the few, people who read and dream and are compassionate and troubled for the poor and the hard-driven. To whom does spiritualism appeal? Necessarily to the few. Its boom has lasted for half a century, and I believe it claims short of four millions of adherents in America, who are attracted by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine and delicate isms. The few again, educated people, sensitively organized with superior mental endowments who seek lofty planes of thought and find their contentment there, and who are attracted by Christian Science? There is no limit. Its field is horizonless. Its appeal is as universal as is the appeal of Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich, the poor, the high, the low, the cultured, the ignorant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest, the vain, the wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the godless, the free man, the slave, the adult, the child. They who are ailing, they who have friends that are ailing. To mass it in a phrase, its clientele is the human race? Will it march? I think so. End of Part 6 of Christian Science in the Book of Mrs. Eddie. And end of Section 9 of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain.