The Autobiography of Mark Twain - Mark Twain (best english books to read .TXT) 📗

man was outside. He and my secretary were for the moment the center of attention⁠—she because of her solitariness in that sea of masculinity, and he because he had been defeated before folks, a thing which we all enjoy, even when we are West Side Young Christians and ought to let on that we don’t. The man looked down at my secretary⁠—anybody can do that without standing on a chair⁠—and he began pathetically⁠—I say began pathetically; the pathos of his manner and his words was confined to his beginning. He began on my secretary, then shifted to the crowd for a finish. He said, “I have been a member of this West Side Young Men’s Christian Association in good standing for seven years, and have always done the best I could, yet never once got any reward.” He paused half an instant, shot a bitter glance at the closed door, and added, with deep feeling, “It’s just my God damned luck.”

I think it damaged my speech for my secretary. The speech was well enough⁠—certainly better than the report of it in the papers⁠—but in spite of her compliments, I knew there was nothing in it so good as what she had heard outside; and by the delight which she exhibited in that outsider’s eloquence I knew that she knew it.

I will insert here a passage from the newspaper report, because it refers to Patrick.

Definition of a Gentleman

Mark Twain went on to speak of the man who left $10,000 to disseminate his definition of a gentleman. He denied that he had ever defined one, but said if he did he would include the mercifulness, fidelity, and justice the Scripture read at the meeting spoke of. He produced a letter from William Dean Howells, and said:

“He writes he is just sixty-nine, but I have known him longer than that. ‘I was born to be afraid of dying, not of getting old,’ he says. Well, I’m the other way. It’s terrible getting old. You gradually lose your faculties and fascinations and become troublesome. People try to make you think you are not. But I know I’m troublesome.

“Then he says no part of life is so enjoyable as the eighth decade. That’s true. I’ve just turned it, and I enjoy it very much. ‘If old men were not so ridiculous’⁠—Why didn’t he speak for himself? ‘But,’ he goes on, ‘they are ridiculous, and they are ugly.’ I never saw a letter with so many errors in it. Ugly! I was never ugly in my life! Forty years ago I was not so good-looking. A looking glass then lasted me three months. Now I can wear it out in two days.

“ ‘You’ve been up in Hartford burying poor old Patrick. I suppose he was old, too,’ says Mr. Howells. No, he was not old. Patrick came to us thirty-six years ago⁠—a brisk, lithe young Irishman. He was as beautiful in his graces as he was in his spirit, and he was as honest a man as ever lived. For twenty-five years he was our coachman, and if I were going to describe a gentleman in detail I would describe Patrick.

“At my own request I was his pallbearer with our old gardener. He drove me and my bride so long ago. As the little children came along he drove them, too. He was all the world to them, and for all in my house he had the same feelings of honor, honesty, and affection.

“He was sixty years old, ten years younger than I. Howells suggests he was old. He was not old. He had the same gracious and winning ways to the end. Patrick was a gentleman, and to him I would apply the lines:

“ ‘So may I be courteous to men, faithful to friends, True to my God, a fragrance in the path I trod.’ ”

At the funeral I saw Patrick’s family. I had seen no member of it for a good many years. The children were men and women. When I had seen them last they were little creatures. So far as I could remember I had not seen them since as little chaps they joined with ours, and with the children of the neighbors, in celebrating Christmas Eve around a Christmas tree in our house, on which occasion Patrick came down the chimney (apparently) disguised as Saint Nicholas, and performed the part to the admiration of the little and the big alike.

John, our old gardener, was a fellow pallbearer with me. The rest were Irish coachmen and laborers⁠—old friends of Patrick. The cathedral was half filled with people.

I spent the night at Twichell’s house, that night, and at noon next day at the Hartford Club I met, at a luncheon, eleven of my oldest friends⁠—Charley Clarke, editor of the Courant; Judge Hammersley of the Supreme Court; Colonel Cheney; Sam Dunham; Twichell; Rev. Dr. Parker; Charles E. Perkins; Archie Welsh. A deal of pretty jolly reminiscing was done, interspersed with mournings over beloved members of the old comradeship whose names have long ago been carved upon their gravestones.

Several things were told on Twichell illustrative of his wide catholicity of feeling and conduct, and I was able to furnish something in this line myself. Three or four years ago, when Sir Thomas Upton came over here to race for the America cup, I was invited to go with Mr. Rogers and a half a dozen other worldlings in Mr. Rogers’s yacht, the Kanawha, to see the race. Mr. Rogers is fond of Twichell and wanted to invite him to go also, but was afraid to do it because he thought Twichell would be uncomfortable among those worldings. I said I didn’t think that would be the case. I said Twichell was chaplain in a fighting brigade all through the Civil War, and was necessarily familiar with about all the different kinds of worldlings that could be started; so Mr. Rogers told me⁠—though with many misgivings⁠—to invite him, and that he would do his best to see that the worldlings should modify