The $30,000 Bequest - Mark Twain (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📗

hat to my life-long

friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread

over my heart, I say, in the language of Alabama, “You do me proud.”)

 

I stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but I did not mean

any harm. I saw by an item in the Boston ADVERTISER that a solemn,

serious critique on the English edition of my book had appeared

in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, and the idea of SUCH a literary

breakfast by a stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too

much for a naturally weak virtue, and I went home and burlesqued it—

reveled in it, I may say. I never saw a copy of the real SATURDAY

REVIEW criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed

to the printer. But when I did get hold of a copy, I found it

to be vulgar, awkwardly written, ill-natured, and entirely serious

and in earnest. The gentleman who wrote the newspaper paragraph

above quoted had not been misled as to its character.

 

If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him. No, I will not

kill him; I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one,

and let any New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I

have above made as to the authorship of the article in question are

entirely true. Perhaps I may get wealthy at this, for I am willing

to take all the bets that offer; and if a man wants larger odds,

I will give him all he requires. But he ought to find out whether

I am betting on what is termed “a sure thing” or not before he

ventures his money, and he can do that by going to a public

library and examining the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th,

which contains the real critique.

 

Bless me, some people thought that I was the “sold” person!

 

P.S.—I cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory

thing of all—this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition,

with his happy, chirping confidence. It is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER:

 

Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar.

Nine smokers out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article,

three for a quarter, to fifty-cent Partaga, if kept in ignorance

of the cost of the latter. The flavor of the Partaga is too delicate

for palates that have been accustomed to Connecticut seed leaf.

So it is with humor. The finer it is in quality, the more danger

of its not being recognized at all. Even Mark Twain has been taken

in by an English review of his INNOCENTS ABROAD. Mark Twain is by

no means a coarse humorist, but the Englishman’s humor is so much

finer than his, that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and “lafts

most consumedly.”

 

A man who cannot learn stands in his own light. Hereafter, when I

write an article which I know to be good, but which I may have reason

to fear will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much,

coming from an American, I will aver that an Englishman wrote it

and that it is copied from a London journal. And then I will occupy

a back seat and enjoy the cordial applause.

 

(Still later)

 

Mark Twain at last sees that the SATURDAY REVIEW’S criticism of his

INNOCENTS ABROAD was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the

thought of having been so badly sold. He takes the only course left him,

and in the last GALAXY claims that HE wrote the criticism himself,

and published it in THE GALAXY to sell the public. This is ingenious,

but unfortunately it is not true. If any of our readers will take

the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original

article in the SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, which, on comparison,

will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY.

The best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold,

and say no more about it.

 

The above is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER, and is a falsehood.

Come to the proof. If the ENQUIRER people, through any agent,

will produce at THE GALAXY office a London SATURDAY REVIEW

of October 8th, containing an article which, on comparison,

will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY,

I will pay to that agent five hundred dollars cash. Moreover, if at

any specified time I fail to produce at the same place a copy

of the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, containing a lengthy

criticism upon the INNOCENTS ABROAD, entirely different, in every

paragraph and sentence, from the one I published in THE GALAXY,

I will pay to the ENQUIRER agent another five hundred dollars cash.

I offer Sheldon & Co., publishers, 500 Broadway, New York,

as my “backers.” Any one in New York, authorized by the ENQUIRER,

will receive prompt attention. It is an easy and profitable way

for the ENQUIRER people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful,

deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs. Will they swallow

that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to THE

GALAXY office. I think the Cincinnati ENQUIRER must be edited

by children.

***

A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY

 

Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902.

 

THE HON. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, WASHINGTON, D. C.:

 

Sir,—Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached

an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in

straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order:

 

Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace,

gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred.

 

Twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking.

 

Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866,

eligible for kindlings.

 

Please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in Riverdale

at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to

 

Your obliged servant,

 

Mark Twain, Who will be very grateful, and will vote right.

***

AMENDED OBITUARIES

 

TO THE EDITOR:

 

Sir,—I am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three

years away. Necessarily, I must go soon. It is but matter-of-course

wisdom, then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in

order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness,

in place of waiting until the last day, when, as we have often seen,

the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been

marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste

of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic

to work together harmoniously, taking turn about and giving each

other friendly assistance—not perhaps in fielding, which could

hardly be expected, but at least in the minor offices of keeping

game and umpiring; by consequence of which conflict of interests

and absence of harmonious action a draw has frequently resulted

where this ill-fortune could not have happened if the houses had been

set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in season,

and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper to it.

 

In setting my earthly house in order I find it of moment that I

should attend in person to one or two matters which men in my

position have long had the habit of leaving wholly to others,

with consequences often most regrettable. I wish to speak of only

one of these matters at this time: Obituaries. Of necessity,

an Obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand

as by that of the subject of it. In such a work it is not the Facts

that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist

shall throw upon them, the meaning which he shall dress them in,

the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgments

which he shall deliver upon them. The Verdicts, you understand:

that is the danger-line.

 

In considering this matter, in view of my approaching change,

it has seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible,

to acquire, by courtesy of the press, access to my standing obituaries,

with the privilege—if this is not asking too much—of editing,

not their Facts, but their Verdicts. This, not for the present profit,

further than as concerns my family, but as a favorable influence

usable on the Other Side, where there are some who are not friendly

to me.

 

With this explanation of my motives, I will now ask you of your

courtesy to make an appeal for me to the public press. It is my

desire that such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me

lying in their pigeonholes, with a view to sudden use some day,

will not wait longer, but will publish them now, and kindly send

me a marked copy. My address is simply New York City—I have no

other that is permanent and not transient.

 

I will correct them—not the Facts, but the Verdicts—striking out

such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the Other Side,

and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character.

I should, of course, expect to pay double rates for both the omissions

and the substitutions; and I should also expect to pay quadruple

rates for all obituaries which proved to be rightly and wisely worded

in the originals, thus requiring no emendations at all.

 

It is my desire to leave these Amended Obituaries neatly bound

behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family,

and as an heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite

commercial value for my remote posterity.

 

I beg, sir, that you will insert this Advertisement (1t-eow, agate,

inside), and send the bill to

 

Yours very respectfully.

 

Mark Twain.

 

P.S.—For the best Obituary—one suitable for me to read in public,

and calculated to inspire regret—I desire to offer a Prize,

consisting of a Portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink

without previous instructions. The ink warranted to be the kind

used by the very best artists.

***

A MONUMENT TO ADAM

 

Some one has revealed to the TRIBUNE that I once suggested

to Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up

a monument to Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project.

There is more to it than that. The matter started as a joke,

but it came somewhat near to materializing.

 

It is long ago—thirty years. Mr. Darwin’s DESCENT OF MAN has been

in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised

by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing

the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had

left Adam out altogether. We had monkeys, and “missing links,”

and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no Adam. Jesting with

Mr. Beecher and other friends in Elmira, I said there seemed to be

a likelihood that the world would discard Adam and accept the monkey,

and that in the course of time Adam’s very name would be forgotten

in the earth; therefore this calamity ought to be averted;

a monument would accomplish this, and Elmira ought not to waste

this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor and herself a credit.

 

Then the unexpected happened. Two bankers came forward and took

hold of the matter—not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they

saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town.

The project had seemed gently humorous before—it was more than

that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it.

The bankers discussed the monument with