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12 - Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch by William M. Clemens · Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch

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Speaker 1: This is chapter twelve of Mark Twain, His Life and Work,
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Speaker 1: a biographical sketch by William M. Clemens. This LibriVox recording
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Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Chapter twelve Gems from Mark Twain,
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Speaker 1: read by John Greenman, collected from his published works, fugitive sketches, lectures, speeches,
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Speaker 1: and correspondents. Be virtuous and you will be eccentric. The
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Speaker 1: train is profusely decorated with tunnels. A tortoise shell cat
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Speaker 1: having a fit in a platter of tomatoes figures stew
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Speaker 1: out of me, just as natural as the otter of
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Speaker 1: roses out of the otter. There is no bird or
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Speaker 1: cow or anything that uses as good grammar as a
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Speaker 1: blue jay. I would give a cent to hear Ingersoll
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Speaker 1: on Moses, but I'd give ten dollars to hear Moses
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Speaker 1: on Ingersoll. One could see the dress creeping along the
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Speaker 1: floor some time after the woman was gone. When the
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Speaker 1: musing spider steps onto the red hot shovel, he first
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Speaker 1: exhibits wild surprise, then he shrivels. I left my rheumatism there. Baden,
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Speaker 1: Baden is welcome to it. It was little, but it
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Speaker 1: was all I had to give. I should liked to
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Speaker 1: leave something more catching, but it was not in my power.
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Speaker 1: I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones.
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Speaker 1: I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with
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Speaker 1: good ones. I fired old, stale jokes into him, and
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Speaker 1: peppered him fore and aft with red hot ones. I
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Speaker 1: warmed up to my work and assaulted him on the
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Speaker 1: right and left in front and behind. I fumed and
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Speaker 1: charged and ranted till I was sick and frantic and furious.
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Speaker 1: But I never moved him once. I never started a
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Speaker 1: smile or a tear, never a ghost of a smile,
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Speaker 1: and never a suspicion of moisture. He was deaf and dumb,
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Speaker 1: and blind as a badger. He was deeply and sincerely pious,
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Speaker 1: and swore like a fishwoman. He was frescoed from head
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Speaker 1: to heel with pictures and mottoes, tattooed in red and
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Speaker 1: blue India ink. There was no hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses
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Speaker 1: on the pier. I said it was like being in heaven.
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Speaker 1: Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes over it broods the
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Speaker 1: spell of a curse that has withered its fields and
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Speaker 1: fettered its energies. Formerly to be a Californian was to
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Speaker 1: be a speculator. A man could not help it. One
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Speaker 1: man tried to be otherwise, but he was only kicking
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Speaker 1: against fate, while everybody was wild with a spirit of
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Speaker 1: speculation and full of plans for making sudden fortunes. He
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Speaker 1: said he would farm along quietly and slowly, gain a
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Speaker 1: modest competence, and so be happy. But his first crop
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Speaker 1: of onions happened to be about the only onions produced
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Speaker 1: that year. He sold it for one hundred thousand dollars
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Speaker 1: and retired a small company. But small companies are pleasantest.
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Speaker 1: He was full of blessed egotism and placid self importance,
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Speaker 1: but he didn't know as much as a three m
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Speaker 1: quad a cat that eat up an entire box of
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Speaker 1: sidelets powders, and then hadn't any more judgment than to
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Speaker 1: go and take a drink. It is the nature of
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Speaker 1: woman to ask trivial, irrelevant and pursuing questions, questions that
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Speaker 1: pursue you from a beginning in nothing to a run
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Speaker 1: to cover in nowhere. We walked out into the grass grown,
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Speaker 1: fragment strewn court beyond the parthenon. It startled us every
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Speaker 1: now and then to see a stony white face stare
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Speaker 1: suddenly up at us, out of the grass with its dead.
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Speaker 1: The place seemed alive with ghosts. I half expected to
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Speaker 1: see the Athenian heroes of twenty centuries ago glide out
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Speaker 1: of the shadows and steal into the old temple they
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Speaker 1: knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride at sea.
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Speaker 1: Now came the resurrection hour. The births gave up their dead.
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Speaker 1: These pale specters in plug hats file up. The companion way.
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Speaker 1: Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments,
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Speaker 1: notably those of the violin, but it seems to set
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Speaker 1: a piano's teeth on edge. I am a Yankee of
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Speaker 1: the Yankees, a practical man, nearly barren of sentiment or poetry.
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Speaker 1: In other words, my father was a blacksmith, my uncle
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Speaker 1: was a horse doctor, and I was both. He found
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Speaker 1: that the education of the nineteenth century is plenty good
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Speaker 1: enough capital to go into business in the sixth century with,
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Speaker 1: and the next year he was running the kingdom all
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Speaker 1: by himself on a moderate royalty of forty percent. There
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Speaker 1: didn't seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery
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Speaker 1: to bait a fish hook. But you didn't mind that
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Speaker 1: after a little while, for you saw that brains were
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Speaker 1: not needed in a society like that, and would have
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Speaker 1: marred its symmetry and spoiled it. This vile bit of
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Speaker 1: human rubbish. Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct. A
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Speaker 1: forlorn dog with bowed head and tail withdrawn from service.
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Speaker 1: When a man has been fifty years at sea, he
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Speaker 1: is only a gray and bearded child. He was a
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Speaker 1: man with a hair lip and a pure heart, and
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Speaker 1: everybody said he was true as steel to the Indian.
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Speaker 1: Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre,
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Speaker 1: but they are more deadly in the long run. They
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Speaker 1: appointed me clerk of the Committee on Concology, and then
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Speaker 1: allowed me no amanuensis, to play billiards with. If there
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Speaker 1: was a horse race, you'd find him flush, or you'd
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Speaker 1: find him busted at the end of it. If there
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Speaker 1: was a dog fight, he'd bet on it. If there
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Speaker 1: was a cat fight, he'd bet on it. If there
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Speaker 1: was a chicken fight, he'd bet on it. Why if
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Speaker 1: there were two birds sitting on a fence, he would
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Speaker 1: bet you which one would fly first. If I had
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Speaker 1: another cold in the head, and there was no course
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Speaker 1: left me but to take either an earthquake or a
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Speaker 1: court of warm salt water. I would take my chances
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Speaker 1: on the earthquake. Ah to think of it, only to
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Speaker 1: think of it, the poor old faithful creature, For she
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Speaker 1: was so faithful. Would you believe it? She had been
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Speaker 1: a servant in that self same house and that self
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Speaker 1: same family for twenty seven years come Christmas, and never
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Speaker 1: a cross word, and never a lick. And oh, to
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Speaker 1: think she should meet such a death at last, A
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Speaker 1: sitting over the red hot stove at three o'clock in
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Speaker 1: the morning and went to sleep, and fell on it
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Speaker 1: and was actually roasted, not just frizzled up a bit,
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Speaker 1: but literally roasted to a crisp poor faithful creature, how
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Speaker 1: she was cooked. I am but a poor woman. But
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Speaker 1: even if I have to scrimp to do it, I
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Speaker 1: will put up a tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave.
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Speaker 1: And mister Riley, if you would have the goodness to
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Speaker 1: think up a little epitaph to put on it, which
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Speaker 1: would sort of describe the awful way in which she
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Speaker 1: met her put it. Well done, good and faithful servant,
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Speaker 1: said Riley, and never smiled. The less a man knows,
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Speaker 1: the bigger noise he makes, and the higher salary he commands.
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Speaker 1: Who can join in the heartless libel that says woman
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Speaker 1: is extravagant in dress, when he can look back and
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Speaker 1: call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed
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Speaker 1: in her modification of the highland costume. He buys the
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Speaker 1: original pig for a dollar and a half and feeds
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Speaker 1: him forty dollars worth of corn, and then sells him
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Speaker 1: for about nine dollars. This is the only crop he
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Speaker 1: ever makes any money on. He loses on the corn,
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Speaker 1: but he makes seven and a half on the hog.
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Speaker 1: He stood bewildered a moment, with a sense of goneness
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Speaker 1: on him, like one who finds himself suddenly overboard upon
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Speaker 1: a midnight sea, and beholds the ship pass into shrouding gloom,
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Speaker 1: while the dreadful conviction falls upon his soul that he
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Speaker 1: has not been missed. Just a hunk of brains, That's
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Speaker 1: what he was. He will eat a man, he will
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Speaker 1: eat a bible. He will eat anything between a man
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Speaker 1: and a bible. He wrote with impressive flatulence and soaring confidence,
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Speaker 1: upon the vastest subjects but puffing alms, gifts of wedding cake,
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Speaker 1: salty ice cream, abnormal watermelons, and sweet potatoes. The size
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Speaker 1: of your leg was his best hold. Tom appeared on
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Speaker 1: the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long
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Speaker 1: handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him,
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Speaker 1: and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty
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Speaker 1: yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him
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Speaker 1: seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped
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Speaker 1: his brush and passed it along the topmost plank, repeated
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Speaker 1: the operation, did it again, compared the insignificant whitewashed streak
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Speaker 1: with the far reaching continent of un whitewashed fence, and
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Speaker 1: sat down on the tree box, discouraged. It was just
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Speaker 1: like a new author. They always think that they know
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Speaker 1: more than anybody else when they are getting out their
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Speaker 1: first book. For weeks, she nursed her grief in silence,
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Speaker 1: while the roses faded from her cheeks, and through it
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Speaker 1: all she clung to the hope that some day the
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Speaker 1: old love would bloom again in Reginald's heart and he
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Speaker 1: would write to her. But the long summer days dragged
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Speaker 1: wearily along, and still no letter came. The newspapers teemed
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Speaker 1: with stories of battle and carnage, and eagerly she read them,
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Speaker 1: but always with the same result. The tears welled up
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Speaker 1: and blurred the closing lines. The name she sought was
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Speaker 1: looked for in vain, and the dull aching returned to
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Speaker 1: her sinking heart. Letters to the other girls sometimes contained
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Speaker 1: brief mention of him, and presented always the picture of him,
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Speaker 1: a morose, unsmiling, desperate man, always in the thickest of
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Speaker 1: the fight, begrimed with powder, and moving calm and unscathed
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Speaker 1: through tempests of shot and shell, as if he bore
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Speaker 1: a charmed life, a cross between a tired mud turtle
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Speaker 1: and a crippled hearse horse. He means well, but artis
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Speaker 1: folly to him. He only understands groceries. His strawberries would
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Speaker 1: be a comfortable success if the robins would eat turnips,
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Speaker 1: but they won't, and hence the difficulty. Having forgotten to
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Speaker 1: mention it sooner, I will remark in conclusion that the
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Speaker 1: ages of the Siamese twins are respectively fifty one and
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Speaker 1: fifty three years. I found the brave fellow in a
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Speaker 1: profound French calm. I say French calm, because French calmness
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Speaker 1: and English calmness have points of difference. He was moving
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Speaker 1: swiftly back and forth among the debris of his furniture,
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Speaker 1: now and then, staving chance fragments of it across the
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Speaker 1: room with his foot, grinding a constant grist of curses
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Speaker 1: through his set teeth, and halting every little while to
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Speaker 1: deposit another handful of his hair on the pile which
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Speaker 1: he had been building of it on the table. The
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Speaker 1: place is as dark as the inside of an infidel.
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Speaker 1: She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate
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Speaker 1: got down, and so saying, he turned his face to
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Speaker 1: the wall and gave up the ghost. We write frankly
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Speaker 1: and fearlessly, but then we modify before we print. Oh,
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Speaker 1: I know him, A sallow faced, red headed fellow with
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Speaker 1: a little scull are on the side of his throat,
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Speaker 1: like a splinter under the flesh. A woman who could
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Speaker 1: face the devil himself or a mouse, loses her grip
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Speaker 1: and goes all to pieces in front of a flash
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Speaker 1: of lightning. He was a man of middle size and
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Speaker 1: compact frame, and when he was thinking deeply, he had
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Speaker 1: a way of knitting his brows and tapping his forehead
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Speaker 1: reflectively with his finger, which impressed you at once with
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Speaker 1: the conviction that you stood in the presence of a
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Speaker 1: person of no common order. The poem is smooth and blubbery.
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Speaker 1: It reads like buttermilk gurgling from a jug. A sincere
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Speaker 1: compliment is always grateful to a young lady, so long
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Speaker 1: as you don't try to knock her down with it.
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Speaker 1: Cain is branded a murderer so heartlessly and unanimously in America,
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Speaker 1: only because he was neither a Democrat nor a Republican,
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Speaker 1: a long, cadaverous creature with lanky locks hanging down to
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Speaker 1: his shoulders and a week's stubble bristling from the hills
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Speaker 1: and valleys of his face. Epitaphs are cheap, and they
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Speaker 1: do a poor chap a world of good after he
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Speaker 1: is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he
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Speaker 1: was alive. I wish they were used more. I do
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Speaker 1: not know how it came about exactly, but gradually we
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Speaker 1: appeared to melt down and run together conversationally speaking, and
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Speaker 1: then everything went along as comfortably as clockwork. Your conscience
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Speaker 1: is a nuisance. A conscience is like a child. If
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Speaker 1: you pet it and play with it, and let it
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Speaker 1: have everything at once, it becomes spoiled and intrudes on
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Speaker 1: all of your amusements and most of your griefs. Treat
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Speaker 1: your your conscience as you would treat anything else. When
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Speaker 1: it is rebellious. Spank it, be severe with it, Argue
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Speaker 1: with it. Prevent it from coming to play with you
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Speaker 1: at all hours, and you will secure a good conscience,
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Speaker 1: that is to say, a properly trained one. A spoiled
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Speaker 1: conscience simply destroys all the pleasure in life. I think
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Speaker 1: I have reduced mine to order. At least I haven't
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Speaker 1: heard from it for some time. Perhaps I've killed it
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Speaker 1: through over severity. It's wrong to kill a child. But
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Speaker 1: in spite of all I have said, a conscience differs
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Speaker 1: from a child in many ways. Perhaps it is best
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Speaker 1: when it is dead. End of Chapter twelve and end
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Speaker 1: of Mark Twain His Life and Work, a biographical sketch
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Speaker 1: by William M. Clemens, read by John Greenman,