My seventieth birthday arrived recently--that is to say, it arrived on the 30th of November, but Colonel Harvey1 was not able to celebrate it on that date because that date had been pre-empted by the President to be used as the usual and perfunctory Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for--annually, not oftener--if they had succeeded in exterminating1 their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated3 by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual4 and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments. The original reason for a Thanksgiving Day has long ago ceased to exist--the Indians have long ago been comprehensively and satisfactorily exterminated and the account closed with the Lord, with the thanks due. But, from old habit, Thanksgiving Day has remained with us, and every year the President of the United States and the Governors of all the several states and territories set themselves the task, every November, to hunt up something to be thankful for, and then they put those thanks into a few crisp and reverent5 phrases, in the form of a proclamation, and this is read from all the pulpits in the land, the national conscience is wiped clean with one swipe, and sin is resumed at the old stand.
1 Col. George Harvey, at the time president of Harper & Brothers, later American Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
The President and the Governors had to have my birthday--the 30th--for Thanksgiving Day, and this was a great inconvenience to Colonel Harvey, who had made much preparation for a banquet to be given to me on that day in celebration of the fact that it marked my seventieth escape from the gallows6, according to his idea--a fact which he regarded with favor and contemplated7 with pleasure, because he is my publisher and commercially interested. He went to Washington to try to get the President to select another day for the national Thanksgiving, and I furnished him with arguments to use which I thought persuasive8 and convincing, arguments which ought to persuade him even to put off Thanksgiving Day a whole year--on the ground that nothing had happened during the previous twelvemonth except several vicious and inexcusable wars, and King Leopold of Belgium's usual annual slaughters9 and robberies in the Congo State, together with the insurance revelations in New York, which seemed to establish the fact that if there was an honest man left in the United States, there was only one, and we wanted to celebrate his seventieth birthday. But the colonel came back unsuccessful, and put my birthday celebration off to the 5th of December.
In the birthday speech which I made were concealed11 many facts. I expected everybody to discount those facts 95 per cent, and that is probably what happened. That does not trouble me; I am used to having my statements discounted. My mother had begun it before I was seven years old. But all through my life my facts have had a substratum of truth, and therefore they were not without value. Any person who is familiar with me knows how to strike my average, and therefore knows how to get at the jewel of any fact of mine and dig it out of its blue-clay matrix. My mother knew that art. When I was seven or eight or ten or twelve years old--along there--a neighbor said to her, "Do you ever believe anything that that boy says?" My mother said, "He is the wellspring of truth, but you can't bring up the whole well with one bucket"--and she added, "I know his average, therefore he never deceives me. I discount him 90 per cent for embroidery12, and what is left is perfect and priceless truth, without a flaw in it anywhere."
Now to make a jump of forty years, without breaking the connection, one of those words was used again in my presence and concerning me, when I was fifty years old, one night at Rev2. Frank Goodwin's house in Hartford, at a meeting of the Monday Evening Club. The Monday Evening Club still exists. It was founded about forty-five years ago by that theological giant, Reverend Doctor Bushnell, and some comrades of his, men of large intellectual caliber13 and more or less distinction, local or national. I was admitted to membership in it in the fall of 1871, and was an active member thenceforth until I left Hartford in the summer of 1891. The membership was restricted, in those days, to eighteen--possibly twenty. The meetings began about the 1st of October and were held in the private houses of the members every fortnight thereafter throughout the cold months until the 1st of May. Usually there were a dozen members present--sometimes as many as fifteen. There were an essay and a discussion. The essayists followed one another in alphabetical14 order through the season. The essayist could choose his own subject and talk twenty minutes on it. from MS. or orally, according to his preference. Then the discussion followed, and each member present was allowed ten minutes in which to express his views. The wives of these people were always present. It was their privilege. It was also their privilege to keep still. They were not allowed to throw any light upon the discussion. After the discussion there was a supper, and talk, and cigars. This supper began at ten o'clock promptly15, and the company broke up and went away at midnight. At least they did except upon one occasion. In my birthday speech I have remarked upon the fact that I have always bought cheap cigars, and that is true. I have never smoked costly16 ones, and whenever I go to a rich man's house to dinner I conceal10 cheap cigars about my person, as a protection against his costly ones. There are enough costly Havana cigars in my house to start a considerable cigar shop with, but I did not buy one of them--I doubt if I have ever smoked one of them. They are Christmas presents from wealthy and ignorant friends, extending back for a long series of years. Among the lot, I found, the other day, a double handful of J. Pierpont Morgan's cigars, which were given to me three years ago by his particular friend, the late William E. Dodge17, one night when I was at dinner in Mr. Dodge's house. Mr. Dodge did not smoke, and so he supposed that those were superexcellent cigars, because they were made for Mr. Morgan in Havana out of special tobacco and cost $1.66 apiece. Now whenever I buy a cigar that costs six cents I am suspicious of it. When it costs four and a quarter or five cents I smoke it with confidence. I carried those sumptuous18 cigars home, after smoking one of them at Mr. Dodge's house to show that I had no animosity, and here they lie ever since. They cannot beguile19 me. I am waiting for somebody to come along whose lack of education will enable him to smoke them and enjoy them.
Well, that night at the club--as I was saying--George, our colored butler, came to me when the supper was nearly over, and I noticed that he was pale. Normally his complexion20 was a clear black and very handsome, but now it had modified to old amber21. He said:
"Mr. Clemens, what are we going to do? There is not a cigar in the house but those old Wheeling 'long nines.' Can't nobody smoke them but you. They kill at thirty yards. It is too late to telephone--we couldn't get any cigars out from town. What can we do? Ain't it best to say nothing and let on that we didn't think?"
"No," I said, "that would not be honest. Fetch out the 'long nines'"--which he did.
I had just come across those "long nines" a few days or a week before. I hadn't seen a "long nine" for years. When I was a cub22 pilot on the Mississippi in the late '60's I had had a great affection for them, because they were not only--to my mind--perfect, but you could get a basketful of them for a cent--or a dime--they didn't use cents out there in those days. So when I saw them advertised in Hartford I sent for a thousand at once. They were sent out to me in badly battered23 and disreputable-looking old square pasteboard boxes, about two hundred in a box. George brought the box, which had caved in on all sides, looking the worst it could, and began to pass them around. The conversation had been brilliantly animated24 up to that moment--but now a frost fell upon the company. That is to say, not all of a sudden, but the frost fell upon each man as he took up a cigar and held it poised25 in the air--and there, in the middle, his sentence broke off. And that kind of thing went all around the table, until, when George had completed his crime the whole place was full of a thick solemnity and silence.
Those men began to light the cigars. Reverend Doctor Parker was the first man to light. He took three or four heroic whiffs--then gave it up. He got up with the excuse that he had to go to the bedside of a dying parishioner, which I knew was a lie, because if that had been the truth he would have gone earlier. He started out. Reverend Doctor Burton was the next man. He took only one whiff, and followed Parker. He furnished a pretext26, and you could see by the sound of his voice that he didn't think much of the pretext, and was vexed27 with Parker for getting in ahead with a dying client. Rev. Joe Twichell followed, with a good hearty28 pretext--nothing in it, and he didn't expect anybody to find anything in it, but Twichell is always more or less honest, to this day, and it cost him nothing to say that he had to go now because he must take the midnight train for Boston. Boston was the first place that occurred to him--he would have said Jerusalem if he had thought of it.
It was only a quarter to eleven when they began to hand out pretexts29. At five minutes to eleven all those people were out of the house and praying, no doubt, that the pretext might be overlooked, in consideration of the circumstances. When nobody was left but George and me I was cheerful--I was glad--had no compunctions of conscience, no griefs of any kind. But George was beyond speech, because he held the honor and credit of the family above his own, and he was ashamed that this smirch had been put upon it. I told him to go to bed and try to sleep it off. I went to bed myself. At breakfast in the morning, when George was taking a cup of coffee from Mrs. Clemens's hand, I saw it tremble in his hand. I knew by that sign there was something on his mind. He brought the cup to me and asked impressively:
"Mr. Clemens, how far is it from the front door to the upper gate?"
I said, "It is one hundred and twenty-five steps."
He said, "Mr. Clemens, you know, you can start at the front door and you can go plumb30 to the upper gate and tread on one of them cigars every time."
Now by this roundabout and gradual excursion I have arrived at that meeting of the club at Rev. Frank Goodwin's house which I spoke31 of awhile back, and where that same word was used in my presence, and to me, which I mentioned as having been used by my mother as much as forty years before. The subject under discussion was dreams. The talk passed from mouth to mouth in the usual serene32 way. The late Charles Dudley Warner delivered his views in the smooth and pleasantly flowing fashion which he had learned in his early manhood when he was an apprentice33 to the legal profession. He always spoke pleasingly, always smoothly34, always choicely, never excitedly, never aggressively, always kindly35, gently, and always with a lambent and playful and inconspicuous thread of humor appearing and disappearing along through his talk, like the tinted36 lights in an opal. To my thinking, there was never much body to what he said, never much juice in it; never anything very substantial, to carry away and think about, yet it was always a pleasure to listen to him. Always his art was graceful37 and charming. Then came the late Colonel Greene, who had been a distinguished38 soldier in the Civil War and who at the time that I speak of was high up in the Connecticut Mutual and on his way to become its president presently, and in time to die in that harness and leave behind him a blemishless reputation, at a time when the chiefs of the New York insurance companies were approaching the eternal doom39 of their reputations. Colonel Greene discussed the dream question in his usual way--that is to say, he began a sentence and went on and on, dropping a comma in here and there at intervals40 of eighteen inches, never hesitating for a word, drifting straight along like a river at half bank with no reefs in it; the surface of his talk as smooth as a mirror; his construction perfect and fit for print without correction, as he went along. And when the hammer fell, at the end of his ten minutes, he dumped in a period right where he was and stopped--and it was just as good there as it would have been anywhere else in that ten minutes' sentence. You could look back over that speech and you'd find it dimly milestoned along with those commas which he had put in and which could have been left out just as well, because they merely staked out the march, and nothing more. They could not call attention to the scenery, because there wasn't any. His speech was always like that--perfectly41 smooth, perfectly constructed; and when he had finished, no listener could go into court and tell what it was he had said. It was a curious style. It was impressive--you always thought, from one comma to another, that he was going to strike something presently, but he never did. But this time that I speak of, the burly and magnificent Reverend Doctor Burton sat with his eyes fixed42 upon Greene from the beginning of the sentence until the end of it. He looked as the lookout43 on a whaleship might look who was watching where a whale had gone down and was waiting and watching for it to reappear; and no doubt that was the figure that was in Burton's mind, because, when at last Greene finished, Burton threw up his hands and shouted, "There she blows!"
The elder Hammersley took his appointed ten minutes, easily, comfortably, with good phrasing, and most entertainingly--and this was always to be expected of the elder Hammersley.
Then his son, Will Hammersley, a young lawyer, now this many years a judge of the Connecticut Supreme44 Court, took his chance in the dream question. And I can't imagine anything more distressing45 than a talk from Will Hammersley--a talk from the Will Hammersley of those days. You always knew that before he got through he would certainly say something--something that you could carry away, something that you could consider, something that you couldn't easily put out of your mind. But you also knew that you would suffer many a torture before he got that thing out. He would hesitate and hesitate, get to the middle of a sentence and search around and around and around for a word, get the wrong word, search again, get another wrong one, search again and again--and so he would go on in that way till everybody was in misery46 on his account, hoping that he would arrive in the course of time, and yet sinking deeper and deeper toward despair, with the conviction that this time he was not going to arrive. He would seem to get so far away from any possible goal that you would feel convinced that he could not cover the intervening space and get there before his ten minutes would come to an end and leave him suspended between heaven and earth. But, sure as a gun, before that ten minutes ended Will Hammersley would arrive at his point and fetch it out with such a round and complete and handsome and satisfying unostentatious crash that you would be lifted out of your chair with admiration47 and gratitude48.
Joe Twichell sometimes took his turn. If he talked, it was easily perceptible that it was because he had something to say, and he was always able to say it well. But almost as a rule, he said nothing, and gave his ten minutes to the next man. And whenever he gave it to ----, he ran the risk of getting lynched on his way home by the rest of the membership. ---- was the dullest white man in Connecticut--and he probably remains49 that to this day: I have not heard of any real competitor. ---- would moon along, and moon along, and moon along, using the most commonplace, the most dreary50, the most degraded English, with never an idea in it by any chance. But he never gave his ten minutes to anybody. He always used it up to the last second. Then there was always a little gap--had to be for the crowd to recover before the next man could begin. ----, when he would get entirely51 lost in his talk and didn't know where he was in his idiotic52 philosophizings, would grasp at narrative53, as the drowning man grasps at a straw. If a drowning man ever does that--which I doubt. Then he would tell something in his experiences, thinking perhaps it had something to do with the question in hand. It generally hadn't--and this time he told about a long and arduous54 and fatiguing55 chase which he had had in the Maine woods on a hot summer's day, after some kind of a wild animal that he wanted to kill, and how at last, chasing eagerly after this creature across a wide stream, he slipped and fell on the ice, and injured his leg--whereupon a silence and confusion. ---- noticed that something was wrong, and then it occurred to him that there was a kind of discrepancy56 in hunting animals on the ice in summertime, so he switched off to theology. He always did that. He was a rabid Christian57, and member of Joe Twichell's church. Joe Twichell could get together the most impossible Christians58 that ever assembled in anybody's congregation; and as a usual thing he couldn't run his church systematically59 on account of new deacons who didn't understand the business--the recent deacons having joined their predecessors60 in the penitentiary61 down there at Wethersfield. ---- would wind up with some very pious62 remarks--and in fact they all did that. Take the whole crowd--the crowd that was almost always present--and this remark applies to them. There was J. Hammond Trumbull, the most learned man in the United States. He knew everything--everything in detail that had ever happened in this world, and a lot that was going to happen, and a lot that couldn't ever possibly happen. He would close with some piety63. Henry C. Robinson--Governor Henry C. Robinson--a brilliant man, a most polished and effective and eloquent64 speaker, an easy speaker, a speaker who had no difficulties to encounter in delivering himself--always closed with some piety. A. C. Dunham, a man really great in his line--that is to say the commercial line--a great manufacturer, an enterprising man, a capitalist, a most competent and fascinating talker, a man who never opened his mouth without a stream of practical pearls flowing from it--he always closed with some piety.
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1
exterminating
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| v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的现在分词 ) | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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exterminated
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| v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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slaughters
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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caliber
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| n.能力；水准 | |
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alphabetical
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| adj.字母（表）的，依字母顺序的 | |
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15
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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beguile
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| vt.欺骗，消遣 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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pretexts
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| n.借口，托辞( pretext的名词复数 ) | |
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plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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apprentice
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| n.学徒，徒弟 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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tinted
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| adj. 带色彩的 动词tint的过去式和过去分词 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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arduous
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| adj.艰苦的，费力的，陡峭的 | |
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fatiguing
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| a.使人劳累的 | |
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discrepancy
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| n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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59
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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penitentiary
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| n.感化院；监狱 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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