Mark Twain ..............................................................................................................................................1

WHAT IS MAN? ....................................................................................................................................2

I. a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit ...............................................................................................2

II. Man's Sole Impulsethe Securing of His Own Approval .................................................................8

A Little Story.........................................................................................................................................14

III. Instances in Point.............................................................................................................................17

Further Instances ....................................................................................................................................21

IV. Training ............................................................................................................................................23

Admonition............................................................................................................................................28

A Parable ................................................................................................................................................32

V. More About the Machine..................................................................................................................33

The ManMachine Again ......................................................................................................................33

After an Interval of Days.......................................................................................................................33

The ThinkingProcess...........................................................................................................................37

Instinct and Thought..............................................................................................................................39

Free Will................................................................................................................................................45

Not Two Values, But Only One .............................................................................................................47

A Difficult Question..............................................................................................................................48

The Master Passion ................................................................................................................................50

Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................51

THE DEATH OF JEAN.......................................................................................................................55

THE TURNINGPOINT OF MY LIFE ................................................................................................62

I..............................................................................................................................................................62

II .............................................................................................................................................................63

III ............................................................................................................................................................65

HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK......................................................................................66

THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION .............................................................................................74

A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY ....................................................................................................79

SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY................................................................................83

AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER ...................................................................................................89

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS ..............................................................................................................96

ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT ........................................................................................................101

ON GIRLS...........................................................................................................................................111

A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET ..............................................................................................................111

AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY ...............................................................................114

I............................................................................................................................................................115

II ...........................................................................................................................................................116

CONCERNING TOBACCO...............................................................................................................119

THE BEE.............................................................................................................................................120

TAMING THE BICYCLE ...................................................................................................................122

I............................................................................................................................................................122

II ...........................................................................................................................................................124

IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? ...............................................................................................................126

II ...........................................................................................................................................................130

III ..........................................................................................................................................................131

IV.........................................................................................................................................................134

V ..........................................................................................................................................................136

VI.........................................................................................................................................................137

VII ........................................................................................................................................................139

VIII .......................................................................................................................................................142

IX.........................................................................................................................................................147

X ...........................................................................................................................................................149

XI........................................................................................................................................................152

XII ........................................................................................................................................................153

XIII .......................................................................................................................................................154

[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had asserted that the human being is

merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and

Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore; crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pigiron; put

some of it through the Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine several metals of

O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a word all the cunning machines of a great

Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the law of construction. It is not a MERIT

O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does so little?

Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its make permits and compels it to do. There

is nothing PERSONAL about it; it cannot choose. In this process of "working up to the matter" is it your idea

to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about the same thing, and that there is no personal

O.M. Yesbut do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes the grand difference between the

stone engine and the steel one? Shall we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage

and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the stuff of which the steel one was builtbut

along with a lot of sulphur and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old

geologic agesprejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either

Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; "Prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to

O.M. Prejudices must be removed by OUTSIDE INFLUENCES or not at all. Put that down.

O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock. To make it more exact, the iron's

absolute INDIFFERENCE as to whether the rock be removed or not. Then comes the OUTSIDE

INFLUENCE and grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The IRON in the ore is still captive. An

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE smelts it free of the clogging ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent

to further progress. An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and refines it into steel

of the first quality. It is educated, now its training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible

O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden mean, and steel men, and so onand

each has the limitations of his nature, his heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build engines

out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not require the weak ones to do equal

work with the strong ones. In each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its obstructing

O.M. Yes. Man the machineman the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man is, is due to his MAKE, and to

the INFLUENCES brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved,

directed, COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR influencesSOLELY. He ORIGINATES nothing, not even a

Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are talking is all foolishness?

O.M. It is a quite natural opinionindeed an inevitable opinionbut YOU did not create the materials out

of which it is formed. They are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously

from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of thought and feeling which have

flowed down into your heart and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. PERSONALLY

you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of which your opinion is

made; and personally you cannot claim even the slender merit of PUTTING THE BORROWED

MATERIALS TOGETHER. That was done AUTOMATICALLYby your mental machinery, in strict

accordance with the law of that machinery's construction. And you not only did not make that machinery

O.M. Spontaneously? No. And YOU DID NOT FORM THAT ONE; your machinery did it for

O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a machine, nothing more. You have no

command over it, it has no command over itselfit is worked SOLELY FROM THE OUTSIDE. That is the

Y.M. I don't merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter upon a course of thought, and study, and

reading, with the deliberate purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. THAT is not the work

of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for I originated the project.

O.M. Not a shred of it. IT GREW OUT OF THIS TALK WITH ME. But for that it would not have occurred

to you. No man ever originates anything. All his thoughts, all his impulses, come FROM THE OUTSIDE.

Y.M. It's an exasperating subject. The FIRST man had original thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw

O.M. It is a mistake. Adam's thoughts came to him from the outside. YOU have a fear of death. You did not

invent thatyou got it from outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of deathnone in the

O.M. Then it came from OUTSIDE. Adam is quite big enough; let us not try to make a god of him. NONE

probably had a good head, but it was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up FROM THE OUTSIDE.

He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had not a shadow of a notion of the difference

between good and evilhe had to get the idea FROM THE OUTSIDE. Neither he nor Eve was able to

originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the apple FROM THE

OUTSIDE. A man's brain is so constructed that IT CAN ORIGINATE NOTHING WHATSOEVER. It can

only use material obtained OUTSIDE. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by willpower.

O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare's IMITATIONS. Shakespeare created nothing. He correctly observed, and

he marvelously painted. He exactly portrayed people whom GOD had created; but he created none himself.

Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare could not create. HE WAS A

O.M. In this. He was not a sewingmachine, like you and me; he was a Gobelin loom. The threads and the

colors came into him FROM THE OUTSIDE; outside influences, suggestions, EXPERIENCES (reading,

seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his mind and started up his

complex and admirable machinery, and IT AUTOMATICALLY turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric

which still compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and

unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no OUTSIDE MATERIAL to work with, and

could have invented none; and NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCES, teachings, moldings, persuasions, inspirations,

of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In

Turkey he would have produced somethingsomething up to the highest limit of Turkish influences,

associations, and training. In France he would have produced something bettersomething up to the highest

limit of the French influences and training. In England he rose to the highest limit attainable through the

I are but sewingmachines. We must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at all

Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel proud of their performance, nor

claim personal merit for it, nor applause and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.

Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in being a coward?

O.M. PERSONAL merit? No. A brave man does not CREATE his bravery. He is entitled to no personal

credit for possessing it. It is born to him. A baby born with a billion dollarswhere is the personal merit in

that? A baby born with nothingwhere is the personal demerit in that? The one is fawned upon, admired,

worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected and despised where is the sense in it?

Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his cowardice and becoming braveand

O.M. That it shows the value of TRAINING IN RIGHT DIRECTIONS OVER TRAINING IN WRONG

ONES. Inestimably valuable is training, influence, education, in right directionsTRAINING ONE'S

Y.M. But as to meritthe personal merit of the victorious coward's project and achievement?

O.M. There isn't any. In the world's view he is a worthier man than he was before, but HE didn't achieve the

O.M. To start with, he was NOT utterly and completely a coward, or the influences would have had nothing

to work upon. He was not afraid of a cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a

man. There was something to build upon. There was a SEED. No seed, no plant. Did he make that seed

Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of CULTIVATING it, the resolution to cultivate it, was meritorious, and he

O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence ALL impulses, good or bad, comefrom OUTSIDE. If

that timid man had lived all his life in a community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had

never heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy of the heroes that had done

them, he would have had no more idea of bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any

possibility have occurred to him to RESOLVE to become brave. He COULD NOT ORIGINATE THE

IDEAit had to come to him from the OUTSIDE. And so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice

derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that

you are a coward!" It was not HE that turned over the new leafshe did it for him. HE must not strut around

O.M. No. OUTSIDE INFLUENCES reared it. At the command and tremblinghe marched out into the

fieldwith other soldiers and in the daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the INFLUENCE OF

EXAMPLE, he drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted to run, but he did not

dare; he was AFRAID to run, with all those soldiers looking on. He was progressing, you seethe moral

fear of shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of the campaign experience will

have taught him that not ALL who go into battle get hurtan outside influence which will be helpful to him;

and he will also have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza'd at with tearchoked

voices as the warworn regiment marches past the worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums

beating. After that he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the armyand there will not be a shade nor

suggestion of PERSONAL MERIT in it anywhere; it will all have come from the OUTSIDE. The Victoria

Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get no credit for it?

O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an important detail of man's make which we have

O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do thingsthe only impulse that ever moves a person to do a

Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole impulse that ever moves a person to

O.M. The impulse to CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRITthe NECESSITY of contenting his own spirit and

Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his own comfort and advantage; whereas

an unselfish man often does a thing solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to

O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do HIM good, FIRST; otherwise he will not do it. He may THINK he is

doing it solely for the other person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit firstthe other's

Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self sacrifice? Please answer me that.

Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of benefit to one's self can result

Y.M. They don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse back of them.

Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man lives three miles uptown. It is bitter

cold, snowing hard, midnight. He is about to enter the horsecar when a gray and ragged old woman, a

touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue from hunger and death. The man finds

that he has a quarter in his pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home through the

storm. Thereit is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of

Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some other way of looking at it?

O.M. Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt and what he thought?

Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous heart with a sharp pain. He could not

bear it. He could endure the threemile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his conscience

would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old creature to perish. He would not have been able to

Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the selfsacrificer knows. His heart sang, he was unconscious of the

O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got for his twentyfive cents. Let us try

to find out the REAL why of his making the investment. In the first place HE couldn't bear the pain which the

old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of HIS painthis good man. He must buy a salve for it. If

he did not succor the old woman HIS conscience would torture him all the way home. Thinking of HIS pain

again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn't relieve the old woman HE would not get any sleep. He must

buy some sleepstill thinking of HIMSELF, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought himself free of a sharp

pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's

sleepall for twentyfive cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself. On his way home his heart

was joyful, and it sangprofit on top of profit! The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman

wasFIRSTto CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT; secondly to relieve HER sufferings. Is it your opinion that

men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?

Y.M. From a variety, of coursesome high and fine and noble, others not. What is your opinion?

Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one source?

O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE A MAN NEVER

Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual or physical?

O.M. No. EXCEPT ON THOSE DISTINCT TERMSthat it shall FIRST secure HIS OWN spiritual

Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his

pleasant home and his weeping family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold, wounds,

O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves MORE than he loves peaceTHE APPROVAL OF HIS

NEIGHBORS AND THE PUBLIC. And perhaps there is something which he dreads more than he dreads

painthe DISAPPROVAL of his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will go to the

fieldnot because his spirit will be ENTIRELY comfortable there, but because it will be more comfortable

there than it would be if he remained at home. He will always do the thing which will bring him the MOST

mental comfortfor that is THE SOLE LAW OF HIS LIFE. He leaves the weeping family behind; he is

sorry to make them uncomfortable, but not sorry enough to sacrifice his OWN comfort to secure theirs.

Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid and peaceful man to

Y.M. I don't believe that. Can it force a rightprincipled man to do a wrong thing?

O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously highprincipled man. He regarded dueling as wrong, and as

opposed to the teachings of religionbut in deference to PUBLIC OPINION he fought a duel. He deeply

loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted them and threw his life away,

ungenerously leaving them to lifelong sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world. In the

then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have been comfortable with the stigma upon him

of having refused to fight. The teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of heart, his high

principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the way of his spiritual comfort. A man will do

ANYTHING, no matter what it is, TO SECURE HIS SPIRITUAL COMFORT; and he can neither be forced

nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for its object. Hamilton's act was compelled by the inborn

necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this it was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all

men's lives. Do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? A man cannot be comfortable without HIS OWN

approval. He will secure the largest share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices.

O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his family's approval and a large share of his

own; but the public approval was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put togetherin the

earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the MOST comfort of mind, the most SELF approval; so

Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully braved the public contempt.

O.M. They acted ACCORDING TO THEIR MAKE. They valued their principles and the approval of their

families ABOVE the public approval. They took the thing they valued MOST and let the rest go. They took

what would give them the LARGEST share of PERSONAL CONTENTMENT AND APPROVALa man

ALWAYS does. Public opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the wars. When they go it is for other

Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a burning building, what do you call that?

O.M. When he does it, it is the law of HIS make. HE can't bear to see the child in that peril (a man of a

different make COULD), and so he tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he was

Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity, Magnanimity, Forgiveness?

O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of securing one's self approval. They wear

diverse clothes and are subject to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the

SAME PERSON all the time. To change the figure, the COMPULSION that moves a manand there is but

the oneis the necessity of securing the contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead.

O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising form. It will squander life and

everything else on its object. Not PRIMARILY for the object's sake, but for ITS OWN. When its object is

O.M. No, IT is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go naked to clothe her child; she will starve

that it may have food; suffer torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a living PLEASURE

in making these sacrifices. SHE DOES IT FOR THAT REWARDthat selfapproval, that contentment,

that peace, that comfort. SHE WOULD DO IT FOR YOUR CHILD IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME

O.M. No. There is NO act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs from any motive but the onethe

O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to themfrom habit and training; and THEY could not know comfort

or happiness or selfapproval if they did not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes THEM happy to

see others happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are afterHAPPINESS,

SELFAPPROVAL. Why don't miners do the same thing? Because they can get a thousandfold more

happiness by NOT doing it. There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make.

O.M. That IS DOES NOT EXIST. Duties are not performed for duty's SAKE, but because their NEGLECT

would make the man UNCOMFORTABLE. A man performs but ONE dutythe duty of contenting his

spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most satisfyingly perform this sole and only

duty by HELPING his neighbor, he will do it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by SWINDLING his

neighbor, he will do it. But he always looks out for Number OneFIRST; the effects upon others are a

SECONDARY matter. Men pretend to selfsacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary value of the

phrase, DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS NOT EXISTED. A man often honestly THINKS he is sacrificing

himself merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a

Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their lives to contenting their consciences.

O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience that independent Sovereign, that insolent

absolute Monarch inside of a man who is the man's Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because there

are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way, a philanthropist's in another, a miser's

in another, a burglar's in still another. As a GUIDE or INCENTIVE to any authoritatively prescribed line of

morals or conduct (leaving TRAINING out of the account), a man's conscience is totally valueless. I know a

kindhearted Kentuckian whose selfapproval was lackingwhose conscience was troubling him, to phrase

it with exactnessBECAUSE HE HAD NEGLECTED TO KILL A CERTAIN MANa man whom he had

never seen. The stranger had killed this man's friend in a fight, this man's Kentucky training made it a duty to

kill the stranger for it. He neglected his dutykept dodging it, shirking it, putting it off, and his unrelenting

conscience kept persecuting him for this conduct. At last, to get ease of mind, comfort, selfapproval, he

hunted up the stranger and took his life. It was an immense act of SELF SACRIFICE (as per the usual

definition), for he did not want to do it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented

spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. But we are so made that we will pay ANYTHING for that

Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of TRAINED consciences. You mean that we are not BORN with

O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and not have to be taught it.

O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influencesfor good or bad: influences which work without rest during every

O.M. It CAN'T be trained to do a thing for any OTHER reason. The thing is impossible.

Y.M. There MUST be a genuinely and utterly selfsacrificing act recorded in human history somewhere.

Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellowbeing struggling in the water and jumps in at the risk

O.M. Wait. Describe the MAN. Describe the FELLOWBEING. State if there is an AUDIENCE present; or

O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are alone, in a solitary place, at midnight?

Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no audience to observe the act, the man

O.M. But there is here and there a man who WOULD. People, for instance, like the man who lost his life

trying to save the child from the fire; and the man who gave the needy old woman his twentyfive cents and

walked home in the stormthere are here and there men like that who would do it. And why? Because they

couldn't BEAR to see a fellowbeing struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would give THEM

pain. They would save the fellowbeing on that account. THEY WOULDN'T DO IT OTHERWISE. They

strictly obey the law which I have been insisting upon. You must remember and always distinguish the

people who CAN'T BEAR things from people who CAN. It will throw light upon a number of apparently

Y.M. Cometake the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in order to gratify his mother.

O.M. He does seventenths of the act because it gratifies HIM to gratify his mother. Throw the bulk of

advantage the other way and the good boy would not do the act. He MUST obey the iron law. None can

O.M. You needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter about the bad boy's act. Whatever it was, he

had a spiritcontenting reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it.

Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man's conscience is not a born judge of morals and

conduct, but has to be taught and trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy, but I don't think

Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow whose little boy was ill and near to

death. The Infidel often watched by the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these

opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his naturethat desire which is in us all to better other people's

condition by having them think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last moments,

The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said:

"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH, AND IN HIS

O.M. Yes, his SelfDisapproval was. It PAINED him to see the mother suffer. He was sorry he had done a

thing which brought HIM pain. It did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the

boy, for he was absorbed in providing PLEASURE for himself, then. Providing it by satisfying what he

Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of AWAKENED CONSCIENCE. That awakened conscience

could never get itself into that species of trouble again. A cure like that is a PERMANENT cure.

O.M. PardonI had not finished the story. We are creatures of OUTSIDE INFLUENCESwe originate

NOTHING within. Whenever we take a new line of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the

impulse is ALWAYS suggested from the OUTSIDE. Remorse so preyed upon the Infidel that it dissolved his

harshness toward the boy's religion and made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for

the boy's sake and the mother's. Finally he found himself examining it. From that moment his progress in his

new trend was steady and rapid. He became a believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed

the dying boy of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It gave him no rest, no peace. He MUST

have rest and peaceit is the law of nature. There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to

saving imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan country ill and helpless. A native

widow took him into her humble home and nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken

hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here was his first opportunity to repair a part

of the wrong done to the other boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish faith

in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy in his last moments reproached him and said:

The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said:

"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH, AND IN HIS

The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter and persecuting and unappeasable,

now, as they had been in the former case. The story is finished. What is your comment?

Y.M. The man's conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn't know right from wrong.

O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that ONE man's conscience doesn't know right from

wrong, it is an admission that there are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine of

infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing which I ask you to notice.

O.M. That in both cases the man's ACT gave him no spiritual discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with

it and got pleasure out of it. But afterward when it resulted in PAIN to HIM, he was sorry. Sorry it had

inflicted pain upon the others, BUT FOR NO REASON UNDER THE SUN EXCEPT THAT THEIR PAIN

GAVE HIM PAIN. Our consciences take NO notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point

where it gives pain to US. In ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person's

pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel would not have been troubled by that

O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, would not have been troubled by the

pagan mother's distressJesuit missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see episodes

O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number of qualities to which we have given

misleading names. Love, Hate, Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach

misleading MEANINGS to the names. They are all forms of selfcontentment, selfgratification, but the

names so disguise them that they distract our attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the

dictionary which ought not to be there at allSelfSacrifice. It describes a thing which does not exist. But

worst of all, we ignore and never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the

imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that

we are. It is our breath, our heart, our blood. It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling

power; we have no other. Without it we should be mere inert images, corpses; no one would do anything,

there would be no progress, the world would stand still. We ought to stand reverently uncovered when the

O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE moved you to itnot one that

O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress upon you that neither you, nor I, nor

any man ever originates a thought in his own head. THE UTTERER OF A THOUGHT ALWAYS UTTERS

O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our discussiontomorrow or next day, say. Now,

then, have you been considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a selfcontenting

Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and apparently selfsacrificing deeds in

O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible selfsacrifice disappeared? It naturally would.

Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the Adirondack woods is a wageearner and

lay preacher in the lumbercamps who is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and practical

laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacationhe is leader of a section of the University

Settlement. Holme, the lumberman, is fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and

go down and save souls on the East Side. He counts it happiness to make this sacrifice for the glory of God

and for the cause of Christ. He resigns his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East Side and

preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to little groups of halfcivilized foreign paupers

who scoff at him. But he rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause of Christ. You

have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse

back of all this, but I am thankful to say I have failed. This man saw his duty, and for DUTY'S SAKE he

O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing himselfNOT for the glory of God,

PRIMARILY, as HE imagined, but FIRST to content that exacting and inflexible master within himDID

O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in place of it. Had he dependents?

Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young sister with a remarkable voicehe was

giving her a musical education, so that her longing to be selfsupporting might be gratified. He was

furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school and satisfy his desire to become a

O.M. The young brother's educationwell, an extinguishing blight fell upon that happy dream, and he had to

O.M. What a handsome job of selfsacrificing he did do! It seems to me that he sacrificed everybody

EXCEPT himself. Haven't I told you that no man EVER sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon

record anywhere; and that when a man's Interior Monarch requires a thing of its slave for either its

MOMENTARY or its PERMANENT contentment, that thing must and will be furnished and that command

obeyed, no matter who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? That man RUINED HIS FAMILY to

Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued that if he saved a hundred souls in New

O.M. The sacrifice of the FAMILY would be justified by that great profit upon thethewhat shall we call

O.M. Hardly. How would SPECULATION do? How would GAMBLE do? Not a solitary soulcapture was

sure. He played for a possible thirtythreehundredpercent profit. It was GAMBLING with his family

for "chips." However let us see how the game came out. Maybe we can get on the track of the secret original

impulse, the REAL impulse, that moved him to so nobly self sacrifice his family in the Savior's cause under

the superstition that he was sacrificing himself. I will read a chapter or so. . . . Here we have it! It was bound

to expose itself sooner or later. He preached to the EastSide rabble a season, then went back to his old dull,

obscure life in the lumbercamps "HURT TO THE HEART, HIS PRIDE HUMBLED." Why? Were not his

efforts acceptable to the Savior, for Whom alone they were made? Dear me, that detail is LOST SIGHT OF,

is not even referred to, the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely forgotten! Then what is the trouble?

The authoress quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole business away. The trouble was this: this

man merely PREACHED to the poor; that is not the University Settlement's way; it deals in larger and better

things than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude SalvationArmy eloquence. It was courteous to

Holmebut cool. It did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom. "PERISHED WERE ALL HIS DREAMS

Savior is not mentioned. Of whom, then? Of "His FELLOWWORKERS." Why did he want that? Because

the Master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it. That emphasized sentence quoted

above, reveals the secret we have been seeking, the original impulse, the REAL impulse, which moved the

obscure and unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on that crusade to the East

Sidewhich said original impulse was this, to wit: without knowing it HE WENT THERE TO SHOW A

I have warned you before, NO act springs from any but the one law, the one motive. But I pray you, do not

accept this law upon my say so; but diligently examine for yourself. Whenever you read of a

selfsacrificing act or hear of one, or of a duty done for DUTY'S SAKE, take it to pieces and look for the

Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten started upon the degrading and exasperating

quest. For it is hatefully interesting!in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across a golden deed

in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine it, I cannot help myself.

Y.M. Noat least, not yet. But take the case of servant tipping in Europe. You pay the HOTEL for service;

Y.M. You are not OBLIGED to do it, therefore its source is compassion for their illpaid condition, and

Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted toeverybody recognizes it as a DUTY.

O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not ALL compassion, charity, benevolence?

O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt and effective service from the

Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn't get any of all, to speak of.

O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of forduty'ssake with a little selfinterest added?

Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion;

yet we go away with a pain at the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we

heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing, and MORE than the right thing, the

GENEROUS thing. I think it will be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.

O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in the HOTEL bill does it annoy

O.M. The EXPENSE, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay

it without a murmur. When you came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and maids

O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade MORE than you had been in the habit of paying in the form of tips?

O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn't really compassion nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax,

and it isn't the AMOUNT of the tax that annoys you. Yet SOMETHING annoys you. What is it?

Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know WHAT to pay, the tax varies so, all over Europe.

Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and calculating and guessing, and

consulting with other people and getting their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught

in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are only guessing and guessing and

O.M. And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay unless you want to! Strange. What is

O.M. It has quite a noble looktaking so much pains and using up so much valuable time in order to be just

and fair to a poor servant to whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.

Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it it will be hard to find.

Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a look that makes you ashamed. You are

too proud to rectify your mistake there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing

you HAD done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes you see, by the signs, that you have it JUST

RIGHT, and you go away mightily satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you

O.M. It is my belief that you have NOT been concerning yourself in guessing out his just dues, but only in

ciphering out what would CONTENT him. And I think you have a selfdeluding reason for that.

O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would get a look which would SHAME

YOU BEFORE FOLK. That would give you PAIN. YOUfor you are only working for yourself, not HIM.

If you gave him too much you would be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF for it, and that would give YOU

painanother case of thinking of YOURSELF, protecting yourself, SAVING YOURSELF FROM

DISCOMFORT. You never think of the servant onceexcept to guess out how to get HIS APPROVAL. If

you get that, you get your OWN approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after. The Master inside

of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was NO OTHER thing at stake, as a matter of FIRST

Y.M. Well, to think of it; SelfSacrifice for others, the grandest thing in man, ruled out! nonexistent!

O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of that phrasewhich is,

selfsacrifice for another ALONE. Men make daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake FIRST.

The act must content their own spirit FIRST. The other beneficiaries come second.

O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must content his spirit FIRST. He must feel

better for DOING the duty than he would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.

O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and examine it, if you like.

Y.M. A British troopship crowded with soldiers and their wives and children. She struck a rock and began

to sink. There was room in the boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his regiment on

the deck and said "it is our duty to die, that they may be saved." There was no murmur, no protest. The boats

carried away the women and children. When the deathmoment was come, the colonel and his officers took

their several posts, the men stood at shoulderarms, and so, as on dressparade, with their flag flying and the

drums beating, they went down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. Can you view it as other than that?

O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you have remained in those ranks and gone

O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping higher and higher around you.

Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have endured it, I could not have remained in my

O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some of them must have been born with

your temperament; if they could do that great duty for duty's SAKE, why not you? Don't you know that you

could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them on that deck and ask them to

die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of them would stay in the ranks to the end?

O.M. But your TRAIN them, and put them through a campaign or two; then they would be soldiers; soldiers,

with a soldier's pride, a soldier's selfrespect, a soldier's ideals. They would have to content a SOLDIER'S

spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's. They could not content that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could

O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the DUTY'S sake, but for their OWN sakeprimarily. The DUTY

was JUST THE SAME, and just as imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they

wouldn't perform it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they

satisfied it. They HAD to; it is the law. TRAINING is potent. Training toward higher and higher, and ever

Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake rather than be recreant to it.

O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that is in him, though it cost him his life.

Another man, just as sincerely religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though

recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must content the spirit that is in himhe

cannot help it. He could not perform that duty for duty's SAKE, for that would not content his spirit, and the

contenting of his spirit must be looked to FIRST. It takes precedence of all other duties.

Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes for a thief for public office, on his

O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no private ones, where his party's

Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of itbut not a large part. I mean ALL the

outside influences. There are a million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking hours, the

human being is under training. In the very first rank of his trainers stands ASSOCIATION. It is his human

environment which influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets him on his road

and keeps him in it. If he leave that road he will find himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and

esteems, and whose approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he takes the color of

his place of resort. The influences about him create his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his

morals, his religion. He creates none of these things for himself. He THINKS he does, but that is because he

O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not Congregationalists? And why were the

Congregationalists not Baptists, and the Baptists Roman Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists, and

the Buddhists Quakers, and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians Millerites and the Millerites

Hindus, and the Hindus Atheists, and the Atheists Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists Agnostics, and the

Agnostics Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians, and the Confucians Unitarians, and the Unitarians

Mohammedans, and the Mohammedans Salvation Warriors, and the Salvation Warriors Zoroastrians, and the

Zoroastrians Christian Scientists, and the Christian Scientists Mormonsand so on?

O.M. That list of sects is not a record of STUDIES, searchings, seekings after light; it mainly (and

sarcastically) indicates what ASSOCIATION can do. If you know a man's nationality you can come within a

split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion: EnglishProtestant; American ditto; Spaniard,

Frenchman, Irishman, Italian, South American Roman Catholic; RussianGreek Catholic;

TurkMohammedan; and so on. And when you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort

of religious books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by

accident he get more light than he wants. In America if you know which party collar a voter wears, you

know what his associations are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he reads to

get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed of massmeetings he attends in order to

broaden his political knowledge, and which breed of massmeetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its

doctrines with brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are around SEEKING AFTER TRUTH. I

have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere

people who THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently, persistently,

carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgmentuntil they believed

that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. THAT WAS THE END OF THE SEARCH. The

man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was

seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men

in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand

that are on the market. In any case, when he found the Truth HE SOUGHT NO FURTHER; but from that day

forth, with his solderingiron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned

with objectors. There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truthhave you ever heard of a

permanent one? In the very nature of man such a person is impossible. However, to drop back to the text

training: all training is one from or another of OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, and ASSOCIATION is the largest

part of it. A man is never anything but what his outside influences have made him. They train him downward

or they train him upwardbut they TRAIN him; they are at work upon him all the time.

Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed there is no help for him, according to your

O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It is in his chameleonship that his greatest

good fortune lies. He has only to change his habitathis ASSOCIATIONS. But the impulse to do it must

come from the OUTSIDEhe cannot originate it himself, with that purpose in view. Sometimes a very small

and accidental thing can furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. The

chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom

and flourish, and ended in producing a surprising fruitagein the fields of war. The history of man is full of

such accidents. The accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald soldier under religious influences

and furnished him a new ideal. From that accident sprang the Order of the Jesuits, and it has been shaking

thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two hundred yearsand will go on. The

chance reading of a book or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him

renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are IN SYMPATHY WITH HIS NEW IDEAL: and the

O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited with INITIATORY IMPULSES TOWARD HIGH

IDEALS. It is what the tractdistributor does. It is what the missionary does. It is what governments ought to

O.M. In one way they do, in another they don't. They separate the smallpox patients from the healthy people,

but in dealing with crime they put the healthy into the pesthouse along with the sick. That is to say, they put

the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This would be well if man were naturally inclined to good, but

he isn't, and so ASSOCIATION makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into captivity. It

is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively innocent at times. They hang a manwhich is a

trifling punishment; this breaks the hearts of his familywhich is a heavy one. They comfortably jail and

Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an intuitive perception of good and evil?

O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets ALL his ideas, all his impressions, from the

outside. I keep repeating this, in the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to observe

O.M. From the OUTSIDE. I did not invent them. They are gathered from a thousand unknown sources.

Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest man's the noblest work of God."

O.M. He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy, and sounds well, but it is not true. God makes

a man with honest and dishonest POSSIBILITIES in him and stops there. The man's ASSOCIATIONS

develop the possibilitiesthe one set or the other. The result is accordingly an honest man or a dishonest

O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? HE is not the architect of his honesty.

Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training people to lead virtuous lives. What is

O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the main thingto HIM. He is not a peril to

his neighbors, he is not a damage to themand so THEY get an advantage out of his virtues. That is the

main thing to THEM. It can make this life comparatively comfortable to the parties concerned; the

NEGLECT of this training can make this life a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned.

Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man HIMSELF, for it makes him what he

O.M. I said training and ANOTHER thing. Let that other thing pass, for the moment. What were you going to

Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty two years. Her service used to be faultless, but

now she has become very forgetful. We are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the infirmity

which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold her for her remissnesses, but at times I doI

can't seem to control myself. Don't I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to dress, this morning, no

clean clothes had been put out. I lost my temper; I lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang;

and immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful and speak gently. I

safeguarded myself most carefully. I even chose the very word I would use: "You've forgotten the clean

clothes, Jane." When she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that phraseand out of it, moved

by an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting and hadn't time to put under control, came the hot

rebuke, "You've forgotten them again!" You say a man always does the thing which will best please his

Interior Master. Whence came the impulse to make careful preparation to save the girl the humiliation of a

rebuke? Did that come from the Master, who is always primarily concerned about HIMSELF?

O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse. SECONDARILY you made preparation to

save the girl, but PRIMARILY its object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.

O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper and not fly out at the girl?

O.M. Why? YOU WOULD DO IT FOR PAY, SOLELYfor PROFIT. What profit would you expect and

O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, WASN'T to save the girl a humiliation, but to PLEASE

YOUR MOTHER. It also appears that to please your mother gives YOU a strong pleasure. Is not that the

profit which you get out of the investment? Isn't that the REAL profits and FIRST profit?

O.M. In ALL transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that YOU GET THE FIRST PROFIT. Otherwise

Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent upon it, why did I threw it away by losing

O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance. Your native warm temper

suddenly jumped to the front, and FOR THE MOMENT its influence was more powerful than your mother's,

and abolished it. In that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it. You did enjoy it, didn't

O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the MOST pleasure, the most satisfaction,

in any moment or FRACTION of a moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master's

Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant's eyes I could have cut my hand off for what I had done.

O.M. Right. You had humiliated YOURSELF, you see, you had given yourself PAIN. Nothing is of FIRST

importance to a man except results which damage HIM or profit himall the rest is SECONDARY. Your

Master was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He required a prompt REPENTANCE; you

obeyed again; you HAD tothere is never any escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he

changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you will obey, ALWAYS. If

he requires repentance, you content him, you will always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted, coddled, and

Y.M. Training! Oh, what's the use of it? Didn't I, and didn't my mother try to train me up to where I would no

O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there IS use in training. Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You

O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was EVERYTHING. I corrected you, and said "training

and ANOTHER thing." That other thing is TEMPERAMENTthat is, the disposition you were born with.

YOU CAN'T ERADICATE YOUR DISPOSITION NOR ANY RAG OF ITyou can only put a pressure on

O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it down nearly all the time. ITS

PRESENCE IS YOUR LIMIT. Your reform will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you

now and then, but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make more. There IS

use in training. Immense use. Presently you will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be

O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please YOURSELF by pleasing your MOTHER; presently the

mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and

satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You will then

labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the roundabout way through your mother. It

Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha'n't ever reach the point where I will spare the girl for HER sake PRIMARILY, not

Y.M. (AFTER A REFLECTIVE PAUSE) Temperament. Well, I see one must allow for temperament. It is a

large factor, sure enough. My mother is thoughtful, and not hottempered. When I was dressed I went to her

room; she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I heard the water running. I inquired. She

answered, without temper, that Jane had forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I offered to ring,

but she said, "No, don't do that; it would only distress her to be confronted with her lapse, and would be a

rebuke; she doesn't deserve thatshe is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her." I sayhas my

O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and pleasure and contentment. The girl's

distress would have pained YOUR MOTHER. Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all. I

know women who would have gotten a No. 1 PLEASURE out of ringing Jane upand so they would

infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the law of their make and training, which are the servants of

their Interior Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance came from training. The

GOOD kind of trainingwhose best and highest function is to see to it that every time it confers a

Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the general betterment of the race's

O.M. Diligently train your ideals UPWARD and STILL UPWARD toward a summit where you will find

your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your

O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not been done before.

O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the difference between frankness and shuffling.

O.M. The others offer your a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding that the Master inside of you must be

conciliated and contented first, and that you will do nothing at FIRST HAND but for his sake; then they turn

square around and require you to do good for OTHER'S sake CHIEFLY; and to do your duty for duty's

SAKE, chiefly; and to do acts of SELFSACRIFICE. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the same

groundrecognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that resides in man, and we all grovel before him

and appeal to him; then those others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and

illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to man's SECONDPLACE powers and

to powers which have NO EXISTENCE in him, thus advancing them to FIRST place; whereas in my

Admonition I stick logically and consistently to the original position: I place the Interior Master's

Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the other schemes aim at and produce the

O.M. One, yesa large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions. When a man leads a right and valuable

life under it he is not deceived as to the REAL chief motive which impels him to itin those other cases he

Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for a mean reason? In the other cases he lives

the lofty life under the IMPRESSION that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an advantage?

O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking himself a duke, and living a duke's life

and parading in ducal fuss and feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would only

Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in his pocket and does his benevolences

O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to let an ignorant duke do showy

benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made

acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up his purse and cease to be good?

Y.M. But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he THINKS he is doing good for others' sake?

O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think humbug is good enough morals when the

Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good deed for his OWN sake firstoff,

Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a child and who saved my life

once at the risk of her own, was burned last night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for

Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have been incapable, and my MOTHER would

Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I could answer every one of them

without your wasting the time to ask them; but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did the

charity knowing it was because the act would give ME a splendid pleasure, and because old Sally's moving

gratitude and delight would give ME another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now

and out of her trouble would fill ME full of happiness. I did the whole thing with my eyes open and

recognizing and realizing that I was looking out for MY share of the profits FIRST. Now then, I have

O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground. Can you have been any MORE

strongly moved to help Sally out of her troublecould you have done the deed any more eagerlyif you

had been under the delusion that you were doing it for HER sake and profit only?

Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved me more powerful, more

O.M. Very well. You begin to suspectand I claim to KNOW that when a man is a shade MORE

STRONGLY MOVED to do ONE of two things or of two dozen things than he is to do any one of the

OTHERS, he will infallibly do that ONE thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all the

beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the impulse by a single shade or add a shade to

Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in men's hearts would not be diminished

by the removal of the delusion that good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the sake

O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his mouth and takes back with the other:

Do right FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, and be happy in knowing that your NEIGHBOR will certainly share in

Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the ORIGINATOR of the idea, but it comes in from the

O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the LATEST outside influence of a procession of

preparatory influences stretching back over a period of years. No SINGLE outside influence can make a man

do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is to start his mind on a new tract and open it

to the reception of NEW influencesas in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences can train him

to a point where it will be consonant with his new character to yield to the FINAL influence and do that

thing. I will put the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think. Here are two ingots of

virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues

by years of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down these strong and wellcompacted

O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steamjet during a long succession of hours. Will there be a result?

O.M. Very well. The steam is an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, but it is ineffective because the gold TAKES NO

INTEREST IN IT. The ingot remains as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized

condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an instantaneous result?

O.M. The QUICKSILVER is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar naturesay

TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITION) CANNOT BE INDIFFERENT TO. It stirs up the interest of the gold,

although we do not perceive it; but a SINGLE application of the influence works no damage. Let us continue

the application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year. By the end of ten or twenty minutesten or

twenty yearsthe little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded. At last

it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We will

apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger. You note the result?

Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not the SINGLE outside influence that

does the work, but only the LAST one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how my

SINGLE impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but only the LAST one of a preparatory

O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys twins. They were alike in good dispositions,

feckless morals, and personal appearance. They were the models of the Sunday school. At fifteen George

had the opportunity to go as cabinboy in a whaleship, and sailed away for the Pacific. Henry remained at

home in the village. At eighteen George was a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the advanced

Bible class. At twentytwo George, through fightinghabits and drinkinghabits acquired at sea and in the

sailor boardinghouses of the European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in HongKong, and out of

a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sundayschool. At twentysix George was a wanderer, a tramp,

and Henry was pastor of the village church. Then George came home, and was Henry's guest. One evening a

man passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with a pathetic smile, "Without intending me a

discomfort, that man is always keeping me reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money

about him, and goes by here every evening of his life." That OUTSIDE INFLUENCEthat remarkwas

enough for George, but IT was not the one that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented

the eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act for which their long gestation had

made preparation. It had never entered the head of Henry to rob the manhis ingot had been subjected to

Note.When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to colleges and museums while one

human being is destitute of bread, she has answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that

she has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's privilege of having a standard;

since she evidently requires him to adopt her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. The

human being always looks down when he is examining another person's standard; he never find one that he

Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his controlcarries on thought on its

O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every waking moment. Have you never tossed

about all night, imploring, beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to sleep?you

who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must obey your orders, think what you tell it to

think, and stop when you tell it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still for an instant.

The brightest man would not be able to supply it with subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the

O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to give it a suggestion. He may go to

sleep saying, "The moment I wake I will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. His mind will

be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake to be half conscious, he will find that it

O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one.

It refuses all persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker

throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You

O.M. Now, dreamsbut we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try commanding your mind to wait

Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should wake in the morning.

Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation, without waiting for me. Alsoas you

suggestedat night I appointed a theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on that

O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has no control over it; it does as it pleases. It

will take up a subject in spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside in spite of him. It

O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the combinations; you implored it to drop the game

Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It wore me out and I got up haggard and wretched in the

O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous rhymejingle?

"I saw Esau kissing Kate, And she saw I saw Esau; I saw Esau, he saw Kate, And she saw"

And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day and all night for a week in spite of all I

Y.M. Oh yes! "In the Sweeeet By and By"; etc. Yes, the new popular song with the taking melody sings

through one's head day and night, asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to let it

O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It is master. You have nothing to do with

it. It is so apart from you that it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its complex and

ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no use for your help, no use for your guidance, and

never uses either, whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could originate a thought in

O.M. Yet you can't originate a dreamthought for it to work out, and get it accepted?

O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a dreamthought for itself?

Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream mind are the same machine?

O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic daythoughts? Things that are dreamlike?

Y.M. Yeslike Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made him invisible; and like the Arabian tales of

O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and unfantastic?

Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like real life; dreams in which there are

several persons with distinctly differentiated charactersinventions of my mind and yet strangers to me: a

vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a kind and compassionate one; a

quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in

character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid

lovepassages; there are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there are sayings and

O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and artistically develops it, and carries the

O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or suggestion from youand I think it does.

It is argument that it is the same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the mind is purely

a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic machine. Have you tried the other experiment

O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over your mindif any.

Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you ordered: I placed two texts before my

eyesone a dull one and barren of interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, whitehot with it.

Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes C two and threequarter, and C owes

A thirty five cents, and D and A together owe E and B threesixteenths of ofI don't remember the rest,

now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my mind to stick to it even half a minute

Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's report of the porkmarket, and at

the same time I reminded it of an experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the pork and

Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty spectators. It makes me wild and

Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to its own devices it would find things

to think about without any of my help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine, set

in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it could be if it were in some one else's skull. Is

Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very lively, even gay and frisky. It was

reveling in a fantastic and joyful episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my

memorymoved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way carefully along the top of the garden

wall. The color of this cat brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the sidestep of the

pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky flypaper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and

fall down, helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more unreconciled, more and more

mutely profane; saw the silent congregation quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw

it all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a sadder scenein Terra del Fuegoand

with Darwin's eyes I saw a naked great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault; saw the

poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop

to mourn with that nude black sister of mine? Noit was far away from that scene in an instant, and was

busying itself with an everrecurring and disagreeable dream of mine. In this dream I always find myself,

stripped to my shirt, cringing and dodging about in the midst of a great drawingroom throng of finely

dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got there. And so on and so on, picture after picture,

incident after incident, a drifting panorama of everchanging, everdissolving views manufactured by my

mind without any help from mewhy, it would take me two hours to merely name the multitude of things

my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen minutes, let alone describe them to you.

O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one way whereby he can get its help when

O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes an inspiring one, open your mouth

and begin talking upon that matterortake your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and

concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It will take full charge, and furnish the words

O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap out before you know what is

O.M. Well, take a "flash of wit"repartee. Flash is the right word. It is out instantly. There is no time to

arrange the words. There is no thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a witmechanism it is automatic in its

action and needs no help. Where the whitmechanism is lacking, no amount of study and reflection can

O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brainmachines automatically combine the things perceived. That is all.

O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of invent is discover. I use the word in that

sense. Little by little they discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect engine. Watt

noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the lid of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely

discovered the fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved the cylinderfrom

the displaced lid he evolved the pistonrod. To attach something to the pistonrod to be moved by it, was a

One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not their creating powersfor they

hadn't anyand now, after a hundred years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand

O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He reproduced in his theatrical wardances,

scalp dances, and so on, incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization produced

more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the storyteller borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by

little, stage by stage. It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to develop the Greek

drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is

O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The astronomer observes this and that; adds

his this and that to the thisandthats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet, seeks it and finds

it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that

trap no more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud of his. Yet both are machines;

they have done machine work, they have originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit

belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no monuments when they die, no

remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are

alike in principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise than automatically, and neither

of them may righteously claim a PERSONAL superiority or a personal dignity above the other.

Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he does, it follows of necessity that he

O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of them being entitled to any personal merit

for what he does, it follows of necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself (personally

Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would you go on believing in them in the

O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere TruthSeeker is always convertible by such means.

Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your conversion

O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are none but temporary TruthSeekers;

that a permanent one is a human impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly

convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk

it and prop it with, and make it weatherproof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the Presbyterian

remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a

Democrat, the Republican a Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and sincere

Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever

budge him from that position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the laws of his

O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but one moving impulsethe

contenting of his own spirit and is merely a machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does,

it is not humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will be spent in patching and painting

and puttying and caulking my priceless possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument

Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a while agoconcerning the rat and all

Old Man. He hasn't any to stripthey are shams, stolen clothes. He claims credits which belong solely to his

O.M. I don'tmorally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is well above him, there.

O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large question. Let us finish with what we are

Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the rat on A level. What is it? The

O.M. I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same machine, but of unequal capacitieslike

yours and Edison's; like the African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's and Bismarck's.

Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no mental quality but instinct, while

Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting together of impressions received from

O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that it is merely PETRIFIED

THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but it become

O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all turned in one direction. They do that

instinctively; they gain nothing by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It is an

inherited habit which was originally thoughtthat is to say, observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable

inference drawn from that observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox noticed that with

the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to

keep his nose to the wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's thoughtmachine works just

like the other animals', but it is a better one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further,

reason wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both front and rear.

O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a rule it applies itself to habits and impulses

which had a faroff origin in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits which can

O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg firstnever the other one. There is

no advantage in that, and no sense in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set purpose,

I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt, and will continue to be transmitted.

O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a clothingstore and watch him try on a dozen

O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the same as a man's and its reasoning

processes the same? I will illustrate further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly

open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for it and find it. Now an uncle of

mine had an old horse who used to get into the closed lot where the corncrib was and dishonestly take the

corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin

which kept the gate closed. These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer the

existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the gate. Presently the horse came and pulled

the pin out with his teeth and went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observedthen thought it out for

himself. His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and that together and drew an inferenceand

Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is not very elaborate. Enlarge.

O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. He comes again by and by, and the

house is vacant. He infers that his host has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter

a house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as

related by a naturalist. The scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. This

particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was fed again; came into the house, next time,

and ate with the family; kept on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on a journey

for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. Its friends had removed to a village three miles

distant. Several months later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him home, entered the

house without excuse or apology, and became a daily guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this

one had memory and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially.

O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and next day he got into the same difficulty

again, he would infer the wise thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. Here is a case of a bird and

a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a bird flying around about his dog's head, down in

the grounds, and uttering cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a young bird in his

mouthunhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush and brought the dog away. Early the next

morning the mother bird came for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers

persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the groundsflying a little way in front of him and waiting for

him to catch up, and so on; and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way across lots.

The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and

once more he had to give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the stranger had helped her

once, she inferred that he would do it again; she knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with

confidence. Her mental processes were what Edison's would have been. She put this and that togetherand

that is all that thought ISand out of them built her logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn't have

O.M. Yesthe elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the macaw, the mockingbird, and many

others. The elephant whose mate fell into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was

raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with the reasoning quality. I conceive that

all animals that can learn things through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this and

that together and draw an inferencethe process of thinking. Could you teach an idiot of manuals of arms,

and to advance, retreat, and go through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?

O.M. Well, canarybirds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all sorts of wonderful things. They must

surely be able to notice, and to put things together, and say to themselves, "I get the idea, now: when I do so

and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I am punished." Fleas can be taught nearly

Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low plane, is there any that can think upon a

O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a selfeducated

specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities

Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which separates man and beast.

Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say there is no such frontier.

O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the mother bird, and the elephant show that

those creatures put their this's and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same

inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like his, also its manner of working.

Their equipment was as inferior to the Strasburg clock, but that is the only differencethere is no frontier.

Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It elevates the dumb beasts toto

O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed Creatures; so far as we can know, there is

O.M. On quite simple ones. "Dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no thoughtmachinery, no

understanding, no speech, no way of communicating what is in its mind. We know that a hen HAS speech.

We cannot understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her phrases. We know when

she is saying, "I have laid an egg"; we know when she is saying to the chicks, "Run here, dears, I've found a

worm"; we know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "Quick! hurry! gather yourselves under

mamma, there's a hawk coming!" We understand the cat when she stretches herself out, purring with

affection and contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says, "Come, kitties, supper's ready"; we understand

her when she goes mourning about and says, "Where can they be? They are lost. Won't you help me hunt for

them?" and we understand the disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "You come

over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur fly!" We understand a few of a dog's

phrases and we learn to understand a few of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we

domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few of the hen's speeches which we understand

is argument that she can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehendin a

word, that she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of

the Unrevealed. It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his

Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature thatas you seem to thinksweeps away the last vestige of an

O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal Australian never thought out a house for

himself and built it. The ant is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a strong and

enduring house eight feet higha house which is as large in proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or

cathedral in the world compared to man's size. No savage race has produced architects who could approach

the air in genius or culture. No civilized race has produced architects who could plan a house better for the

uses proposed than can hers. Her house contains a throneroom; nurseries for her young; granaries;

apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and they and the multifarious halls and corridors which

communicate with them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for convenience

O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further before we decide. The ant has

soldiersbattalions, regiments, armies; and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them

O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it is well planned, elaborate, and is well

O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of forced labor.

O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and

O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock took ants from two different nests,

made them drunk with whiskey and laid them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from

the nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then carried their friends home and

threw the strangers overboard. Sir John repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants

did as they had done at firstcarried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. But finally they

lost patience, seeing that their reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and strangers

overboard. Comeis this instinct, or is it thoughtful and intelligent discussion of a thing new absolutely

newto their experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment executed? Is it

instinct?thought petrified by ages of habitor isn't it brandnew thought, inspired by the new occasion,

Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the look of reflection, thought, putting this and

O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of sugar on a table in his room. The ants

got at it. He tried several preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one which shut off

accessprobably set the table's legs in pans of water, or drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't

remember. At any rate, he watched to see what they would do. They tried various schemesfailures, every

one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they held a consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a

decisionand this time they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession, cross the floor, climbed

the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down

Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned scheme to meet a new emergency.

O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances. I come now to a mental detail

wherein the ant is a long way the superior of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many

experiments that an ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the stranger is

disguised with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows every individual in her hive of five hundred

thousand souls. Also, after a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway recognize

the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions

made? Not by color, for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for ants that had been dipped in

chloroform were recognized. Not by speech and not by antennae signs nor contacts, for the drunken and

motionless ants were recognized and the friend discriminated from the stranger. The ants were all of the same

species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and feature friends who formed part of a hive

of five hundred thousand! Has any man a memory for form and feature approaching that?

O.M. Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting this and that together in new and

untried emergencies and deducting smart conclusions from the combinationsa man's mental process

exactly. With memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects upon them, adds to

them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to far resultsfrom the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's

complex engine; from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the capricious chase to

agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to stable government and concentrated authority; from

incoherent hordes to massed armies. The ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the preserving

adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's development and the essential features of his

Y.M. We have come a good way. As a resultas I understand it I am required to concede that there is

absolutely no intellectual frontier separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?

O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such frontierthere is no way to get around that.

Man has a finer and more capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and works in

the same way. And neither he nor those others can command the machineit is strictly automatic,

independent of control, works when it pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced.

Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental machinery, and there isn't any difference of

O.M. That is about the state of itintellectuality. There are pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't

learn to understand much of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a very great

deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc.,

nor any of our fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.

Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is still a wall, and a lofty one. They

haven't got the Moral Sense; we have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.

Y.M. Now look herelet's call a halt. I have stood the other infamies and insanities and that is enough; I am

O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple truthand without uncharitableness. The

fact that man knows right from wrong proves his INTELLECTUAL superiority to the other creatures; but the

fact that he can DO wrong proves his MORAL inferiority to any creature that CANNOT. It is my belief that

O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the old woman his last shilling and

Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her to suffer. Isn't it so?

O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the one hand and the comfort of the

spirit on the other. The body made a strong appeal, of coursethe body would be quite sure to do that; the

spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two appeals, and was made. Who or what

Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in doing it he exercised Free Will.

O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will, and that he can and must exercise

it where he is offered a choice between good conduct and lessgood conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in that

man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and the daily influences which had

molded him and made him what he was, COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus save

HIMSELFsave himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. He did not make the choice, it

was made FOR him by forces which he could not control. Free Will has always existed in WORDS, but it

stops there, I thinkstops short of FACT. I would not use those wordsFree Willbut others.

O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to ACT as you please, the other implies nothing beyond a mere

MENTAL PROCESS: the critical ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just.

O.M. The mind can freely SELECT, CHOOSE, POINT OUT the right and just oneits function stops there.

It can go no further in the matter. It has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the

O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and the character which has been built

O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's machine would act upon the right one;

Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and judicially points out which of two

O.M. Yes, and his MORAL machinery will freely act upon the other or the other, according to its make, and

be quite indifferent to the MIND'S feeling concerning the matterthat is, WOULD be, if the mind had any

feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing

Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man KNOWS which of two things is right he is absolutely BOUND to

O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he will do it; he cannot help himself, he

has no authority over the mater. Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?

O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an absolute and insurmountable bar to

O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can NOT essay it, what becomes of his Free Will?

Where is his Free Will? Why claim that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why

content that because he and David SEE the right alike, both must ACT alike? Why impose the same laws

O.M. It is what I think. There is WILL. But it has nothing to do with INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTIONS OF

RIGHT AND WRONG, and is not under their command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it

was a compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The coward's temperament and

training possess Will, and IT is compulsory; it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no

choice. But neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Willwill that may do the right or do the

Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can't tell where you draw the line between MATERIAL

O.M. There is no such thing as MATERIAL covetousness. All covetousness is spiritual

O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in ALL cases you shall content his SPIRITthat alone. He never

Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody's moneyisn't that rather distinctly material and gross?

O.M. No. The money is merely a symbolit represents in visible and concrete form a SPIRITUAL DESIRE.

Any socalled material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for ITSELF, but because it

O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and your vanity is pleased, your spirit

contented. Suppose your friends deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are ashamed of

O.M. It is the same hat, isn't it? It is in no way altered. But it wasn't the HAT you wanted, but only what it

stood fora something to please and content your SPIRIT. When it failed of that, the whole of its value was

gone. There are no MATERIAL values; there are only spiritual ones. You will hunt in vain for a material

value that is ACTUAL, REALthere is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for even a moment, is the

spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at once worthlesslike the hat.

O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no MATERIAL value; you think you desire it for its own sake, but it

is not so. You desire it for the spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that its value is

gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had

accumulated a fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a pestilence swept away

all whom he held dear and left him desolate. His money's value was gone. He realized that his joy in it came

not from the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his family's enjoyment of the

pleasures and delights it lavished upon them. Money has no MATERIAL value; if you remove its spiritual

value nothing is left but dross. It is so with all things, little or big, majestic or trivialthere are no

exceptions. Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste jewels, village notoriety, worldwide famethey are all the

same, they have no MATERIAL value: while they content the SPIRIT they are precious, when this fails they

Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive terminology. Sometimes you divide a

man up into two or three separate personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities of its

own, and when he is in that condition I can't grasp it. Now when _I_ speak of a man, he is THE WHOLE

O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of "my body" who is the "my"?

Y.M. The Me is THE WHOLE THING; it is a common property; an undivided ownership, vested in the

O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it, including the hair, hands, heels, and all?

O.M. So YOU divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must. What, then, definitely, is the Me?

O.M. You think so? If you say "I believe the world is round," who is the "I" that is speaking?

O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines and accepts the evidence that the world

O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the loss of your father?

O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen if the mind is spiritual, and

O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain. Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is

O.M. But isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the outskirts without the help of the PHYSICAL

messenger? You perceive that the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all. You say "I

admire the rainbow," and "I believe the world is round," and in these cases we find that the Me is not

speaking, but only the MENTAL part. You say, "I grieve," and again the Me is not all speaking, but only the

MORAL part. You say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say "I have a pain" and find that this time the

Me is mental AND spiritual combined. We all use the "I" in this indeterminate fashion, there is no help for it.

We imagine a Master and King over what you call The Whole Thing, and we speak of him as "I," but when

we try to define him we find we cannot do it. The intellect and the feelings can act quite INDEPENDENTLY

of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a Ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a

DEFINITE AND INDISPUTABLE "I," and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we are

talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and confess that we cannot find him. To

me, Man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in

accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of borntemperament and an

accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and trainings; a machine whose ONE function is to secure

the spiritual contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose Will is absolute

O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the man to content its desires. It may be

O.M. It is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about anything but the satisfying of its own

desires. It can be TRAINED to prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them only

Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out for its own contentment, and not for the

O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good, and never concerns itself about it.

O.M. It is a COLORLESS force seated in the man's moral constitution. Let us call it an instincta blind,

unreasoning instinct, which cannot and does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares

nothing for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured; and it will ALWAYS secure that.

Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage for the man?

O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor office, nor any other MATERIAL

advantage. In ALL cases it seeks a SPIRITUAL contentment, let the MEANS be what they may. Its desires

are determined by the man's temperament and it is lord over that. Temperament, Conscience,

Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared

Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to take a place in a business house at a

O.M. He had to satisfy his masterthat is to say, his temperament, his Spiritual Appetiteand it preferred

O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold, and manifold perils, to content his

autocrat, who prefers these things, and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that

O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations, either well paid or ill paid, to any others

in the market, at any price. You REALIZE that the Master Passionthe contentment of the spiritconcerns

itself with many things besides socalled material advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?

O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that would refuse the burdens and

vexations and distinctions of public office as there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments

seek the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the case with the other set. Neither set

seeks anything BUT the contentment of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so, since

the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. And in both cases Temperament decides the

Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought over all these talks, and passed them

carefully in review. With this result: that . . . that . . . are you intending to publish your notions about Man

O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me has halfintended to order me to set

them to paper and publish them. Do I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you

Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved your interior Master to give the order;

stronger outside influences deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of these impulses could ever

have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or originating an idea within itself.

Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master's hands. If some day an outside influence

Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the publication of your doctrines would be

Speakingtrumpets are not responsible for what is said through them. Outside influences in the form of

lifelong teachings, trainings, notions, prejudices, and other secondhand importationshave persuaded the

Master within you that the publication of these doctrines would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural,

and was to be expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of ease and convenience, stick to habit:

Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring, enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out

of man, it takes the pride out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal credit, all

applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows him no control over the machine; makes a mere

coffeemill of him, and neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and piteously

humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his make, outside impulses doing the rest.

Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance, charity, benevolence, magnanimity,

O.M. I would not go any further. These are ELEMENTALS. Virtue, fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty,

high ideals these, and all the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are MADE OF THE

ELEMENTALS, by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals, just as one makes green by

blending blue and yellow, and makes several shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. There

are several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we manufacture and name fifty shades of

them. You have named the elementals of the human rainbow, and also one BLENDheroism, which is

made out of courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these elements does the possessor of it

O.M. Take those othersthe elemental moral qualities charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness;

fruitful seeds, out of which spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold blends and

combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all

O.M. Then it is YOU who degrade man. You make him claim glory, praise, flattery, for every valuable thing

he possesses BORROWED finery, the whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it

O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a piano an elaborate piece of music,

without error, while the man is thinking about something else, or talking to a friend?

O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which automatically drives its

renewing and refreshing streams through the body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man?

Who devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests itself in what it pleases,

regardless of its will or desire, labors all night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all

these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine. I am merely calling attention to

the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to call attention to the fact? Is it a crime?

Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he is the supreme marvel of the Creation;

he believes it; in all the ages he has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple and

fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant, his life cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere

admiration of himself, his joy in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his

exultation over the praise and applause which they evokedthese have exalted him, enthused him,

ambitioned him to higher and higher flights; in a word, made his life worth the living. But by your scheme,

all this is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble prides wither to mere vanities; let

him strive as he may, he can never be any better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be

Y.M. Oh, welltemperament, of course! You never let THAT escape from your scheme.

O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament, nothing can make him happy; if he is

O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless. They strive in vain against inborn

O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not studiously examined the facts. Of all your

O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments are as opposite as the poles. Their

lifehistories are about alikebut look at the results! Their ages are about the sameabout around fifty.

Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been cheerless, hopeless, despondent.

As young fellows both tried country journalismand failed. Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams couldn't

smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture himself with vain regrets for not

having done so and so instead of so and soTHEN he would have succeeded. They tried the law and

failed. Burgess remained happybecause he couldn't help it. Adams was wretchedbecause he couldn't

help it. From that day to this, those two men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out

happy and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And we do absolutely know that these men's inborn

temperaments have remained unchanged through all the vicissitudes of their material affairs. Let us see how

it is with their immaterials. Both have been zealous Democrats; both have been zealous Republicans; both

have been zealous Mugwumps. Burgess has always found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several

political beliefs and in their migrations out of them. Both of these men have been Presbyterians,

Universalists, Methodists, Catholicsthen Presbyterians again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always

found rest in these excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian Science, now, with the customary

result, the inevitable result. No political or religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man

happy. I assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are ACQUIREMENTS, temperaments are

O.M. Yes, the halfdozen others are modifications of the extremes. But the law is the same. Where the

temperament is twothirds happy, or twothirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the

proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally balanced; the intensities are absent, and

this enables a nation to learn to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and like them,

be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. Nations do not THINK, they only FEEL. They get their feelings at

second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought by force of

circumstances, not argumentto reconcile itself to ANY KIND OF GOVERNMENT OR RELIGION

THAT CAN BE DEVISED; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and

will fiercely fight for them. As instances, you have all history: the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the

Egyptians, the Russians, the Germans, the French, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the South

Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turksa thousand wild and tame religions, every

kind of government that can be thought of, from tiger to housecat, each nation KNOWING it has the only

true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not

suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each without

undoubting confidence summoning Him to take command in time of war, each surprised when He goes over

to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume complimentsin a word, the whole human race

content, always content, persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, NO MATTER

facts? You know I am. Is the human race cheerful? You know it is. Considering what it can stand, and be

happy, you do me too much honor when you think that _I_ can place before it a system of plain cold facts

that can take the cheerfulness out of it. Nothing can do that. Everything has been tried. Without success. I beg

The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24, 1909. Mr. Clemens was in great

stress of mind when I first saw him, but a few hours later I found him writing steadily.

"I am setting it down," he said, "everything. It is a relief to me to write it. It furnishes me an excuse for

thinking." At intervals during that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then on the

evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to rest in Elmira, he came to my room with the

"I have finished it," he said; "read it. I can form no opinion of it myself. If you think it worthy, some dayat

Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings connected with a dear onehappenings of

the twenty four hours preceding the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain

them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the mind in a flood. They are little things

that have been always happening every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable

beforebut now! Now, how different! how precious they are, now dear, how unforgettable, how pathetic,

Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from the wholesome effects of my Bermuda

holiday, strolled hand in hand from the dinnertable and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned, and

discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)until ninewhich is late for usthen went

upstairs, Jean's friendly German dog following. At my door Jean said, "I can't kiss you good night, father: I

have a cold, and you could catch it." I bent and kissed her hand. She was movedI saw it in her eyesand

she impulsively kissed my hand in return. Then with the usual gay "Sleep well, dear!" from both, we parted.

At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door. I said to myself, "Jean is starting

on her usual horseback flight to the station for the mail." Then Katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping at

Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart.

In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet. And

looking so placid, so natural, and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she had

been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The doctor had to come several miles. His efforts,

It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It is a noble face, and full of dignity;

In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart with a cablegram which said, "Susy

was mercifully released today." I had to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the

peremptory addition, "You must not come home." Clara and her husband sailed from here on the 11th of this

month. How will Clara bear it? Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.

Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected health; but by some accident the

reporters failed to perceive this. Day before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and

strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill. Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my

case through the Associated Press. I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said I must

think of Clara. Clara would see the report in the German papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day

and night for four months [2] and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. There was reason

in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the Associated Press denying the "charge" that I was

Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it

so, for there was nothing serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's irremediable

disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this evening's papers? the one so blithe, the other so

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her motherher incomparable mother!five and a half years ago; Clara

has gone away to live in Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! Seven

months ago Mr. Roger diedone of the best friends I ever had, and the nearest perfect, as man and

gentleman, I have yet met among my race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and

Laffanold, old friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed

hands goodby at this door last nightand it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit

herewriting, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the

Seventyfour years ago twentyfour days ago. Seventyfour years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age

I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead

in that Florentine villa so long ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.

I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again; that I would never again look into the

grave of any one dear to me. I have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and bear her

to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been released, but I shall not follow.

Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was at the door, beaming a welcome,

when I reached this house the next evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called

"Mark Twain." We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and she wouldn't let me look into the loggia,

where she was making Christmas preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, and then her

little French friend would arrive from New Yorkthe surprise would follow; the surprise she had been

working over for days. While she was out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed

with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a

Christmas tree that was drenched with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal

profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today. What desecrating hand will ever banish

that eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? Not mine, surely. All these little matters have happened in

the last four days. "Little." YesTHEN. But not now. Nothing she said or thought or did is little now. And

all the lavish humor!what is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, and the thought of it brings tears.

All these little things happened such a few hours agoand now she lies yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for

nothing any more. Strangemarvelousincredible! I have had this experience before; but it would still be

That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's head without a preliminary knock, I

supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering

I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for servants and friends! They are

everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the flooreverything is occupied, and over occupied. It is many and

many a year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I used to slip softly into the

nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And

now here is Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The presents are not labeledthe hands

are forever idle that would have labeled them today. Jean's mother always worked herself down with her

Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding days, and the fatigue has cost her her

life. The fatigue caused the convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for months.

Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of overtaxing her strength. Every

morning she was in the saddle by half past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the letters

and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the others to the stenographer and myself. She

dispatched her share and then mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her

poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me after dinner, but she was usually too tired

Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while absent in Bermuda, to lighten her

burdens. We would get a housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretarywork into Mr. Paine's

Noshe wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter ended in a compromise, I submitted.

I always did. She wouldn't audit the bills and let Paine fill out the checks she would continue to attend to

that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let Katy assist. Also, she would continue to

answer the letters of personal friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by that name,

However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud of being my secretary, and I was

never able to persuade her to give up any part of her share in that unlovely work.

In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that if she were willing I would go back to

Bermuda in February and get blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was urgent

that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip until March she would take Katy and go with me.

We struck hands upon that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by tomorrow's ship and

secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to write the letter this morning. But it will never be written,

Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the skyline of the hills.

I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer to me every day. I was getting

acquainted with Jean in these last nine months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us

threequarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums, many miles from us. How eloquent glad

Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word would do it, I would beg for strength to

withhold the word. And I would have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt, and my

life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched with the most precious of all giftsthat gift

which makes all other gifts mean and poor death. I have never wanted any released friend of mine restored

to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr.

Rogers. When Clara met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died suddenly that

morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune fortunate all his long and lovely lifefortunate to his

latest moment! The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. Truebut they were for ME, not

for him. He had suffered no loss. All the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this

Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay

in it. The spirits of the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of the family. Susy

died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would never enter it again. But it made the house dearer

to me. I have entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but to me it was a holy place

and beautiful. It seemed to me that the spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and

welcome me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and Charles Dudley Warner.

How good and kind they were, and how lovable their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could call

the children back and hear them romp again with Georgethat peerless black exslave and children's idol

who came one daya flitting strangerto wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara

and Jean would never enter again the New York hotel which their mother had frequented in earlier days.

They could not bear it. But I shall stay in this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's

spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic deathbut I will not think of that now.

Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping, and was always physically

exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was her very own childshe wore herself out present hunting in

New York these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of namesfifty, he thinkspeople

to whom she sent presents last night. Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of

Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and forlorn. I have seen him from the

windows. She got him from Germany. He has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in

Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders save in that tongue. And so when

the burglaralarm made a fierce clamor at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no

German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean wrote me, to Bermuda, about the

incident. It was the last letter I was ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will

There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up she always spent the most of her

allowance on charities of one kind or another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she

spent her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad and grateful to say.

She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds, beasts, and everythingeven snakesan

inheritance from me. She knew all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of various

humane societies when she was still a little girlboth here and abroadand she remained an active member

to the last. She founded two or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.

She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out of the wastebasket and answered

the letters. She thought all letters deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that

She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but an indifferent ear music, but her

tongue took to languages with an easy facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty

The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as they did in Italy five years and a

half ago, when this child's mother laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they take away

some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at my door last, how little did we imagine that in

For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house, remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to

She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her maladyepilepsy. There are no words to express

how grateful I am that she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own

A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines yet to appear, and now I am

CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals, and turned back the sheet and

looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence

so long ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so many times, and turned back a

sheet and looked at a face just like this oneJean's mother's faceand kissed a brow that was just like this

one. And last night I saw again what I had seen thenthat strange and lovely miraclethe sweet, soft

contours of early maidenhood restored by the gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace

of care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of the face, and I was looking

again upon it as I had known and worshipped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.

About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep silences, as one dies in times like

these, when there is a dumb sense that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be

sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon Jean's dog in the hall downstairs,

and noted that he did not spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and

sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he

know? I think so. Always when Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the

house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor was his bedroom. Whenever I happened

upon him on the ground floor he always followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went tooin a

tumultuous gallop. But now it was different: after patting him a little I went to the libraryhe remained

behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyesbig,

and kind, and eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature, and is of the breed of the New York

policedogs. I do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have liked this one

from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because he never barks except when there is

In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of my books, and I knew what it meant.

She was waiting for me to come home from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away.

If I only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will keep them. Her hand has touched

And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for mea thing I have often wished I owned: a noble big globe. I

couldn't see it for the tears. She will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the mails are

full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old kind words she loved so well, "Merry Christmas to

At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to one of those New York homes for poor

CHRISTMAS NIGHT.This afternoon they took her away from her room. As soon as I might, I went down

to the library, and there she lay, in her coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at

the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant

with happy excitement then; it was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God upon it.

They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited, and stood up on his hind legs and

rested his fore paws upon the trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went

At midafternoon it began to snow. The pity of itthat Jean could not see it! She so loved the snow.

The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the door to bear away its pathetic burden. As

they lifted the casket, Paine began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was Jean's

favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then he played the Largo; that was for their

mother. He did this at my request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo and the

Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in their last hours in this life.

From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road and gradually grow vague and

spectral in the falling snow, and presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back

any more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies togetherhe and her beloved old

Katywere conducting her to her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more,

DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning. He was very affectionate, poor

The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives across the landscape in vast clouds,

2:30 P.M.It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just

as if I were there. The scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where her mother

and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her

mother's stood five years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.

When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I could bear it, for I had Jean left. I

said WE would be a family. We said we would be close comrades and happyjust we two. That fair dream

was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my mind when she received me at

the door last Tuesday evening. We were together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come trueoh,

precisely true, contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.

1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family for twentynine years.

If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon the above text. It means the change in

my life's course which introduced what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my

career. But it also implieswithout intention, perhapsthat that turningpoint ITSELF was the creator of

the new condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the

LAST link in a very long chain of turningpoints commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any

more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed

share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one

of them would have defeated the scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. It know we have a fashion

of saying "such and such an event was the turningpoint in my life," but we shouldn't say it. We should

merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real

Perhaps the most celebrated turningpoint recorded in history was the crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius

Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the

importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may still

retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms."

This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big and little, of Caesar's previous life had

been leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link. This was the LAST linkmerely the last one, and no

bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big

You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have I; so has the rest of the human race. It

was one of the links in your lifechain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with baited

While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person remarked for his noble mien and

graceful aspect appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a

number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet

from one of them, ran to the river with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other

side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies

So he crossedand changed the future of the whole human race, for all time. But that stranger was a link in

Caesar's lifechain, too; and a necessary one. We don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he was

very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion of HIS lifechain,

to blow the electrifying blast that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the

If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed. With such results! Such vast

eventseach a link in the HUMAN RACE'S lifechain; each event producing the next one, and that one the

next one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire; the breaking up of the

empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins; the spread of the religion to other landsand so on; link by

link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America being one of them; our

Revolution another; the inflow of English and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors

among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of

the unavoidable results of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away

(which he COULDN'T, for he was the appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What would have

happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only know that the things that did happen would not have

happened. They might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and results

are beyond our guessing. But the matter that interests me personally is that I would not be HERE now, but

somewhere else; and probably blackthere is no telling. Very well, I am glad he crossed. And very really

To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I have been professionally literary

something more than forty years. There have been many turningpoints in my life, but the one that was the

link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most CONSPICUOUS link in that chain.

BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not any more important than its predecessors. All the other links have

an inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in making me literary they are all of

I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up to it and brought it about.

The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a recent one; I should have to go back

ages before Caesar's day to find the first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of generations and

start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve and a half years old, my father died. It was in the

spring. The summer came, and brought with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child died almost every

day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair. Children that were not smitten with the disease

were imprisoned in their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes there were no cheerful faces,

there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was

allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. I was a

prisoner. My soul was steeped in this awful drearinessand in fear. At some time or other every day and

every night a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow, and I said to myself, "There, I've got it! and I shall die."

Life on these miserable terms was not worth living, and at last I made up my mind to get the disease and have

it over, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went to the house of a neighbor where a playmate

of mine was very ill with the malady. When the chance offered I crept into his room and got into bed with

him. I was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity. But I had the disease; they could not take

that from me. I came near to dying. The whole village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me

every day; and not only once a day, but several times. Everybody believed I would die; but on the fourteenth

This was a turningpoint of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got well my mother closed my school

career and apprenticed me to a printer. She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure

I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain which was to lead me into the literary

profession. A long road, but I could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even that it

A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and seeking again, when necessity

commands. N. B. Necessity is a CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's masterand when Circumstance

commands, he must obey; he may argue the matterthat is his privilege, just as it is the honorable privilege

of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitationbut it won't do any good, he must OBEY. I

wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of

Iowa, where I worked several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one about the

Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up the great river from Para to the sources of

the Madeira, through the heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a romantic

land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the museum varieties, and where the alligator and

the crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo. Also, he told an

astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing

and so strengthgiving that the native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and down

I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to open up a trade in coca with all the

world. During months I dreamed that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid

enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A person may PLAN as much as he wants to, but

nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the

matter off his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help. It was in this way. Circumstance, to help or hurt

another man, made him lose a fiftydollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it. I

advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This was another turningpoint, another link.

Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the Amazon and open up a

worldtrade in coca on a fifty dollar basis and been obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools

thereshoals and shoals of thembut they were not of my kind. I was the only one of my kind.

Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a partner. Its partner is man's

TEMPERAMENThis natural disposition. His temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he

has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot change it, nothing can change it,

nothing can modify itexcept temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is permanent, like the color of the

man's eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray in certain unusual lights; but they resume their

A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of a different temperament. If

Circumstance had thrown the banknote in Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for

the Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with the money, but not that. It

might have made him advertise the noteand WAIT. We can't tell. Also, it might have made him go to New

York and buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learn when it came his

Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me what to do with it. Sometimes a

temperament is an ass. When that is the case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.

Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt him that people will

think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is

By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and reflects afterward. So I started

for the Amazon without reflecting and without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In

all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have been punished many and many a time,

and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I still

do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect afterward. Always violently. When

I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My idea was to take ship, at New

Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there

never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and asked me what I was doing, and I

told him. He made me move on, and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run

After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with another turningpoint of my lifea

new link. On my way down, I had made the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and

By and by Circumstance came againintroducing the Civil War, this time, in order to push me ahead

another stage or two toward the literary profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.

Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turningpoint and a fresh link. My brother was appointed

secretary to the new Territory of Nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I

In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the mines to make a fortune, as I

supposed; but that was not the idea. The idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For

amusement I scribbled things for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE. One isn't a printer ten years without

setting up acres of good and bad literature, and learningunconsciously at first, consciously laterto

discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is unconsciously acquiring

what is called a "style." One of my efforts attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me

And so I became a journalistanother link. By and by Circumstance and the Sacramento UNION sent me to

the Sandwich Islands for five or six months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of extraneous

matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.

It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I did. And profitably. I had long had a

desire to travel and see the world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me upon

the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the "Quaker City Excursion."

When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier with the LAST linkthe conspicuous,

the consummating, the victorious link: I was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE

INNOCENTS ABROAD. Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild. That was fortytwo years

ago, and I have been a member ever since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can

say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles when I was twelve

Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details themselves, but the fact that none of them

was foreseen by me, none of them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,

working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled them all. I often offered help, and

with the best intentions, but it was rejectedas a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and get it to

come out the way I planned it. It came out some other waysome way I had not counted upon.

And so I do not admire the human beingas an intellectual marvelas much as I did when I was young,

and got him out of books, and did not know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general

did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so. Circumstance did it by help of his

temperament. The circumstances would have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might

see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too quick or too doubtful. Once General

Grant was asked a question about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers;

he answered the question without any hesitancy. "General, who planned the the march through Georgia?"

"The enemy!" He added that the enemy usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by

neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see your chance and take

Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperaments. I see no great difference

between a man and a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES to plan

things and the watch doesn't. The watch doesn't wind itself and doesn't regulate itselfthese things are done

exteriorly. Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left to himself, he

wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are

wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men are only

simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A Waterbury of that kind, some say.

A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and Circumstances comes and upsets themor

enlarges them. Some patriots throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The PLANS

stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest riots into a revolution.

And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new route to an old country. Circumstance

revised his plan for him, and he found a new WORLD. And HE gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn't

Necessarily the scene of the real turningpoint of my life (and of yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there

that the first link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary

guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENT was the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this

planet. And it was the only command Adam would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water,

be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The latter command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be

disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his TEMPERAMENTwhich he did not create and had no

authority over. For the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named Man is

merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the

sheep's temperament is Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger

alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those

commands CAN'T be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which is

supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve.

That is, in their temperaments. Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures afflicted with temperaments

made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and BE MELTED. What I

cannot help wishing is, that Adam had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their

placethat splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary

persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been

results! Indeed, yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there would be no

YOU; there would be no ME. And the old, old creationdawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the

These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large enough to command respect. In the

hope that you are listening, and that you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult things to

acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the head. But they are very valuable. They

are like the cattlepens of a ranchthey shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within its own

fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates are hard to remember because they consist of

figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures,

and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can

make nearly anything stickparticularly IF YOU MAKE THE PICTURES YOURSELF. Indeed, that is the

great pointmake the pictures YOURSELF. I know about this from experience. Thirty years ago I was

delivering a memorized lecture every night, and every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep

from getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of sentences, and were eleven in number, and

Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and protected me against skipping. But they

all looked about alike on the page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never with

certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I always had to keep those notes by me and look

at them every little while. Once I mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening. I

now saw that I must invent some other protection. So I got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper

orderI, A, B, and so onand I went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink on my ten

fingernails. But it didn't answer. I kept track of the figures for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was

never quite sure which finger I had used last. I couldn't lick off a letter after using it, for while that would

have made success certain it also would have provoked too much curiosity. There was curiosity enough

without that. To the audience I seemed more interested in my fingernails than I was in my subject; one or two

It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles passed away. In two minutes I made six

pictures with a pen, and they did the work of the eleven catchsentences, and did it perfectly. I threw the

pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I could shut my eyes and see them any time. That

was a quarter of a century ago; the lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I would

The first one is a haystackbelow it a rattlesnakeand it told me where to begin to talk ranchlife in

Carson Valley. The second one told me where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to

burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two o'clock and try to blow the town

away. The third picture, as you easily perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to

begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no lightningnor thunder, eitherand it never

I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you are to follow him don't jot down

notes to speak from, jot down PICTURES. It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes;

and besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and noncoherent; but you can tear up your

pictures as soon as you have made themthey will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and

sequence in which you scratched them down. And many will admire to see what a good memory you are

Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess was trying to hammer some primer

histories into their heads. Part of this funif you like to call it thatconsisted in the memorizing of the

accession dates of the thirtyseven personages who had ruled England from the Conqueror down. These little

people found it a bitter, hard contract. It was all dates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't stick. Day after

day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six

With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some way out of the trouble with

pictures, but I hoped a way could be found which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the

The idea was to make them SEE the reigns with their eyes; that would be a large help. We were at the farm

then. From the houseporch the grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to the

high ground where my small workden stood. A carriageroad wound through the grounds and up the hill. I

staked it out with the English monarchs, beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and

clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest down to Victoria, then in the fortysixth year of her

reignEIGHT HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN YEARS OF English history under your eye at once!

English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The world had suddenly realized that while

it was not noticing the Queen had passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining in length

every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones; everybody was interested now it was watching a

race. Would she pass the long Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the long Henry?

Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible! Everybody said it. But we have lived to see her

I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and at the beginning and end of each reign

I drove a threefoot whitepine stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it. Abreast

the middle of the porchfront stood a great granite flowervase overflowing with a cataract of brightyellow

flowersI can't think of their name. The vase of William the Conqueror. We put his name on it and his

accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off twentyone feet of the road, and drove William

Rufus's state; then thirteen feet and drove the first Henry's stake; then thirtyfive feet and drove Stephen's;

then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the summerhouse on the left; then we staked out thirtyfive,

ten, and seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve and entered upon just what

was needed for Henry III.a level, straight stretch of fiftysix feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it lay

exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There couldn't have been a better place for that

long reign; you could stand on the porch and see those two wideapart stakes almost with your eyes shut.

That isn't the shape of the roadI have bunched it up like that to save room. The road had some great curves

in it, but their gradual sweep was such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could tell at a

glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakeswith LOCALITY to help, of course.

Although I am away off here in a Swedish village [1] and those stakes did not stand till the snow came, I can

see them today as plainly as ever; and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before me of

their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he takes up on our road. Are your kings spaced

off in your mind? When you think of Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns seem about

alike to you? It isn't so to me; I always notice that there's a foot's difference. When you think of Henry III. do

you see a great long stretch of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it joins on to Edward I. I always

see a small pearbush with its green fruit hanging down. When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady

little group of these small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when I think of George III. I see him

stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch when

he comes into my mind, for he just filled the stretch which went by the summerhouse. Victoria's reign

reached almost to my study door on the first little summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; I believe that

that would carry it to a big pinetree that was shattered by some lightning one summer when it was trying to

We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. We trotted the course from the conqueror

to the study, the children calling out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes, going a

good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we came upon people like Mary and Edward VI.,

and the short Stuart and Plantagenet, to give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes, tooapples. I threw

one as far as I could send it, and the child that first shouted the reign it fell in got the apple.

The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or

"up at the stone steps," and say instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in

George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road mapped out with such exactness was a

great boon for me, for I had the habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and had

not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had often been obliged to go to fetch them

myself, to save time and failure; but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the children.

Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them alongside the English ones, so that we

could always have contemporaneous French history under our eyes as we went our English rounds. We

pegged them down to the Hundred Years' War, then threw the idea aside, I do not now remember why. After

that we made the English pegs fence in European and American history as well as English, and that answered

very well. English and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues, cataclysms, revolutionswe

shoveled them all into the English fences according to their dates. Do you understand? We gave

Washington's birth to George II.'s pegs and his death to George III.'s; George II. got the Lisbon earthquake

and George III. the Declaration of Independence. Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola, Joan of Arc,

the French Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga,

the Battle of the Boyne, the invention of the logarithms, the microscope, the steamengine, the telegraph

anything and everything all over the worldwe dumped it all in among the English pegs according to it date

If the roadpegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the kings in the children's heads by

means of pictures that is, I should have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be effective

WHEN MADE BY THE PUPIL; not the master, for it is the work put upon the drawing that makes the

drawing stay in the memory, and my children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides,

they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are like me.

But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to use it. It will come good for indoors

when the weather is bad and one cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are a

procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat for exercise and are now starting back

again up the zigzag road. This will bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent the

And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use the parlor wall. You do not mark on

the wall; that would cause trouble. You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumbtacks. These will

Take your pen now, and twentyone pieces of white paper, each two inches square, and we will do the

twentyone years of the Conqueror's reign. On each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and

term of service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William's begin with the same letter;

it is the biggest fish that swims, and William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of a

landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw. By the time you have drawn twentyone wales

and written "William I.10661087twentyone years" twentyone times, those details will be your

property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything but dynamite. I will make a sample for

I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for Harold. It may be that a whale hasn't

that fin up there on his back, but I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err on the safe

Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing your first whale from my sample and writing the

word and figures under it, so that you will not need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with

the sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can shut your eyes and see the

picture and call the words and figures, then turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy

from memory; and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory until you

have finished the whole twentyone. This will take you twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will

find that you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine; also, up to the

time you die you will always be able to furnish William's dates to any ignorant person that inquires after

You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches square, and do William II. (Fig. 4.)

Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him small, and stick a harpoon in him and

give him that sick look in the eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that

would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him small; he was only about a No. 11 whale, or

along there somewhere; there wasn't room in him for his father's great spirit. The barb of that harpoon ought

not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped;

if the barb were removed people would think some one had stuck a whipstock into the whale. It is best to

leave the barb the way it is, then every one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business.

Rememberdraw from the copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory.

Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its inscription once from my sample and two or

three times from memory the details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you like, you may

make merely the whale's HEAD and WATERSPOUT for the Conqueror till you end his reign, each time

SAYING the inscription in place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the HARPOON alone, and

say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it

will to do the second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in length of the two reigns.

That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable. When you have repeated the hen and the

inscription until you are perfectly sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirtyfive times,

You begin to understand how how this procession is going to look when it is on the wall. First there will be

the Conqueror's twentyone whales and waterspouts, the twentyone white squares joined to one another

and making a white stripe three and one half feet long; the thirteen blue squares of William II. will be joined

to thata blue stripe two feet, two inches long, followed by Henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches long, and

so on. The colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the difference in the length of the reigns and

Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen twoinch squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 8.)

That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen's name. I choose it for that reason. I can make a

better steer than that when I am not excited. But this one will do. It is a goodenough steer for history. The

Next comes Henry II. Give him thirtyfive squares of RED paper. These hens must face west, like the former

This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what has been happening in Canterbury.

How we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion heart because he was a brave fighter and was never

so contented as when he was leading crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give him ten

That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion hearted Richard. There is something the matter with his

legs, but I do not quite know what it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones are the most

unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be better if they were rights and lefts.

Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called Lackland. He gave his realm to the

That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is only an accident and not intentional. It is

prehistoric and extinct. It used to roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish and

climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which was the fashion then. It was very fierce, and

the Old Silurians were afraid of it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has no representative now, but its mind

has been transmitted. First I drew it sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because I think it

looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. I love to think that in this attitude it gives

us a pleasant idea of John coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been arranging for

him at Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve

We now come to Henry III.; RED squares again, of course fiftysix of them. We must make all the Henrys

the same color; it will make their long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys

there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes. The reigns of six of the Henrys cover

227 years. It might have been well to name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until it was

This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the first House of Commons in English

history. It was a monumental event, the situation in the House, and was the second great liberty landmark

which the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this was not intentional.

That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet on a chair, which is the editor's way; then

he can think better. I do not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor suggests the sound of

Edward, and he will do. I could make him better if I had a model, but I made this one from memory. But is no

particular matter; they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome, and don't pay enough.

Edward was the first really English king that had yet occupied the throne. The editor in the picture probably

looks just as Edward looked when it was first borne in upon him that this was so. His whole attitude

Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript

he strikes it out with that. That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing

in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in

his vestholes, gloating. They are full of envy and malice, editors are. This picture will serve to remind you

that Edward II. was the first English king who was DEPOSED. Upon demand, he signed his deposition

himself. He had found kingship a most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look

of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put his blue pencil up for good now. He had struck out many a

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book

which he is going to have for breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at first, but I see

it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left shoulder, and his left arm on his right shoulder, and this

shows us the back of his hands in both instances. It makes him lefthanded all around, which is a thing which

has never happened before, except perhaps in a museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but

born to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting that your genius is beginning to

work and swell and strain in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something

astonishing. This is called inspiration. It is an accident; you never know when it is coming. I might have tried

as much as a year to think of such a strange thing as an allaround lefthanded man and I could not have

done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the more it eludes you; but it can't elude

inspiration; you have only to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at Botticelli's "Spring."

Those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late

to reorganize this editorcritic now; we will leave him as he is. He will serve to remind us.

We use the lion again because this is another Richard. Like Edward II., he was DEPOSED. He is taking a last

sad look at his crown before they take it away. There was not room enough and I have made it too small; but

Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchsthe Lancastrian kings.

This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the magnitude of the event. She is giving notice in the

usual way. You notice I am improving in the construction of hens. At first I made them too much like other

animals, but this one is orthodox. I mention this to encourage you. You will find that the more you practice

the more accurate you will become. I could always draw animals, but before I was educated I could not tell

what kind they were when I got them done, but now I can. Keep up your courage; it will be the same with

you, although you may not think it. This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was born.

There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the amazing figures of the battle of

Agincourt. French history says 20,000 Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians

This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and humiliations. Also two great

disasters: he lost France to Joan of Arc and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV. had

started in business with such good prospects. In the picture we see him sad and weary and downcast, with the

scepter falling from his nerveless grasp. It is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing

the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are

and get bribes for it and become wealthy. That flower which he is wearing in his buttonhole is a rosea

white rose, a York roseand will serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one was the

winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the Lancastrian dynasty.

His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you get the reigns displayed upon the wall this one

will be conspicuous and easily remembered. It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane Grey's,

which was only nine days. She is never officially recognized as a monarch of England, but if you or I should

ever occupy a throne we should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair and right, too,

That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You would think that this lion has two

heads, but that is not so; one is only a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not

light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting sunglimpses now and then. Richard had a

humped back and a hard heart, and fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that flower in the

pot, but we will use it as Richard's trademark, for it is said that it grows in only one place in the

worldBosworth Fieldand tradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal blood warmed its

Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and quiet and the general prosperity

which such conditions create. He liked to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the

nation's, and hatch them out and count up their result. When he died he left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which

was a most unusual fortune for a king to possess in those days. Columbus's great achievement gave him the

discoveryfever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search out some foreign territory for

England. That is Cabot's ship up there in the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad to

He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his head, which is a LASTshoemaker's last.

The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke. The first three letters of Mary's name

and the first three of the word martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were

becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes called Bloody Mary.

This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period of nearly five hundred years of

England's history492 to be exact. I think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further

lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the scheme now, and something in the ruler's

name or career will suggest the pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not only help your

memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it has done for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big

enough for all of England's history, continue it into the dining room and into other rooms. This will make

the walls interesting and instructive and really worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the

Note.The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September 10, 1898, occurred during Mark

Twain's Austrian residence. The news came to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of

"That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman, and I am living in the midst of

worldhistory again. The Queen's Jubilee last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this

murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand a thousand years from now. To

have a personal friend of the wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and

say, in a voice broken with tears, 'My God! the Empress is murdered,' and fly toward her home before we can

utter a questionwhy, it brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and personally interested;

it is as if your neighbor, Antony, should come flying and say, 'Caesar is butcheredthe head of the world is

"Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and genuine, the consternation is stupefying.

The Austrian Empire is being draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday, when the

He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it. He prepared the article which

follows, but did not offer it for publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the court

circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. There appears no such reason for withholding its

The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and tremendous the event becomes. The

destruction of a city is a large event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand years; the

destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine is a large event, but it has happened several times

The murder of an empress is the largest of all events. One must go back about two thousand years to find an

instance to put with this one. The oldest family of unchallenged descent in Christendom lives in Rome and

traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has been present in the earth when an

empress was murdered, until now. Many a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have

been startled with the news of extraordinary eventsthe destruction of cities, the fall of thrones, the murder

of kings, the wreck of dynasties, the extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of government; and their

descendants have been by to hear of it and talk about it when all these things were repeated once, twice, or a

dozen timesbut to even that family has come news at last which is not staled by use, has no duplicates in

It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual now living in the world: he has stood

alive and breathing in the presence of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable or

untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely to fall within the experience of any

Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. The murder of an empress theneven the

assassination of Caesar himselfcould not electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. For one

reason, there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world, as to known bulk, and it had

rather a thin population, besides; and for another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous

initial thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and by the time it reached the

remoter regions there was but little of it left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it

was not properly news, it was history. But the world is enormous now, and prodigiously populatedthat is

one change; and another is the lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. "The Empress is

murdered!" When those amazing words struck upon my ear in this Austrian village last Saturday, three hours

after the disaster, I knew that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San Francisco,

Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, and that the entire globe with a single

voice, was cursing the perpetrator of it. Since the telegraph first began to stretch itself wider and wider about

the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of the world have, as time went on, received simultaneously the

shock of a great calamity; but this is the first time in history that the entire surface of the globe has been

And who is the miracleworker who has furnished to the world this spectacle? All the ironies are compacted

in the answer. He is at the bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and value go: a

soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without talents, without education, without morals, without

character, without any born charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a single grace

of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an

incompetent stone cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive, empty, unwashed, vulgar,

gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat. And it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm

upon the human race to reach upupupand strike from its far summit in the social skies the world's

accepted ideal of Glory and Might and Splendor and Sacredness! It realizes to us what sorry shows and

shadows we are. Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities

are not real, our pomps are shams. At our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and

And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often forgetor try to: that no man has a

wholly undiseased mind; that in one way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this

madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but when it develops powerfully and

takes possession of the man, it can make him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it

again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love is a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it

can grow to a frenzy of despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph, throw

away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. All the whole list of desires, predilections, aversions,

ambitions, passions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow, spread, and

consume, when the occasion comes. There are no healthy minds, and nothing saves any man but

One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed.

Perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is

pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to

attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and

grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and

caused wondering talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety in one, for

fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the

thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one

another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has

raised up prizefighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little

charityfounders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons.

Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city, or the State, or the nation,

or the planet shouting, "Lookthere he goesthat is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no cost of

brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all, outstripped them

all, for in time their names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kings

and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all down the ages as long as human speech shall

She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart, in person and spirit; and whether

with a crown upon her head or without it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification

of its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her down reestablishes the doubt.

In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages respect, esteem, affection, and homage.

Her tastes, her instincts, and her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and brain were

busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had

the highest honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She knew all ranks, and won

them all, and made them her friends. An English fisherman's wife said, "When a body was in trouble she

didn't send her help, she brought it herself." Crowns have adorned others, but she adorned her crowns.

It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some curious contrasts. At noon last,

Saturday there was no one in the world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth

claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; the humblest honest

bootblack would not have valued the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was

sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom grades of officialdom. Three hours

later he was the one subject of conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors

were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside their other interests to talk about

him. And wherever there was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at

some time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret satisfaction, and MENTIONED

itfor it was a distinction, now! It brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite

realizablebut it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw that creature

in a time past, he has let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way, some dozens of

times during the past week. For a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any

other person; and it is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way connected with amazing

events. We are all privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the

rest of us are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of the same clay, and it is a

Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it well as if I were hearing them:

THE CAPTAIN: "He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember him well."

THE SERGEANT: "Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning I used to" etc., etc.; a

THE LANDLADY: "Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show you his very room, and the very bed he

slept in. And the charcoal mark there on the wallhe made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own

It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables and the jailer treasure up the assassin's

daily remarks and doings as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful distinction. The

interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few

others are allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more keep his vanity corked in

Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal militarism which is impoverishing

Europe and driving the starving poor mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One

may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs done the poor; one may not dignify

him with a generous impulse of any kind. When he saw his photograph and said, "I shall be celebrated," he

laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for notoriety. There is another confessed case

Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must concede high rank to the many

which have described it as a "peculiarly brutal crime" and then added that it was "ordained from above." I

think this verdict will not be popular "above." If the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way

of making this prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without

manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding its laws even the most pious and showy

theologian may be beguiled into preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the shelter

I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the windows of the Krantz, Vienna's

sumptuous new hotel. We came into town in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station.

Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were Sundaylike; the crowds on the sidewalks were

quiet and moved slowly; very few people were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were

in black as a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and coachmen in black clothes and

wearing black cocked hats; the shops were closed; in many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a

beautiful young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years; and finally in deep black

and without ornamentsthe costume she always wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her

heart broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. The people stood grouped before these pictures, and

now and then one saw women and girls turn away wiping the tears from their eyes.

In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church where the funeral services would be

held. It is small and old and severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no

ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that a small black flag. But in its crypt lie

several of the great dead of the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son, the

Duke of Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the Emperor Marcus Aurelius died a

thousand years before the first Habsburg ruled in Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.

The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and the windows of them were full of

people. Behind the vast plateglass windows of the upper floors of the house on the corner one glimpsed

terraced masses of fineclothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like people under water. Under us the

square was noiseless, but it was full of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands, and

in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty, the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a

youth of eighteen or twenty, he was, and through the fieldglass one could see that he was tearing apart and

munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling

contrast with his drooping ruin of moldy rags, but he took not notice; he was not there to grieve for a nation's

disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. From two directions two long files of infantry came plowing

through the pack and press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished, the square save

the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone. Another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed

the square in a doubleranked human fence. It was all so swift, noiseless, exactlike a beautifully ordered

It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then carriages began to flow past and deliver

the two and three hundred court personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the

square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in showy and beautiful uniforms. They

filled it compactly, leaving only a narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian

among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of

the church, on its steps, and on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of

colorintense red, gold, and whitewhich dimmed the brilliancies around them; and opposite them on the

other side of the path was a bunch of cascaded brightgreen plumes above paleblue shoulders which made

another splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings. It was a sea of flashing

color all about, but these two groups were the high notes. The green plumes were worn by forty or fifty

Austrian generals, the group opposite them were chiefly Knights of Malta and knights of a German order.

The mass of heads in the square were covered by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirrorlike

gaze, and the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the sunrays, and the effect was fine to

seethe square was like a garden of richly colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little

Think of itit was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his imperial throne in the Geneva prison that

this splendid multitude was assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church from a

At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file. At threefive a cardinal arrives with his

attendants; later some bishops; then a number of archdeaconsall in striking colors that add to the show. At

threeten a procession of priests passed along, with crucifix. Another one, presently; after an interval, two

more; at threefifty another onevery long, with many crosses, goldembroidered robes, and much white

A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At threefiftyeight a waiting interval. Presently a

long procession of gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near to the square,

then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the sidewalk, and the white shirtfronts show like snowflakes

A waiting pause. At fourtwelve the head of the funeral procession comes into view at last. First, a body of

cavalry, four abreast, to widen the path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next, three

sixhorse mourning coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with cocked hats and white wigs. Next,

Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low rumble of drums; the sumptuous great

hearse approaches, drawn at a walk by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich

The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by; first the Hungarian Guard in their

indescribably brilliant and picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric splendor,

Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow, and melted away in radiant

streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slumgirls in Austria

Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854, when she was a bride of seventeen,

and then she rode in measureless pomp and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and

decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting and welcoming subjects; and the

second time was last Wednesday, when she entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in

the dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls again; but everywhere was a

deep stillness, nowa stillness emphasized, rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long

cavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of grayheaded women who had

witnessed the first entry fortyfour years before, when she and they were youngand unaware!

A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama "Habsburg" tells about the first coming of the girlish

Empress Queen, and in his history draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it, but will try to

Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouria village; time, 1845. La

BourboulelesBains, France a village; time, the end of June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early

time; I am in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide apart, yet today I have the strange

sense of being thrust back into that Missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that I lived there so

Last Saturday night the life of the President of the French Republic was taken by an Italian assassin. Last

night a mob surrounded our hotel, shouting, howling, singing the "Marseillaise," and pelting our windows

with sticks and stones; for we have Italian waiters, and the mob demanded that they be turned out of the

house instantlyto be drubbed, and then driven out of the village. Everybody in the hotel remained up until

far into the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror which one reads about in books which tell of

nigh attacks by Italians and by French mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the arrival, with rain

of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to rearrange plansfollowed by a silence ominous,

threatening, and harder to bear than even the active siege and the noise. The landlord and the two village

policemen stood their ground, and at last the mob was persuaded to go away and leave our Italians in peace.

Today four of the ringleaders have been sentenced to heavy punishment of a public sortand are become

That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian village half a century ago. The mistake

In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, our Vaillants; and in a humble way our CesarioI hope I

have spelled this name wrong. Fifty years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been

passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of periodical frights, horrors, and

In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In that day, for a man to speak out openly and proclaim

himself an enemy of negro slavery was simply to proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming

against the holiest thing known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right mind. For a man to proclaim

himself an anarchist in France, three years ago, was to proclaim himself a madmanhe could not be in his

Now the original first blasphemer against any institution profoundly venerated by a community is quite sure

to be in earnest; his followers and imitators may be humbugs and self seekers, but he himself is

Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONISTawful name! He was a journeyman cooper, and worked in the

big coopershop belonging to the great porkpacking establishment which was Marion City's chief pride and

sole source of prosperity. He was a New Englander, a stranger. And, being a stranger, he was of course

regarded as an inferior personfor that has been human nature from Adam downand of course, also, he

was made to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other animals. Hardy was thirty

years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the

isolation which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side remarks by his fellows, but as he did not

All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist straight out and publicly! He said that negro slavery

was a crime, an infamy. For a moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a fury of

rage and swarmed toward the coopershop to lynch Hardy. But the Methodist minister made a powerful

speech to them and stayed their hands. He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for his

So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. He was found to be good entertainment.

Several nights running he made abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and laugh.

He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity on the poor slaves, and take measurements

for the restoration of their stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flowblood, blood, rivers of blood!

It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A slave came flying from Palmyra, the

countyseat, a few miles back, and was about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull twilight

of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him. Hardy happened along and tried to rescue the

negro; there was a struggle, and the constable did not come out of it alive. Hardly crossed the river with the

negro, and then came back to give himself up. All this took time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook,

like the Seine, the Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide. The town was on hand

in force by now, but the Methodist preacher and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of

order; so Hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village calaboose in spite of all

the effort of the mob to get hold of him. The reader will have begun to perceive that this Methodist minister

was a prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good headpiece. Williams was his nameDamon

Williams; Damon Williams in public, Damnation Williams in private, because he was so powerful on that

The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who had ever been killed in the town. The

event was by long odds the most imposing in the town's history. It lifted the humble village into sudden

importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around. And so was the name of Robert

HardyRobert Hardy, the stranger, the despised. In a day he was become the person of most consequence in

the region, the only person talked about. As to those other coopers, they found their position curiously

changedthey were important people, or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had

been their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or three who had really been on a sort of familiar

footing with him found themselves objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their

The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man was an enterprising fellow, and he

made the most of the tragedy. He issued an extra. Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole paper

to matters connected with the great eventthere would be a full and intensely interesting biography of the

murderer, and even a portrait of him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on the back

of a wooden typeand a terror it was to look at. It made a great commotion, for this was the first time the

village paper had ever contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of the paper was ten times

When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from Hannibal, and Quincy, and even

from Keokuk; and the courthouse could hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The

trial was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying pictures of the accused.

Hardy was convicted, and hangeda mistake. People came from miles around to see the hanging; they

brought cakes and cider, also the women and children, and made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest

crowd the village had ever seen. The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples, for

Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. Within one week afterward four young lightweights in

the village proclaimed themselves abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert; everybody

laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The four swaggered around with their slouchhats

pulled down over their faces, and hinted darkly at awful possibilities. The people were troubled and afraid,

and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they could not understand it. "Abolitionist" had always been a

term of shame and horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to bear that name,

but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men they were, tooof good families, and brought up in the

church. Ed Smith, the printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been the head Sundayschool boy, and had once

recited three thousand Bible verses without making a break. Dick Savage, twenty, the baker's apprentice; Will

Joyce, twentytwo, journeyman blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twentyfour, tobaccostemmerwere the

other three. They were all of a sentimental cast; they were all romancereaders; they all wrote poetry, such as

it was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been suspected of having anything bad in

They withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and dreadful. They presently achieved the

distinction of being denounced by names from the pulpitwhich made an immense stir! This was grandeur,

this was fame. They were envied by all the other young fellows now. This was natural. Their company

grewgrew alarmingly. They took a name. It was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly

they were simply the abolitionists. They had passwords, grips, and signs; they had secret meetings; their

They always spoke of Hardy as "the Martyr," and every little while they moved through the principal street in

processionat midnight, blackrobed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drumon pilgrimage to

the Martyr's grave, where they went through with some majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his

murderers. They gave previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody to keep

indoors and darken all houses along the route, and leave the road empty. These warnings were obeyed, for

When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite natural thing happened. A few men of

character and grit woke up out of the nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and began

to discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community for enduring this child'splay; and at the

same time they proposed to end it straightway. Everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into their dead

spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men again. This was on a Saturday. All day the new

feeling grew and strengthened; it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it. Midnight saw a

united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly defined and welcome piece of work in front of it.

The best organizer and strongest and bitterest talker on that great Saturday was the Presbyterian clergyman

who had denounced the original four from his pulpitRev. Hiram Fletcherand he promised to use his

pulpit in the public interest again now. On the morrow he had revelations to make, he saidsecrets of the

But the revelations were never made. At half past two in the morning the dead silence of the village was

broken by a crashing explosion, and the town patrol saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling

fragments into the sky. The preacher was killed, together with a negro woman, his only slave and servant.

The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggle against a visible enemy is a thing worth while,

and there is a plenty of men who stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible

onean invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the dark and leaves no tracethat is

The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. The man who was to have had a packed church to hear

him expose and denounce the common enemy had but a handful to see him buried. The coroner's jury had

brought in a verdict of "death by the visitation of God," for no witness came forward; if any existed they

prudently kept out of the way. Nobody seemed sorry. Nobody wanted to see the terrible secret society

provoked into the commission of further outrages. Everybody wanted the tragedy hushed up, ignored,

And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will Joyce, the blacksmith's journeyman,

came out and proclaimed himself the assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made

his proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon a trial. Here was an ominous thing; here was a

new and peculiarly formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could not hope to deal

with successfullyVANITY, thirst for notoriety. If men were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win

the glory of newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible invention of man could

discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort of panic; it did not know what to do.

However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matterit had no choice. It brought in a true bill, and

presently the case went to the county court. The trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the principal

witness for the prosecution. He gave a full account of the assassination; he furnished even the minutest

particulars: how he deposited his keg of powder and laid his trainfrom the house to suchandsuch a spot;

how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart's cigar and fired

the train with it, shouting, "Down with all slavetyrants!" and how Hart and Ronalds made no effort to

But they had to testify now, and they didand pitiful it was to see how reluctant they were, and how scared.

The crowded house listened to Joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a deep hush

which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding, with a roaring repetition of his "Death to all

slavetyrants!"which came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present catch his

The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with other slanderous and insane pictures,

The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast crowd. Good places in trees and seats

on rail fences sold for half a dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbreadstands had great prosperity. Joyce

recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the scaffold which had imposing passages of

schoolboy eloquence in it, and gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in the

society's records, of the "Martyr Orator." He went to his death breathing slaughter and charging his society to

"avenge his murder." If he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young fellows present in

He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from his death the society which he had honored had

twenty new members, some of them earnest, determined men. They did not court distinction in the same way,

but they celebrated his martyrdom. The crime which had been obscure and despised had become lofty and

Such things were happening all over the country. Wild brained martyrdom was succeeded by uprising and

organization. Then, in natural order, followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It was

bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. It has been the manner of reform since the beginning

It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. In that remote time there was only one ladder railway

in the country. That state of things is all changed. There isn't a mountain in Switzerland now that hasn't a

ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders; indeed, some mountains are latticed with them, and two

years hence all will be. In that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a lantern when he goes

visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over railroads that have been built since his last round. And also

in that day, if there shall remain a highaltitude peasant whose potatopatch hasn't a railroad through it, it

However, there are only two best ways to travel through Switzerland. The first best is afloat. The second best

is by open twohorse carriage. One can come from Lucerne to Interlaken over the Brunig by ladder railroad

in an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage in ten, and have two hours for luncheon at

noonfor luncheon, not for rest. There is no fatigue connected with the trip. One arrives fresh in spirit and in

person in the eveningno fret in his heart, no grime on his face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye.

This is the right condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the solemn event which closed

the daystepping with metaphorically uncovered head into the presence of the most impressive mountain

mass that the globe can showthe Jungfrau. The stranger's first feeling, when suddenly confronted by that

towering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud of snow, is breathtaking astonishment. It is as if

It is peaceful here and pleasant at Interlaken. Nothing going onat least nothing but brilliant lifegiving

sunshine. There are floods and floods of that. One may properly speak of it as "going on," for it is full of the

suggestion of activity; the light pours down with energy, with visible enthusiasm. This is a good atmosphere

to be in, morally as well as physically. After trying the political atmosphere of the neighboring monarchies, it

is healing and refreshing to breathe air that has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come

among a people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be taught in all schools and studied by

all races and peoples. For the struggle here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of any private

family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole body of the nation, and for shelter and protection of all

forms of belief. This fact is colossal. If one would realize how colossal it is, and of what dignity and majesty,

let him contrast it with the purposes and objects of the Crusades, the siege of York, the War of the Roses, and

Last week I was beating around the Lake of Four Cantons, and I saw Rutli and Altorf. Rutli is a remote little

patch of meadow, but I do not know how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth crossing oceans

and continents to see, since it was there that the great trinity of Switzerland joined hands six centuries ago

and swore the oath which set their enslaved and insulted country forever free; and Altorf is also honorable

ground and worshipful, since it was there that William, surnamed Tell (which interpreted means "The foolish

talker"that is to say, the toodaring talker), refused to bow to Gessler's hat. Of late years the prying student

of history has been delighting himself beyond measure over a wonderful find which he has made to wit,

that Tell did not shoot the apple from his son's head. To hear the students jubilate, one would suppose that the

question of whether Tell shot the apple or didn't was an important matter; whereas it ranks in importance

exactly with the question of whether Washington chopped down the cherrytree or didn't. The deeds of

Washington, the patriot, are the essential thing; the cherrytree incident is of no consequence. To prove that

Tell did shoot the apple from his son's head would merely prove that he had better nerve than most men and

was skillful with a bow as a million others who preceded and followed him, but not one whit more so. But

Tell was more and better than a mere marksman, more and better than a mere cool head; he was a type; he

stands for Swiss patriotism; in his person was represented a whole people; his spirit was their spiritthe

spirit which would bow to none but God, the spirit which said this in words and confirmed it with deeds.

There have always been Tells in Switzerlandpeople who would not bow. There was a sufficiency of them

at Rutli; there were plenty of them at Murten; plenty at Grandson; there are plenty today. And the first of

them allthe very first, earliest bannerbearer of human freedom in this worldwas not a man, but a

womanStauffacher's wife. There she looms dim and great, through the haze of the centuries, delivering

into her husband's ear that gospel of revolt which was to bear fruit in the conspiracy of Rutli and the birth of

From this Victoria Hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling width to a lofty mountain barrier, which

has a gateway in it shaped like an inverted pyramid. Beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of the Jungfrau,

a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. The gateway, in the darkcolored barrier, makes a strong

frame for the great picture. The somber frame and the glowing snowpile are startlingly contrasted. It is this

frame which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the Jungfrau and makes it the most engaging and

beguiling and fascinating spectacle that exists on the earth. There are many mountains of snow that are as

lofty as the Jungfrau and as nobly proportioned, but they lack the fame. They stand at large; they are intruded

upon and elbowed by neighboring domes and summits, and their grandeur is diminished and fails of effect.

It is a good name, JungfrauVirgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing could be purer; nothing could be

saintlier of aspect. At six yesterday evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish haze

seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so shimmering where the wandering lights

touched it and so dim where the shadows lay. Apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination,

nothing real about it. The tint was green, slightly varying shades of it, but mainly very dark. The sun was

downas far as that barrier was concerned, but not for the Jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond the

It is said the Fridolin (the old Fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a missionary, gave the mountain its

gracious name. He was an Irishman, son of an Irish kingthere were thirty thousand kings reigning in

County Cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. It got so that they could not make a living, there

was so much competition and wages got cut so. Some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife

and little children to feed, and not a crust in the place. At last a particularly severe winter fell upon the

country, and hundreds of them were reduced to mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest

weather, standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for alms. Indeed, they would have been

obliged to emigrate or starve but for a fortunate idea of Prince Fridolin's, who started a laborunion, the first

one in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. He thus won the general gratitude, and they wanted to

make him emperoremperor over them allemperor of County Cork, but he said, No, walking delegate

was good enough for him. For behold! he was modest beyond his years, and keen as a whip. To this day in

Germany and Switzerland, where St. Fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him

The first walk he took was into France and Germany, missionaryingfor missionarying was a better thing in

those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the savage's sick daughter by a "miracle"a

miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instanceand immediately that head savage was your

convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert's enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy,

now. He would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation himself. Charlemagne was that kind of a walking

Yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were sure and the rewards great. We have

But to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are interested. I am interested myself because I

have seen his relics in Sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miraclethe one which

won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries later. To have seen these things makes me feel very

near to him, almost like a member of the family, in fact. While wandering about the Continent he arrived at

the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by Sackingen, and proposed to settle there, but the people

warned him off. He appealed to the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the whole region, people

and all. He built a great cloister there for women and proceeded to teach in it and accumulate more land.

There were two wealthy brothers in the neighborhood, Urso and Landulph. Urso died and Fridolin claimed

his estates. Landulph asked for documents and papers. Fridolin had none to show. He said the bequest had

been made to him by word of mouth. Landulph suggested that he produce a witness and said it in a way

which he thought was very witty, very sarcastic. This shows that he did not know the walking delegate.

The court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. A day was appointed for the trial of the case.

On that day the judges took their seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was ready for

business. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet no Fridolin appeared. Landulph rose, and

was in the act of claiming judgment by default when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up the stairs.

In another moment Fridolin entered at the door and came walking in a deep hush down the middle aisle, with

Amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody suspected that the skeleton was Urso's. It

stopped before the chief judge and raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the assembled

"Brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by robbery the gift which I gave thee for the

It seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was actually given against Landulph on the

testimony of this wandering rackheap of unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton would not be allowed to

testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility, and its word could not be believed on oath, and this

was probably one of them. However, the incident is valuable as preserving to us a curious sample of the

quaint laws of evidence of that remote timea time so remote, so far back toward the beginning of original

idiocy, that the difference between a bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as yet so slight that we

During several afternoons I have been engaged in an interesting, maybe useful, piece of workthat is to say,

I have been trying to make the mighty Jungfrau earn her livingearn it in a most humble sphere, but on a

prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't do anything in a small way with her size

and style. I have been trying to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as they glide

along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the time of day to the populations lying within fifty

miles of her and to the people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there.

Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau's aspect is that of a spotless desert of snow set upon edge against the

sky. But by midafternoon some elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose

presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time, began to cast black shadows eastward

across the gleaming surface. At first there is only one shadow; later there are two. Toward 4 P.M. the other

day I was gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to notice that shadow No. 1 was beginning to take

itself something of the shape of the human profile. By four the back of the head was good, the military cap

was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great

At fourthirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the altered slant of the sun had revealed and

made conspicuous a huge buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer very well for a

shoulder or coatcollar to this swarthy and indiscreet sweetheart who had stolen out there right before

everybody to pillow his head on the Virgin's white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to her in the

sensuous music of the crashing icedomes and the boom and thunder of the passing avalanchemusic very

familiar to his ear, for he had heard it every afternoon at this hour since the day he first came courting this

child of the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day is far, yesfor he was at this pleasant sport before the

Middle Ages drifted by him in the valley; before the Romans marched past, and before the antique and

recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and wondered who he might be, and were probably afraid of

him; and before primeval man himself, just emerged from his fourfooted estate, stepped out upon this plain,

first sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago, and cast a glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother

human being and consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed here, still some eons

earlier. Oh yes, a day so far back that the eternal son was present to see that first visit; a day so far back that

neither tradition nor history was born yet and a whole weary eternity must come and go before the restless

little creature, of whose face this stupendous Shadow Face was the prophecy, would arrive in the earth and

begin his shabby career and think of a big thing. Oh, indeed yes; when you talk about your poor Roman and

Egyptian daybeforeyesterday antiquities, you should choose a time when the hoary Shadow Face of the

Jungfrau is not by. It antedates all antiquities known or imaginable; for it was here the world itself created the

theater of future antiquities. And it is the only witness with a human face that was there to see the marvel, and

By 4:40 P.M. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. It is black and is powerfully marked against

the upright canvas of glowing snow, and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface.

Meantime shadow No. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the face west of itand at five o'clock has

Meantime, also, the great Shadow Face has been gradually changing for twenty minutes, and now, 5 P.M., it

is becoming a quite fair portrait of Roscoe Conkling. The likeness is there, and is unmistakable. The goatee is

shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn't any, but ran off eastward and arrived nowhere.

By 6 P.M. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become what looks like the shadow of a tower

with a pointed roof, and the shoe had turned into what the printers call a "fist" with a finger pointing.

If I were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward of this point, and was denied a

timepiece, I could get along well enough from four till six on clear days, for I could keep trace of the time by

the changing shapes of these mighty shadows of the Virgin's front, the most stupendous dial I am acquainted

I suppose I should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if I hadn't the habit of hunting for faces in the

clouds and in mountain cragsa sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you don't find any,

and brilliantly satisfying when you do. I have searched through several bushels of photographs of the

Jungfrau here, but found only one with the Face in it, and in this case it was not strictly recognizable as a

face, which was evidence that the picture was taken before four o'clock in the afternoon, and also evidence

that all the photographers have persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating features of the Jungfrau

show. I say fascinating, because if you once detect a human face produced on a great plan by unconscious

nature, you never get tired of watching it. At first you can't make another person see it at all, but after he has

The King of Greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off duty. One day this summer he was

traveling in an ordinary firstclass compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm in

when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in particular, but a good deal like everybody in

general. By and by a hearty and healthy German American got in and opened up a frank and interesting and

sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a couple of thousand questions about himself, which the

king answered good naturedly, but in a more or less indefinite way as to private particulars.

"Now, ain't that strange! I never expected to live to see that. What is your trade? I mean how do you get your

"Well, I hardly know how to answer. I am only a kind of foreman, on a salary; and the businesswell, is a

"Yes, I understandgeneral jobbinglittle of everything anything that there's money in."

"Well, partly; but not entirely. Of course I do a stroke of business if it falls in the way"

"Well that's all right. No harm in that. A man works all the better for a little letup now and then. Not that

I've been used to having it myself; for I haven't. I reckon this is my first. I was born in Germany, and when I

was a couple of weeks old shipped to America, and I've been there ever since, and that's sixtyfour years by

the watch. I'm an American in principle and a German at heart, and it's the boss combination. Well, how do

"There, that's itbig family and trying to raise them on a salary. Now, what did you go to do that for?"

"Of course you did. You were young and confident and thought you could branch out and make things go

with a whirl, and here you are, you see! But never mind about that. I'm not trying to discourage you. Dear

me! I've been just where you are myself! You've got good grit; there's good stuff in you, I can see that. You

got a wrong start, that's the whole trouble. But you hold your grip, and we'll see what can be done. Your case

ain't half as bad as it might be. You are going to come out all rightI'm bail for that. Boys and girls?"

"And the rest girls. It's just as I expected. But that's all right, and it's better so, anyway. What are the boys

"It's a big mistake. It's the biggest mistake you ever made. You see that in your own case. A man ought

always to have a trade to fall back on. Now, I was harnessmaker at first. Did that prevent me from becoming

one of the biggest brewers in America? Oh no. I always had the harness trick to fall back on in rough

weather. Now, if you had learned how to make harness However, it's too late now; too late. But it's no

good plan to cry over spilt milk. But as to the boys, you seewhat's to become of them if anything happens

"Now, look here; you want to get right down to business and stop dreaming. You are capable of immense

thingsman. You can make a perfect success in life. All you want is somebody to steady you and boost you

"Nonot exactly; but if I continue to give satisfaction, I suppose I can keep my"

"Keep your placeyes. Well, don't you depend on anything of the kind. They'll bounce you the minute you

get a little old and worked out; they'll do it sure. Can't you manage somehow to get into the firm? That's the

"Umthat's badyes, and unfair, too. Do you suppose that if I should go there and have a talk with your

"I have never tried, but I think I could do it after a little familiarity with the business."

The German was silent for some time. He did a good deal of thinking, and the king waited curiously to see

"My mind's made up. You leave that crowdyou'll never amount to anything there. In these old countries

they never give a fellow a show. Yes, you come over to Americacome to my place in Rochester; bring the

family along. You shall have a show in the business and the foremanship, besides. Georgeyou said your

name was George?I'll make a man of you. I give you my word. You've never had a chance here, but that's

all going to change. By gracious! I'll give you a lift that'll make your hair curl!"

It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music mad strangers that was rolling down upon

Bayreuth. It had been long since we had seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a good

halfhour to pack them and pair them into the trainand it was the longest train we have yet seen in Europe.

Nuremberg had been witnessing this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. It gives

one an impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial pilgrimage. For a pilgrimage is what it is. The

devotees come from the very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own Kaaba in his own Mecca.

If you are living in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or anywhere else in America, and you conclude,

by the middle of May, that you would like to attend the Bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must

use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats, and you must cable for lodgings, too.

Then if you are lucky you will get seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. If you stop to

write you will get nothing. There were plenty of people in Nuremberg when we passed through who had

come on pilgrimage without first securing seats and lodgings. They had found neither in Bayreuth; they had

walked Bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to Nuremberg and found neither beds nor standing

room, and had walked those quaint streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and empty their guests into

trains, and so make room for these, their defeated brethren and sisters in the faith. They had endured from

thirty to forty hours' railroading on the continent of Europewith all which that implies of worry, fatigue,

and financial impoverishmentand all they had got and all they were to get for it was handiness and

accuracy in kicking themselves, acquired by practice in the back streets of the two towns when other people

were in bed; for back they must go over that unspeakable journey with their pious mission unfulfilled. These

humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and apologetic look of wet cats, and their eyes were glazed

with drowsiness, their bodies were adroop from crown to sole, and all kindhearted people refrained from

asking them if they had been to Bayreuth and failed to connect, as knowing they would lie.

We reached here (Bayreuth) about midafternoon of a rainy Saturday. We were of the wise, and had secured

I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about the operas and deliver judgment upon

their merits. The little children of Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader intelligence

than I. I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy

them. What I write about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as merely a

Next day, which was Sunday, we left for the operahouse that is to say, the Wagner templea little after

the middle of the afternoon. The great building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground outside

the town. We were warned that if we arrived after four o'clock we should be obliged to pay two dollars and a

half extra by way of fine. We saved that; and it may be remarked here that this is the only opportunity that

Europe offers of saving money. There was a big crowd in the grounds about the building, and the ladies'

dresses took the sun with fine effect. I do not mean to intimate that the ladies were in full dress, for that was

The interior of the building is simpleseverely so; but there is no occasion for color and decoration, since

the people sit in the dark. The auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the narrow end. There

is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of the house. Each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve

from one side of the house to the other. There are seven entrance doors on each side of the theater and four at

the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit 1,650 persons. The number of the particular door by which you are

to enter the house or leave it is printed on your ticket, and you can use no door but that one. Thus, crowding

and confusion are impossible. Not so many as a hundred people use any one door. This is better than having

the usual (and useless) elaborate fireproof arrangements. It is the model theater of the world. It can be

emptied while the second hand of a watch makes its circuit. It would be entirely safe, even if it were built of

If your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must work your way along a rank of about

twentyfive ladies and gentlemen to get to it. Yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until all the

seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few minutes. Then all sit down, and you have a solid

mass of fifteen hundred heads, making a steep cellardoor slant from the rear of the house down to the stage.

All the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a deep and solemn gloom. The funereal

rustling of dresses and the low buzz of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost of

a sound was left. This profound and increasingly impressive stillness endured for some timethe best

preparation for music, spectacle, or speech conceivable. I should think our show people would have invented

or imported that simple and impressive device for securing and solidifying the attention of an audience long

ago; instead of which there continue to this day to open a performance against a deadly competition in the

Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose upon the stillness, and from his grave

the dead magician began to weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments.

There was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept intruding itself that the composer was

conscious in his grave of what was going on here, and that these divine souls were the clothing of thoughts

which were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized and familiar ones which had issued

The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the curtain down. It was exquisite; it was

delicious. But straightway thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that nothing can

make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. I

wish I could see a Wagner opera done in pantomime once. Then one would have the lovely orchestration

unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with,

and the dumb acting couldn't mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything in the Wagner opera that

one would call by such a violent name as acting; as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent

people, one of them standing still, the other catching flies. Of course I do not really mean that he would be

catching flies; I only mean that the usual operatic gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into

the air and then the other might suggest the sport I speak of if the operator attended strictly to business and

This present opera was "Parsifal." Madame Wagner does not permit its representation anywhere but in

Bayreuth. The first act of the three occupied two hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing.

I trust that I know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most entrancing and bewitching and moving

and eloquent of all the vehicles invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that the

chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you please to call it, and that when this feature is

absent what remains is a picture with the color left out. I was not able to detect in the vocal parts of "Parsifal"

anything that might with confidence be called rhythm or tune or melody; one person performed at a

timeand a long time, too often in a noble, and always in a hightoned, voice; but he only pulled out long

notes, then some short ones, then another long one, then a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or twoand so on

and so on; and when he was done you saw that the information which he had conveyed had not compensated

for the disturbance. Not always, but pretty often. If two of them would but put in a duet occasionally and

blend the voices; but no, they don't do that. The great master, who knew so well how to make a hundred

instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their souls in mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound,

deals only in barren solos when he puts in the vocal parts. It may be that he was deep, and only added the

singing to his operas for the sake of the contrast it would make with the music. Singing! It does seem the

wrong name to apply to it. Strictly described, it is a practicing of difficult and unpleasant intervals, mainly.

An ignorant person gets tired of listening to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter how pleasant they

may be. In "Parsifal" there is a hermit named Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices

by the hour, while first one and then another character of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to

During the evening there was an intermission of three quarters of an hour after the first act and one an hour

long after the second. In both instances the theater was totally emptied. People who had previously engaged

tables in the one sole eatinghouse were able to put in their time very satisfactorily; the other thousand went

hungry. The opera was concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. When we reached home we had been

gone more than seven hours. Seven hours at five dollars a ticket is almost too much for the money.

While browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts I encountered twelve or fifteen

friends from different parts of America, and those of them who were most familiar with Wagner said that

"Parsifal" seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard it several times it was almost sure to become a

favorite. It seemed impossible, but it was true, for the statement came from people whose word was not to be

And I gathered some further information. On the ground I found part of a German musical magazine, and in it

a letter written by Uhlic thirtythree years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused Wagner against

people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive absence of what our kind regards as singing. Uhlic

says Wagner despised "JENE PLAPPERUDE MUSIC," and therefore "runs, trills, and SCHNORKEL are

discarded by him." I don't know what a SCHNORKEL is, but now that I know it has been left out of these

operas I never have missed so much in my life. And Uhlic further says that Wagner's song is true: that it is

"simply emphasized intoned speech." That certainly describes it in "Parsifal" and some of the operas; and

if I understand Uhlic's elaborate German he apologizes for the beautiful airs in "Tannh:auser." Very well;

now that Wagner and I understand each other, perhaps we shall get along better, and I shall stop calling

Waggner, on the American plan, and thereafter call him Waggner as per German custom, for I feel entirely

friendly now. The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless

Of course I came home wondering why people should come from all corners of America to hear these operas,

when we have lately had a season or two of them in New York with these same singers in the several parts,

TUESDAY.Yesterday they played the only operatic favorite I have ever hadan opera which has always

driven me mad with ignorant delight whenever I have heard it"Tannh:auser." I heard it first when I was a

youth; I heard it last in the last German season in New York. I was busy yesterday and I did not intend to go,

knowing I should have another "Tannh:auser" opportunity in a few days; but after five o'clock I found myself

free and walked out to the operahouse and arrived about the beginning of the second act. My opera ticket

admitted me to the grounds in front, past the policeman and the chain, and I thought I would take a rest on a

In a moment or so the first bugles blew, and the multitude began to crumble apart and melt into the theater. I

will explain that this buglecall is one of the pretty features here. You see, the theater is empty, and hundreds

of the audience are a good way off in the feedinghouse; the first buglecall is blown about a quarter of an

hour before time for the curtain to rise. This company of buglers, in uniform, march out with military step

and send out over the landscape a few bars of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances with

the gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and repeat. Presently they do this over again.

Yesterday only about two hundred people were still left in front of the house when the second call was

blown; in another halfminute they would have been in the house, but then a thing happened which delayed

themthe only solitary thing in this world which could be relied on with certainty to accomplish it, I

supposean imperial princess appeared in the balcony above them. They stopped dead in their tracks and

began to gaze in a stupor of gratitude and satisfaction. The lady presently saw that she must disappear or the

doors would be closed upon these worshipers, so she returned to her box. This daughterinlaw of an

emperor was pretty; she had a kind face; she was without airs; she is known to be full of common human

sympathies. There are many kinds of princesses, but this kind is the most harmful of all, for wherever they go

they reconcile people to monarchy and set back the clock of progress. The valuable princes, the desirable

princes, are the czars and their sort. By their mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every

argument that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist. In his time the husband of

this princess was valuable. He led a degraded life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and

In the operahouse there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of open gallery, in which princes are

displayed. It is sacred to them; it is the holy of holies. As soon as the filling of the house is about complete

the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon the princely layout and gaze mutely and longingly and

adoringly and regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. They become rapt, unconscious, steeped in

worship. There is no spectacle anywhere that is more pathetic than this. It is worth crossing many oceans to

see. It is somehow not the same gaze that people rivet upon a Victor Hugo, or Niagara, or the bones of the

mastodon, or the guillotine of the Revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant Vesuvius smoking in the sky,

or any man long celebrated to you by his genius and achievements, or thing long celebrated to you by the

praises of books and picturesno, that gaze is only the gaze of intense curiosity, interest, wonder, engaged

in drinking delicious deep draughts that taste good all the way down and appease and satisfy the thirst of a

lifetime. Satisfy itthat is the word. Hugo and the mastodon will still have a degree of intense interest

thereafter when encountered, but never anything approaching the ecstasy of that first view. The interest of a

prince is different. It may be envy, it may be worship, doubtless it is a mixture of bothand it does not

satisfy its thirst with one view, or even noticeably diminish it. Perhaps the essence of the thing is the value

which men attach to a valuable something which has come by luck and not been earned. A dollar picked up in

the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninetyandnine which you had to work for, and money won at

faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way. A prince picks up grandeur, power, and a

permanent holiday and gratis support by a pure accident, the accident of birth, and he stands always before

the grieved eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental representative of luck. And thensupremest value of

allhis is the only high fortune on the earth which is secure. The commercial millionaire may become a

beggar; the illustrious statesman can make a vital mistake and be dropped and forgotten; the illustrious

general can lose a decisive battle and with it the consideration of men; but once a prince always a

princethat is to say, an imitation god, and neither hard fortune nor an infamous character nor an addled

brain nor the speech of an ass can undeify him. By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the

most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved. It follows without

doubt or question, then, that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I think it also follows

that the socalled usurpations with which history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men

A prince is not to us what he is to a European, of course. We have not been taught to regard him as a god, and

so one good look at him is likely to so nearly appease our curiosity as to make him an object of no greater

interest the next time. We want a fresh one. But it is not so with the European. I am quite sure of it. The same

old one will answer; he never stales. Eighteen years ago I was in London and I called at an Englishman's

house on a bleak and foggy and dismal December afternoon to visit his wife and married daughter by

appointment. I waited half an hour and then they arrived, frozen. They explained that they had been delayed

by an unlookedfor circumstance: while passing in the neighborhood of Marlborough House they saw a

crowd gathering and were told that the Prince of Wales was about to drive out, so they stopped to get a sight

of him. They had waited half an hour on the sidewalk, freezing with the crowd, but were disappointed at

lastthe Prince had changed his mind. I said, with a good deal of surprise, "Is it possible that you two have

Apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they exclaimed: "What an idea! Why, we have seen him

They had seem him hundreds of times, yet they had waited half an hour in the gloom and the bitter cold, in

the midst of a jam of patients from the same asylum, on the chance of seeing him again. It was a stupefying

statement, but one is obliged to believe the English, even when they say a thing like that. I fumbled around

"I can't understand it at all. If I had never seen General Grant I doubt if I would do that even to get a sight of

Their blank faces showed that they wondered where the parallel came in. Then they said, blankly: "Of course

It is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an interest not subject to deterioration. The general

who was never defeated, the general who never held a council of war, the only general who ever commanded

a connected battlefront twelve hundred miles long, the smith who welded together the broken parts of a

great republic and reestablished it where it is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies present and to come,

was really a person of no serious consequence to these people. To them, with their training, my General was

only a man, after all, while their Prince was clearly much more than thata being of a wholly unsimilar

construction and constitution, and being of no more blood and kinship with men than are the serene eternal

lights of the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of commerce that sputter and die and leave nothing

I saw the last act of "Tannh:auser." I sat in the gloom and the deep stillness, waitingone minute, two

minutes, I do not know exactly how longthen the soft music of the hidden orchestra began to breathe its

rich, long sighs out from under the distant stage, and by and by the dropcurtain parted in the middle and was

drawn softly aside, disclosing the twilighted wood and a wayside shrine, with a whiterobed girl praying and

a man standing near. Presently that noble chorus of men's voices was heard approaching, and from that

moment until the closing of the curtain it was music, just musicmusic to make one drunk with pleasure,

music to make one take scrip and staff and beg his way round the globe to hear it.

To such as are intending to come here in the Wagner season next year I wish to say, bring your dinnerpail

with you. If you do, you will never cease to be thankful. If you do not, you will find it a hard fight to save

yourself from famishing in Bayreuth. Bayreuth is merely a large village, and has no very large hotels or

eatinghouses. The principal inns are the Golden Anchor and the Sun. At either of these places you can get

an excellent mealno, I mean you can go there and see other people get it. There is no charge for this. The

town is littered with restaurants, but they are small and bad, and they are overdriven with custom. You must

secure a table hours beforehand, and often when you arrive you will find somebody occupying it. We have

had this experience. We have had a daily scramble for life; and when I say we, I include shoals of people. I

have the impression that the only people who do not have to scramble are the veteransthe disciples who

have been here before and know the ropes. I think they arrive about a week before the first opera, and engage

all the tables for the season. My tribe had tried all kinds of placessome outside of the town, a mile or

twoand have captured only nibblings and odds and ends, never in any instance a complete and satisfying

meal. Digestible? No, the reverse. These odds and ends are going to serve as souvenirs of Bayreuth, and in

that regard their value is not to be overestimated. Photographs fade, bricabrac gets lost, busts of Wagner

get broken, but once you absorb a Bayreuthrestaurant meal it is your possession and your property until the

time comes to embalm the rest of you. Some of these pilgrims here become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of

souvenirs of Bayreuth. It is believed among scientists that you could examine the crop of a dead Bayreuth

pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell where he came from. But I like this ballast. I think a "Hermitage"

scrapup at eight in the evening, when all the faminebreeders have been there and laid in their mementoes

THURSDAY.They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles, and one of these is composed of

the most renowned artists in the world, with Materna and Alvary in the lead. I suppose a double team is

necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week, for all the plays last from four in the

afternoon till ten at night. Nearly all the labor falls upon the halfdozen head singers, and apparently they are

required to furnish all the noise they can for the money. If they feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they

are required to open out and let the public know it. Operas are given only on Sundays, Mondays,

Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with three days of ostensible rest per week, and two teams to do the four operas;

but the ostensible rest is devoted largely to rehearsing. It is said that the off days are devoted to rehearsing

from some time in the morning till ten at night. Are there two orchestras also? It is quite likely, since there are

Yesterday the opera was "Tristan and Isolde." I have seen all sorts of audiencesat theaters, operas,

concerts, lectures, sermons, funeralsbut none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth for

fixed and reverential attention. Absolute attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of the attitude

assumed at the beginning of it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. You seem

to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they are being stirred to their profoundest depths;

that there are times when they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times

when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or

screams; yet you hear not one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have slowly

faded out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building with their applause. Every seat

is full in the first act; there is not a vacant one in the last. If a man would be conspicuous, let him come here

This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing I have read about except the city in the

Arabian tale where all the inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after centuries

mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they last knew in life. Here the Wagner audience

dress as they please, and sit in the dark and worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New York they sit in a

glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs, they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the

time. In some of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the attention of the house

with the stage. In large measure the Metropolitan is a showcase for rich fashionables who are not trained in

Wagnerian music and have no reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show their clothes.

Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to

whom its creator is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and

the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity? Manifestly, no. Then, perhaps the temporary

expatriation, the tedious traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands explained. These

devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. It is only here that they can find it without fleck or

blemish or any worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to

intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to

his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body

exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid

and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night

broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many who

could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the

sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one

groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.

But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences

of my life. I have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen anything so great and fine and real

FRIDAY.Yesterday's opera was "Parsifal" again. The others went and they show marked advance in

appreciation; but I went hunting for relics and reminders of the Margravine Wilhelmina, she of the

imperishable "Memoirs." I am properly grateful to her for her (unconscious) satire upon monarchy and

nobility, and therefore nothing which her hand touched or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me. I am her

TUESDAY.I have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we cross over into Bohemia this

afternoon. I was supposing that my musical regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because I enjoyed

both of these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was "Parsifal," but the experts have

"Singing! That wasn't singing; that was the wailing, screeching of thirdrate obscurities, palmed off on us in

Well, I ought to have recognized the signthe old, sure sign that has never failed me in matters of art.

Whenever I enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this fact has saved

me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many a chromo. However, my base instinct

does bring me profit sometimes; I was the only man out of thirtytwo hundred who got his money back on

Is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at forty and then begins to wane toward setting?

Doctor Osler is charged with saying so. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; I don't know which it is. But if he

said it, I can point him to a case which proves his rule. Proves it by being an exception to it. To this place I

I read his VENETIAN DAYS about forty years ago. I compare it with his paper on Machiavelli in a late

number of HARPER, and I cannot find that his English has suffered any impairment. For forty years his

English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great

qualitiesclearness, compression, verbal exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of

phrasinghe is, in my belief, without his peer in the Englishwriting world. SUSTAINED. I entrench

myself behind that protecting word. There are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does,

but only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape

between; whereas Howells's moon sails cloudless skies all night and all the nights.

In the matter of verbal exactness Mr. Howells has no superior, I suppose. He seems to be almost always able

to find that elusive and shifty grain of gold, the RIGHT WORD. Others have to put up with approximations,

more or less frequently; he has better luck. To me, the others are miners working with the goldpanof

necessity some of the gold washes over and escapes; whereas, in my fancy, he is quicksilver raiding down a

riffleno grain of the metal stands much chance of eluding him. A powerful agent is the right word: it lights

the reader's way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a

wellenough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when

THE right one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a

newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely

around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumnbutter that creams

the sumacberry. One has no time to examine the word and vote upon its rank and standing, the automatic

recognition of its supremacy is so immediate. There is a plenty of acceptable literature which deals largely in

approximations, but it may be likened to a fine landscape seen through the rain; the right word would dismiss

the rain, then you would see it better. It doesn't rain when Howells is at work.

And where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and its cadenced and undulating rhythm?

and its architectural felicities of construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of compression,

and all that? Born to him, no doubt. All in shining good order in the beginning, all extraordinary; and all just

as shining, just as extraordinary today, after forty years of diligent wear and tear and use. He passed his

fortieth year long and long ago; but I think his English of todayhis perfect English, I wish to say can

I will got back to the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to examine this passage from it which I

append. I do not mean examine it in a bird'seye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read it aloud.

I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out of finely wrought literature all that is in it by

Mr. Dyer is rather of the opinion, first luminously suggested by Macaulay, that Machiavelli was in earnest,

but must not be judged as a political moralist of our time and race would be judged. He thinks that

Machiavelli was in earnest, as none but an idealist can be, and he is the first to imagine him an idealist

immersed in realities, who involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary

issues of reverie. The Machiavelli whom he depicts does not cease to be politically a republican and socially

a just man because he holds up an atrocious despot like Caesar Borgia as a mirror for rulers. What

Machiavelli beheld round him in Italy was a civic disorder in which there was oppression without statecraft,

and revolt without patriotism. When a miscreant like Borgia appeared upon the scene and reduced both

tyrants and rebels to an apparent quiescence, he might very well seem to such a dreamer the savior of society

whom a certain sort of dreamers are always looking for. Machiavelli was no less honest when he honored the

diabolical force than Carlyle was when at different times he extolled the strong man who destroys liberty in

creating order. But Carlyle has only just ceased to be mistaken for a reformer, while it is still Machiavelli's

hard fate to be so trammeled in his material that his name stands for whatever is most malevolent and

You see how easy and flowing it is; how unvexed by ruggednesses, clumsinesses, broken meters; how simple

andso far as you or I can make outunstudied; how clear, how limpid, how understandable, how

unconfused by crosscurrents, eddies, undertows; how seemingly unadorned, yet is all adornment, like the

lilyofthevalley; and how compressed, how compact, without a complacencysignal hung out anywhere to

There are twentythree lines in the quoted passage. After reading it several times aloud, one perceives that a

good deal of matter is crowded into that small space. I think it is a model of compactness. When I take its

materials apart and work them over and put them together in my way, I find I cannot crowd the result back

into the same hole, there not being room enough. I find it a case of a woman packing a man's trunk: he can

The proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the article is as compact as it is; there are no

waste words. The sample is just in other ways: limpid, fluent, graceful, and rhythmical as it is, it holds no

superiority in these respects over the rest of the essay. Also, the choice phrasing noticeable in the sample is

not lonely; there is a plenty of its kin distributed through the other paragraphs. This is claiming much when

that kin must face the challenge of a phrase like the one in the middle sentence: "an idealist immersed in

realities who involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary issues of

reverie." With a hundred words to do it with, the literary artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down

and reduce it to a concrete condition, visible, substantial, understandable and all right, like a cabbage; but the

The quoted phrase, like a thousand others that have come from the same source, has the quality of certain

scraps of verse which take hold of us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the

words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all seem inconspicuous, therefore we

It is like a dreamy strain of moving music, with no sharp notes in it. The words are all "right" words, and all

the same size. We do not notice it at first. We get the effect, it goes straight home to us, but we do not know

When I got back from Howells old to Howells young I find him arranging and clustering English words well,

but not any better than now. He is not more felicitous in concreting abstractions now than he was in

translating, then, the visions of the eyes of flesh into words that reproduced their forms and colors:

In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. It is at once shoveled into the canals by hundreds of

halfnaked FACCHINI; and now in St. Mark's Place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon my ear;

and I saw the shivering legion of poverty as it engaged the elements in a struggle for the possession of the

Piazza. But the snow continued to fall, and through the twilight of the descending flakes all this toil and

encountered looked like that weary kind of effort in dreams, when the most determined industry seems only

to renew the task. The lofty crest of the belltower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and I could no

longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But looked at across the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St.

Mark's Church was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the snowfall were woven into a

spell of novel enchantment around the structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic

loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had compassionated the beautiful edifice

for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the hand of

the builderor, better said, just from the brain of the architect. There was marvelous freshness in the colors

of the mosaics in the great arches of the facade, and all that gracious harmony into which the temple rises, or

marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times

etherealized by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly on the golden gloves that

tremble like peacockscrests above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in

ermine; and it danced over all its works, as if exulting in its beautybeauty which filled me with subtle,

selfish yearning to keep such evanescent loveliness for the littlewhilelonger of my whole life, and with

despair to think that even the poor lifeless shadow of it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem.

Through the wavering snowfall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not

show so grim as his wont is, and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so gentle and

mild he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the island churches loomed faint and far away

in the dimness; the sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like phantoms among the

shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a

The spirit of Venice is there: of a city where Age and Decay, fagged with distributing damage and

repulsiveness among the other cities of the planet in accordance with the policy and business of their

profession, come for rest and play between seasons, and treat themselves to the luxury and relaxation of

sinking the shop and inventing and squandering charms all about, instead of abolishing such as they find, as it

In the working season they do business in Boston sometimes, and a character in THE UNDISCOVERED

COUNTRY takes accurate note of pathetic effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once

dignified and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey to neglect and gradual

ruin and progressive degradation; a descent which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for

What a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! I don't think I was ever in a street before

when quite so many professional ladies, with English surnames, preferred Madam to Mrs. on their

doorplates. And the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air of going to the deuce. Every house

seems to wince as you go by, and button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had no shirt

onso to speak. I don't know what's the reason, but these material tokens of a social decay afflict me

terribly; a tipsy woman isn't dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that's once been a home, in a street like this.

Mr. Howells's pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs; they are photographs with feeling in

As concerns his humor, I will not try to say anything, yet I would try, if I had the words that might

approximately reach up to its high place. I do not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so

gracefully and delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many to play with, nor can come so near

making them look as if they were doing the playing themselves and he was not aware that they were at it. For

they are unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted. His is a humor which flows softly all

around about and over and through the mesh of the page, pervasive, refreshing, healthgiving, and makes no

There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr. Howells's books. That is his "stage

directions"those artifices which authors employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and a

conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings in the other which might not be

perceived if entrusted unexplained to the bare words of the talk. Some authors overdo the stage directions,

they elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and take up so much room in telling us

how a person said a thing and how he looked and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish

he hadn't said it all. Other authors' directions are brief enough, but it is seldom that the brevity contains either

wit or information. Writers of this school go in rags, in the matter of state directions; the majority of them

having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush, and a bursting into tears. In their poverty they work

". . . replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." (This explains nothing; it only wastes space.)

". . . responded Richard, with a laugh." (There was nothing to laugh about; there never is. The writer puts it in

from habitautomatically; he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is nothing to

laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by

enlarging the stage direction and making Richard break into "frenzies of uncontrollable laughter." This makes

". . . murmured Gladys, blushing." (This poor old shopworn blush is a tiresome thing. We get so we would

rather Gladys would fall out of the book and break her neck than do it again. She is always doing it, and

usually irrelevantly. Whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out her blush; it is the only thing she's got.

". . . repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears." (This kind keep a book damp all the time. They can't say a thing

without crying. They cry so much about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry ABOUT

they have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved. We are only glad.)

They gavel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these carbon films that got burnt out long ago

and cannot now carry any faintest thread of light. It would be well if they could be relieved from duty and

flung out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear along with the discarded and forgotten "steeds" and

"halidomes" and similar stageproperties once so dear to our grandfathers. But I am friendly to Mr. Howells's

stage directions; more friendly to them than to any one else's, I think. They are done with a competent and

discriminating art, and are faithful to the requirements of a state direction's proper and lawful office, which is

to inform. Sometimes they convey a scene and its conditions so well that I believe I could see the scene and

get the spirit and meaning of the accompanying dialogue if some one would read merely the stage directions

to me and leave out the talk. For instance, a scene like this, from THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY:

". . . and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father's shoulder."

". . . but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his face with puzzled entreaty."

Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can invent fresh ones without limit. It is

mainly the repetition over and over again, by the thirdrates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless forms

that makes their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, I think. We do not mind one or two deliveries of

their wares, but as we turn the pages over and keep on meeting them we presently get tired of them and wish

And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I always notice stage directions, because they fret me and

keep me trying to get out of their way, just as the automobiles do. At first; then by and by they become

Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful as the make of it. I have held him in

admiration and affection so many years that I know by the number of those years that he is old now; but his

heart isn't, nor his pen; and years do not count. Let him have plenty of them; there is profit in them for us.

CATO'S SOLILOQUY.One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to him [Dr. Samuel Johnson] Cato's

Soliloquy, which she went through very correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child:

He then asked her the meaning of "bane and antidote," which she was unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said:

"Now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a child Cato's Soliloquy, who does not

In a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society Professor Ravenstein quoted the following list of frantic

Mention all names of places in the world derived from Julius Caesar or Augustus Caesar.

All you know of the following: Machacha, Pilmo, Schebulos, Crivoscia, Basces, Mancikert, Taxhem,

Name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from the Skaptar Jokul in the eruption of

That list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical knowledge. Isn't it reasonably possible that in our

schools many of the questions in all studies are several miles ahead of where the pupil is?that he is set to

struggle with things that are ludicrously beyond his present reach, hopelessly beyond his present strength?

This remark in passing, and by way of text; now I come to what I was going to say.

I have just now fallen upon a darling literary curiosity. It is a little book, a manuscript compilation, and the

compiler sent it to me with the request that I say whether I think it ought to be published or not. I said, Yes;

but as I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious; and so, now that the publication is imminent, it has seemed

to me that I should feel more comfortable if I could divide up this responsibility with the public by adding

them to the court. Therefore I will print some extracts from the book, in the hope that they may make

converts to my judgment that the volume has merit which entitles it to publication.

As to its character. Every one has sampled "English as She is Spoke" and "English as She is Wrote"; this little

volume furnishes us an instructive array of examples of "English as She is Taught"in the public schools

ofwell, this country. The collection is made by a teacher in those schools, and all the examples in it are

genuine; none of them have been tampered with, or doctored in any way. From time to time, during several

years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself of anything peculiarly quaint or toothsome in the course of his

recitations, this teacher and her associates have privately set that thing down in a memorandumbook; strictly

following the original, as to grammar, construction, spelling, and all; and the result is this literary curiosity.

The contents of the book consist mainly of answers given by the boys and girls to questions, said answers

being given sometimes verbally, sometimes in writing. The subjects touched upon are fifteen in number: I.

Etymology; II. Grammar; III. Mathematics; IV. Geography; V. "Original"; VI. Analysis; VII. History; VIII.

"Intellectual"; IX. Philosophy; X. Physiology; XI. Astronomy; XII. Politics; XIII. Music; XIV. Oratory; XV.

You perceive that the poor little young idea has taken a shot at a good many kinds of game in the course of

the book. Now as to results. Here are some quaint definitions of words. It will be noticed that in all of these

instances the sound of the word, or the look of it on paper, has misled the child:

Here is one where the phrase "publicans and sinners" has got mixed up in the child's mind with politics, and

Also in Democratic newspapers now and then. Here are two where the mistake has resulted from sound

I cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the following instances; it would not seem to

Here is one whichwell, now, how often we do slam right into the truth without ever suspecting it:

Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many's the time you will notice it in the gas bill. In

the following sentences the little people have some information to convey, every time; but in my case they

The last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it means, and yet he knows all the time

that he doesn't. Here is an odd (but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a lofty

And herewith "zoological" and "geological" in his mind, but not ready to his tonguethe small scholar

has innocently gone and let out a couple of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any

Under the head of "Grammar" the little scholars furnish the following information:

"Caterpillar" is well enough, but capital letter would have been stricter. The following is a brave attempt at a

When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the poetry or prose they must put a

The chapter on "Mathematics" is full of fruit. From it I take a few samplesmainly in an unripe state:

To find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by the number of the feet. The product is

Right you are. In the matter of geography this little book is unspeakably rich. The questions do not appear to

have applied the microscope to the subject, as did those quoted by Professor Ravenstein; still, they proved

plenty difficult enough without that. These pupils did not hunt with a microscope, they hunted with a

The United States is quite a small country compared with some other countrys, but it about as industrious.

Cape Hateras is a vast body of water surrounded by land and flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.

One of the leading industries of the United States is mollasses, bookcovers, numbers, gas, teaching, lumber,

The width of the different zones Europe lies in depend upon the surrounding country.

The imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports are the things that are not.

The chapter headed "Analysis" shows us that the pupils in our public schools are not merely loaded up with

those showy facts about geography, mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state; no, there's

machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. They are required to take poems and analyze them, dig

out their common sense, reduce them to statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous prose translation which

shall tell you at a glance what the poet was trying to get at. One sample will do. Here is a stanza from "The

The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor

not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant

with weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full or sorrow, the young deer made imperfect

I see, now, that I never understood that poem before. I have had glimpses of its meaning, it moments when I

was not as ignorant with weariness as usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea of it ever filtered

in sight. If I were a publicschool pupil I would put those other studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after

We come now to historical matters, historical remains, one might say. As one turns the pages he is impressed

with the depth to which one date has been driven into the American child's head 1492. The date is there,

and it is there to stay. And it is always at hand, always deliverable at a moment's notice. But the Fact that

belongs with it? That is quite another matter. Only the date itself is familiar and sure: its vast Fact has failed

of lodgment. It would appear that whenever you ask a public school pupil when a thinganything, no

matter whathappened, and he is in doubt, he always rips out his 1492. He applies it to everything, from the

landing of the ark to the introduction of the horsecar. Well, after all, it is our first date, and so it is right

enough to honor it, and pay the public schools to teach our children to honor it:

The Middle Ages come in between antiquity and posterity. Luther introduced Christianity into England a

good many thousand years ago. His birthday was November 1883. He was once a Pope. He lived at the time

of the Rebellion of Worms. Julius Caesar is noted for his famous telegram dispatch I came I saw I conquered.

Julius Caesar was really a very great man. He was a very great soldier and wrote a book for beginners in the

Latin. Cleopatra was caused by the death of an asp which she dissolved in a wine cup. The only form of

government in Greece was a limited monkey. The Persian war lasted about 500 years. Greece had only 7 wise

Here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such ingenious infelicity that it can be depended

To show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and diligent boosting in the public school, we

In the chapter headed "Intellectual" I find a great number of most interesting statements. A sample or two

In the middle of the chapter I find many pages of information concerning Shakespeare's plays, Milton's

works, and those of Bacon, Addison, Samuel Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, De Foe,

Locke, Pope, Swift, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Byron, Coleridge, Hood, Scott,

Macaulay, George Eliot, Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, and Disraelia

fact which shows that into the restricted stomach of the publicschool pupil is shoveled every year the blood,

bone, and viscera of a gigantic literature, and the same is there digested and disposed of in a most successful

and characteristic and gratifying publicschool way. I have space for but a trifling few of the results:

Here are two or three miscellaneous facts that may be of value, if taken in moderation:

When the publicschool pupil wrestles with the political features of the Great Republic, they throw him

And here she rises once more and untimely. There should be a limit to publicschool instruction; it cannot be

If, up to this point, none of my quotations have added flavor to the Johnsonian anecdote at the head of this

If a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, nor the unintelligent teacheror rather the unintelligent

Boards, Committees, and Trusteesare the proper target for it. All through this little book one detects the

signs of a certain probable factthat a large part of the pupil's "instruction" consists in cramming him with

obscure and wordy "rules" which he does not understand and has no time to understand. It would be as useful

to cram him with brickbats; they would at least stay. In a town in the interior of New York, a few years ago, a

gentleman set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to every publicschool pupil who

should furnish the correct solution of it. Twentytwo of the brightest boys in the public schools entered the

contest. The problem was not a very difficult one for pupils of their mathematical rank and standing, yet they

all failedby a hairthrough one trifling mistake or another. Some searching questions were asked, when it

turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the "rules," but could not reason out a single rule or

explain the principle underlying it. Their memories had been stocked, but not their understandings. It was a

There are several curious "compositions" in the little book, and we must make room for one. It is full of

naivete, brutal truth, and unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy's composition I think I

Girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your. They think more of dress than

anything and like to play with dowls and rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of

guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They are always sick. They are al ways

funy and making fun of boy's hands and they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor things.

They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont beleave they ever kiled a cat or anything.

They look out every nite and say oh ant the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they

The marked difference between the books now being produced by French, English, and American travelers,

on the one hand, and German explorers, on the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due

entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is taught, in the first place to see, and in the

(This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last writing done by Mark Twain on any

I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling toward Simplified Spelling, from the

beginning of the movement three years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to merely

propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of patching and plugging poor old dental relics with

cement and gold and porcelain paste; what was really needed was a new set of teeth. That is to say, a new

The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn't know how to spell, and can't be taught. In this

it is like all other alphabets except onethe phonographic. This is the only competent alphabet in the world.

That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. In a

week the student can learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable ease. I know,

for I saw it tried in a public school in Nevada fortyfive years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that

I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed) character. I mean SIMPLY the alphabet;

simply the consonants and the vowelsI don't mean any REDUCTIONS or abbreviations of them, such as

the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. No, I would SPELL EVERY WORD OUT.

I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz's PHONIC SHORTHAND. [Figure 1] It is arranged on the

basis of Isaac Pitman's PHONOGRAPHY. Isaac Pitman was the originator and father of scientific

phonography. It is used throughout the globe. It was a memorable invention. He made it public seventy

three years ago. The firm of Isaac Pitman Sons, New York, still exists, and they continue the master's work.

First of all, we could spell DEFINITELYand correctlyany word you please, just by the SOUND of it.

We can't do that with our present alphabet. For instance, take a simple, everyday word PHTHISIS. If we

tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and be laughed at by every educated person.

Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several hundred words, but the new spelling

must be LEARNED. You can't spell them by the sound; you must get them out of the book.

But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language, the phonographic alphabet would

still beat the Simplified Speller "hands down" in the important matter of economy of labor. I will illustrate:

To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only THREE strokes.

To write "laff," the pen has to make the SAME NUMBER of strokesno labor is saved to the penman.

To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only THREE strokes.

To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only FIVE strokes. [Figure 3]

To write the words "phonographic alphabet," the pen has to make fiftythree strokes.

To write "fonografic alfabet," the pen has to make fifty strokes. To the penman, the saving in labor is

To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only SEVENTEEN

Without the vowels, only THIRTEEN strokes. [Figure 4] The vowels are hardly necessary, this time.

We make five penstrokes in writing an m. Thus: [Figure 5] a stroke down; a stroke up; a second stroke

down; a second stroke up; a final stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m

with a single strokea curve, like a parenthesis that has come home drunk and has fallen face down right at

When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it has to be connected with the next

letter, and that requires another penstroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never mind

about the connecting strokeslet them go. Without counting them, the twentysix letters of our alphabet

consumed about eighty penstrokes for their constructionabout three penstrokes per letter.

It is THREE TIMES THE NUMBER required by the phonographic alphabet. It requires but ONE stroke for

My writinggait iswell, I don't know what it is, but I will time myself and see. Result: it is twentyfour

words per minute. I don't mean composing; I mean COPYING. There isn't any definite composinggait.

Very well, my copyinggait is 1,440 words per hoursay 1,500. If I could use the phonographic character

with facility I could do the 1,500 in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours' copying in three hours; I could do

three years' copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting machine with the phonographic alphabet on

I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a lesson, and I am copying the letters from

the book. But I can accomplish my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear idea

of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present alphabet and put this better one in its

[Figure 6] MAN DOG HORSE. I think it is graceful and would look comely in print. And consideronce

more, I begwhat a laborsaver it is! Ten penstrokes with the one system to convey those three words

above, and thirtythree by the other! [Figure 6] I mean, in SOME ways, not in all. I suppose I might go so far

as to say in most ways, and be within the facts, but never mind; let it go at SOME. One of the ways in which

it exercises this birthright isas I thinkcontinuing to use our laughable alphabet these seventythree years

It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer's rotten spellingif I may be allowed to use to

frank a term as thatand it will take five hundred years more to get our exasperating new Simplified

Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha'n't be any better off then than we are now; for in that

day we shall still have the privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: ANYBODY can change the spelling

always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling, you have to change the sound first.

Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy guild that is patiently and hopefully trying

to reform our drunken old alphabet by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they get

through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will be only HALF drunk. Above that

condition their system can never lift him. There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to

take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman's wholesome and undiseased alphabet.

One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a simplified word looks so like the very nation!

and when you bunch a whole squadron of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable.

The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled to the bezair asspekt of the

Simplified Kombynashuns, butif I may be allowed the expressionis it worth the wasted time? [Figure 7]

To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed offends the eye, and also takes the

It doesn't thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked the thrill all out of it.

But a written character with which we are NOT ACQUAINTED does not offend usGreek, Hebrew,

Russian, Arabic, and the othersthey have an interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is

true of hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about the mathematical signs when

we do not understand them. The mystery hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across

a printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we could read it.

Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adopting is not shorthand, but longhand, written with the

SHORTHAND ALPHABET UNREACHED. You can write three times as many words in a minute with it as

you can write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it IS properly a shorthand. It has a pleasant look, too; a

beguiling look, an inviting look. I will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: [Figure 8]

Even when _I_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it

costs one hundred and twentythree penstrokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it costs only

This line of hieroglyphics was for fourteen years the despair of all the scholars who labored over the

Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the temples, this upon pain of death.

That was the twentyforth translation that had been furnished by scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a

time. Then doubts began to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors. Three years of

patient work produced eleven new translations; among them, this, by Gr:unfeldt, was received with

The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this upon pain of death.

But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned world with yet greater favor:

The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people, and these shall listen with reverence,

Seven years followed, in which twentyone fresh and widely varying renderings were scorednone of them

quite convincing. But now, at last, came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation which

was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct version, and his name became famous in a

day. So famous, indeed, that even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the achievement

itself make that not even the noise of the monumental political event of that same yearthe flight from

Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and follow it; so shall it conduct thee to

the temple's peace, and soften for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death.

It is demotica style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the language which has perished from the

Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon our crags and boulders. It has taken our

most gifted and painstaking students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures; yet there

are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the figures grouped upon the Dighton Rocks which they have

Thus we have infinite trouble in solving manmade mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover the

secret of God that our difficulties disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom of

the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds, and this was patiently and hopefully

continued century after century, although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded

instance. The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can read coarse print. Roman history is

full of the marvels of interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These strange and wonderful

achievements move our awe and compel our admiration. Those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery

instantly. If the Rosettastone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them, but entrails had no

embarrassments for them. Entrails have gone out, nowentrails and dreams. It was at last found out that as

A part of the wall of Valletri in former times been struck with thunder, the response of the soothsayers was,

that a native of that town would some time or other arrive at supreme power. BOHN'S SUETONIUS, p.

"Some time or other." It looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened, all the same; one needed only to wait,

and be patient, and keep watch, then he would find out that the thunder stroke had Caesar Augustus in mind,

There were other advanceadvertisements. One of them appeared just before Caesar Augustus was born, and

was most poetic and touching and romantic in its feelings and aspects. It was a dream. It was dreamed by

Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the stars and expanded through the whole

That was in the augur's line, and furnished him no difficulties, but it would have taken Rawlinson and

Champollion fourteen years to make sure of what it meant, because they would have been surprised and

dizzy. It would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service would have been barred by the

In those old Roman days a gentleman's education was not complete until he had taken a theological course at

the seminary and learned how to translate entrails. Caesar Augustus's education received this final polish. All

through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the

In his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve vultures presented themselves, as they

had done to Romulus. And when he offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in the

lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who had skill in things of that nature, as an

"Indubitable" is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the livers were really turned that way. In those

days chicken livers were strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far off they

might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and squirm like that, particularly when vultures

We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings us down to enlightened Christian

times and the troubled days of King Stephen of England. The augur has had his day and has been long ago

King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes flying over from Normandy to steal the

throne from Henry's daughter. He accomplished his crime, and Henry of Huntington, a priest of high degree,

mourns over it in his Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated Stephen: "wherefore the Lord

visited the Archbishop with the same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah the

Stephen's was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait; not so the Archbishop, apparently.

The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine spread ruin throughout the land; cries of

That was the result of Stephen's crime. These unspeakable conditions continued during nineteen years. Then

Stephen died as comfortably as any man ever did, and was honorably buried. It makes one pity the poor

Archbishop, and with that he, too, could have been let off as leniently. How did Henry of Huntington know

that the Archbishop was sent to his grave by judgment of God for consecrating Stephen? He does not explain.

Neither does he explain why Stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than he was entitled to, while the aged

King Henry, his predecessor, who had ruled England thirtyfive years to the people's strongly worded

satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances most distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and

disagreeable. His was probably the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in history. There is not a detail

about it that is attractive. It seems to have been just the funeral for Stephen, and even at this fardistant day it

Whenever God punishes a man, Henry of Huntington knows why it was done, and tells us; and his pen is

eloquent with admiration; but when a man has earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. He is

evidently puzzled, but he does not say anything. I think it is often apparent that he is pained by these

discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not to show it. When he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence

so marked that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed criticism. However, he has plenty of

King David of Scotland . . . under color of religion caused his followers to deal most barbarously with the

English. They ripped open women, tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the altars, and,

cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes, placed them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange

they fixed on the crucifixes the heads of their victims. Wherever the Scots came, there was the same scene of

horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the

Then the chief of the men of Lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all his followers were put to flight. For the

Offended at them for what? For committing those fearful butcheries? No, for that was the common custom on

both sides, and not open to criticism. Then was it for doing the butcheries "under cover of religion"? No, that

was not it; religious feeling was often expressed in that fervent way all through those old centuries. The truth

is, He was not offended at "them" at all; He was only offended at their king, who had been false to an oath.

Then why did not He put the punishment upon the king instead of upon "them"? It is a difficult question. One

can see by the Chronicle that the "judgments" fell rather customarily upon the wrong person, but Henry of

Huntington does not explain why. Here is one that went true; the chronicler's satisfaction in it is not hidden:

In the month of August, Providence displayed its justice in a remarkable manner; for two of the nobles who

had converted monasteries into fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met with a

similar punishment. Robert Marmion was one, Godfrey de Mandeville the other. Robert Marmion, issuing

forth against the enemy, was slain under the walls of the monastery, being the only one who fell, though he

was surrounded by his troops. Dying excommunicated, he became subject to death everlasting. In like

manner Earl Godfrey was singled out among his followers, and shot with an arrow by a common

footsoldier. He made light of the wound, but he died of it in a few days, under excommunication. See here

The exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for they deserved that, but because it is

death eternal, in whitehot fire and flame. It makes my flesh crawl. I have not known more than three men, or

perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, *whom I would rejoice to see writhing in those fires for even a year, let

alone forever. I believe I would relent before the year was up, and get them out if I could. I think that in the

long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not harmed me, should come crying and pleading, I couldn't

stand it; I know I should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a monastery. Henry of

Huntington has been watching Godfrey and Marmion for nearly seven hundred and fifty years, now, but I

couldn't do it, I know I couldn't. I am soft and gentle in my nature, and I should have forgiven them

seventyandseven times, long ago. And I think God has; but this is only an opinion, and not authoritative,

like Henry of Huntington's interpretations. I could learn to interpret, but I have never tried; I get so little time.

All through his book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions of God, and with the reasons for his

intentions. Sometimesvery often, in factthe act follows the intention after such a wide interval of time

that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one intention out of a hundred and get the

thing right every time when there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a man

offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years later; meantime he was committed a million

other crimes: no matter, Henry can pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally used in

those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. This has gone out, now, but in old times it was a

. . . the just God avenging Robert Fitzhilderbrand's perfidy, a worm grew in his vitals, which gradually

gnawing its way through his intestines fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating

sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his end. (P. 400.)

It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a particular breed, and only used to

convey wrath. Some authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt.

However, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been due years and years. Robert F. had

violated a monastery once; he had committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permittedunder

disapprovalbut the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten nor forgiven, and the worm came

Why were these reforms put off in this strange way? What was to be gained by it? Did Henry of Huntington

really know his facts, or was he only guessing? Sometimes I am half persuaded that he is only a guesser, and

not a good one. The divine wisdom must surely be of the better quality than he makes it out to be.

Five hundred years before Henry's time some forecasts of the Lord's purposes were furnished by a pope, who

perceived, by certain perfectly trustworthy signs furnished by the Deity for the information of His familiars,

. . . about to come. But as this end of the world draws near many things are at hand which have not before

happened, as changes in the air, terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the

seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all which will not happen in our days, but

Still, the end was so near that these signs were "sent before that we may be careful for our souls and be found

That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement on the work of the Roman augurs.

As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is thisthat there is a STANDARD

governing the matter, whereas there is nothing of the kind. Each man's own preference is the only standard

for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him. A congress of all the

tobaccolovers in the world could not elect a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would

The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He hasn't. He thinks he has, but he hasn't. He

thinks he can tell what he regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad onebut he can't. He goes

by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm off the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears

Children of twentyfive, who have seven years experience, try to tell me what is a good cigar and what isn't.

Me, who never learned to smoke, but always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light.

No one can tell me what is a good cigarfor me. I am the only judge. People who claim to know say that I

smoke the worst cigars in the world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house. They betray

an unmanly terror when I offer them a cigar; they tell lies and hurry away to meet engagements which they

have not made when they are threatened with the hospitalities of my box. Now then, observe what

superstition, assisted by a man's reputation, can do. I was to have twelve personal friends to supper one night.

One of them was as notorious for costly and elegant cigars as I was for cheap and devilish ones. I called at his

house and when no one was looking borrowed a double handful of his very choicest; cigars which cost him

forty cents apiece and bore redandgold labels in sign of their nobility. I removed the labels and put the

cigars into a box with my favorite brand on ita brand which those people all knew, and which cowed them

as men are cowed by an epidemic. They took these cigars when offered at the end of the supper, and lit them

and sternly struggled with themin dreary silence, for hilarity died when the fell brand came into view and

started aroundbut their fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed out, treading

on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the morning when I went out to observe results the

cigars lay all between the front door and the gate. All except onethat one lay in the plate of the man from

whom I had cabbaged the lot. One or two whiffs was all he could stand. He told me afterward that some day I

Am I certain of my own standard? Perfectly; yes, absolutely unless somebody fools me by putting my

brand on some other kind of cigar; for no doubt I am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of

by the flavor. However, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a good deal of territory. To me, almost

any cigar is good that nobody else will smoke, and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people consider

good. Nearly any cigar will do me, except a Havana. People think they hurt my feelings when then come to

my house with their life preservers onI mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. It is an error; I take

care of myself in a similar way. When I go into dangerthat is, into rich people's houses, where, in the

nature of things, they will have hightariff cigars, redandgilt girded and nested in a rosewood box along

with a damp sponge, cigars which develop a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will

grow hot to the fingers, and will go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on smelling more and more

infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire tunnels down inside below the thimbleful of honest tobacco

that is in the front end, the furnisher of it praising it all the time and telling you how much the deadly thing

costyes, when I go into that sort of peril I carry my own defense along; I carry my own

brandtwentyseven cents a barreland I live to see my family again. I may seem to light his redgartered

cigar, but that is only for courtesy's sake; I smuggle it into my pocket for the poor, of whom I know many,

and light one of my own; and while he praises it I join in, but when he says it cost fortyfive cents I say

However, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that I have never seen any cigars that I really could not smoke,

except those that cost a dollar apiece. I have examined those and know that they are made of doghair, and

I have a thoroughly satisfactory time in Europe, for all over the Continent one finds cigars which not even the

most hardened newsboys in New York would smoke. I brought cigars with me, the last time; I will not do

that any more. In Italy, as in France, the Government is the only cigarpeddler. Italy has three or four

domestic brands: the Minghetti, the Trabuco, the Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification of

the Virginia. The Minghettis are large and comely, and cost three dollars and sixty cents a hundred; I can

smoke a hundred in seven days and enjoy every one of them. The Trabucos suit me, too; I don't remember the

price. But one has to learn to like the Virginia, nobody is born friendly to it. It looks like a rat tail file, but

smokes better, some think. It has a straw through it; you pull this out, and it leaves a flue, otherwise there

would be no draught, not even as much as there is to a nail. Some prefer a nail at first. However, I like all the

French, Swiss, German, and Italian domestic cigars, and have never cared to inquire what they are made of;

and nobody would know, anyhow, perhaps. There is even a brand of European smokingtobacco that I like.

It is a brand used by the Italian peasants. It is loose and dry and black, and looks like teagrounds. When the

fire is applied it expands, and climbs up and towers above the pipe, and presently tumbles off inside of one's

vest. The tobacco itself is cheap, but it raises the insurance. It is as I remarked in the beginningthe taste for

tobacco is a matter of superstition. There are no standardsno real standards. Each man's preference is the

only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him.

It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. I mean, in the psychical and in the poetical way. I had had

a business introduction earlier. It was when I was a boy. It is strange that I should remember a formality like

Bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. It is because all the important bees are of that sex. In the hive

there is one married bee, called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one hundred are

sons; the rest are daughters. Some of the daughters are young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins

Every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of her sons and marries him. The

honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to

lay two million eggs. This will be enough to last the year, but not more than enough, because hundreds of

bees are drowned every day, and other hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the

population up to standard say, fifty thousand. She must always have that many children on hand and

efficient during the busy season, which is summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. She

lays from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand; and she must exercise

judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a slim flowerharvest, nor fewer than are required in a

prodigal one, or the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more sense.

There are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her placeready and more than anxious to do

it, although she is their own mother. These girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and tended from

birth. No other bees get such fine food as they get, or live such a high and luxurious life. By consequence

they are larger and longer and sleeker than their working sisters. And they have a curved sting, shaped like a

A common bee will sting any one or anybody, but a royalty stings royalties only. A common bee will sting

and kill another common bee, for cause, but when it is necessary to kill the queen other ways are employed.

When a queen has grown old and slack and does not lay eggs enough one of her royal daughters is allowed to

come to attack her, the rest of the bees looking on at the duel and seeing fair play. It is a duel with the curved

stings. If one of the fighters gets hard pressed and gives it up and runs, she is brought back and must try

againonce, maybe twice; then, if she runs yet once more for her life, judicial death is her portion; her

children pack themselves into a ball around her person and hold her in that compact grip two or three days,

until she starves to death or is suffocated. Meantime the victor bee is receiving royal honors and performing

As regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that is a matter of politics, and will be

During substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years the queen lives in Egyptian darkness and

stately seclusion of the royal apartments, with none about her but plebeian servants, who give her empty

lipaffection in place of the love which her heart hungers for; who spy upon her in the interest of her waiting

heirs, and report and exaggerate her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her and flatter her to

her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel before her in the day of her power and forsake her in

her age and weakness. There she sits, friendless, upon her throne through the long night of her life, cut off

from the consoling sympathies and sweet companionship and loving endearments which she craves, by the

gilded barriers of her awful rank; a forlorn exile in her own house and home, weary object of formal

ceremonies and machinemade worship, winged child of the sun, native to the free air and the blue skies and

the flowery fields, doomed by the splendid accident of her birth to trade this priceless heritage for a black

captivity, a tinsel grandeur, and a loveless life, with shame and insult at the end and a cruel deathand

Huber, Lubbock, Maeterlinckin fact, all the great authoritiesare agreed in denying that the bee is a

member of the human family. I do not know why they have done this, but I think it is from dishonest motives.

Why, the innumerable facts brought to light by their own painstaking and exhaustive experiments prove that

But that is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with

the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the

main chief fact of allthat his accumulation proves an entirely different thing. When you point out this

miscarriage to him he does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant prevaricates

and you do not get in. Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can

To be strictly fair, I will concede that now and then one of them will answer your letter, but when they do

they avoid the issueyou cannot pin them down. When I discovered that the bee was human I wrote about it

to all those scientists whom I have just mentioned. For evasions, I have seen nothing to equal the answers I

After the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the virgin. The virgins are fifty thousand or

one hundred thousand in number, and they are the workers, the laborers. No work is done, in the hive or out

of it, save by them. The males do not work, the queen does no work, unless laying eggs is work, but it does

not seem so to me. There are only two million of them, anyway, and all of five months to finish the contract

in. The distribution of work in a hive is as cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast American

machineshop or factory. A bee that has been trained to one of the many and various industries of the

concern doesn't know how to exercise any other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything

outside of her profession. She is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the cook to wait on the table, you

know what will happen. Cooks will play the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. In my time I have

asked a cook to chop wood, and I know about these things. Even the hired girl has her frontiers; true, they are

vague, they are illdefined, even flexible, but they are there. This is not conjecture; it is founded on the

absolute. And then the butler. You ask the butler to wash the dog. It is just as I say; there is much to be

learned in these ways, without going to books. Books are very well, but books do not cover the whole domain

of esthetic human culture. Pride of profession is one of the boniest bones in existence, if not the boniest.

In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old highwheel bicycles of that period. He wrote

an account of his experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle he rode long ago

became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a quality which does not grow old.

I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down a bought a barrel of Pond's Extract and

a bicycle. The Expert came home with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake of privacy,

Mine was not a fullgrown bicycle, but only a colta fiftyinch, with the pedals shortened up to

fortyeightand skittish, like any other colt. The Expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he got on

its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He said that the dismounting was perhaps

the hardest thing to learn, and so we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He found, to his

surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on to the machine and stand out of the way; I

could get off, myself. Although I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best time on record. He was

on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down with a crash, he at the bottom, I next, and the

We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was hardly believable. Yet the Expert

assured me that it was true; in fact, the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably

these things are constructed. We applied some Pond's Extract, and resumed. The Expert got on the OTHER

side to shove up this time, but I dismounted on that side; so the result was as before.

The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves again, and resumed. This time the Expert took up a sheltered

He was full of admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all right, not a scratch on her, not a timber started

anywhere. I said it was wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came to know these

steel spiderwebs I would realize that nothing but dynamite could cripple them. Then he limped out to

position, and we resumed once more. This time the Expert took up the position of shortstop, and got a man

to shove up behind. We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top

of the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air between

me and the sun. It was well it came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured.

Five days later I got out and was carried down to the hospital, and found the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a

few more days I was quite sound. I attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on something soft.

The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a good idea. These four held the graceful

cobweb upright while I climbed into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side of

The bicycle had what is called the "wabbles," and had them very badly. In order to keep my position, a good

many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature. That is to say,

that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding moved me to attempt it in one way,

while some immutable and unsuspected law of physics required that it be done in just the other way. I

perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the lifelong education of my body and

members. They were steeped in ignorance; they knew nothingnothing which it could profit them to know.

For instance, if I found myself falling to the right, I put the tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural

impulse, and so violated a law, and kept on going down. The law required the opposite thingthe big wheel

must be turned in the direction in which you are falling. It is hard to believe this, when you are told it. And

not merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your notions. And it is just as hard to do it,

after you do come to believe it. Believing it, and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is true, does

not help it: you can't any more DO it than you could before; you can neither force nor persuade yourself to do

it at first. The intellect has to come to the front, now. It has to teach the limbs to discard their old education

The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each lesson he knows he has acquired

something, and he also knows what that something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like

studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you

think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. Noand I see now, plainly

enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is

nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have learned of

bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a

When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel

it and steer it, then comes your next taskhow to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on

your right foot, resting the other on the mountingpeg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word,

you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way,

lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but

you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times.

By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer without wrenching the tiller out by the

roots (I say tiller because it IS a tiller; "handlebar" is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer along,

straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your

body, into the saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that, and down you go again.

But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting to light on one foot or the other

with considerable certainty. Six more attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the saddle

comfortably, next time, and stay therethat is, if you can be content to let your legs dangle, and leave the

pedals alone a while; but if you grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon learn to wait a little

and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals; then the mountingart is acquired, is complete, and a

little practice will make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off a rod or two to one

And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind first of all. It is quite easy to tell

one how to do the voluntary dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently undifficult;

let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you

would from a horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn't. I don't know why it isn't but it isn't.

Try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house

During the eight days I took a daily lesson an hour and a half. At the end of this twelve workinghours'

appreticeship I was graduatedin the rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without

outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. It takes considerably longer than that to learn

Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would have been risky for me, because of my

natural clumsiness. The selftaught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as

much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of

fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who imagine

that the unlucky accidents of lifelife's "experiences"are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out

how. I never knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on

your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it wouldn't seem

likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more that likely

that one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all

up in a knot. Now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether it was a

good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit him; he would be one of the selftaught kind that go by

experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he would find, for his instruction, that the coiled

patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a

complete and roundedout condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to bouncing a

But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much time and Pond's Extract.

Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to

inform him that I hadn't any. He said that that was a defect which would make uphill wheeling pretty

difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon remove it. The contrast between his muscles

and mine was quite marked. He wanted to test mine, so I offered my bicepswhich was my best. It almost

made him smile. He said, "It is pulpy, and soft, and yielding, and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from

under the fingers; in the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag." Perhaps this made me look

grieved, for he added, briskly: "Oh, that's all right, you needn't worry about that; in a little while you can't tell

it from a petrified kidney. Just go right along with your practice; you're all right."

Then he left me, and I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't really have to seek themthat is

I chose a reposeful Sabbathday sort of a back street which was about thirty yards wide between the

curbstones. I knew it was not wide enough; still, I thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space

Of course I had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own responsibility, with no encouraging moral

support from the outside, no sympathetic instructor to say, "Good! now you're doing wellgood

againdon't hurrythere, now, you're all right brace up, go ahead." In place of this I had some other

support. This was a boy, who was perched on a gatepost munching a hunk of maple sugar.

He was full of interest and comment. The first time I failed and went down he said that if he was me he

would dress up in pillows, that's what he would do. The next time I went down he advised me to go and learn

to ride a tricycle first. The third time I collapsed he said he didn't believe I could stay on a horsecar. But the

next time I succeeded, and got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and occupying

pretty much all of the street. My slow and lumbering gait filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung

out, "My, but don't he rip along!" Then he got down from his post and loafed along the sidewalk, still

observing and occasionally commenting. Presently he dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A

little girl passed by, balancing a washboard on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to make a remark,

I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed it was a dead level; but it was not, as

the bicycle now informed me, to my surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and acute as a

spiritlevel in the detecting the delicate and vanishing shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise

where your untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline which water will run

down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and still,

labor as I might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. At such times the boy would say:

"That's it! take a rest there ain't no hurry. They can't hold the funeral without YOU."

Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when I went over them. I could hit any

kind of a stone, no matter how small, if I tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn't help trying to do that.

It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us all, for some inscrutable reason.

It was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to round to. This is not a pleasant thing,

when you undertake it for the first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to succeed. Your

confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a

watchful strain, you start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full of electric

anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickelclad

horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and all your powers to

change its mindyour heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go,

and there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And now is the desperate moment, the last

chance to save yourself; of course all your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel

AWAY from the curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling on that granitebound inhospitable

shore. That was my luck; that was my experience. I dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle

I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer's wagon poking along down toward me, loaded

with cabbages. If I needed anything to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The farmer

was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on

either side. I couldn't shout at hima beginner can't shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone; he must keep all

his attention on his business. But in this grisly emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to

be grateful to him. He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and inspirations of my bicycle,

"To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass 'll run over you!" The man started to do it. "No, to the right, to the

right! Hold on! THAT won't do!to the left!to the right!to the LEFTright! leftri Stay where

And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a pile. I said, "Hang it! Couldn't you

"Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn't tell which WAY you was coming. Nobody couldnow, COULD

There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I said I was no doubt as much to blame

Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy couldn't keep up with me. He had to go

There was a row of low steppingstones across one end of the street, a measured yard apart. Even after I got

so I could steer pretty fairly I was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the worst

falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick

enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true: but I

think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any

dog. But I ran over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of difference. If you try to run

over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate,

and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my experience. Even when I could not hit

a wagon I could hit a dog that came to see me practice. They all liked to see me practice, and they all came,

for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog. It took time to learn to miss a dog,

I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy one of these days and run over HIM if he

Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this formidable

Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with

"Claimants"claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled

Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton,

Claimant; Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimantand the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants,

defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered

Claimants, despised Claimants, twinkle starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of history and

legend and traditionand, oh, all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about

them with deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to

which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant that

couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and

apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come

to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote SCIENCE AND HEALTH from the direct dictation

of the Deity; yet in England nearly forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible

adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor

and jailed as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in

numbers and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had

the like among hers from the beginning. Her Church is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other

Church. Claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim,

nor whether they come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the long vanished past,

across the abyss of the ages, if you listen, you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin

A friend has sent me a new book, from EnglandTHE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATEDwell

restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years' interest in that matterasleep for the last three yearsis

excited once more. It is an interest which was born of Delia Bacon's bookaway back in the ancient

day1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my pilotmaster, Bixby, transferred me from his own

steamboat to the PENNSYLVANIA, and placed me under the orders and instructions of George Ealerdead

now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many monthsas was the humble duty of the

pilotapprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction

of the master. He was a prime chessplayer and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play chess with

anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do that. Alsoquite uninvitedhe

would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch and I was steering.

He read well, but not profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke it

all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all upto that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of

river an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and which

Approach thou WHAT are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a

little, ease her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the THERE she goes! meet her, meet her!

didn't you KNOW she'd smell the reef if you crowded in like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any ship but that and

my firm nerves she'll be in the WOODS the first you know! stop he starboard! come ahead strong on the

larboard! back the starboard! . . . NOW then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and

go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert DAMNATION can't you keep away from

that greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit

then, lay in the leads!no, only with the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl.

Hence horrible shadow! eight bellsthat watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown

He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me,

because I have never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his

explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant, "What in hell are you up to NOW!

pull her down! more! MORE!there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that

were always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now I can hear them as plainly as I did in that

longdeparted timefiftyone years ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed, they were

His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail he was a good reader; I can say that

much for him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever

Did he have something to saythis Shakespeareadoring Mississippi pilotanent Delia Bacon's book?

Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for monthsin the morning watch, the middle watch, and dog watch;

and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we

discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed in every thirtyfive daysthe

time required by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and

disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate, HE did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a

cog and there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I did mine with

the reverse and moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilothouse and is perched

forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the

pretensions of the Baconians. So was Iat first. And at first he was glad that that was my attitude. There

were even indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the

lofty bosspilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a

complimentcompliment coming down from about the snowline and not well thawed in the transit, and

not likely to set anything afire, not even a cubpilot's self conceit; still a detectable complement, and

Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare if possiblethan I was before, and more

prejudiced against Baconif possiblethat I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on the

same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for a very little while, a very, very, very little

A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough

for all practical purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a little

time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently never

furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard,

rosecut, hundredfaceted, diamondflashing REASONING. That was his name for it. It has been applied

since, with complacency, as many as several times, in the BaconShakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare

Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal

interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went

over to the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That is to

say, I took this attitudeto wit, I only BELIEVED Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I KNEW Shakespeare

didn't. Ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study, practice, experience in handling my end

of the matter presently enabled me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly

seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After

that I was welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and I looked down with compassion not

unmixed with scorn upon everybody else's faith that didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by

selfinterest in that ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort, solace, peace, and

neverfailing joy. You see how curiously theological it is. The "rice Christian" of the Orient goes through the

very same steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after HIM; he goes for rice, and remains to

Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"not to say substantially all of it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for

calling it by that large name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name

at all. They show for themselves what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to

Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my inductiontalents together and hove the

controversial lead myself: always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even

I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a passage from Shakespeareit may have

been the very one I quoted awhile ago, I don't rememberand riddled it with his wild steamboatful

interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and

buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked

the PENNSYLVANIA triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the A. T. LACEY had

followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him

to fire it off READ it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only HE could read dramatic poetry. The

compliment touched him where he lived. He did read it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it

will never be read again; for HE know how to put the right music into those thunderous interlardings and

make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul,

each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed and magnificent

I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he brought up for reasonings and

vituperation my pet position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far

above all others in my ammunitionwagon to wit, that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's

words, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the lawcourts,

and lawproceedings, and lawyertalk, and lawyerwaysand if Shakespeare was possessed of the

infinitely divided stardust that constituted this vast wealth, HOW did he get it, and WHERE and WHEN?

From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the champions of my side of the great

controversy had taught me to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and

successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not,

and cannot, get the tradephrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade,

from a common trade form, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer HASN'T. Ealer would

not be convinced; he said a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and free

masonries of ANY trade by careful reading and studying. But when I got him to read again the passage from

Shakespeare with the interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a bewildering

multitude of pilotphrases so thoroughly and perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or

conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. It was a triumph for me. He

was silent awhile, and I knew what was happeninghe was losing his temper. And I knew he would

presently close the session with the same old argument that was always his stay and his support in time of

need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't answer, because I dasn'tthe argument that I was an ass, and

O dear, how long ago it washow pathetically long ago! And here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone,

When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he keeps company with other standard

authors. Ealer always had several highclass books in the pilothouse, and he read the same ones over and

over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He played well on the flute, and greatly

enjoyed hearing himself play. So did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it

apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the

compassshelf under the breastboard. When the PENNSYLVANIA blew up and became a drifting rackheap

freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother Henry among them), pilot Brown had the

watch below, and was probably asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his

pilothouse were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged cavern where the

hurricanedeck and the boilerdeck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one

of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and deadly steam. But not for long. He did not

lose his headlong familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all emergencies. He held his

coatlapels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he found

the joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and was successful. I was not on board. I

had been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain Klinenfelter. The reasonhowever, I have told all about it in

the book called OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI, and it isn't important, anyway, it is so long ago.

When I was a Sundayschool scholar, something more than sixty years ago, I became interested in Satan, and

wanted to find out all I could about him. I began to ask questions, but my classteacher, Mr. Barclay, the

stonemason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was anxious to be praised for turning

my thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a

thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent, and thought Eve's calmness was

perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a

serpeant, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not answer my question, but

rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he

was willing to tell me the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't allow any discussion of

In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or six of them; you could set them all

down on a visitingcard. I was disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find that

there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears running down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and

compassion were aroused, for he was a most kind and gentlespirited man, and he patted me on the head and

cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can still feel the happy thrill which

Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and joy. Like this: it was

"conjectured"though not establishedthat Satan was originally an angel in Heaven; that he fell; that he

rebelled, and brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also, "we have reason to

believe" that later he did so and so; that "we are warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he traveled

extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries afterward, "as tradition instructs us,"

he took up the cruel trade of tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by and by, "as the

probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done certain things, he might have done certain other things, he

And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves on a piece of paper, and numbered it

"page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions,"

and "maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and guesses," and "probabilities," and

"likelihoods," and "we are permitted to thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have

beens," and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and "without a shadow of

Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of Satan. Why? Because, as he said,

he had suspicionssuspicions that my attitude in the matter was not reverent, and that a person must be

reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly of Satan would be

I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly misconceived my attitude; that I had the

highest respect for Satan, and that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of any

member of the church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought I would make

fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh at him, scoff at him; whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing,

but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at THEM. "What others? "Why, the

Supposers, the Perhapsers, the MightHaveBeeners, the CouldHaveBeeners, the MustHaveBeeners,

the WithoutaShadowofDoubters, the WeAreWarrantedinBelievingers, and all that funny crop of

solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built

What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He was shocked. He was so shocked

that he visibly shuddered. He said the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were

THEMSELVES sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of

their work, could not afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door.

How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been for me if I had heeded them. But

I was young, I was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the

How curious and interesting is the parallelas far as poverty of biographical details is concernedbetween

Satan and Shakespeare. It is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in

history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their

position, and how overtopping, how skyreaching, how supremethe two Great Unknowns, the two

Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the bestknown unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon

For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those details of Shakespeare's history which are

Of good farmerclass parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names.

At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the

nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in

On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Whateley.

Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.

William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a reluctantly granted dispensation

About two (blank) years followed, during which period NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED TO

Five blank years follow. During this period NOTHING HAPPENED TO HIM, as far as anybody actually

Next year1594he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every

Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor

Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and

Then161011he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending

money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of fortyone shillings, borrowed by his

wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for

shillings and coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a

He lived five or six yearstill 1616in the joy of these elevated pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed

A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the

worldhouses, lands, sword, silvergilt bowl, and so onall the way down to his "secondbest bed" and its

It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of his family, overlooking no

individual of it. Not even his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a

special dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; the wife

who had had to borrow fortyone shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the

prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. No, even this wife was remembered in

Books were much more precious than swords and silvergilt bowls and secondbest beds in those days, and

The will mentioned NOT A PLAY, NOT A POEM, NOT AN UNFINISHED LITERARY WORK, NOT A

Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died THIS poor; the others all left

If Shakespeare had owned a dogbut we not go into that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will.

If a good dog, Susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a downer interest in it. I

wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the

Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was eight years old when he died, yet

she had had no teaching, he left no provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature

womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else'sshe thought

When Shakespeare died in Stratford, IT WAS NOT AN EVENT. It made no more stir in England than the

death of any other forgotten theateractor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were

no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tearsthere was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking

contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other

distinguished literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost

So far as any one KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote only one poem during his

life. This one is authentic. He did write that onea fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he

wrote the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb,

In the list as above set down will be found EVERY POSITIVELY KNOWN fact of Shakespeare's life, lean

and meager as the invoice is. Beyond these details we know NOT A THING about him. All the rest of his

vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories,

conjecturesan Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising skyhigh from a very flat and very thin foundation of

The historians "suppose" that Shakespeare attended the Free School in Stratford from the time he was seven

years old till he was thirteen. There is no EVIDENCE in existence that he ever went to school at all.

The historians "infer" that he got his Latin in that school the school which they "suppose" he attended.

They "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him to leave the school they supposed he

attended, and get to work and help support his parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence that he

They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and that, being only a boy, he didn't have to

do full grown butchering, but only slaughtering calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a

highflown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony of a man who wasn't there at the time; a

man who got it from a man who could have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and neither of

them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two more decades after Shakespeare's

death (until old age and mental decay had refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't two facts in

stock about the longdead distinguished citizen, but only just the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into

oratory while he was at it. Curious. They had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen had spent twentysix

years in that little townjust half his lifetime. However, rightly viewed, it was the most important fact,

indeed almost the only important fact, of Shakespeare's life in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For experience is an

author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood

into the book he writes. Rightly viewed, calfbutchering accounts for "Titus Andronicus," the only

playain't it?that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only one everybody tried to

The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas

Lucy's deer preserves and got haled before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy

The historians, having argued the thing that MIGHT have happened into the thing that DID happen, found no

trouble in turning Sir Thomas Lucy into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the worldon

The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes easy. The historian builds it out of the

surmised deersteeling, and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeanceprompted

satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh, SUCH a wild

young scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for all time! It is the very way Professor Osborn and I

built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty seven feet long and sixteen feet high in the Natural

History Museum, the awe and admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the planet. We

had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster of Paris. We ran short of plaster of Paris, or we'd

have built a brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford Shakespeare and none but an expert could tell

Shakespeare pronounced "Venus and Adonis" "the first heir of his invention," apparently implying that it was

his first effort at literary composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment to his

historians these many, many years. They have to make him write that graceful and polished and flawless and

beautiful poem before he escaped from Stratford and his family1586 or '87age, twentytwo, or along

there; because within the next five years he wrote five great plays, and could not have found time to write

It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach deer, and rollick around, and learn

English, at the earliest likely momentsay at thirteen, when he was supposably wretched from that school

where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary usehe had his youthful hands full, and much

more than full. He must have had to put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in

London, and study English very hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard, almost, if the result of that labor

was to be the smooth and rounded and flexible and letterperfect English of the "Venus and Adonis" in the

space of ten years; and at the same time learn great and fine and unsurpassable literary FORM.

However, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this and more, much more: learned law and its

intricacies; and the complex procedure of the lawcourts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the

manners and customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his one

head every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by

the lowly and the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world's great

literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any other man of his timefor he was going to make

brilliant and easy and admirationcompelling use of these splendid treasures the moment he got to London.

And according to the surmisers, that is what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to teach

him these things, and no library in the little village to dig them out of. His father could not read, and even the

It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his

familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shoptalk of lawyers through being for

a time the CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks

of the Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Bering Strait whalefishery and the shoptalk

of the veteran exercises of that adventurebristling trade through catching catfish with a "trotline" Sundays.

But the surmise is damaged by the fact that there is no evidenceand not even traditionthat the young

It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his lawtreasures in the first years of his

sojourn in London, through "amusing himself" by learning booklaw in his garret and by picking up

lawyertalk and the rest of it through loitering about the lawcourts and listening. But it is only surmise;

there is no EVIDENCE that he ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of plaster

There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the London theaters, mornings

and afternoons. Maybe he did. If he did, it seriously shortened his lawstudy hours and his recreationtime in

the courts. In those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. The

horseholding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's difficulty in accounting

for the young Shakespeare's eruditionan erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by

chunk, every day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next day's imperishable drama.

He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of soldierpeople and sailorpeople

and their ways and talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily

emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his dramas. How did he acquire these rich

In the usual way: by surmise. It is SURMISED that he traveled in Italy and Germany and around, and

qualified himself to put their scenic and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French,

Italian, and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester's expedition to the Low Countries, as soldier or

sutler or something, for several months or yearsor whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his

businessand thus became familiar with soldiership and soldierways and soldiertalk and generalship and

Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the horses in the mean time; and who

studied the books in the garret; and who frolicked in the lawcourts for recreation. Also, who did the

For he became a callboy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"the law's ungentle term for an

unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) lightly

Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and manager of them. Thenceforward he was a

busy and flourishing business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a

noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poemhis only poem, his darlingand laid him down

He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. We have only circumstantial evidence.

Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It

would strain the Unabridged Dictionary to hold them. He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels

In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. Two of these cults are

known as the Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other onethe Brontosaurian.

The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the Baconian knows that Francis

Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn't really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and

contentedly sure that Shakespeare DIDN'T, and strongly suspects that Bacon DID. We all have to do a good

deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have

come out ahead of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but the Baconians seem to me

to get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the

Shakespearites. The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and

immutable law: which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No

matter, you cannot get a habitsodden Shakespearite to cipherup his materials upon any other basis. With

the Baconian it is different. If you place before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will

never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get just the proper 31.

Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way calculated to bring the idea within the

grasp of the ignorant and unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap bred, housefed, uneducated,

inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred from stem to rudderpost with the memorials of

strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him "all

catknowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. Lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless

prisoncell. Wait half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and let them

cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be decided is, where is it? You can guess both

verdicts beforehand. One verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as certainly say the

The Shakespearite will Reason like this(that is not my word, it is his). He will say the kitten MAY HAVE

BEEN attending school when nobody was noticing; therefore WE ARE WARRANTED IN ASSUMING that

it did so; also, it COULD HAVE BEEN training in a courtclerk's office when no one was noticing; since

that could have happened, WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN ASSUMING that it did happen; it COULD HAVE

STUDIED CATOLOGY IN A GARRET when no one was noticingtherefore it DID; it COULD HAVE

attended catassizes on the shedroof nights, for recreation, when no one was noticing, and have harvested a

knowledge of cat courtforms and cat lawyer talk in that way: it COULD have done it, therefore without a

doubt it DID; it COULD HAVE gone soldiering with a wartribe when no one was noticing, and learned

soldierwiles and soldierways, and what to do with a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference,

therefore, is that that is what it DID. Since all these manifold things COULD have occurred, we have EVERY

RIGHT TO BELIEVE they did occur. These patiently and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and

competences needed but one thing moreopportunityto convert themselves into triumphal action. The

opportunity came, we have the result; BEYOND SHADOW OF QUESTION the mouse is in the kitten.

It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "WE THINK WE MAY ASSUME," we expect

it, under careful watering and fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weatherdefying

We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: "THERE IS NOT A RAG OF EVIDENCE THAT THE

When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the

London world and in high favor for twentyfour years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it

attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet

had passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a playactor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not

His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does this mean that in Stratford he was not

"We are privileged to assume"no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assumethat such was the case. He had

spent the first twenty two or twentythree years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was

known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and the horses. He had spent the

last five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we

are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the

rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to

remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive,

who had known of him or known about him in the first twentythree years of his life were in the same

unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that period of his life they didn't tell

about it. Would the if they had been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent that they

were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to

For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been interested in him. Then the quarto was

published, and Ben Jonson awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the front

For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began to be made, of Stratfordians. Of

Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people

who had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the inquires were only made of

Stratfordians who were not Stratfordians of Shakespeare's day, but later comers; and what they had learned

had come to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as

FACT, but only as legend dim and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calfslaughtering rank, and

Has it ever happened beforeor sincethat a celebrated person who had spent exactly half of a fairly long

life in the village where he was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that village

voiceless and gossipless behind himutterly voiceless., utterly gossipless? And permanently so? I don't

believe it has happened in any case except Shakespeare's. And couldn't and wouldn't have happened in his

When I examine my own casebut let us do that, and see if it will not be recognizable as exhibiting a

condition of things quite likely to result, most likely to result, indeed substantially SURE to result in the case

My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, when I was two

and a half years old. I entered school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in the village

during nine and a half years. Then my father died, leaving his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances;

wherefore my bookeducation came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer's apprentice, on board and

clothes, and when the clothes failed I got a hymnbook in place of them. This for summer wear, probably. I

lived in Hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according to the custom of persons who

are intending to become celebrated. I never lived there afterward. Four years later I became a "cub" on a

Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, and after a year and a half of hard study and

hard work the U.S. inspectors rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings and decided that I

knew every inch of the Mississippithirteen hundred milesin the dark and in the day as well as a baby

knows the way to its mother's paps day or night. So they licensed me as a pilotknighted me, so to speak

and I rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the United States Government.

Now then. Shakespeare died younghe was only fiftytwo. He had lived in his native village twentysix

years, or about that. He died celebrated (if you believe everything you read in the books). Yet when he died

nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years afterward no townsman remembered to

say anything about him or about his life in Stratford. When the inquirer came at last he got but one fact no,

LEGENDand got that one at second hand, from a person who had only heard it as a rumor and didn't claim

But necessarily a number of persons were still alive in Stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen

Shakespeare nearly every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been able to tell that

inquirer some firsthand things about him if he had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person

of interest to the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? Wasn't it worth while?

Wasn't the matter of sufficient consequence? Had the inquirer an engagement to see a dogfight and couldn't

It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or elsewhere, and no considerable repute as

Now then, I am away along in lifemy seventythird year being already well behind meyet SIXTEEN of

my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive today, and can telland do tell inquirers dozens and dozens of

incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened to us in the morning of life, in the

blossom of our youth, in the good days, the dear days, "the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago."

Most of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when she was five years old and I eight

still lives in Hannibal, and she visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles

of railroad without damage to her patience or to her oldyoung vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid

attention in Hannibal when she was nine years old and I the same, is still alivein Londonand hale and

hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving steamboatsthose lingering ghosts and remembrancers of

great fleets that plied the big river in the beginning of my watercareerwhich is exactly as long ago as the

whole invoice of the lifeyears of Shakespeare numbersthere are still findable two or three riverpilots

who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several whiteheaded engineers; and several

roustabouts and mates; and several deckhands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still

night the "SixfeetSCANT!" that made me shudder, and the "Mark TWAIN!" that took the

shudder away, and presently the darling "By the deepFOUR!" that lifted me to heaven for joy. [1]

They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper

reporters, from Nevada to San Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really been celebrated,

like me, Stratford could have told things about him; and if my experience goes for anything, they'd have done

If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare

or not, I believe I would place before the debaters only the one question, WAS SHAKESPEARE EVER A

It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely myriadminded, but also

myriadaccomplished: that he not only knew some thousands of things about human life in all its shades and

grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men busy themselves in, but

that he could TALK about the men and their grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is

so, but have the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the exhibit stand upon wide, and

loose, and eloquent generalizingwhich is not evidence, and not proofor upon details, particulars,

Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only one of Shakespeare's multifarious

craft equipments, so far as my recollections of ShakespeareBacon talk abide with mehis

lawequipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever examined Shakespeare's battles and

sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for good and all that they were militarily flawless; I do

not remember that any Nelson, or Drake, or Cook ever examined his seamanship and said it showed profound

and accurate familiarity with that art; I don't remember that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that

Shakespeare was letterperfect in his handling of royal courtmanners and the talk and manners of

aristocracies; I don't remember that any illustrious Latinist or Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian

has proclaimed him a pastmaster in those languages; I don't rememberwell, I don't remember that there is

TESTIMONYgreat testimonyimposing testimony unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any

Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with certainty the changes that various

trades and their processes and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and find

out what their processes and technicalities were in those early days, but with the law it is different: it is

milestoned and documented all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex and

intricate trade, that awecompelling trade, has competent ways of knowing whether Shakespearelaw is good

law or not; and whether his lawcourt procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shoptalk is the

shoptalk of a veteran practitioner or only a machinemade counterfeit of it gathered from books and from

Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every experience that falls to the lot of the sailor

before the mast of our day. His sailortalk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease and

confidence of a person who has LIVED what he is talking about, not gathered it from books and random

Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each

yard, at the word the whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible everything

was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and catheaded, and the ship under headway.

The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and skysails set, and, as we had the wind free, the

booms were run out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the

studdingsail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails

Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royalmasts

bent under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging of the

CALIFORNIA; then they were all furled at once, but with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the topgallant

mastheads and loose them again at the word. It was my duty to furl the foreroyal; and while standing by to

loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars

and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly

capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The CALIFORNIA was to windward of us, and had

every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken she ranged a

little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt

dropped. "Sheet home the foreroyal!" "Weather sheet's home!""Lee sheet's home!""Hoist away,

sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your clewlines!" shouts the mate. "Ayeaye, sir, all clear!""Taut

leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!" and the royals are set.

What would the captain of any sailingvessel of our time say to that? He would say, "The man that wrote that

didn't learn his trade out of a book, he has BEEN there!" But would this same captain be competent to sit in

judgment upon Shakespeare's seamanshipconsidering the changes in ships and shiptalk that have

necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is

my conviction that Shakespeare's sailortalk would be Choctaw to him. For instancefrom "The Tempest":

MASTER. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or we run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir!

BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the

master's whistle. . . . Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi' the main course. . . . Lay

If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the

standing galley and the imposingstone into the hellbox; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them

jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know

I have been a quartz miner in the silver regionsa pretty hard life; I know all the palaver of that business: I

know all about discovery claims and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings,

dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, airshafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings;

quartz mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and

how to clean them up, and how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion

into pigs; and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for something less robust to do, and

find it. I know the argot and the quartzmining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte

introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his

phrasing that Harte got the phrasing by listeninglike ShakespeareI mean the Stratford onenot by

experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and

I have been a surface minergoldand I know all its mysteries, and the dialects that belongs with them;

and whenever Harte introduces that industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that neither

I have been a "pocket" minera sort of gold mining not findable in any but one little spot in the world, so far

as I know. I know how, with horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step and stage by

stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret

home under the ground. I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that fascinating

buriedtreasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to use it without having learned it by the sweat of

I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and whenever a person tries to talk the talk

peculiar to any of them without having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he gets far on his

And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a BaconShakespeare controversy, I

would narrow the matter down to a single questionthe only one, so far as the previous controversies have

informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: WAS THE

experience? I would put aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapes, and mighthavebeens, and

couldhave beens, and musthavebeens, and wearejustifiedinpresumings, and the rest of those vague

specters and shadows and indefintenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury

upon that single question. If the verdict was Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare,

the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even village consequence,

that sixty years afterward no fellowcitizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about

Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED bears the heading "Shakespeare as a

Lawyer," and comprises some fifty pages of expert testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the

first nine, as being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the question which I have

The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their author not only had a very extensive

and accurate knowledge of law, but that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of

"While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the laws of marriage, of wills, of

inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of

exceptions, nor writ of error." Such was the testimony borne by one of the most distinguished lawyers of the

nineteenth century who was raised to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and subsequently became

Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers

know how impossible it is for those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying

their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so

dangerous," wrote Lord Campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry." A layman is

certain to betray himself by using some expression which a lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee

himself supplies us with an example of this. He writes (p. 164): "On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare . . .

obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of No. 6, and No. 1, 5s. 0d. costs." Now a

lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not to

deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find a verdict on the facts. The error is,

indeed, a venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer

But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of

his incompetence. "Let a nonprofessional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again, "presume to

talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into

And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a deep technical knowledge of the

law," and an easy familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And

again: "Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." Of "Henry IV.," Part 2, he

says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable

with having forgotten any of his law while writing it." Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke speak of "the

marvelous intimacy which he displays with legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his

curiously technical knowledge of their form and force." Malone, himself a lawyer, wrote: "His knowledge of

legal terms is not merely such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his allcomprehending

mind; it has the appearance of technical skill." Another lawyer and wellknown Shakespearean, Richard

Grant White, says: "No dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was the younger son of a judge of the

Common Pleas, and who after studying in the Inns of Court abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases

with Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. And the significance of this fact is heightened by another, that is

only to the language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. The phrases peculiar to other occupations

serve him on rare occasions by way of description, comparison, or illustration, generally when something in

the scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his

thought. Take the word 'purchase' for instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire by giving value, but

applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar

sense the word occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirtyfour plays, and only in one single instance in the

fiftyfour plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been suggested that it was in attendance upon the courts in

London that he picked up his legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to account for

Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it does not even place him in the

way of learning those terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard

at ordinary proceedings at NISI PRIUS, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and

recovery,' 'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,'

'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging

round the courts of law in London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of real property

were comparatively rare. And besides, Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his first plays, written in his

first London years, as in those produced at a later period. Just as exactly, too; for the correctness and

propriety with which these terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a Chief Justice and a Lord

Senator Davis wrote: "We seem to have something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms

of an unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are

impressed into a disciplined service. Over and over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers

unlearned in the law, Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its rules of

tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure

of the Courts, the method of bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of

escapes and of contempt of court, in the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the

distinction between the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of attainder and forfeiture, in the requisites

of a valid marriage, in the presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative, in the

inalienable character of the Crown, this mastership appears with surprising authority."

To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not cited) may now be added that of a great

lawyer of our own times, VIZ.: Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. 1855, created a Baron of the Exchequer in

1860, promoted to the post of Judge Ordinary and Judge of the Courts of Probate and Divorce in 1863, and

better known to the world as Lord Penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all

lawyers know, and as the late Mr. Inderwick, K.C., has testified, was one of the first legal authorities of his

day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of legal principles," and "endowed by nature with a remarkable facility

Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's "perfect familiarity with not only the principles, axioms, and maxims,

but the technicalities of English law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect and

never at fault. . . . The mode in which this knowledge was pressed into service on all occasions to express his

meaning and illustrate his thoughts was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a special pleasure in his

complete and ready mastership of it in all its branches. As manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and

learning had therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the

multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the plays. At every turn and point at which

the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the law. He seems

almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his

pen in description or illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer language when he had a forensic

subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was

exhibited in a far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and

mingled itself with strains of thought widely divergent from forensic subjects." Again: "To acquire a perfect

familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases not only of

the conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short of

employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions and general legal work would be

requisite. But a continuous employment involves the element of time, and time was just what the manager of

two theaters had not at his disposal. In what portion of Shakespeare's (i.e., Shakspere's) career would it be

possible to point out that time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or

Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary

knowledge of law, have made the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in an

attorney's office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord Campbell to ask his opinion as to the

probability of this being true. His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a fact, of

which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been forthcoming to

establish it. Not having been actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at Stratford

nor of the superior Court at Westminster would present his name as being concerned in any suit as an

attorney, but it might reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills witnessed by him still

Upon this Lord Penzance commends: "It cannot be doubted that Lord Campbell was right in this. No young

man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a witness,

and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." There is not a single fact or incident in all that

is known of Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of a clerkship. And after

much argument and surmise which has been indulged in on this subject, we may, I think, safely put the notion

on one side, for no less an authority than Mr. Grant White says finally that the idea of his having been clerk

It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he, nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "That

Shakespeare was in early life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office may be correct. At Stratford there

was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every fortnight, with six attorneys, besides the town clerk,

belonging to it, and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young Shakespeare may have

had employment in one of them. There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have

about Shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to London are so loose and

baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an

attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high style,' and making speeches over them."

This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There is, as we have seen, a very old tradition that

Shakespeare was a butcher's apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour of Warwickshire in 1693, testifies to

it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over the church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by

Mr. HalliwellPhillipps. (Vol. I, p. 11, and Vol. II, pp. 71, 72.) Mr. Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it,

and it is supported by Aubrey, who must have written his account some time before 1680, when his

manuscript was completed. Of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the faintest

vestige of a tradition. It has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed Stratfordians, seeking

for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life.

But Mr. Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of

antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred of positive

evidence, but which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance pointed out, is really put out of court by the

negative evidence, since "no young man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called

upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." And as

Mr. Edwards further points out, since the day when Lord Campbell's book was published (between forty and

fifty years ago), "every old deed or will, to say nothing of other legal papers, dated during the period of

William Shakespeare's youth, has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not one signature of the

Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's office it is clear that he must have served for a

considerable period in order to have gained (if, indeed, it is credible that he could have so gained) his

remarkable knowledge of the law. Can we then for a moment believe that, if this had been so, tradition would

have been absolutely silent on the matter? That Dowdall's old clerk, over eighty years of age, should have

never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the butcher's apprentice) and that all the other ancient

But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy. Tradition is to be scouted when it is found

inconvenient, but cited as irrefragable truth when it suits the case. Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of

the Plays and Poems, but the author of the Plays and Poems could not have been a butcher's apprentice.

Anyway, therefore, with tradition. But the author of the Plays and Poems MUST have had a very large and a

very accurate knowledge of the law. Therefore, Shakespeare of Stratford must have been an attorney's clerk!

The method is simplicity itself. By similar reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a

soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things besides, according to the inclination and the

exigencies of the commentator. It would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying Latin as a

However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he has fully recognized, what is indeed tolerable

obvious, that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. "It may, of course, be urged," he writes, "that

Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch of it which related to morbid psychology,

is equally remarkable, and that no one has ever contended that he was a physician. (Here Mr. Collins is

wrong; that contention also has been put forward.) It may be urged that his acquaintance with the

technicalities of other crafts and callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and

yet no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier. (Wrong again. Why, even Messrs. Garnett and

Gosse "suspect" that he was a soldier!) This may be conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an

analogy. To these and all other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in season, but with reminiscences of the

law his memory, as is abundantly clear, was simply saturated. In season and out of season now in manifest,

now in recondite application, he presses it into the service of expression and illustration. At least a third of his

myriad metaphors are derived from it. It would indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his dramas,

nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of which are not colored by it. Much of his law

may have been acquired from three books easily accessible to himnamely, Tottell's PRECEDENTS

(1572), Pulton's STATUTES (1578), and Fraunce's LAWIER'S LOGIKE (1588), works with which he

certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it could only have come from one who had an intimate

acquaintance with legal proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that Shakespeare's legal knowledge is

not what could have been picked up in an attorney's office, but could only have been learned by an actual

attendance at the Courts, at a Pleader's Chambers, and on circuit, or by associating intimately with members

This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins's explanation? "Perhaps the simplest solution of the problem is to

accept the hypothesis that in early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted a love for the

law which never left him, that as a young man in London he continued to study or dabble in it for his

amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. On no other

supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, and his minute and

undeviating accuracy in a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious

display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in keeping himself from tripping."

A lame conclusion. "No other supposition" indeed! Yes, there is another, and a very obvious

suppositionnamely, that Shakespeare was himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways

of the courts, and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the Inns of Court.

One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated the fact that Shakespeare must have had a sound

legal training, but I may be forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance to his pronouncements on

this branch of the subject as to those of Malone, Lord Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord

Penzance, Mr. Grant White, and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the matter of

Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord Penzance's book as to the suggestion that

Shakespeare had somehow or other managed "to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an

accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not only of the conveyancer's office, but of the

pleader's chambers and the Courts at Westminster." This, as Lord Penzance points out, "would require

nothing short of employment in some career involving CONSTANT CONTACT with legal questions and

general legal work." But "in what portion of Shakespeare's career would it be possible to point out that time

could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of practicing lawyers? .

. . It is beyond doubt that at an early period he was called upon to abandon his attendance at school and assist

his father, and was soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice to a trade. While under the obligation of

this bond he could not have pursued any other employment. Then he leaves Stratford and comes to London.

He has to provide himself with the means of a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the theater. No

one doubt that. The holding of horses is scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and

certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his employment was at the theater, there is hardly room for the

belief that it could have been other than continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. Ere long he had been

taken into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a "Johannes Factotum.' His rapid

accumulation of wealth speaks volumes for the constancy and activity of his services. One fails to see when

there could be a break in the current of his life at this period of it, giving room or opportunity for legal or

indeed any other employment. 'In 1589,' says Knight, 'we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a

casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as may players were, but was a shareholder in the

company of the Queen's players with other shareholders below him on the list.' This (1589) would be within

two years after his arrival in London, which is placed by White and Halliwell Phillipps about the year 1587.

The difficulty in supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he is supposed to have come

to London, he was induced to enter upon a course of most extended study and mental culture, is almost

insuperable. Still it was physically possible, provided always that he could have had access to the needful

books. But this legal training seems to me to stand on a different footing. It is not only unaccountable and

incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known facts of his career." Lord Penzance then refers to the fact

that "by 1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant White) several of the plays had been written. 'The

Comedy of Errors' in 1589, 'Love's Labour's Lost' in 1589, 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' in 1589 or 1590," and

so forth, and then asks, "with this catalogue of dramatic work on hand . . . was it possible that he could have

taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two theaters, and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied upon,

taken his share in the performances of the provincial tours of his companyand at the same time devoted

himself to the study of the law in all its branches so efficiently as to make himself complete master of its

principles and practice, and saturate his mind with all its most technical terms?"

I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance's book, because it lay before me, and I had already quoted from

it on the matter of Shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set forth the insuperable

difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the idea that Shakespeare might have found them in some

unknown period of early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of classics, literature, and

law, to say nothing of languages and a few other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: "Did you

ever meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country gave himself up to legal studies

and engaged in legal employments, which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of

practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do not believe that it would be easy, or

indeed possible, to produce an instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all its branches, except

This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and

surmises, and maybeso's, and mighthavebeens, and couldhavebeens, and must havebeens, and the

rest of that ton of plaster of Paris out of which the biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which goes

by the Stratford actor's name, that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works knew

all about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been the Stratford Shakespeareand WASN'T.

1. From Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED. By George G. Greenwood,

We cannot say we KNOW a thing when that thing has not been proved. KNOW is too strong a word to use

when the evidence is not final and absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those slaves. . . .

No, I will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. The upholders of the StratfordShakespeare

superstition call US the hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; very well, if they

like to descend to that level, let them do it, but I will not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call

them harsh names; the most I can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval; and this without

To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built their entire superstition upon INFERENCES,

not upon known and established facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say our side

But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that sort. . . . Since the Stratford

Shakespeare couldn't have written the Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires

Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a tidal wave whose roar and boom and

thunder are made up of admiration, delight, and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the

authorship. Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is, because there are a dozen that are

recognizably competent to do that poem. Do you remember "Beautiful Snow"? Do you remember "Rock Me

to Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to Sleep"? Do you remember "Backward, turn, backward, O Time, in thy flight!

Make me a child again just for tonight"? I remember them very well. Their authorship was claimed by most

of the grownup people who were alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument in his

Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was good reason. The world knows there was

but one man on the planet at the time who was competentnot a dozen, and not two. A long time ago the

dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of prodigious footprints stretching across the

plainfootprints that were three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong deep, and

with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was there any doubt as to who made that mighty trail? Were

there a dozen claimants? Where there two? Nothe people knew who it was that had been along there: there

There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn't be two; certainly there couldn't be two at the same time.

It takes ages to bring forth a Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched

before his time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. The prospect of matching him in our time

The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not qualified to write the Works, and that Francis

Bacon was. They claim that Bacon possessed the stupendous equipmentboth natural and acquiredfor the

miracle; and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like; or, indeed, anything closely approaching

Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and horizonless magnitude of that equipment.

Also, he has synopsized Bacon's historya thing which cannot be done for the Stratford Shakespeare, for he

hasn't any history to synopsize. Bacon's history is open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old

agea history consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; FACTS, not guesses

Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a Lord Chancellor for his father, and a

mother who was "distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with Bishop

Jewell, and translated his APOLOGIA from the Latin so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker

could suggest a single alteration." It is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations

and aspirations shall tend. The atmosphere furnished by the parents to the son in this present case was an

atmosphere saturated with learning; with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite

culture. It had its natural effect. Shakespeare of Stratford was reared in a house which had no use for books,

since its owners, his parents, were without education. This may have had an effect upon the son, but we do

not know, because we have no history of him of an informing sort. There were but few books anywhere, in

that day, and only the welltodo and highly educated possessed them, they being almost confined to the

dead languages. "All the valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly

have filled a single shelf"imagine it! The few existing books were in the Latin tongue mainly. "A person

who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintancenot merely with Cicero and Virgil, but with the

most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time"a literature necessary to the

Stratford lad, for his fictitious reputation's sake, since the writer of his Works would begin to use it wholesale

and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than out of his teens and into his twenties.

At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years there. Thence he went to Paris in the

train of the English Ambassador, and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and the

aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. A total of six years spent at the sources of knowledge;

knowledge both of books and of men. The three spent at the university were coeval with the second and last

three spent by the little Stratford lad at Stratford school supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by

inferencewith nothing to infer from. The second three of the Baconian six were "presumably" spent by the

Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the thugs presume iton no evidence of any kind. Which is

their way, when they want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to

them. They know the difference, but they also know how to blink it. They know, too, that while in

historybuilding a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long to bloom into a fact

when THEY have the handling of it. They know by old experience that when they get hold of a presumption

tadpole he is not going to STAY tadpole in their historytank; no, they know how to develop him into the

giant fourlegged bullfrog of FACT, and make him sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look

important and insolent and cometostay; and assert his genuine simonpure authenticity with a thundering

bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty

persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if but never mind about that, it

has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, is the

They "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the Stratford school to become apprentice to

a butcher. They also "presume" that the butcher was his father. They don't know. There is no written record

of it, nor any other actual evidence. If it would have helped their case any, they would have apprenticed him

to thirty butchers, to fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchersall by their patented method "presumption."

If it will help their case they will do it yet; and if it will further help it, they will "presume" that all those

butchers were his father. And the week after, they will SAY it. Why, it is just like being the past tense of the

compound reflexive adverbial incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is

father to the expression which the grammarians call Verb. It is like a whole ancestry, with only one posterity.

To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and mastered that abstruse science. From that

day to the end of his life he was daily in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker in

intervals between holding horses in front of a theater, but as a practicing lawyera great and successful one,

a renowned one, a Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood of the legal Table

Round; he lived in the law's atmosphere thenceforth, all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its

difficult steeps to its supremest summit, the LordChancellorship, leaving behind him no fellowcraftsman

When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other illustrious experts upon the legal

condition and legal aptnesses, brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in the Plays, and

try to fit them to the historyless Stratford stagemanager, they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but

when we put them in the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural and rightful

place, they seem at home there. Please turn back and read them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford

they are meaningless, they are inebriate extravaganciesintemperate admirations of the dark side of the

moon, so to speak; attributed to Bacon, they are admirations of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the

moon at the fulland not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. "At ever turn and

point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the law;

he seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases; the commonest legal phrases, the commonest of legal

expressions, were ever at the end of his pen." That could happen to no one but a person whose TRADE was

the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners fill their conversation with sailorphrases and

draw all their similes from the ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere PASSENGER ever does it, be he

of Stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try.

Please read again what Lord Campbell and the other great authorities have said about Bacon when they

The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his time, with wisdom, erudition,

imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace, and majesty of expression. Everyone one had said it, no one

doubts it. Also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to break out. We have no

evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford possessed any of these gifts or any of these acquirements.

The only lines he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of them barren of all of them.

His language, WHERE HE COULD SPARE AND PASS BY A JEST, was nobly censorious. No man ever

spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.

No member of his speech but consisted of his (its) own graces. . . . The fear of every man that heard him was

He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent

measure on which the King's heart was setthe union of England and Scotland. It was not difficult for such

an intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor of such a scheme. He conducted the great case of

the POST NATI in the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the judgesa decision the legality of which

may be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which must be acknowledgedwas in a great measure

While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the courts of law, he still found leisure for letters

and philosophy. The noble treatise on the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, which at a later period was

The WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS, a work which, if it had proceeded from any other writer, would have

In the mean time the NOVUM ORGANUM was slowly proceeding. Several distinguished men of learning

had been permitted to see portions of that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration of

Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the COGITATA ET VISA, one of the most precious of those

scattered leaves out of which the great oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all

proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it could not be

gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of learning, and with

In 1612 a new edition of the ESSAYS appeared, with additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk

Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the

most useful that even his mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to use his own

To serve the exacting and laborious offices of AttorneyGeneral and SolicitorGeneral would have satisfied

the appetite of any other man for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just described,

The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years of his life, amid ten thousand distractions

and vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, to use the

He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England under the Princes of the House of

Tudor, a body of National History, a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to

Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely:

The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor bore the mark of his mind. THE BEST

JESTBOOK IN THE WORLD is that which he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a

Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light upon Bacon, and seem to indicateand

With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been

The ESSAYS contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a

house, a garden, or a courtmasque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the

His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed

a toy for the hand of a lady; spread it, and the armies of the powerful Sultans might repose beneath its shade.

The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments

In a letter written when he was only thirtyone, to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all

Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the

The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the

There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old dying John of Gaunt volleying

secondrate puns at his own name, is a pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's fault, but

No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. It stopped at the first check from

In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world amid things as strange as any that are

described in the ARABIAN TALES . . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin,

fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of

Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more effacious than the balsam of

Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent daydreams there was nothing wildnothing but what sober reason

Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the NOVUM ORGANUM. . . . Every part of it blazes with

wit, but with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so great a

revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so may prejudices, introduced so many new opinions.

But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which, without effort, takes in at once all the

domains of scienceall the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the

It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and each and every one of the acquirements

that are so prodigally displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other

man of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable. There was

only one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written

When a person reads the noble verses about the cloudcap'd towers, he ought not to follow it immediately

with Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor prose

too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is

Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you

take me for? Would I be so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly seventyfour

years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so

unadmiringly of me. No, no, I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up

from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to

examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem

to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second

hand our notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff; and prohibition and

antiprohibition; and the holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals;

and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as

to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of

religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Author Ortons and

the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we

are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't change it. And whenever we have been

furnished a fetish, and have been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from

examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our

loyalty and our devotion. In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and

associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash. Whenever we have been furnished with a

tar baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel

it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for

we are privately afraid we should find, upon examination that the jewels are of the sort that are manufactured

I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in

him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeplyloved tar baby has never been known to

disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several thousand years to convince our fine

raceincluding every splendid intellect in itthat there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several

thousand years to convince the same fine raceincluding every splendid intellect in itthat there is no such

person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's program of

postmortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up

infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be

burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch.

We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples, and we can't prove it by the

miraculous "histories" built by those Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but there

is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if I could think of them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when

we find a vague file of chipmunktracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we know by our

reasoning bowers that Hercules has been along there. I feel that our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. The

bust, toothere in the Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust,

the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache, and the putty face, unseamed of carethat face which has

looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still look down upon

the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.

One of the most trying defects which I find in thesethese what shall I call them? for I will not apply

injurious epithets to them, the way they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature

and my dignity. The farthest I can go in that direction is to call them by names of limited reverence names

merely descriptive, never unkind, never offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. If THEY would do like this,

they would feel better in their hearts. Very well, thento proceed. One of the most trying defects which I

find in these Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes, these

herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is

detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am thankful that in me there is

nothing of that spirit. When a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I cannot

call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except towards the things which were sacred

to other people. Am I in the right? I think so. But I ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, look at the

IRREVERENCE. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God and sacred things.

What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says irreverence is lack of respect for Vishnu, and

Brahma, and Chrishna, and his other gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within

them. He endorses the definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 Hindus or their equivalents back of him.

The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it could restrict irreverence to lack of reverence

for OUR Deity and our sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by the simple

process of spelling HIS deities with capitals the Hindu confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own

sects, thus making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere HIS gods and HIS sacred things, and nobody's

else. We can't say a word, for he had our own dictionary at his back, and its decision is final.

This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is sacred to the Christian must be held in

reverence by everybody else; 2. whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody else;

3. therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably, whatever is sacred to ME must be held in reverence

Now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites and bandoleers and buccaneers are

ALSO trying to crowd in and share the benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their Shakespeare

and hold him sacred. We can't have that: there's enough of us already. If you go on widening and spreading

and inflating the privilege, it will presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the ONLY

ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. That can

surely happen, and when it happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and

foolish, and selfconceited, and insolent, and impudent, and dictatorial word in the language. And people will

say, "Whose business is it what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right to dictate to

We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the word from this destruction. There is

but one way to do it, and that is to stop the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its present

limitsthat is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock

It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so because I am the only sect that knows

how to employ it gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of selfrestraint.

The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and

the Protestant Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which Catholics hold sacred;

then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas Paine and charge HIM with irreverence. This is all

unfortunate, because it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of mentality to find out

It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating the irreverent and keeping them in order

shall eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarreling, no more

There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon Shakespeare controversy except what is sacred to

me. That will simplify the whole matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer, because

I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth

will be the last. Taught by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition,

Isn't it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of

modern times, clear back to the first Tudorsa list containing five hundred names, shall we say?and you

can go to the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and learn the particulars of the lives of every one of

them. Every one of them except onethe most famous, the most renownedby far the most illustrious of

them allShakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all

the celebrated tragedians, comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, historians,

biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prizefighters,

murderers, pirates, conspirators, horsejockeys, buncosteerers, misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by

land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists,

geologists, philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors,

politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers,

burglars, highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeonsyou can get the lifehistories of all of them but

ONE. Just ONEthe most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all Shakespeare!

You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the rest of Christendom in the past four

centuries, and you can find out the lifehistories of all those people, too. You will then have listed fifteen

hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic lifehistories of the whole of them. Save onefar and

away the most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulationShakespeare! About him you can find out

NOTHING. Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your

memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly commonplace

persona manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a

person of any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go

to the records and find out the lifehistory of every renowned RACEHORSE of modern timesbut not

Shakespeare's! There are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and

conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is

abundantly sufficient all by itselfHE HADN'T ANY HISTORY TO RECORD. There is no way of getting

around that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting around its formidable

Its quite plain significanceto any but those thugs (I do not use the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had

no prominence while he lived, and none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays enjoyed

high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the world did not find it out. He ought to

have explained that he was the author, and not merely a NOM DE PLUME for another man to hide behind. If

he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more solicitous about his Works, it would have

been better for his good name, and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will moulder away,

P.S. MARCH 25. About two months ago I was illuminating this Autobiography with some notions of mine

concerning the BaconShakespeare controversy, and I then took occasion to air the opinion that the Stratford

Shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure

and unimportant. And not only in great London, but also in the little village where he was born, where he

lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried. I argued that if he had been a person of any

note at all, aged villagers would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his death,

instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact connected with him. I believed, and I still believe,

that if he had been famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my native village out

in Missouri. It is a good argument, a prodigiously strong one, and most formidable one for even the most

gifted and ingenious and plausible Stratfordolator to get around or explain away. Today a Hannibal

COURIERPOST of recent date has reached me, with an article in it which reinforces my contention that a

really celebrated person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty years. I will make an

Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the

great men she has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son, Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a few

of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous

and the town that made him famous. His name is associated with every old building that is torn down to make

way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill or cave over or

through which he might by any possibility have roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove

into his stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark Twain Cave, are now monuments to his

genius. Hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do him honor as he had honored her.

So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with Mark or were with him on some of his usual

escapades have been honored with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and

condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very extraordinary humorist

and whose every boyish act is now seen to have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Becky and

Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated when he lived here and that the things he

did as a boy and was whipped for doing were not all bad, after all. So they have been in no hesitancy about

drawing out the bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "Mark Twain" story, all

incidents being viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of "Twainiana" is already

considerable and growing in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold second and

third hand by their descendants. With some seventythree years and living in a villa instead of a house, he is

a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are some of his "works"

that will go swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as graybeards gather about the fires and begin with,

"I've heard father tell," or possibly, "Once when I." The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my motherWAS my

Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday

afternoon, aged 72 years. The deceased was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn," one of the famous characters in

Mark Twain's TOM SAWYER. She had been a member of the Dickason familythe housekeeperfor

nearly forty five years, and was a highly respected lady. For the past eight years she had been an invalid, but

was as well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if she had been a near relative. She was a member of

I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was graven there, clear and sharp and vivid,

sixtythree years ago. She was at that time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where she

stood, and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her bare head, her brown face, and her short

towlinen frock. She was crying. What it was about I have long ago forgotten. But it was the tears that

preserved the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for her. She knew me nearly

seventy years ago. Did she forget me, in the course of time? I think not. If she had lived in Stratford in

Shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For he was never famous during his lifetime, he was

utterly obscure in Stratford, and there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a

"Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and very intemperate ne'erdoweels in

Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about

them. Isn't it curious that two "town drunkards" and one halfbreed loafer should leave behind them, in a

remote Missourian village, a fame a hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in

the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the village where he had lived the half of his