תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no: let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better of the public and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish the perpetrators of the deed)."

The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the "outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such property as they could carry when they went. And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered Governor Hoffman's grandfather. More: I had never even heard of him or mentioned him up to that day and date.

[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to me afterward as "Twain the Body-Snatcher."]

The next newspaper article that attracted was the following :

my attention

"A SWEET CANDIDATE.-Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a runaway team and his leg broken in two places -sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know what was the real reason

of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The voice of the people demands in thunder-tones, "WHO WAS THAT MAN?"

It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine, or liquor of any kind.

[It shows what effect the times were having on me when, I say that I saw myself confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue of that journal without a pang,-notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]

By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my mail matter. This form was com

mon

"How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which was beging.

And this

"POL PRY."

"There is things which you have done which is unbeknowens to anybody but me. You better trot out a few dolls to yours truly, or you'll hear thro' the papers

from

"HANDY ANDY."

That is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was surfeited, if desirable.

Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesale bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of blackmailing to

me.

[In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain the Filthy Corruptionist," and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."]

By this time there had grown to be such a clamour for an "answer" to all the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of the papers the very next day :

[ocr errors]

"BEHOLD THE MAN!-The independent candidate still maintains silence. Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been endorsed and re-endorsed by his own eloquent silence till at this day he stands for ever convicted. Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-snatcher! Contemplate your Incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him-ponder him well— and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his mouth in denial of any one of them !”

There was no possible way of getting out of it and so,

in deep humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer a mass of baseless charges and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its inmates because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food for the foundling hospital when I was warden. I was wavering-wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution that party rancour had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children of all shades of colour and degrees of raggedness were taught to rush on to the platform at a public meeting and clasp me around the legs and call me PA ! I gave up. I hauled down my colours and surrendered. I was not equal to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the State of New York, and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of spirit signed it,

"Truly yours,

"Once a decent man, but now

"MARK TWAIN, I. P., M. T., B. S., D. T., F. C.,

"and L. E."

LITERATURE IN THE DRY DIGGINGS.

[ocr errors]

ALTHOUGH a resident of San Francisco, I never heard much about the "Art Union Association of that city until I got hold of some old newspapers during my three months' stay in the Big Tree region of Calaveras county. Up there, you know, they read everything, because in most of those little camps they have no libraries, and no books to speak of, except now and then a patent office report or a prayer-book, or literature of that kind, in a general way, that will hang on and last a good while when people are careful with it, like miners; but as for novels, they pass them around and wear them out in a week or two. Now there was Coon, a nice, bald-headed man, at the hotel in Angel's Camp, I asked him to lend me a book, one rainy day; he was silent a moment, and a shade of melancholy flitted across his fine face, and then he said: "Well, I've got a mighty responsible old Webster Unabridged, what there is left of it, but they started her sloshing around and sloshing around and sloshing around the camp before ever I got a chance to read her myself; and next she went to Murphy's and from there she went to Jackass Gulch, and now she's gone to San Andreas, and I don't expect I'll ever see that book again. But what makes me mad is, that for

« הקודםהמשך »