The Life & Times of Mark Twain - 4 Biographical Works in One Edition. Марк Твен

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      CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. — XVI.

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      [Dictated January 12th, 1905.] … But I am used to having my statements discounted. My mother began it before I was seven years old. Yet all through my life my facts have had a substratum of truth, and therefore they were not without preciousness. Any person who is familiar with me knows how to strike my average, and therefore knows how to get at the jewel of any fact of mine and dig it out of its blue-clay matrix. My mother knew that art. When I was seven or eight, or ten, or twelve years old — along there — a neighbor said to her,

      “Do you ever believe anything that that boy says?”

      My mother said,

      “He is the well-spring of truth, but you can’t bring up the whole well with one bucket” — and she added, “I know his average, therefore he never deceives me. I discount him thirty per cent. for embroidery, and what is left is perfect and priceless truth, without a flaw in it anywhere.”

      Now to make a jump of forty years, without breaking the connection: that word “embroidery” was used again in my presence and concerning me, when I was fifty years old, one night at Rev. Frank Goodwin’s house in Hartford, at a meeting of the Monday Evening Club. The Monday Evening Club still exists. It was founded about forty-five years ago by that theological giant, Rev. Dr. Bushnell, and some comrades of his, men of large intellectual calibre and more or less distinction, local or national. I was admitted to membership in it in the fall of 1871 and was an active member thenceforth until I left Hartford in the summer of 1891. The membership was restricted, in those days, to eighteen — possibly twenty. The meetings began about the 1st of October and were held in the private houses of the members every fortnight thereafter throughout the cold months until the 1st of May. Usually there were a dozen members present — sometimes as many as fifteen. There was an essay and a discussion. The essayists followed each other in alphabetical order through the season. The essayist could choose his own subject and talk twenty minutes on it, from MS. or orally, according to his preference. Then the discussion followed, and each member present was allowed ten minutes in which to express his views. The wives of these people were always present. It was their privilege. It was also their privilege to keep still; they were not allowed to throw any light upon the discussion. After the discussion there was a supper, and talk, and cigars. This supper began at ten o’clock promptly, and the company broke up and went away at midnight. At least they did except upon one occasion. In my recent Birthday speech I remarked upon the fact that I have always bought cheap cigars, and that is true. I have never bought costly ones.

      Well, that night at the Club meeting — as I was saying — George, our colored butler, came to me when the supper was nearly over, and I noticed that he was pale. Normally his complexion was a clear black, and very handsome, but now it had modified to old amber. He said:

      “Mr. Clemens, what are we going to do? There is not a cigar in the house but those old Wheeling long nines. Can’t nobody smoke them but you. They kill at thirty yards. It is too late to telephone — we couldn’t get any cigars out from town — what can we do? Ain’t it best to say nothing, and let on that we didn’t think?”

      “No,” I said, “that would not be honest. Fetch out the long nines” — which he did.

      I had just come across those “long nines” a few days or a week before. I hadn’t seen a long nine for years. When I was a cub pilot on the Mississippi in the late ‘50’s, I had had a great affection for them, because they were not only — to my mind — perfect, but you could get a basketful of them for a cent — or a dime, they didn’t use cents out there in those days. So when I saw them advertised in Hartford I sent for a thousand at once. They came out to me in badly battered and disreputable-looking old square pasteboard boxes, two hundred in a box. George brought a box, which was caved in on all sides, looking the worst it could, and began to pass them around. The conversation had been brilliantly animated up to that moment — but now a frost fell upon the company. That is to say, not all of a sudden, but the frost fell upon each man as he took up a cigar and held it poised in the air — and there, in the middle, his sentence broke off. That kind of thing went on all around the table, until when George had completed his crime the whole place was full of a thick solemnity and silence.

      Those men began to light the cigars. Rev. Dr. Parker was the first man to light. He took three or four heroic whiffs — then gave it up. He got up with the remark that he had to go to the bedside of a sick parishioner. He started out. Rev. Dr. Burton was the next man. He took only one whiff, and followed Parker. He furnished a pretext, and you could see by the sound of his voice that he didn’t think much of the pretext, and was vexed with Parker for getting in ahead with a fictitious ailing client. Rev. Mr. Twichell followed, and said he had to go now because he must take the midnight train for Boston. Boston was the first place that occurred to him, I suppose.

      It was only a quarter to eleven when they began to distribute pretexts. At ten minutes to eleven all those people were out of the house. When nobody was left but George and me I was cheerful — I had no compunctions of conscience, no griefs of any kind. But George was beyond speech, because he held the honor and credit of the family above his own, and he was ashamed that this smirch had been put upon it. I told him to go to bed and try to sleep it off. I went to bed myself. At breakfast in the morning when George was passing a cup of coffee, I saw it tremble in his hand. I knew by that sign that there was something on his mind. He brought the cup to me and asked impressively,

      “Mr. Clemens, how far is it from the front door to the upper gate?”

      I said, “It is a hundred and twenty-five steps.”

      He said, “Mr. Clemens, you can start at the front door and you can go plumb to the upper gate and tread on one of them cigars every time.”

      It wasn’t true in detail, but in essentials it was.

      The subject under discussion on the night in question was Dreams. The talk passed from mouth to mouth in the usual serene way.

      I do not now remember what form my views concerning dreams took at the time. I don’t remember now what my notion about dreams was then, but I do remember telling a dream by way of illustrating some detail of my speech, and I also remember that when I had finished it Rev. Dr. Burton made that doubting remark which contained that word I have already spoken of as having been uttered by my mother, in some such connection, forty or fifty years before. I was probably engaged in trying to make those people believe that now and then, by some accident, or otherwise, a dream which was prophetic turned up in the dreamer’s mind. The date of my memorable dream was about the beginning of May, 1858. It was a remarkable dream, and I had been telling it several times every year for more than fifteen years — and now I was telling it again, here in the club.

      In 1858 I was a steersman on board the swift and popular New Orleans and St. Louis packet, “Pennsylvania,” СКАЧАТЬ