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

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СКАЧАТЬ to take the moral of it home to their hearts and be rational and merciful thenceforth, and cease from screaming in mass, and agree to let one person talk at a time and the rest listen in grateful and unvexed peace. They granted my prayer, and we had a happy time all the rest of the evening; I do not think I have ever had a better time in my life. This was largely because the new terms enabled me to keep the floor — now that I had it — and do all the talking myself. I do like to hear myself talk. Susy has exposed this in her Biography of me.

      Dean Sage was a delightful man, yet in one way a terror to his friends, for he loved them so well that he could not refrain from playing practical jokes on them. We have to be pretty deeply in love with a person before we can do him the honor of joking familiarly with him. Dean Sage was the best citizen I have known in America. It takes courage to be a good citizen, and he had plenty of it. He allowed no individual and no corporation to infringe his smallest right and escape unpunished. He was very rich, and very generous, and benevolent, and he gave away his money with a prodigal hand; but if an individual or corporation infringed a right of his, to the value of ten cents, he would spend thousands of dollars’ worth of time and labor and money and persistence on the matter, and would not lower his flag until he had won his battle or lost it.

      He and Rev. Mr. Harris had been classmates in college, and to the day of Sage’s death they were as fond of each other as an engaged pair. It follows, without saying, that whenever Sage found an opportunity to play a joke upon Harris, Harris was sure to suffer.

      Along about 1873 Sage fell a victim to an illness which reduced him to a skeleton, and defied all the efforts of the physicians to cure it. He went to the Adirondacks and took Harris with him. Sage had always been an active man, and he couldn’t idle any day wholly away in inanition, but walked every day to the limit of his strength. One day, toward nightfall, the pair came upon a humble log cabin which bore these words painted upon a shingle: “Entertainment for Man and Beast.” They were obliged to stop there for the night, Sage’s strength being exhausted. They entered the cabin and found its owner and sole occupant there, a rugged and sturdy and simple-hearted man of middle age. He cooked supper and placed it before the travellers — salt junk, boiled beans, corn bread and black coffee. Sage’s stomach could abide nothing but the most delicate food, therefore this banquet revolted him, and he sat at the table unemployed, while Harris fed ravenously, limitlessly, gratefully; for he had been chaplain in a fighting regiment all through the war, and had kept in perfection the grand and uncritical appetite and splendid physical vigor which those four years of tough fare and activity had furnished him. Sage went supperless to bed, and tossed and writhed all night upon a shuck mattress that was full of attentive and interested corn-cobs. In the morning Harris was ravenous again, and devoured the odious breakfast as contentedly and as delightedly as he had devoured its twin the night before. Sage sat upon the porch, empty, and contemplated the performance and meditated revenge. Presently he beckoned to the landlord and took him aside and had a confidential talk with him. He said,

      “I am the paymaster. What is the bill?”

      “Two suppers, fifty cents; two beds, thirty cents; two breakfasts, fifty cents — total, a dollar and thirty cents.”

      Sage said, “Go back and make out the bill and fetch it to me here on the porch. Make it thirteen dollars.”

      “Thirteen dollars! Why, it’s impossible! I am no robber. I am charging you what I charge everybody. It’s a dollar and thirty cents, and that’s all it is.”

      “My man, I’ve got something to say about this as well as you. It’s thirteen dollars. You’ll make out your bill for that, and you’ll take it, too, or you’ll not get a cent.”

      The man was troubled, and said, “I don’t understand this. I can’t make it out.”

      “Well, I understand it. I know what I am about. It’s thirteen dollars, and I want the bill made out for that. There’s no other terms. Get it ready and bring it out here. I will examine it and be outraged. You understand? I will dispute the bill. You must stand to it. You must refuse to take less. I will begin to lose my temper; you must begin to lose yours. I will call you hard names; you must answer with harder ones. I will raise my voice; you must raise yours. You must go into a rage — foam at the mouth, if you can; insert some soap to help it along. Now go along and follow your instructions.”

      The man played his assigned part, and played it well. He brought the bill and stood waiting for results. Sage’s face began to cloud up, his eyes to snap, and his nostrils to inflate like a horse’s; then he broke out with —

      “Thirteen dollars! You mean to say that you charge thirteen dollars for these damned inhuman hospitalities of yours? Are you a professional buccaneer? Is it your custom to — ”

      The man burst in with spirit: “Now, I don’t want any more out of you — that’s a plenty. The bill is thirteen dollars and you’ll pay it — that’s all; a couple of characterless adventurers bilking their way through this country and attempting to dictate terms to a gentleman! a gentleman who received you supposing you were gentlemen yourselves, whereas in my opinion hell’s full of — ”

      Sage broke in —

      “Not another word of that! — I won’t have it. I regard you as the lowest-down thief that ever — ”

      “Don’t you use that word again! By — — , I’ll take you by the neck and — ”

      Harris came rushing out, and just as the two were about to grapple he pushed himself between them and began to implore —

      “Oh, Dean, don’t, don’t — now, Mr. Smith, control yourself! Oh, think of your family, Dean! — think what a scandal — ”

      But they burst out with maledictions, imprecations and all the hard names they could dig out of the rich accumulations of their educated memories, and in the midst of it the man shouted —

      “When gentlemen come to this house, I treat them as gentlemen. When people come to this house with the ordinary appetites of gentlemen, I charge them a dollar and thirty cents for what I furnished you; but when a man brings a hellfired Famine here that gorges a barrel of pork and four barrels of beans at two sittings — ”

      Sage broke in, in a voice that was eloquent with remorse and self-reproach, “I never thought of that, and I ask your pardon; I am ashamed of myself and of my friend. Here’s your thirteen dollars, and my apologies along with it.”

      [Dictated March 12, 1906.] I have always taken a great interest in other people’s duels. One always feels an abiding interest in any heroic thing which has entered into his own experience.

      (1878.)

      In 1878, fourteen years after my unmaterialized duel, Messieurs Fortu and Gambetta fought a duel which made heroes of both of them in France, but made them rather ridiculous throughout the rest of the world. I was living in Munich that fall and winter, and I was so interested in that funny tragedy that I wrote a long account of it, and it is in one of my books, somewhere — an account which had some inaccuracies in it, but as an exhibition of the spirit of that duel, I think it was correct and trustworthy. And when I was living in Vienna, thirty-four years after my ineffectual duel, my interest in that kind of incident was still strong; and I find here among my Autobiographical manuscripts of that day a chapter which I began concerning it, but did not finish. I wanted to finish it, but held it open in the hope that the Italian ambassador, M. Nigra, would find time to furnish me the full history of Señor Cavalotti’s adventures in that line. But he was a busy man; there was always an interruption before he could get well started; so my hope was never fulfilled. The following is the СКАЧАТЬ