Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me. It affects me as the locomotive always affects me: I saw to myself, "I have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive you is clearly beyond human genius--you can't exist, you don't exist, yet here you are!"
I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. I yearn to print it, and where is the harm? The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, and if I conceal her name and address
-her this-world address-- I am sure her shade will not mind. And with it I wish to print the answer which I wrote at the time but probably did not send. If it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy, for I find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter. To that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send, fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; I have done it many a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort.
X------, California, JUNE 3, 1879.
Mr. S. L. Clemens, HARTFORD, CONN.:
Dear Sir,--You will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to write and ask a favor of you. let your memory go back to your days in the Humboldt mines--'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a leanto which was half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp-- strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the desert to where the last claim was, at the divide. The lean-to you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down through one night, as told about by you in ROUGHING IT--my uncle Simmons remembers it very well. He lived in the principal cabin, half-way up the divide, along with Dixon and Parker and Smith. It had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks, and was the only one that had. You and your party were there on the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, Uncle Simmons often speaks of it. It seems curious that dried-apple-pie should have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far Humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim the regular bill of fare was. Sixteen years ago--it is a long time. I was a little girl then, only fourteen. I never saw you, I lived in Washoe. But Uncle Simmons ran across you every now and then, all during those weeks that you and party were there working your claim which was like the rest. The camp played out long and long ago, there wasn't silver enough in it to make a button. You never saw my husband, but he was there after you left, AND LIVED IN THAT VERY LEAN-TO, a bachelor then but married to me now. He often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days, he would have taken the lean-to. He got hurt in the old Hal Clayton claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best he could. It landed him clear down on the train and hit a Piute. For weeks they thought he would not get over it but he did, and is all right, now. Has been ever since. This is a long introduction but it is the only way I can make myself known. The favor I ask I feel assured your generous heart will grant: Give me some advice about a book I have written. I do not claim anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as most of the books of the times. I am unknown in the literary world and you know what that means unless one has some one of influence (like yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you. I would like to place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you would suggest.
This is a secret from my husband and family. I intend it as a surprise in case I get it published.Feeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write me a letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see them for me and then let me hear.
I appeal to you to grant me this favor. With deepest gratitude I think you for your attention.
One knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other direction across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly, unceasingly, unrestingly. It goes to every well-known merchant, and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and Mayor, and Congressman, and Governor, and editor, and publisher, and author, and broker, and banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed to have "influence." It always follows the one pattern: "You do not know me, BUT YOU ONCE KNEW A RELATIVE OF MINE," etc., etc. We should all like to help the applicants, we should all be glad to do it, we should all like to return the sort of answer that is desired, but--Well, there is not a thing we can do that would be a help, for not in any instance does that latter ever come from anyone who CAN be helped. The struggler whom you COULD help does his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger. He has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone. That pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable, the unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it? What do you find to say? You do not want to inflict a wound; you hunt ways to avoid that. What do you find? How do you get out of your hard place with a contend conscience? Do you try to explain? The old reply of mine to such a letter shows that I tried that once. Was I satisfied with the result? Possibly; and possibly not; probably not; almost certainly not. I have long ago forgotten all about it. But, anyway, I append my effort:
THE REPLYI know Mr. H., and I will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection you find you still desire it. There will be a conversation. I know the form it will take. It will be like this:
MR. H. How do her books strike you? MR. CLEMENS. I am not acquainted with them.
H. Who has been her publisher?
C. I don't know.
H. She HAS one, I suppose?
C. I--I think not.
H. Ah. You think this is her first book?
C. Yes--I suppose so. I think so.
H. What is it about? What is the character of it?
C. I believe I do not know.
H. Have you seen it?
C. Well--no, I haven't.
H. Ah-h. How long have you known her?
C. I don't know her.
H. Don't know her?
C. No.
H. Ah-h. How did you come to be interested in her book, then?
C. Well, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her, and mentioned you.
H. Why should she apply to you instead of me?
C. She wished me to use my influence.
H. Dear me, what has INFLUENCE to do with such a matter?
C. Well, I think she thought you would be more likely to examine her book if you were influenced.
H. Why, what we are here FOR is to examine books--anybody's book that comes along. It's our BUSINESS. Why should we turn away a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? It would be foolish. No publisher does it. On what ground did she request your influence, since you do not know her? She must have thought you knew her literature and could speak for it. Is that it?
C. No; she knew I didn't.H. Well, what then? She had a reason of SOME sort for believing you competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations to do it?
C. Yes, I--I knew her uncle.
H. Knew her UNCLE?
C. Yes.
H. Upon my word! So, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature; he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed; you are satisfied, and therefore--
C. NO, that isn't all, there are other ties. I know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the back with almost fatal consequences.
H. To HIM, or to the Indian?C. She didn't say which it was.
H. (WITH A SIGH). It certainly beats the band! You don't know HER, you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build an estimate of her book upon, so far as I--
C. I knew her uncle. You are forgetting her uncle.H. Oh, what use is HE? Did you know him long? How long was it?
C. Well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have met him, anyway. I think it was that way; you can't tell about these things, you know, except when they are recent.
H. Recent? When was all this?
C. Sixteen years ago.
H. What a basis to judge a book upon! As first you said you knew him, and not you don't know whether you did or not.
C. Oh yes, I know him; anyway, I think I thought I did; I'm perfectly certain of it. H. What makes you think you thought you knew him?
C. Why, she says I did, herself.
H. SHE says so!
C. Yes, she does, and I DID know him, too, though I don't remember it now.
H. Come--how can you know it when you don't remember it.
C. _I_ don't know. That is, I don't know the process, but I DO know lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I don't know. It's so with every educated person.
H. (AFTER A PAUSE). Is your time valuable?C. No--well, not very.
H. Mine is.
So I came away then, because he was looking tired. Overwork, I reckon; I never do that; I have seen the evil effects of it. My mother was always afraid I work overwork myself, but I never did.
Dear madam, you see how it would happen if I went there. He would ask me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him, and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done. I wish I could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them, it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence. But they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them, no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. If you will send yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it, I can assure you of that.
***Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. I notice that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by. Well, the thing began in this way. A member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown. I have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves. I don't know why, but they do. So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued:
CENTRAL OFFICE. (GRUFFY.) Hello!I. Is it the Central Office?
C. O. Of course it is. What do you want?
I. Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please?
C. O. All right. Just keep your ear to the telephone.
Then I heard K-LOOK, K-LOOK, K'LOOK--KLOOK-KLOOK-KLOOK-LOOKLOOK! then a horrible "gritting" of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: Y-e-s? (RISING INFLECTION.) Did you wish to speak to me?
Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world-- a conversation with only one end of it. You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. Well, I heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted-- for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone:
Yes? Why, how did THAT happen?
What did you say?
Pause.
Oh no, I don't think it was.
Pause.
NO! Oh no, I didn't mean THAT. I meant, put it in while it is still boiling--or just before it COMES to a boil.
Pause.
WHAT?
Pause.
I turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge.
Pause.
Yes, I like that way, too; but I think it's better to baste it on with Valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort. It gives it such an air--and attracts so much noise.
Pause.
It's forty-ninth Deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive. I think we ought all to read it often.
Pause.
Perhaps so; I generally use a hair pin.
Pause.
What did you say? (ASIDE.) Children, do be quiet!
Pause
OH! B FLAT! Dear me, I thought you said it was the cat! Since WHEN?
Pause.
Why, _I_ never heard of it.
Pause.
You astound me! It seems utterly impossible!
Pause.
WHO did?
Pause.
Good-ness gracious!
Pause.
Well, what IS this world coming to? Was it right in CHURCH?
Pause.
And was her MOTHER there?
Pause.
Why, Mrs. Bagley, I should have died of humiliation! What did they DO?
Long pause.
I can't be perfectly sure, because I haven't the notes by me; but I think it goes something like this: te-rolly-loll-loll, loll lolly-loll-loll, O tolly-loll-loll-LEE-LY-LI-I-do! And then REPEAT, you know.
Yes, I think it IS very sweet--and very solemn and impressive, if you get the andantino and the pianissimo right.
Oh, gum-drops, gum-drops! But I never allow them to eat striped candy. And of course they CAN'T, till they get their teeth, anyway.
Pause.
WHAT?
Pause.
Oh, not in the least--go right on. He's here writing--it doesn't bother HIM.
Pause.
Very well, I'll come if I can. (ASIDE.) Dear me, how it does tire a person's arm to hold this thing up so long! I wish she'd--
Pause.
Oh no, not at all; I LIKE to talk--but I'm afraid I'm keeping you from your affairs.
Pause.
Visitors?
Pause.
No, we never use butter on them.
Pause.
Yes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they are very unhealthy when they are out of season. And HE doesn't like them, anyway--especially canned. Oh, I think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty cents a bunch.
Pause.
MUST you go? Well, GOOD-by.
Pause.
Yes, I think so. GOOD-by.
Pause.
Four o'clock, then--I'll be ready. GOOD-by.
Pause.
Thank you ever so much. GOOD-by.
Pause.
Oh, not at all!--just as fresh--WHICH? Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that. GOOD-by.
(Hangs up the telephone and says, "Oh, it DOES tire a person's arm so!")
A man delivers a single brutal "Good-by," and that is the end of it. Not so with the gentle sex--I say it in their praise; they cannot abide abruptness.
***
These two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly grew very fond of them. The Brants were always saying: "Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured." The children heard this repeated some thousands of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves long before they could say the Lord's Prayer; it was painted over the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read. It was destined to be the unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life. Sometimes the Brants changed the wording a little, and said: "Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never lack friends."
Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him. When he wanted candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented himself without it. When Baby Benton wanted candy, he cried for it until he got it. Baby Mills took care of his toys; Baby Benton always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself to insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house, little Edward was persuaded to yield up his play-things to him.
When the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he shone frequently in new ones, with was not the case with Eddie. The boys grew apace. Eddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie an increasing solicitude. It was always sufficient to say, in answer to Eddie's petitions, "I would rather you would not do it"-- meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing, and all sorts of things which boys delight in. But NO answer was sufficient for Georgie; he had to be humored in his desires, or he would carry them with a high hand. Naturally, no boy got more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no body ever had a better time. The good Brants did not allow the boys to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed at that hour; Eddie honorably remained, but Georgie usually slipped out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight. It seemed impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the Brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, to stay in. The good Brants gave all their time and attention to vain endeavors to regulate Georgie; they said, with grateful tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed no efforts of theirs, he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect.
By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed to a trade: Edward went voluntarily; George was coaxed and bribed. Edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the good Brants; they praised him, so did his master; but George ran away, and it cost Mr. Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get him back. By and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble. He ran away a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him. Trouble and expense for Mr. Brant once more; and, besides, it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft.
Edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner in his master's business. George did not improve; he kept the loving hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full of inventive activities to protect him from ruin. Edward, as a boy, had interested himself in Sunday-schools, debating societies, penny missionary affairs, antitobacco organizations, anti-profanity associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies, and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men. This excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his "natural bent."
Finally, the old people died. The will testified their loving pride in Edward, and left their little property to George-- because he "needed it"; whereas, "owing to a bountiful Providence," such was not the case with Edward. The property was left to George conditionally: he must buy out Edward's partner with it; else it must go to a benevolent organization called the Prisoner's Friend Society. The old people left a letter, in which they begged their dear son Edward to take their place and watch over George, and help and shield him as they had done.
Edward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in the business. He was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now, and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly. Edward had been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time. They loved each other dearly, and--But about this period George began to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying to Edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her-- she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it: she must marry "poor George" and "reform him." It would break her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty. So she married George, and Edward's heart came very near breaking, as well as her own. However, Edward recovered, and married another girl-- a very excellent one she was, too.
Children came to both families. Mary did her honest best to reform her husband, but the contract was too large. George went on drinking, and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly. A great many good people strove with George--they were always at it, in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty, and did not mend his ways. He added a vice, presently--that of secret gambling. He got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless.
Times were hard, now, and they grew worse. Edward moved his family into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work. He begged for it, but in was really not to be had. He was astonished to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and disappeared. Still, he MUST get work; so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it. At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that NOBODY knew him or cared anything about him. He was not able to keep up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the disgrace of suspension.
But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the faster George rose in them. He was found lying, ragged and drunk, in the gutter one morning. A member of the Ladies' Temperance Refuge fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him. An account of it was published.
General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good. Then he fell-in the gutter; and there was general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble sisterhood rescued him again. They cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. An account of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: "We are not about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes." There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. Everybody wrung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero. An account of it was published.
George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for him. Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good.
He was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals-- that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful--he was "sent up" for only two years. When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success, and he emerged from the peniten