[begin page 637]

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS: A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

FAMILY BIOGRAPHIES

CLEMENS’S WORKING NOTES FOR “THE ASHCROFT-LYON MANUSCRIPT”

1873 NOTES; SKETCH BY WARNER

1899 NOTES; SKETCH BY MOFFETT

PROPOSITION FOR A POSTAL CHECK

ASHCROFT-LYON CHRONOLOGY

ASHCROFT TO STANCHFIELD, 30 JULY 1909

PREVIOUS PUBLICATION

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SAMUEL L. CLEMENS: A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

1835      Born 30 November in Florida, Mo., the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens. Of his six siblings, only Orion, Pamela, and Henry lived into adulthood. (For details, see the next appendix, “Family Biographies.”)
1839–40      Moves to Hannibal, Mo., on the west bank of the Mississippi River; enters typical western common school in Hannibal (1840).
1842–47      Spends summers at his uncle John Quarles’s farm, near Florida, Mo.
1847      On 24 March his father dies. Leaves school to work as an errand boy and apprentice typesetter for Henry La Cossitt’s Hannibal Gazette.
1848      Apprenticed to Joseph P. Ament, the new editor and owner of the Hannibal Missouri Courier. Works for and lives with Ament until the end of 1850.
1851      In January joins Orion’s newspaper, the Hannibal Western Union, where he soon prints “A Gallant Fireman,” his earliest known published work.
1853–57      After almost three years as Orion’s apprentice, leaves Hannibal in June 1853. Works as a journeyman typesetter in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Muscatine (Iowa), Keokuk (Iowa), and Cincinnati.
1857      On 16 February departs Cincinnati on the Paul Jones, piloted by Horace E. Bixby, who agrees to train him as a Mississippi River pilot.
1858      Henry Clemens dies of injuries from the explosion of the Pennsylvania.
1859      On 9 April officially licensed to pilot steamboats “to and from St. Louis and New Orleans.” By 1861 has served as “a good average” pilot on at least a dozen boats.
1861      Becomes a Freemason (resigns from his lodge in 1869). Works as a commercial pilot until the outbreak of the Civil War. Joins the Hannibal Home Guard, a small band of volunteers with Confederate sympathies. Resigns after two weeks and accompanies Orion to Nevada Territory, where Orion will serve until 1864 as the territorial secretary. Works briefly for Orion, then prospects for silver.
[begin page 638] 1862      Prospects in the Humboldt and Esmeralda mining districts. Sends contributions signed “Josh” (now lost) to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and in October becomes its local reporter.
1863–64      On 3 February 1863 first signs himself “Mark Twain.” While writing for the Enterprise he becomes Nevada correspondent for the San Francisco Morning Call. To escape prosecution for dueling, moves to San Francisco about 1 June 1864 and for four months works as local reporter for the Call. Writes for the Californian and the Golden Era. In early December visits Jackass Hill in Tuolumne County, Calif.
1865      Visits Angels Camp in Calaveras County, Calif. Returns to San Francisco and begins writing a daily letter for the Enterprise. Continues to write for the Californian. “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” published in the New York Saturday Press on 18 November.
1866      Travels to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) as correspondent for the Sacramento Union, to which he writes twenty-five letters. In October gives his first lecture in San Francisco.
1867      His first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches, published in May. Gives first lecture in New York City. Sails on Quaker City to Europe and the Holy Land. Meets Olivia (Livy) Langdon in New York on 27 December. In Washington, D.C., serves briefly as private secretary to Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada.
1868      Lectures widely in eastern and midwestern states. Courts and proposes to Livy, winning her consent in November.
1869      The Innocents Abroad published. With Jervis Langdon’s help, buys one-third interest in the Buffalo Express.
1870      Marries Olivia on 2 February; they settle in Buffalo in a house purchased for them by Jervis Langdon. Son, Langdon, born prematurely on 7 November.
1871      Sells Express and the house and moves to Hartford, Conn. For the next two decades the family will live in Hartford and spend summers at Quarry Farm, in Elmira.
1872      Daughter Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens born 19 March; son Langdon dies 2 June. Roughing It published in London (securing British copyright) and Hartford. Visits London to lecture in the fall.
1873      Takes family to England and Scotland for five months. Escorts them home (Livy is pregnant) and returns to England alone in November. The Gilded Age, written with Charles Dudley Warner, published in London and Hartford.
1874      Returns home in January; daughter Clara Langdon Clemens born 8 June. The family moves into the house they have built in Hartford.
[begin page 639] 1875–76      Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (1875) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) published.
1878–79      Travels with family in Europe.
1880      A Tramp Abroad published. Daughter Jane (Jean) Clemens born 26 July.
1881      Begins to invest in Paige typesetting machine. The Prince and the Pauper published.
1882      Revisits the Mississippi to gather material for Life on the Mississippi, published 1883.
1884–85      Founds publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Co., named for his nephew by marriage, its chief officer. Reading tour with George Washington Cable (November–February). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published in London (1884) and New York (1885). Publishes Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs (1885).
1889      A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court published.
1891–94      Travels and lives in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, with frequent business trips to the United States. Henry H. Rogers, vice-president of Standard Oil, undertakes to salvage Clemens’s fortunes. In 1894 Webster and Co. declares bankruptcy, and on Rogers’s advice Clemens abandons the Paige machine. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson published serially and as a book in 1894.
1895      In August starts an around-the-world lecture tour to raise money, accompanied by Olivia and Clara; lectures en route to the Pacific Coast and then in Australia and New Zealand.
1896      Lectures in India, Ceylon, and South Africa. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc published. On 18 August Susy dies from meningitis in Hartford. Jean is diagnosed with epilepsy. Resides in London.
1897      Following the Equator published in London and Hartford. Lives in Weggis (Switzerland) and Vienna.
1898      Pays his creditors in full. Lives in Vienna and nearby Kaltenleutgeben.
1899–1901      Resides in London, with stays at European spas. The family returns to the United States in October 1900, living at 14 West 10th Street, New York, then in Riverdale in the Bronx. Publishes “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (February 1901).
1902      Makes last visit to Hannibal and St. Louis. Olivia’s health deteriorates severely. Isabel V. Lyon, hired as her secretary, is soon secretary to Clemens.
1903      Moves family to rented Villa di Quarto in Florence. Harper and Brothers acquires exclusive rights to all Mark Twain’s work.
[begin page 640] 1904      Begins dictating autobiography to Lyon; Jean types up her copy. Olivia dies of heart failure in Florence on 5 June. Family returns to the United States. Clemens leases a house at 21 Fifth Avenue, New York.
1905      Spends summer in Dublin, New Hampshire, with Jean. Writes “The War-Prayer.”
1906      Begins Autobiographical Dictations in January. Excerpts will appear in the North American Review, 1906–7. Rents Upton House, Dublin. Commissions John Mead Howells to design a house to be built at Redding, Conn. What Is Man? printed anonymously for private distribution.
1907      Christian Science published. Hires Ralph W. Ashcroft as business assistant. Travels to England to receive honorary degree from Oxford University.
1908      Moves into the Redding house (“Innocence at Home,” then “Stormfield”).
1909      Dismisses Lyon and Ashcroft. Jean rejoins Clemens at Stormfield. Clara marries Ossip Gabrilowitsch, pianist and conductor, on 6 October. Jean dies of heart failure on 24 December.
1910      Suffers severe angina while in Bermuda; with Paine leaves for New York on 12 April. Dies at Stormfield on 21 April.

For a much more detailed chronology, see Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1852–1890 (Budd 1992a, 949–97).

FAMILY BIOGRAPHIES

John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), Clemens’s father, was born in Virginia. As a youth he moved with his mother and siblings to Kentucky, where he studied law and in 1822 was licensed to practice. He married Jane Lampton the following year. In 1827 the Clemenses relocated to Jamestown, Tennessee, where he opened a store and eventually became a clerk of the county court. In 1835 he moved his family to Missouri, settling first in the village of Florida, where Samuel Clemens was born. Two years later he was appointed judge of Monroe County Court, earning the honorific “Judge,” which young Clemens unwittingly exaggerated into a position of great power. In 1839 he moved the family to Hannibal, where he kept a store on Main Street and was elected justice of the peace, probably in 1844. At the time of his death, he was a candidate for the position of clerk of the circuit court, but died some months before the election. He was regarded as one of the foremost citizens of the county, scrupulously honest, but within his family circle he was taciturn and irritable. A contemporary reference to John Clemens’s “shattered nerves,” together with his extensive use of medicines, may point to some chronic [begin page 641] condition. His sudden death from pneumonia in 1847 left the family in genteel poverty. When his father died Clemens was only eleven; he later wrote that “my own knowledge of him amounted to little more than an introduction” ( Inds , 309–11; 4 Sept 1883 to Holcombe, MnHi).

Jane Lampton Clemens (1803–90), Clemens’s mother, was born in Adair County, Kentucky. Her marriage to the dour and humorless John Marshall Clemens was not a love match: late in life she confided to her family that she had married to spite another suitor. She bore seven children, of whom only four (Orion, Pamela, Samuel, and Henry [1838–58]) survived at the time of her husband’s death in 1847. The widowed Jane left Hannibal, Missouri, and between 1853 and 1870 lived in Muscatine, and possibly Keokuk, Iowa, and in St. Louis, Missouri, initially as part of Orion Clemens’s household and then with her daughter, Pamela Moffett. After Clemens married and settled in Buffalo, New York, in 1870, Jane set up house in nearby Fredonia with the widowed Pamela. In 1882 she moved to Keokuk, Iowa, where she lived with Orion for the rest of her life. She was buried in Hannibal’s Mount Olivet Cemetery, alongside her husband and her son Henry. Her Hannibal pastor called her “a woman of the sunniest temperament, lively, affable, a general favorite” (Wecter 1952, 86). She was the model for Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer (1876), Huckleberry Finn (1885), and other works. After her death in 1890 Clemens wrote a moving tribute to her, “Jane Lampton Clemens” ( Inds , 82–92, 311).

Orion (pronounced O'-ree-ən) Clemens (1825–97), Clemens’s older brother, was born in Gainesboro, Tennessee. After the Clemens family’s move to Hannibal, Missouri, he was apprenticed to a printer. In 1850 he started the Hannibal Western Union, and the following year became the owner of the Hannibal Journal as well, employing Clemens and Henry, their younger brother, as typesetters. In 1853, shortly after Clemens left home to travel, Orion moved with his mother and Henry to Muscatine, Iowa. There he married Mary (Mollie) Stotts (1834–1904), who bore him a daughter, Jennie, in 1855. He campaigned for Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860, and through the influence of a friend was rewarded with an appointment as secretary of the newly formed Nevada Territory (1861). Mollie and Jennie joined him there in 1862; Jennie died in 1864 of spotted fever. That year Nevada became a state, and Orion could not obtain a post comparable to his territorial position. Over the next two decades he struggled to earn a living as a proofreader, inventor, chicken farmer, lawyer, lecturer, and author. From the mid-1870s until his death in 1897, Orion was supported by an amused and exasperated Clemens, who said that “he was always honest and honorable” but “he was always dreaming; he was a dreamer from birth” ( Inds , 311–13; see AutoMT1 , 451–55 and notes on 643–44).

Pamela (pronounced Pə-mee'-la) A. (Clemens) Moffett (1827–1904), also known as “Pamelia” or “Mela,” was Clemens’s older sister. Born in Jamestown, Tennessee, after the Clemens family’s move to Hannibal she attended Elizabeth Horr’s school and in November 1840 was commended by her teacher for her “amiable deportment and faithful application to her various studies.” Pamela played piano and guitar, and in the [begin page 642] 1840s helped support the family by giving music lessons. In September 1851, she married William Anderson Moffett (1816–65), a commission merchant, and moved to St. Louis. Their children were Annie (1852–1950) and Samuel (1860–1908). From 1870 Pamela lived in Fredonia, New York. Clemens called Pamela “a lifelong invalid”; she was probably the model for Tom’s cousin Mary in Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and other works ( Inds , 313).

Olivia Louise Langdon Clemens (1845–1904), familiarly known as “Livy,” was born and raised in Elmira, New York, the daughter of wealthy coal merchant Jervis Langdon (1809–70) and Olivia Lewis Langdon (1810–90). The Langdons were strongly religious, reformist, and abolitionist. Livy’s education, in the 1850s and 1860s, was a combination of home tutoring and classes at Thurston’s Female Seminary and Elmira Female College. Always delicate, her health deteriorated into invalidism for a time between 1860 and 1864. “She was never strong again while her life lasted,” Clemens said in 1906. Clemens was first introduced to the shy and serious Livy in December 1867; he soon began an earnest and protracted courtship, conducted largely through letters. They married in February 1870 and settled in Buffalo, New York, in a house purchased for them by Livy’s father; their first child, Langdon Clemens, was born there in November. In 1871 they moved, as renters, to the Nook Farm neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut, and quickly became an integral part of the social life of that literary and intellectual enclave. They purchased land and built the distinctive house which was their home from 1874 to 1891. Young Langdon died in 1872, but three daughters were born: Olivia Susan (Susy) in 1872, Clara in 1874, and Jane (Jean) in 1880. Clara later recalled her mother’s “unselfish, tender nature—combined with a complete understanding, both intellectual and human, of her husband”; she took “care of everything pertaining to house and home, which included hospitality to many guests,” and made “time for lessons in French and German as well as hours for reading aloud to my sisters and me” (CC 1931, 24–25). To her adoring husband, whom she addressed fondly as “Youth,” Livy was “my faithful, judicious, and painstaking editor” ( AutoMT1 , 354–59). In June 1891, with their expenses mounting and Clemens’s investments draining his earnings as well as Livy’s personal income, they permanently closed the Hartford house and left for a period of retrenchment in Europe; thenceforth Livy’s life was spent in temporary quarters, hotel suites, and rented houses. When Clemens was forced to declare bankruptcy in April 1894, the family’s financial future was salvaged by the expedient of giving Livy “preferred creditor” status and assigning all Clemens’s copyrights to her. In 1895–96 she and Clara accompanied Clemens on his round-the-world lecture tour. The death of her daughter Susy in 1896 was a blow from which she never recovered. She died of heart failure in Italy in June 1904.

Olivia Susan Clemens (1872–96), known as “Susy,” was Clemens’s eldest daughter. Her early education was conducted largely at home by her mother and, for several years starting in 1880, by a governess. Her talents for writing, dramatics, and music were soon apparent. At thirteen, she secretly began to write a biography of Clemens, much of which he later incorporated into his autobiography; it is a charming portrait of idyllic family [begin page 643] life. Susy accompanied her parents to England in 1873 and for a longer stay abroad in 1878–79. In the fall of 1890 she left home to attend Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, but completed only one semester. In June 1891, the Clemenses closed the Hartford house, and the family, including Susy, left for a period of retrenchment in Europe that would last until mid-1895. Susy attended schools in Geneva and Berlin and took language and voice lessons, but increasingly she suffered from physical and nervous complaints for which her parents sought treatments including “mind cure” and hydrotherapy. After the European sojourn Susy chose not to go with her father, mother, and sister Clara on Clemens’s lecture trip around the world (1895–96); she and her sister Jean stayed at the Elmira, New York, home of their aunt Susan Crane. In August 1896, while visiting her childhood home in Hartford, Susy came down with a fever, which proved to be spinal meningitis. She died while her mother and sister were making the transatlantic journey to be with her. “The cloud is permanent, now,” Clemens wrote in his notebook (Notebook 40, TS p. 8, CU-MARK; see AutoMT1 , 323–28).

Clara Langdon Clemens (1874–1962), called “Bay,” was Clemens’s second daughter. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, she was mostly educated at home by her mother and governesses. During the family’s sojourn in Europe between 1891 and 1895, Clara enjoyed more independence than her sisters, returning alone to Berlin to study music. She was the only one of Clemens’s daughters to go with him and Livy on their 1895–96 trip around the world. The death of her sister Susy, and the first epileptic seizure of her other sister, Jean, both came in 1896: “It was a long time before anyone laughed in our household,” Clara recalled (CC 1931, 179). The family settled in Vienna in 1897. Clara aspired to be a pianist, studying under Theodor Leschetizky, through whom she met the young Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch (1878–1936). By 1898 Clara’s vocation had changed from pianist to singer, a career in which she found more indulgence than acclaim. After her mother’s death in 1904 Clara suffered a breakdown and was intermittently away from her family at rest cures in 1905 and 1906. She was financially dependent on her father but spent less and less time in his household, traveling and giving occasional recitals. Increasingly suspicious of the control exerted by Isabel V. Lyon and Ralph Ashcroft over her father and his finances, Clara convinced Clemens to dismiss the pair in 1909. She married Gabrilowitsch in 1909; their daughter, Nina Gabrilowitsch (1910–66), was Clemens’s last direct descendant. Between 1904 and 1910 Clara lost her mother, her sister Jean, and her father; at the age of thirty-five, she was sole heir to the estate of Mark Twain, which was held in trust for her, not to be disposed in its entirety until her own death. For the rest of her life she used her influence to control the public representation of her father. Gabrilowitsch died in 1936; in 1944 Clara married Russian conductor Jacques Samossoud (1894–1966). Her memoir of Clemens, My Father, Mark Twain, was published in 1931. She spent the last decades of her life in Southern California. Clara’s bequest of Clemens’s personal papers to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962, formed the basis of the Mark Twain Papers now housed in The Bancroft Library.

[begin page 644] Jean (Jane Lampton) Clemens (1880–1909), Clemens’s youngest daughter, was named after his mother but was always called Jean. Like her sisters, she was educated largely at home. In 1896, however, she was attending school in Elmira, New York, when she suffered a severe epileptic seizure. Sedatives were prescribed, and for the next several years her anxious parents tried to forestall the progress of her illness, even spending the summer of 1899 in Sweden so that she could be treated by the well-known osteopath Jonas Kellgren. Her condition, which worsened after her mother’s death in 1904, and the household’s frequent relocations, gave Jean little chance to develop an independent existence. In late 1899 she began teaching herself how to type so that she could transcribe her father’s manuscripts. She also loved riding and other outdoor activities, and espoused animal and human-rights causes. In October 1906 Jean was sent to a sanatorium in Katonah, New York, and remained in “exile” until April 1909, when she rejoined her father at Stormfield, in Redding, Connecticut. Over the next months she enjoyed a close, happy relationship with him and took over Isabel Lyon’s duties as secretary. Jean died at Stormfield on 24 December 1909, apparently of a heart attack suffered during a seizure. Over the next few days Clemens wrote a heart-breaking reminiscence of her entitled “Closing Words of My Autobiography.”

Clemens’s Working Notes for “The Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript”

stopped check　　#　　　 98 signing March 14 orally There ➀ March 30 the Horace incident begins. Quote Horace. A. notified all servants they better resign & save their face. ➁ Norfolk, Apl 3 or 4 (we in splendid friendship. Got back home Apl. 7. STOLEN BEADS 3 4) To New York Apl. 12 or 13 to C.’s concert with Rogerses—no Ashs. ➂ Apl. 11 Clara saw Peterson. Dr. Peterson came here Apl. 13—says Miss Lyon did not talk Jean over with him. Untrue, I guess. ➄ Apl. 14 Paine & I called on Peterson—he was reluctant to believe me. In fact didn’t believe either of us. Apl. 15 dismissal. Her letter STOLEN BEADS Carting things out. === February. After discovery. I was scared, & went to Safety to remove signature & examine Mark Twain doct for the words “real estate.” Not there. It was probly the grand Power I signed, Nov. 14 in place of it. IX? June 9, fled to Europe, without returning my insurance & other papers. Badly scared.

Whisky &c before they left. J. 4 May. (1)Toward end of May they mortgaged house & suddenly left June 4,* the night before their first “At Home,” badly scared. ➁ ➂ III A’s remark to little Harry, May 28 or 29, about Power of Attorney not being revoked, moved Paine to search, & he & Clara found it. They were scared because they found Lounsbury had given us ➁ (about May 20) 25) the figures which showed Miss L’s extra building bill—a theft—& I had reported it to Miss Watson, upon whom it had no effect. That day, I think, Paine & I visited Strohmeyer. ➃ We About May 29 I revoked Miss L’s Power, thinking it the only one, in writing, & she accepted the notice. ➄ On June 1 the big Power discovered. Stanchfield annulled it & gave them notice, which they accepted. June 4 they decamped. (1½) About May 20, Ash ordered L to mend road; I canceled the order. A told L. (to whom I had 2½ given a larger order) to go ahead if he “wanted to take the risk”—which we did not then understand. About May 24 we June 4 went to Knickerbocker & discovered the stock sale. *June 3 or 4 or 5, Knick

101 Mephistoph     ——— eavesdropping Apl. 23 Clara went to Mr. Rogers. (His letter). === Apl. 26. Jean came (Wilkommen letter?) === Apl. 29. Ash’s letter. About same date A’s giveaway remark to Harry about selling my house === MARCH. === About the 1st first or second week I resumed check-signing. 2 keys. Early—their engagement. L’s rest-cure. During it No—8th of May, farm paid for. About 10th (suspicious) Dunneka examined securities. Reported 12th. 11th my letter to Clara. 13th. Clean-up. About 15th took A to vault & removed signatures. He smole a smile.

Tel. C. “No changes” (4th) 6th, saw her in N.Y; showed Horace’s letter, & she wrote upon it. She sent for Claude. Said he could come Apl 15, & glad to, if L was not to be over him. Katy ran across Lyon on street & was telephoned by Clara & she told her Claude was coming: “Mr. C., she turned white just with pure fright, for she knew what Claude had seen that 2o’c in the morning.” When I got home on the 7th she was so glad Claude was coming back, “he is a perfect servant, & said when he went away, just let him know if she ever needed him, & he would leave any service & come. On 7th a.m. Ash tels L I was coming at 3. 32 train. She called up Teresa & said excitedly, “tell H. to get out at once, Mr. C. is coming, & is raving mad.” Horace hid in his room from then 36 hours—then I asked for him & got his dictated statement. Horace cried

CLEMENS’S 1873 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES, AND
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

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[Autobiographical Notes, 1873]

Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

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Born Nov. 30, 1835, in village of Florida, Monroe County, Mo. Missouri.

Attended the ordinary western common school in Hannibal, Mo., from the age of 5 till near the age of 13.Ⓐtextual note That’s all the education—if schooling—if playing hookey & getting licked for it may be called by that name.

Education continued in the offices of the Hannibal “Courier” & the “Journal,” as an apprenticed printer. Afterward worked at that business in St Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia & New York while yet a boy—& belonged to the Typographical Unions in those cities, by a courtesy which forebore to enforce the rule requiring 21 years age for eligibility.

About 1855, aged 20, started to New Orleans, with about ten or twelve dollars, after paying steamboat passage, intending in good earnest to take shipping there for the port of Para, & explore the river Amazon & open up a commerce in the marvelous herb called coca, which is the concentrated bread & meat of the tribes (when on long, tedious journeys) that inhabit the country lying about the headwaters of the Amazon. Broken-hearted to find that a vessel would not be likely to leave N. O. for Para during the next generation. Got some little comfort out of the fact that I had not Ⓐtextual note at least not arrived too late, if I had arrived too soon, for no ship had ever yet left N. O. for Para in preceding generations.

Had learn made friends with the pilots & learned to steer, on the way down; so they had com good-will enough to engage to make a St Louis & N. O. pilot of me for $500, payable upon graduation. They kept their word, & for 18 months I went up & down, steering & studying the 1275 miles of river day & night, supporting myself meantime by helping the freight clerks & standing the sho clerks on board & the freight watchmen on shore. Then I got my U.S. license to pilot, & a steady berth at $250 a month—which was a princely salary for a youth in those days of low wages for mechanics.

Foll While I was still an apprentice pilot, the most ancient pilot in the whole west, (Capt. Isaiah Sellers) used to write paragraphs now & then for the N O Picayune, which he signed “Mark Twain;” it is a leadsman’s term & signifies a depth of two fathoms of water. In his articles he always spoke of this present high water being higher than he had ever seen it before, or lower than he had ever seen it before, since 18— always naming a date so long before any other man on the river was born, that he was an aggravating [begin page 646] eyesore to a hundred river men who wanted to be considered veterans. And he was always referring to islands nobody had ever heard of before; & then he would add in an exasperatingly naive way that they had washed away during such and such a remote generation. My first literary venture was a communication of a column & a half to the N. O. True Delta, about 18 over a fictitious signature in which I ante-dated him about sixty years, recalled high water & lowe water which “laid over” his most marvelous recollections, introduced islands which had joined the main land & become States & Territories before he was born—& thus won the gratitude of all the other veterans & Capt. Sellers’s undying animosity. He never wrote again.

Early in 1861, my brother was appointed Secretary to the then Territory of Nevada, & I went out there with him as pr his private Secretary. Got the silver fever & fought the mines with a spade & shovel for a year or more; was really worth a million dollars for just ten days, as related in “Roughing It,” & lost it through my own indolent heedlessness. Then I worke shoveled quartz in a silver mill at ten dollars a week, for one entire week, & then resigned, with the consent & even the gratitude of the entire mill company.

Meantime had written an occasional letter to the Virginia City “Enterprise” over a fictitious signature; & in the winter of 1862–3 their city editor went to the States on a visit & I was offered his berth for 3 months at $25 a week. Gladly took it, & held it nearly 3 years. Part of the time reported Legislative proceedings for my paper (from Carson the capital.) Wrote a letter every Saturday to sum up results, & therefore needed a signature. In the nick of time Capt. Sellers’s death came over the wires & I “jumped” his nom de plume before the old man was cold.

Went to San Francisco when the silver collapse came, & reported five months on the “Morning Call.”◇ Got too lazy to live, & too restless & enterprising. Went up to Calaveras County & worked in the surface gold diggings 3 months without result. Came back to San F & made a living writing newspaper correspondence & literary sketches several months.

Then went down early in 1867 1866Ⓐtextual note, to the Sandwich Islands for the Sacramento Union. Wrote from there 5 or 6 months. Came back with a high Pacific Coast fame & lectured on my own hook in the city & all around California & Nevada.

Went east with more worldly gear than I was accustomed to.

Published “The Jumping Frog & Other Sketches” in the spring of ’67. It had a fair sale here & a good sale in England, where Routledge republished it.

In August 1869, published “The Innocents Abroad,” 650 pp. 8vo, illustrated. It sold 125,000 copies in 3 years & has good steady sale yet.

Entered the lecture field here 1869–70.

In March 1872, published “Roughing It,” illustrated, 600 pp. 8vo. It has sold 91,000 copies in 9 months—have n’t got the yearly return yet.

In England the Routledges & Hotten have gathered together & published all my sketches; a great many that have not appeared in book form here. There are four volumes of these sketches. “Roughing It” & the “Innocents Abroad” are republished in England, 2 vols. each, & have a good sale.

[begin page 647] Residence, Hartford, Conn.

Baron Tauchnitz proposes to issue my books complete, on the Continent in English.

And there’s a chap going to issue them in Germany in the German Language he says. Is now translating the Innocents.

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[Biographical Sketch by Charles Dudley Warner]

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS,

Who is widely known by his signature of “Mark Twain,” an American humorist of decided and peculiar originality, and the possessor of a descriptive style of great vigor and clearness, was born in the village of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri, November 30, 1835. His only schooling was in the ordinary district school at Hannibal, from the age of five to thirteen, when he was apprenticed to the printing business in a newspaper office of that town. He worked at his trade in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York, after the manner of travelling journeymen, and was a member of the Typographical Union, though under age. At the age of twenty he started for New Orleans, with a capital of about twelve dollars, after paying his steamboat fare, and the intention of shipping thence for the port of Para, exploring the Amazon, and opening up a trade in coca, which he had understood was the concentrated bread and meat of the tribes about the head waters of the river. This commercial venture was frustrated by finding that no vessel was likely to leave New Orleans for Para during the next generation; but he had the comfort of knowing that he had not arrived too late, if he had arrived too soon, for no vessel had ever left New Orleans for Para in the preceding generations.

Having made the acquaintance of some pilots and learned to steer on the way down, he determined to become a Mississippi river pilot. The members of the craft agreed to teach him for $500 on graduation; and for eighteen months he went up and down, studying the river night and day, and supporting himself by helping the freight clerks and standing tricks with the shore watchmen. Obtaining his license as a pilot, he had steady work at a salary of $250 a month, a princely sum in those days of low wages to mechanics. While he was still an apprentice, there was on the river a noted pilot, Capt. Isaiah Sellers, who wrote paragraphs occasionally for the New Orleans papers signed “Mark Twain”—the leadsman’s term signifying a depth of two fathoms of water. Sellers was an aggravation to all the other pilots, by reason of his assumption of ancient knowledge of the river. If it was high water, he would say it was higher than he had ever seen it before since 18—, naming a date before any other man on the river was born; and he was always referring to islands which nobody had ever heard of before, and naively adding that they had washed away in such and such a remote generation. He was a nuisance to all the other pilots who wanted to be considered veterans. The first literary venture of young Clemens was a communication a column and a half in length to the New Orleans [begin page 648] True Delta, under a fictitious signature, in which he ante-dated Capt. Sellers about sixty years, recalling high and low water which belittled his most marvellous recollections, and introducing islands which had joined the mainland and become territories and States before he was born. The communication squelched Capt. Sellers; he never wrote again, and Clemens became the pet of the river men.

Early in 1861 Mr. Clemens went to Nevada as private secretary to his brother, who was appointed Secretary of the Territory. His adventures there are graphically related in his volume called “Roughing It.” He had the silver fever, and fought the mines with pick and spade for a year or more, and was actually, as he relates in his book, the owner of a claim worth a million dollars for several days, but lost it by his heedlessness in not taking some necessary steps to secure it. Plunged at once from riches to poverty, he hired out to shovel quartz in a silver mill, at ten dollars a week, but resigned at the end of a week, with the consent and even gratitude of the entire mill company. Meantime he had written an occasional letter to the Virginia City Enterprise, and in 1862–3 he became its city editor, at $25 a week, and continued in that post for three years. In reporting the legislative proceedings, and writing a weekly letter summing up results, which was no doubt rather personal in its comments, he needed a signature, and at the nick of time hearing of the death of Capt. Sellers, he appropriated the nom de plume of “Mark Twain,” which he has since been identified with.

When the silver collapse came, he went to San Francisco and reported for five months on the Morning Call; became lazy or enterprising, and travelled to Calaveras county and worked at surface gold digging for three months without result. Returning to San Francisco, he lived by reporting and sketch writing till early in 1866, when he visited the Sandwich Islands and remained there six months, writing diligently to the Sacramento Union. Coming back he found he had a high Pacific coast reputation, and he lectured with great success in California and Nevada. He went East with a pocket-bookⒶtextual note much fuller than it was accustomed to be. In the spring of 1867 The Jumping Frog and Other Sketches was published in New York. It had a fair sale in this country, and a better in England, where it was reprinted.

In 1868 Mr. Clemens made a pilgrimage, with a party of excursionists in the Quaker City, to the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. He corresponded during his absence with the San Francisco Alta and the New York Tribune; and upon his return he published, in 1869, a very humorous and picturesque account of his travels, called The Innocents Abroad, an illustrated octavo volume of 650 pages, which sold 125,000 copies in three years. In 1869–70 he lectured everywhere to large audiences in the Northern States. In March, 1872, he published Roughing It, in the main a true account of his Pacific coast experiences, with exact pictures of a wild frontier society—an illustrated octavo volume of 600 pages, which sold 91,000 copies in nine months. The fall of 1872 Mr. Clemens spent in England. He was married in 1870 to Olivia L., daughter of Jervis Langdon, Esq., of Elmira, New York. His residence is Hartford, Connecticut.

All the books of Mr. Clemens have been reprinted in England, most of them by two publishers, who have gathered together, besides, four volumes of sketches, many of which [begin page 649] have not been in book form here. The author was most cordially received in England, where his writings are in great favor. Tauchnitz proposes to issue his books complete in English on the Continent; and a translation of The Innocents, to be followed by others, is now being made into German.

Mr. Clemens and Mr. Charles D. Warner wrote in 1873 a joint novel, The Gilded Age,—a social and political satire of the times.

CLEMENS’S 1899 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES, AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY SAMUEL E. MOFFETT

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[Autobiographical Notes, 1899]

Samuel L. Clemens.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Born in Florida, Mo., Nov. 30, 1835. Son of John Marshall Clemens, of Virginia, & Jane Lambton of Kentucky. An ancestor (Jeoffrey Clement), was ambassador to Spain under Charles I., married a Spanish wife & introduced a strain of Spanish blood into the Clemens stock which shows up in now & then in a descendant yet. (Clara is an instance.) This Clement sat as one of Charles’s judges on the trial that rendered the death-verdict.

The Lambtons still occupy possess in England the lands occupied by their ancestors of the same name before the invasion of the Conqueror.

The childhood of S. L. Clemens was spent in the village of Florida, his boyhood in the town of Hannibal, on the Mississippi. Before he was 13 he had been rescued in a substantially drown condition nine times—3 times from the Mississippi & 6 times from Bear creek. His mother’s comment was, “People who are born to be hanged are safe in the water.”

S. L. C.’s parents began their young married life in Lexington, Ky., with a small property in land & six inherited slaves. They presently removed to Jamestown, Tennessee; & later to Florida, Mo., & finally to Hannibal, where Mr. C. served as a magistrate some [begin page 652] years & was then elected County Judge, but died (1847) before he was invested with the office.

S. L. C was educated in the common school at Hannibal, & in his brother’s newspaper office, where he served in all capacities, including staff-work. His literature attracted the town’s attention, “but not its admiration”—(his brother’s testimony.)

He ran away in 1853 & visited the World’s Fair in New York. After a year’s absence he in the Atlantic States he was obliged by financial dis stress to reveal his whereabouts to the family. He returned to the West & lived in St Louis, Muscatine & Keokuk until 1857; he spent the next 4 years on the river, between St Louis & New Orleans, in the pilot house. On his last tri

In the su

He was in New Orleans when Louisiana went out of the Union, Jan. 26, 1861, & started North the next day. Every day on the trip a blockade was closed by the boat, & the batteries at Jefferson Barracks (below St Louis) fired two shots through her chimneys the last night of her voyage.

At the beg

In June he joined the Confederates in Ralls county, Mo., as a 2d lieutenant under General Tom Harris, & came near having the distinction of being captured by Colonel Ulysses S. Grant. He resigned, after 2 weeks’ service in the field, explaining that he was “incapacitated by fatigue” through persistent retreating; became private secretary to his brother, who had been appointed Secretary of the Nev new Territory of Nevada, & crossed the Plains with him in the overland coach—an 18 day-&-night trip.

After a year spent in the silver mines of the Humboldt and Esmeralda regions he became local editor of the Territorial Enterprise at Virginia, Nevada, & also legislative correspondent for that paper from Carson City, the capital. He wrote a weekly letter to the paper; it appeared Sundays, & on Mondays the legislative proceedings were obstructed by the complaints of members, as a result. They rose to questions of privilege & answered the criticisms of the correspondent with bitterness, customarily describing him with elaborate & uncomplimentary phrases, for lack of a briefer way. To save their time he presently began to sign the letters, using the Mississippi leadsman’s call, “Mark Twain” (2 fathoms = 12 feet) for their this purpose.

Dueling was in that day a custom there—a temporary one. The weapons were always Colt’s navy revolvers; distance, 15 paces; fire, & advance; six shots allowed. M. T. & Mr. Laird, editor of the Virginia Union got into a newspaper quarrel, & a duel was appointed for dawn in a mountain gorge outside the town. Neither man was capable with a pistol; but this did not appear on the field, for an accident caused Mr. Laird to withdraw & apologise. The accident was this. The seconds of both parties were practicing the their menⒶtextual note in neighboring gorges with a concealing ridge between. Mr. Laird was making fairly good practice, but M. T. wasⒶtextual note hitting nothing. A small bird flew by & litⒶtextual note on a sage-bush 30 yards away, & M. T.’s second, who was an expert, fired & knocked its head off. Just then the adverse party came over the ridge to compare notes, & when they saw the dead bird & learned the distance, they were troubled interested. When they further learned [begin page 653] erroneously (from Gillis, M. T.’s second) that Twain had done the shooting, & that it was not a remarkable feat for him, they were troubled. They drew aside & consulted, then returned & made a formal apology & the duel was “off.”

There was a new & stringent law which provided two years’ imprisonment for any one who should send a challenge, carry a challenge, or receive one. The noise of the proposed duel had reached the capital, 18 miles distant. Governor North was very angry, & gave orders for the arrest of all concerned in the preliminaries of the duel; he said he would make an example that would be remembered. But a friend of the duelists got wind of the matter & outrode the officers of the law, arriving in time to hurry the parties over the frontier into California & save them from well-earned punishment.

M. T. took service of the San Francisco Morning Call as city editor, & held the place a couple of years; then spent three months in the “pocket” mines of Calaveras county at Jackass Gulch, but found no pockets.

He returned to San Francisco & wrote letters to the Virginia Enterprise for the Sacramento Union; Enterprise Ⓐtextual note for a while, & was then sent to the Sandwich Islands by the Sacramento Union to write about the sugar interest. While in Honolulu the survivors of the clipper “Hornet” (burned on the line), arrived, mere skin-&-bone relics, after a passage of 43 days in an open boat on 10 days’ provisions, & M. T. worked all day & all night & produced a full & complete account of the matter & flung it aboard a schooner which had already cast off. It was the only full account that went to California, & the Union paid M.T. $100 a column for it, which was ten-fold the current rates. for it.Ⓐtextual note

On his return to California after a half-year’s absence he profitably delivered several lectures & cleared $1500, then went east & (1867) & joined the “Quaker City” Excursion to Europe & the Holy Land; was gone five or six months, & upon his return wrote & published “The Innocents Abroad,” (1869) which was an account of the voyage. The sale reached 100,000 copies in the first year, & doubled it later.

In 1869 he entered the lecture field & traversed the eastern and western States. Remained in the field 4 years.

In the beginning of February, 1870 he was married to Miss Olivia L. Langdon, & took up his residence in Buffalo, N. Y., where he bought a third interest in the Express, a daily newspaper, & joined its staff. In the following November a son (Langdon) was born to him. (Died 1872.)

In October 1871 he removed to Hartford, Conn., & presently built a house, which the family still retain.

In 1872 Susan Olivia Clemens was born. “Roughing It” written. Also “The Gilded Age” (in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner.)

In 1873 the family spent some months in England & Scotland; M. T. lectured a few weeks in London.

In the succeeding years various books were written. In 1874 Clara Langdon Ⓐtextual note Clemens was born. In 1878 the family went to Europe & spent 14 18 Ⓐtextual note months. “A Tramp Abroad” resulted. Jean Clemens born, 1880.

In 1885 M. T. financed the publishing house of Charles L. Webster & Co., in New [begin page 654] York. Its first issue was the Memoirs of General Grant, which achieved a sale of more than 600,000 volumes. The first check received by the Grant heirsⒶtextual note was for $200,000; it was followed a few months later by a check for $150,000. These are the largest checks ever paid for an author’s work on either side of the Atlantic.

In 1886–89 M. T. spent $170,000 a large sum of money Ⓐtextual note on a type-setting machine, the invention of one James W. Paige, a fraud which was a failure Ⓐtextual note. The money was all lost.

The publishing house was incapably conducted, & wasted all the money that came into its hands. M. T. contributed $65,000 in efforts to save its life, but to no purpose. It finally failed, (1894) with liabilities of $96,000 & assets worth less than a third of that amount. The debts The privilege of paying the debts fell to M. T.’s share.

In 1895–6 M. T., with his wife & second daughter, made a lecturing tour around the world, wrote “Following the Equator,” & paid off the debts.

The years 1897–98

NearⒶtextual note the close of this absence of 13 months the eldest daughter, who had remained at home, died, aged 24 years.

The years 1897–98–99 were spent by the family in England, Switzerland & Austria. M. T. was present in the Austrian Reichsrath on the memorable occasion when the House was invaded by 60 policemen & 16 refractory Members dragged roughly out of it.

A number of his books have been translated & published in France, Germany, Russia, Italy Ⓐtextual note Sweden, Norway & Hungary. Dramatisations of “the Gilded Age,” Tom Sawyer, Prince & Pauper and Puddnhead Wilson made good successes on the stage.

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MARK TWAIN.Ⓐtextual note
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.Ⓐtextual note
By Samuel E. Moffett.Ⓐtextual note

In 1835 the creation of the Western empire of America had just begun. In the whole region west of the Mississippi, which now contains 21,000,000 people—nearly twice the entire population of the United States at that time—there were less than half a million white inhabitants. There were only two StatesⒶtextual note beyond the great river, Louisiana and Missouri. There were only two considerable groups of population, one about New Orleans, the other about St. Louis. If we omit New Orleans, which is east of the river, there was only one place in all that vast domain with any pretension to be called a city. That was St. Louis, and that metropolis, the wonder and pride of all the Western country, had no more than 10,000 inhabitants.

It was in this frontier region, on the extreme fringe of settlement “that just divides the desert from the sown,” that Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born, November 30, 1835, [begin page 655] in the hamlet of Florida, Missouri. His parents had come there to be in the thick of the Western “boom,”Ⓐtextual note and by a fate for which no lack of foresight on their part was to blame, they found themselves in a place which succeeded in accumulating 125 inhabitants in the next sixty years. When we read of the westward sweep of population and wealth in the United States, it seems as if those who were in the van of that movement must have been inevitably carried on to fortune. But that was a tide full of eddies and back currents, and Mark Twain’s parents possessed a faculty for finding them that appears nothing less than miraculous. The whole Western empire was before them where to choose. They could have bought the entire site of Chicago for a pair of boots. They could have taken up a farm within the present city limits of St. Louis. What they actually did was to live for a time in ColumbiaⒶtextual note, Kentucky, with a small property in landⒶtextual note and six inherited slaves;Ⓐtextual note then to move to Jamestown, on the Cumberland plateau of Tennessee, a place that was then no farther removed from the currents of the world’s life than Uganda, but which no resident of that or any other part of Central Africa would now regard as a serious competitor;Ⓐtextual note and next to migrate to Missouri, passing St. Louis,Ⓐtextual note and settling first in FloridaⒶtextual note and afterward in Hannibal. But when the whole map was blank,Ⓐtextual note the promise of fortune glowed as rosily in these regions as anywhere else. Florida had great expectations when Jackson was President. When John Marshall Clemens took up 80,000 acres of land in Tennessee, he thought he had established his children as territorial magnates. That phantom vision of wealth furnished later one of the motives of “The Gilded Age.” It conferred no other benefit.

If Samuel Clemens missed a fortune,Ⓐtextual note he inherited good blood. On both sides,Ⓐtextual note his family had been settled in the South since early colonial times. His father, John Marshall Clemens, of Virginia, was a descendant of Gregory ClementⒶtextual note, who becameⒶtextual note one of the judges that condemned Charles I. to death, was excepted from the amnesty after the RestorationⒶtextual note in consequence, and lost his head. A cousin of John M. Clemens, Jeremiah Clemens, represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1849 to 1853.

Through his mother, Jane Lampton (Lambton), the boy was descended from the Lambtons,Ⓐtextual note of Durham, whose modern English representatives still possess the lands held by their ancestors of the same name since the twelfth century. Some of her forbears on the maternal side, the Montgomerys, went with Daniel Boone to Kentucky, and were in the thick of the romantic and tragic events that accompanied the settlement of the “Dark and Bloody Ground;”Ⓐtextual note and she herself was born there,Ⓐtextual note twenty-nine years after the first log-cabinⒶtextual note was built within the limits of the present commonwealth. She was one of the earliest, prettiest, and brightest of the manyⒶtextual note belles that have given Kentucky such an enviable reputation as a nursery of fair women, and her vivacity and wit left no doubt in the minds of her friends concerning the source of her son’s genius.

John Marshall Clemens, who had been trained for the bar in Virginia, served for some years as a magistrate at Hannibal, holding for a time the position of county judge. With his death, in March, 1847,Ⓐtextual note Mark Twain’s formal education came to an end, and his education in real life began. He had always been a delicate boy, and his fatherⒶtextual note in consequenceⒶtextual note had been lenient in the matter of enforcing attendance at school, although [begin page 656] he had been profoundly anxious that his children should be well educated. His wish was fulfilled, although not in the way he had expected. It is a fortunate thing for literature that Mark Twain was never ground into smooth uniformity under the scholastic emery wheel. He has made the world his university, and in menⒶtextual note and booksⒶtextual note and strange placesⒶtextual note and all the phases of an infinitely varied lifeⒶtextual note has built an education broad and deepⒶtextual note on the foundations of an undisturbed individuality.

His high school was a village printing-office, where his elder brother, Orion,Ⓐtextual note was conducting a newspaper. The thirteen-year-old boy served in all capacities, and in the occasional absences of his chief he reveled in personal journalism, with original illustrations hacked on wooden blocks with a jackknifeⒶtextual note, to an extent that riveted the town’s attention, “but not its admiration,” as his brother plaintively confessed. The editor spoke with feeling, for he had to take the consequences of these exploits on his return.

From his earliest childhood young Clemens had been of an adventurous disposition. Before he was thirteenⒶtextual note he had been extracted three times from the MississippiⒶtextual note and six times from Bear CreekⒶtextual note in a substantially drowned condition, butⒶtextual note his mother, with the high confidence in his future that never deserted her, merely remarked: “People who are born to be hanged are safe in the water.” By 1853,Ⓐtextual note the Hannibal tether had become too short for him. He disappeared from home,Ⓐtextual note and wandered from one Eastern printing-office to another. He saw the World’s Fair at New YorkⒶtextual note and other marvels, and supported himself by setting type. At the end of this Wanderjahr, Ⓐtextual note financial stress drove him back to his family. He lived at St. Louis, Muscatine, and Keokuk until 1857, when he induced the great Horace Bixby to teach him the mystery of steamboat piloting. The charm of allⒶtextual note this warm, indolent existence in the sleepy river towns has colored his whole subsequent life. In “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “Life on the Mississippi,” and “Pudd’nhead Wilson”Ⓐtextual note every phase of that vanished estate is lovingly dwelt upon.

Native character will always make itself felt, but one may wonder whether Mark Twain’s humor would have developed in quite so sympathetic and buoyant a vein if he had been brought up in Ecclefechan instead of in Hannibal, and whether Carlyle might not have been a little more human if he had spent his boyhood in Hannibal instead of in Ecclefechan.

A Mississippi pilot in the later fifties was a personage of imposing grandeur. He was a miracle of attainments; he was the absolute master of his boat while it was under way;Ⓐtextual note and just before his fall,Ⓐtextual note he commanded a salary precisely equal to that earned at that time by the Vice-President of the United States or a justiceⒶtextual note of the Supreme Court. The best proof of the superlative majesty and desirability of his position is the fact that Samuel Clemens deliberately subjected himself to the incredible labor necessary to attain it—a labor compared with which the efforts needed to acquire the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at a university are as light as a summer course of modern novels. To appreciate the full meaning of a pilot’s marvelous educationⒶtextual note one must read the whole of “Life on the Mississippi,” but this extract may give a partial idea of a single feature of that training—the cultivation of the memory:

“First of all, there is one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has [begin page 657] brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do. That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the exact sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase ‘I think,’ instead of the vigorous one ‘I know!’ One cannot easily realize what a tremendous thing it is to know every trivial detail of 1,200Ⓐtextual note miles of riverⒶtextual note and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street in New YorkⒶtextual note and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently until you know every houseⒶtextual note and windowⒶtextual note and doorⒶtextual note and lamp-postⒶtextual note and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot’s knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And thenⒶtextual note if you will go on until you know every street crossing, the character, size, and position of the crossing stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if you will take half of the signs on that long street and change their places once a month, and still manage to know their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what is required of a pilot’s peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.Ⓐtextual note

“I think a pilot’s memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both ways, and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot’s massed knowledge of the Mississippi, and his marvelous facility in handling it . . .

“And how easily and comfortably the pilot’s memory does its work; how placidly effortless is its way; how unconsciously it lays up its vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman say: ‘Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!’ until it becomes as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking, and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of this endless string of half twains let a single ‘quarter twain!’ be interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again, just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with precision the boat’s position in the river when that quarter twain was uttered, and give you such a lot of head marks, stern marks, and side marks to guide you that you ought to be able to take the boat there and put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of ‘Quarter twain’ did not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid up the important details for future reference without requiring any assistance from him in the matter.”Ⓐtextual note

Young Clemens went through all that appalling training, stored away in his head the bewildering mass of knowledge a pilot’s duties required, received the license that was the [begin page 658] diploma of the river university, entered into regular employment, and regarded himself as established for life, when the outbreak of the Civil War wiped out his occupation at a strokeⒶtextual note and made his weary apprenticeship a useless labor. The commercial navigation of the lower Mississippi was stopped by a line of fire, and black, squat gunboats, their sloping sides plated with railroad iron, took the place of the gorgeous white side-wheelersⒶtextual note whose pilots had been the envied aristocrats of the river towns. Clemens was in New Orleans when Louisiana seceded, and started North the next day. The boat ran a blockade every day of her trip, and on the last night of the voyage the batteries at the Jefferson BarracksⒶtextual note, just below St. Louis, fired two shots through her chimneys.

Brought up in a slave-holdingⒶtextual note atmosphere, Mark Twain naturally sympathized at first with the South. In June he joined the Confederates in Ralls County, Missouri, as a second lieutenantⒶtextual note under General Tom Harris. His military career lasted for two weeks. Narrowly missing the distinction of being captured by Colonel Ulysses S. Grant, he resigned, explaining that he had become “incapacitated by fatigue” through persistent retreating. In his subsequent writings he has always treated his brief experience of warfare as a burlesque episode, although the official reports and correspondence of the Confederate commanders speak very respectfully of the work of the raw countrymen of the Harris Brigade. The elder Clemens brother, Orion, was persona grata to the Administration of President Lincoln, and received in consequence an appointment as the first Secretary of the new Territory of Nevada. He offered his speedily reconstructed junior the position of private secretary to himself, “with nothing to do and no salary.” The two crossed the plains in the overland coach in eighteen days—almost precisely the time it will take to go from New York to Vladivostok when the Trans-Siberian Railway is finished.

A year of variegated fortune-huntingⒶtextual note among the silver mines of the Humboldt and Esmeralda regions followed. Occasional letters written during this time to the leading newspaper of the Territory, the “Virginia City Territorial Enterprise,”Ⓐtextual note attracted the attention of the proprietor, Mr. J. T. Goodman, a man of keen and unerring literary instinct, and he offered the writer the position of local editor on his staff. With the duties of this place were combined those of legislative correspondent at Carson City, the capital. The work of young Clemens created a sensation among the lawmakers. He wrote a weekly letter, spined with barbed personalities. It appeared every Sunday, and on Mondays the legislative business was obstructed with the complaints of members who rose to questions of privilegeⒶtextual note and expressed their opinion of the correspondent with acerbity. This encouraged him to give his letters more individuality by signing them. For this purpose he adopted the old Mississippi leadsman’s call for two fathoms (twelve feet)—“Mark Twain.”

At that particular period dueling was a passing fashion on the Comstock. The refinements of Parisian civilization had not penetrated there, and a Washoe duel seldom left more than one survivor. The weapons were always Colt’s navy revolvers—distance, fifteen paces; fire and advance; six shots allowed. Mark Twain became involved in a quarrel with Mr. Laird, the editor of the “Virginia Union,”Ⓐtextual note and the situation seemed to call for a duel. Neither combatant was an expert with the pistol, but Mark Twain was fortunate enough to have a second who was. The men were practisingⒶtextual note in adjacent [begin page 659] gorges, Mr. Laird doing fairly well, and his opponent hitting everything but the mark. A small bird lit on a sage bush thirty yards away, and Mark Twain’s second fired and knocked off its head. At that moment the enemy came over the ridge, saw the dead bird, observed the distance, and learned from Gillis, the humorist’s second, that the feat had been performed by Mark Twain, for whom such an exploit was nothing remarkable. They withdrew for consultation, and then offered a formal apology, after which peace was restored, leaving Mark Twain with the honors of war.

However, this incident was the means of effecting another change in his life. There was a new law which prescribed two years’Ⓐtextual note imprisonment for any one who should send, carry, or accept a challenge. The fame of the proposed duel had reached the capital, eighteen miles away, and the governorⒶtextual note wrathfully gave orders for the arrest of all concerned, announcing his intention of making an example that would be remembered. A friend of the duelists heard of their danger, outrode the officers of the law, and hurried the parties over the border into California.

Mark Twain found a berth as city editor of the “San Francisco Morning Call,”Ⓐtextual note but he was not adapted to routine newspaper work, and in a couple of years he made another bid for fortune in the mines. He tried the “pocket mines” of CaliforniaⒶtextual note this time, at Jackass Gulch, in Calaveras County, but was fortunate enough to find no pockets. Thus he escaped the hypnotic fascination that has kept some intermittently successful pocket miners willing prisoners in Sierra cabins for life, and in three months he was back in San Francisco, penniless, but in the line of literary promotion. He wrote letters for the “Virginia Enterprise”Ⓐtextual note for a time, but,Ⓐtextual note tiring of that, welcomed an assignment to visit Hawaii for the “Sacramento Union”Ⓐtextual note and write about the sugar interests. It was in Honolulu that he accomplished one of his greatest feats of “straight newspaper work.” The clipper “Hornet”Ⓐtextual note had been burned on “the line,” and when the skeleton survivors arrivedⒶtextual note after a passage of forty-three days in an open boat on ten days’ provisions, Mark Twain gathered their stories, worked all day and all night, and threw a complete account of the horror aboard a schooner that had already cast off. It was the only full account that reached California, and it was not only a clean “scoop” of unusual magnitude, but an admirable piece of literary art. The “Union”Ⓐtextual note testified its appreciation by paying the correspondent ten times the current rates for it.

After six months in the islandsⒶtextual note, Mark Twain returned to California, and made his first venture upon the lecture platform. He was warmly received, and delivered several lectures with profit. In 1867 he went East by way of the Isthmus, and joined the “Quaker City”Ⓐtextual note excursion to Europe and the Holy LandⒶtextual note as correspondent of the “Alta California,”Ⓐtextual note of San Francisco. During this tour of five or six months the party visited the principal ports of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. From this trip grew “The Innocents Abroad,” the creator of Mark Twain’s reputation as a literary force of the first order. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” had preceded it, but “The Innocents” gave the author his first introduction to international literature. A hundred thousand copies were sold the first year, and as many more later.

Four years of lecturing followed—distasteful, but profitable. Mark Twain always [begin page 660] shrank from the public exhibition of himself on the platform, but he was a popular favorite there from the first. He was one of a little group, including Henry Ward Beecher and two or three others, for whom every lyceum committee in the country was bidding, and whose capture at any price insured the success of a lecture course.

The “Quaker City”Ⓐtextual note excursion had a more important result than the production of “The Innocents Abroad.” Through her brother, who was one of the party, Mr. Clemens became acquainted with Miss Olivia L. Langdon, the daughter of Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, New York, and this acquaintance led, in February, 1870, to one of the most ideal marriages in literary history.

Four children came of this union. The eldest, Langdon, a son, was born in November, 1870, and died in 1872. The second, Susan Olivia, a daughter, was born in the latter year, and lived only twenty-four years, but long enough to develop extraordinary mental gifts and every grace of character. Two other daughters, Clara Langdon and Jean, were born in 1874 and 1880Ⓐtextual note respectively, and still live (1899).Ⓐtextual note

Mark Twain’s first home as a man of family was in Buffalo, in a house given to the bride by her father as a wedding present. He bought a third interest in a daily newspaper, the “Buffalo Express,”Ⓐtextual note and joined its staff. But his time for jogging in harness was past. It was his last attempt at regular newspaper work, and a yearⒶtextual note of it was enough. He had become assured of a market for anything he might produce, and he could choose his own place and time for writing.

There was a tempting literary colony at Hartford; the place was steeped in an atmosphere of antique peace and beauty, and the Clemens family were captivated by its charm. They moved there in October, 1871, and soon built a house which was one of the earliest fruits of the artistic revolt against the mid-century Philistinism of domestic architecture in America. For years it was an object of wonder to the simple-minded tourist. The facts that its rooms were arranged for the convenience of those who were to occupy them, and that its windows, gables, and porches were distributed with an eye to the beauty, comfort, and picturesqueness of that particular house, instead of following the traditional lines laid down by the carpenters and contractors who designed most of the dwellings of the period, distracted the critics, and gave rise to grave discussions in the newspapers throughout the country of “Mark Twain’s practical joke.”

The years that followed brought a steady literary development. “Roughing It,” which was written in 1872, and scored a success hardly second to that of “The Innocents,” was, like that, simply a humorous narrative of personal experiences, variegated by brilliant splashes of description; but with “The Gilded Age,” which was produced in the same year in collaboration with Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, the humorist began to evolve into the philosopher. “Tom Sawyer,” appearing in 1876, was a veritable manual of boy nature, and its sequel, “Huckleberry Finn,” which was published nine years later, was not only an advanced treatise in the same science, but a most moving study of the workings of the untutored human soulⒶtextual note in boy and man. “The Prince and the Pauper,” 1882;Ⓐtextual note “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,” 1890Ⓐtextual note, and “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” firstⒶtextual note published serially in 1893–94Ⓐtextual note, were all alive with a comprehensive and passionate [begin page 661] sympathy,Ⓐtextual note to which their humor was quite subordinate, although Mark Twain never wrote, and probably never will write, a book that could be read without laughter. His humor is as irrepressible as Lincoln’s, and like thatⒶtextual note it bubbles out on the most solemn occasions; but still, again like Lincoln’s, it has a way of seeming, in spite of the surface incongruity, to belong there. But it was in the “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” whoseⒶtextual note anonymous serial publicationⒶtextual note in 1894–95 betrayed some critics of reputation into the absurdity of attributing it to other authors, notwithstanding the characteristic evidences of its paternity that obtruded themselves on every page, that Mark Twain became most distinctly a prophet of humanity. HereⒶtextual note at lastⒶtextual note was a book with nothing ephemeral about it—one that will reach the elemental human heart as well among the flying-machinesⒶtextual note of the next centuryⒶtextual note as it does among the automobiles of to-day, or as it would have done among the stage-coachesⒶtextual note of a hundred years ago.

And side by side with this spiritual growth had come a growth in knowledge and in culture. The Mark Twain of “The Innocents,” keen-eyed, quick of understanding, and full of fresh, eager interest in all Europe had to show, but frankly avowing that he “did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was,” had developed into an accomplished scholar and a man of the world for whom the globe had few surprises left. The Mark Twain of 1895 might conceivably have written “The Innocents Abroad,” although it would have required an effort to put himself in the necessary frame of mind; but the Mark Twain of 1869Ⓐtextual note could no more have written “Joan of Arc” than he could have deciphered the Maya hieroglyphics.

In 1873,Ⓐtextual note the family spent some months in England and Scotland, and Mr. Clemens lectured for a few weeks in London. Another European journey followed in 1878.

“A Tramp Abroad” was the result of this tour, which lasted eighteen months. “The Prince and the Pauper,” “Life on the Mississippi,” and “Huckleberry Finn” appeared in quick succession in 1882, 1883, and 1885. Considerably more amusing than anything the humorist ever wrote was the fact that the trustees of some village libraries in New England solemnly voted that “Huckleberry Finn,” whose power of moral uplift has hardly been surpassed by any book of our time, was too demoralizing to be allowed on their shelves.

All this time fortune had been steadily favorable, and Mark Twain had been spoken of by the pressⒶtextual note sometimes with admirationⒶtextual note as an example of the financial success possible in literature, and sometimes with uncharitable envyⒶtextual note as a haughty millionaire, forgetful of his humble friends. But now began the series of unfortunate investments that swept away the accumulations of half a lifetime of hard work, and left him loaded with debts incurred by other men. In 1885 he financed the publishing house of Charles L. Webster & Company,Ⓐtextual note in New York. The firm began business with the prestige of a brilliant coupⒶtextual note. It secured the publication of the Memoirs of General Grant, which achieved a sale of more than 600,000 volumes. The first check received by the Grant heirs was for $200,000, and this was followed a few months later by one for $150,000. These are the largest checks ever paid for an author’s work on either side of the Atlantic. MeanwhileⒶtextual note Mr. Clemens was spending great sums on a type-setting machine of such seductive ingenuity as to captivate the imagination of everybody who saw it. It worked to perfection, but it was too [begin page 662] complicated and expensive for commercial use, and, after sinking a fortune in it between 1886 and 1889, Mark Twain had to write off the whole investment as a dead loss.

On top of this the publishing house, which had been supposed to be doing a profitable business, turned out to have been incapably conducted, and all the money that came into its hands was lost. Mark Twain contributed $65,000 in efforts to save its life, but to no purpose;Ⓐtextual note and when it finally failed, he found that it had not only absorbed everything he had put in, but had incurred liabilities of $96,000, of which less than one-third was covered by assets. HeⒶtextual note could easily have avoided any legal liability for the debts;Ⓐtextual note but as the credit of the company had been based largely upon his name, he felt bound in honor to pay them. In 1895–96 he tookⒶtextual note his wife and second daughter onⒶtextual note a lecturing tour around the world;Ⓐtextual note wrote “Following the Equator,” and cleared off the obligations of the house in full.

TheⒶtextual note years 1897, 1898, and 1899 wereⒶtextual note spent in England, Switzerland, and Austria. Vienna took the family to its heart, and Mark Twain achieved such a popularity among all classes there as is rarely won by a foreigner anywhere. He saw the manufacture of a good deal of history in that time. It was his fortune, for instance, to be present in the Austrian Reichsrath on the memorable occasion when it was invaded by sixty policemen, and sixteen refractory members were dragged roughly out of the hall. That momentous event in the progress of parliamentary government profoundly impressed him.Ⓐtextual note

Mark Twain, although so characteristically American in every fiber, does not appeal to Americans alone, nor even to the English-speaking race.Ⓐtextual note His work has stood the test of translation into French, German, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, and Magyar. That is pretty good evidence that it possesses the universal quality that marks the master. Another evidence of its fidelity to human nature is the readiness with which it lends itself to dramatization.Ⓐtextual note “The Gilded Age,” “Tom Sawyer,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” and “Pudd’nhead Wilson” have all beenⒶtextual note successful onⒶtextual note the stage.

In the thirty-eight years of his literary activity Mark Twain has seen generation after generationⒶtextual note of “American humorists” rise, expand into sudden popularity, and disappear, leaving hardly a memory behind. If he has not written himself out like them, if his place in literature has become every year more assured, it is because his “humor” has been something radically different from theirs. It has been irresistibly laughter-provoking, but its sole end has never been to make people laugh. Its more important purpose has been to make them think and feel. And with the progress of the years Mark Twain’s own thoughts have become finer, his own feelings deeper and more responsive. Sympathy with the suffering, hatred of injustice and oppression, and enthusiasm for all that tends to make the world a more tolerable place for mankind to live in, have grown with his accumulating knowledge of life as it is. That is why Mark Twain has become a classic, not only at home, but in all lands whose people read and think about the common joys and sorrows of humanity.

PROPOSITION FOR A POSTAL CHECK

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Proposition for a Postal Check.♦Ⓐtextual note

Statesman. Ⓐtextual note You were proposing to distribute cheapⒶtextual note books and a multitude of other articlesⒶtextual note by mail. To order them from headquarters——Ⓐtextual note

Wisdom Seeker.—WillⒶtextual note be unhandy and inconvenient? Yes, it will. I have been thinking out a way to remedy that. It is necessary to find a smooth and easy way out of a couple of difficulties which at present badly cripple purchase and sale in things of trifling cost—and in things of largerⒶtextual note cost, too.

S. What are they?

W.S. Well, the first one is this. Take books, for instance.Ⓐtextual note The bookseller cannot keep samples of all Ⓐtextual note books in stock—he hasn’t room. When he is out of a book he offers to order it for you, but if you are the average man you say never mind, let it alone. That is a damage. Because of it, a book which shouldⒶtextual note sell ten thousandⒶtextual note copies sellsⒶtextual note only three thousandⒶtextual note. Again, you read a review of a book, and want a copy; but if you have to go all the way to the bookstore to get it or order it—well, if you are the average man, that cools your desire and you drop the matter out of your mind, or you forget it. Another Ⓐtextual note damage:Ⓐtextual note twenty thousandⒶtextual note copies fail of purchase in that Ⓐtextual note way. And so,Ⓐtextual note a book which would sell thirty thousandⒶtextual note copies if things were handier, sellsⒶtextual note only three thousandⒶtextual note.

S. What is the other difficulty?

W.S. This: that there is at present no good way to beguile a man into ordering the book himself Ⓐtextual note. Therein lies the prodigious damage—the incalculable damage!Ⓐtextual note If he could order it without stirring from his chair, and without any trouble or bother, the usual three-thousand-copyⒶtextual note book would sell—well, a ton or twoⒶtextual note. But there is no way. If he proposes to send postage-stampsⒶtextual note to the publisher, he finds he is just out of stamps; if he needs to send several dollars, his check will not be good with a publisher who doesn’t know him; if he encloseⒶtextual note bank notesⒶtextual note—but that is too risky; very well, there’s no help for it—Ⓐtextual notehe must go to the postofficeⒶtextual note and get a postal money-order, with all which that means of bother and red tape and waste of time.Ⓐtextual note

S. Isn’t the postal order a convenience?

W.S. Yes. So is the stage-coach.Ⓐtextual note

S. But is Ⓐtextual note there so much bother and waste about it?

W.S. Yes, in Austria, and it must be so in all countries. Here is a man who sends me a money-order for two dollars from Kaltenleutgeben, ten miles from Vienna. The

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♦Written in Austria five years ago, i.e. in 1898–9. M.T. [begin page 664] pen-work in it consists of 319 letters—the equivalent of sixty-fourⒶtextual note words! When I have a sentence of twentyⒶtextual note words already planned out in my head, I can swiftly put it on paper in one minute. Then how long would it take me to fill the blanks in this money-order with those sixty-fourⒶtextual note words?

S. Three minutes.

W.S. It is a mistake. The words consist of unfamiliar names Ⓐtextual note, and with figures about which I must be very careful, lest I make a costly mistake. It would take me six Ⓐtextual note minutes.

S. Is that a serious matter?

W.S. It looks so to me. But that isn’t all. The sixty-fourⒶtextual note words have to be also entered in the postmaster’s record-book. Six minutes more. At the other end of the line a number of the words have to be written again. The mere penmanship expended on this two dollars’ worth of money-order has cost about twenty minutes—and time is money.

S. It really has a ratherⒶtextual note serious aspect.

W.S. We haven’t reached the end, yet. The man who sent Ⓐtextual note the order lost fifteenⒶtextual note minutes in his trip to the postofficeⒶtextual note and back. Add that: thirty-five minutes altogether. All for two dollars.Ⓐtextual note

S. It grows formidable.

W.S. Yes. An output of a hundred thousand money-orders per day with a total loss of aⒶtextual note half hour’s time on eachⒶtextual note would be sureⒶtextual note to rob the country’s industries of fifty thousandⒶtextual note hours per day of more or less valuable time. For it is time taken from the ten hours of daylight. In a year the country’s industries would lose in wasted labor-time about 5,500 years. At $600 a year for wages, and $600 more for the product of the labor, the country’s cash loss is more than $6,000,000 for the year.

S. Of course that is disastrous, but does any country buy a hundred thousandⒶtextual note money-orders per day—working-dayⒶtextual note?

W.S. It is only one and a quarter orders per working-day for each thousandⒶtextual note of the population of the United States.

S. Will your scheme save that wasted time?

W.S. Substantially. Nine-tenths of it, let us say.

S. Then you are not proposing to restrict it to books?

W.S. By no means! Books are not even 1 per cent of the commerce the scheme would cover.Ⓐtextual note

S. Very good. What is the scheme?

W.S. Ⓐtextual note I will try to developⒶtextual note it. When you enclose half a dozen postage-stampsⒶtextual note or a bank note to a reputable firm, what risk are you running?

S. Merely the risk that some thief may steal the enclosure on the road.

W.S. But it is Ⓐtextual note a risk?Ⓐtextual note

S. Yes. Of course it is.

W.S. When you enclose a check drawn to the order of a reputable firm are you running any risk?

S. No.

W.S. Is the firm running a risk?

[begin page 665] S. Yes; if you are a bankrupt stranger and the firm choose to chance you and endorse and collect.

W.S. Which the firm wouldn’t do?

S. I think not.

W.S. Now, then, couldn’t the Government Ⓐtextual note issue blank checksⒶtextual note for you or anybody to fill up?

S. The Government!Ⓐtextual note How do you mean?

W.S. Well, the postage-stampⒶtextual note is really the Government’sⒶtextual note check drawn to “bearer”—and so is the greenback. When you ship these things through the mail the GovernmentⒶtextual note runs no risk, but you Ⓐtextual note do. Now then, why shouldn’t the GovernmentⒶtextual note sell youⒶtextual note checks with no Ⓐtextual note risk attaching, to either itself or you? Checks to be sent in an envelopeⒶtextual note, along with your orderⒶtextual note, like any other checks.

S. Checks to “bearer?”

W.S. No. Checks to “order.”

S. How does that differ from a postal money-orderⒶtextual note?

W.S. In convenience, handiness, and economy of time. I will explain. This check should be a simple thing, and as small as a post-card, or smaller; and it should say “Pay to order of ( blank for name Ⓐtextual note)” These checks should be of fiveⒶtextual note several values♦Ⓐtextual note (5 cents, 25Ⓐtextual note cents, $1 and $3 and $5Ⓐtextual note), and the figure-valueⒶtextual note should be printed large on the check and also a fewⒶtextual note times in smallⒶtextual note letters or figures, after the custom used in the case of the greenback.Ⓐtextual note At the postofficeⒶtextual note you would buy a basketful of these checks, of the several denominationsⒶtextual note, and carry them home and lock them up in your desk, and when you wished to buy a book,Ⓐtextual note or a patent medicine, or a fountain pen, or an umbrella, or a Waterbury,Ⓐtextual note or a theatreⒶtextual note ticket, or wanted to subscribe to a magazine, or a charity, or a church-fund, or anything, you could fill-in the check-blank andⒶtextual note attend to it in two minutes; you could ship any amount you pleased, and do it without stirring out ofⒶtextual note your chair.

[begin page 666]

S. It looks very good.

W.S. Dear sir, I believeⒶtextual note it is Ⓐtextual note good. The GovernmentⒶtextual note is the all-sufficient endorser; the check is not collectable by an unknown person; no one runs any risk; the thing is speedy and convenient, and the slow and cumbersome postal money-order (the American one, at least,)Ⓐtextual note is done away with. Think of the lost time we spoke of; but the poor and the Government must lose it on the money-order, since the poorⒶtextual note have no safe way to send money but that. It is a pathetic and unchristian fact—but a fact. IfⒶtextual note we get this scheme going there won’t be a man, woman or child in America too poor to keep a bank account and carry checks in his or herⒶtextual note pocket to draw upon it with. And it will be a very goodⒶtextual note bank, too—the United States Treasury.Ⓐtextual note

S. Would the checks be single, like bank notes?

W.S. Some of them. The high-figure ones with a stub on the end for you to tear off and keep.Ⓐtextual note

S. What material would you use for your Universal-Check-and-Everybody’s-Time-SaverⒶtextual note?

W.S. Greenback-paper, I think, so as to beat the counterfeiter. In Great Britain, English bank-note paper.Ⓐtextual note

S. Size and shape?

W.S. The shape of the greenback, but as much as a third smaller, and by that much handier to carry in purse or vest pocket.Ⓐtextual note

S. Why do you want it handy for the pocket?

W.S. Because as long as the blank in it was unfilled it could pass from hand to hand as money.

S. Come, you are restoring the old postal currency!

W.S. Yes, but with a large difference.Ⓐtextual note With the blank filled you can send it through the mails without fear of thieves.

S. Suppose a village postmasterⒶtextual note should suddenly be called upon to cash postal checksⒶtextual note to the amount of a thousand dollars—how is he going to find that money?

W.S. You know how he would find it to-day to pay that amount in money-orders, don’t you?

S. Yes. The GovernmentⒶtextual note would prepare him. Let us suppose the orders originated in New York, and theⒶtextual note receiving village was in the middle of Arkansas;Ⓐtextual note the GovernmentⒶtextual note would send the thousand dollars and it would arrive at the village in time to cash the orders.

W.S. But supposeⒶtextual note each order was for a dollar. Ten clerksⒶtextual note would fill a part ofⒶtextual note the blanks in the thousand orders; enter the thousand sums and the two thousand names and addressesⒶtextual note of payer and payéⒶtextual note in their books; then the thousand sums and the two thousand names would be written out on a blanket and the same mailed to the Arkansas village along with a thousand dollars in one-dollar bills. It would take each of the ten clerks nine hoursⒶtextual note to do the red-taping for hisⒶtextual note hundred money-orders. It is tenⒶtextual note days’ working-time for one man; it costs $40Ⓐtextual note in wages.Ⓐtextual note All that labor and expense to ship a thousand dollars to Arkansas. Add five hundred hours wasted by the thousand senders—$250 or more.Ⓐtextual note Isn’tⒶtextual note it too costly in time and wages?Ⓐtextual note

[begin page 667] S. It looks so.

W.S. But suppose the thousand dollars went from a thousand different villages? Could the GovernmentⒶtextual note come to the Arkansas postmaster’sⒶtextual note rescue in that case?

S. I don’t know, but I suppose not.Ⓐtextual note But how are youⒶtextual note proposing to protect your Ⓐtextual note village-postmaster when a thousand-dollar cold-wave strikes him?

W.S. The thousand checks would arrive drawn to the order of this, that and the other villager. The village banker would know the men, and would cash the checks at a trifling discount.

S. Suppose there was no bank?

W.S. The village storekeepersⒶtextual note would perform the banker’s function.Ⓐtextual note

S. Then what would they Ⓐtextual note do with the checks?

W.S. Endorse them and pay their debts to the big merchants in the big city with them.Ⓐtextual note

S. And what would the big merchants do with them?

W.S. Endorse them and send a clerk to the general postofficeⒶtextual note to collect the money. The GovernmentⒶtextual note keeps a large money-reserve in great general postofficesⒶtextual note.

S. It seems sound and simple.Ⓐtextual note Would you expect a large sale of these checks?

W.S. Yes. I should expect fifty million people to buy an average of five dollars’ worth a year.

S. Isn’t that a rather large order?Ⓐtextual note

W.S. Ah, well, you see, they are so seductively handy! You must not overlook that feature. I am trading on human nature, now. A man is always an easy victim to handiness. There are a thousand things which he will not put himself to the least trouble about, but if you make them perfectly handy and convenient, he is your prey. Consider what the postage-stampⒶtextual note and the telephone have done. When I was a boy I knew none but merchants and professionally-busyⒶtextual note people who wrote more than about one letter in a month or two. Postage was 10, 15, and 25 cents,Ⓐtextual note and one had to walk half a mile to post a letter. The cheap and handy stamp and post-cardⒶtextual note and the handy letter-box have changed all that; in our day the kitchen girl writes more letters in six months than the United States Senator used to write in a year. When we used to have to go all the way down town to order things which we didn’t absolutely need, we did without them. But nowⒶtextual note by telephone we order every unnecessary thing that comesⒶtextual note into our heads.Ⓐtextual note The telephone has doubled the world’s local business—yes, and made domestic life infamously expensive. The postal checkⒶtextual note will greatlyⒶtextual note increase commerce in books and all sorts of little merchandise, and make every man and woman in the land spend from $5 to $100 more per year than he or sheⒶtextual note spends now.

S. This is all an advantage to the GovernmentⒶtextual note?

W.S. And the express companies? And general commerce? And manufacturers? Yes. Because you must multiply the output of a cheap article ten-fold above its present output,Ⓐtextual note for one thing. The letter that carries an order and a check must bear a postage-stampⒶtextual note, and the mails will carry back a considerable shareⒶtextual note of the articles ordered—a couple of profitableⒶtextual note advantages for the GovernmentⒶtextual note.

S. Are there other advantages for the GovernmentⒶtextual note?

[begin page 668] W.S. BlankⒶtextual note checks will get into circulation,Ⓐtextual note as money.Ⓐtextual note A percentageⒶtextual note of them will get worn out or lost. They have been paid for, and the GovernmentⒶtextual note has the money.

S. Will that hurt silver? Will it drive it out?

W.S. The great majority of users of the checks will not buy them oftener than once a month, and then not so much as a dollar’s worth, perhaps. Those people buy with silver, not greenbacksⒶtextual note.

S. YouⒶtextual note feel sure that this scheme will increase the output of cheap articlesⒶtextual note?

W.S. Yes, ten-fold,Ⓐtextual note I am quite sure of it. I know what other people are, because I know what I am myself. The non-existence of the handy postal checkⒶtextual note saves me a good dealⒶtextual note of money every year; for it is the instant Ⓐtextual note ability to order books and things without leaving my chair that beguiles meⒶtextual note; if I must go down town to leave an order at a merchant’s or a bookstall, or evenⒶtextual note down stairsⒶtextual note to struggle with the telephone, it gives me time to reflect— and that is fatal to commerce Ⓐtextual note. I have never bought a postal orderⒶtextual note; I would rather go hungry for a thing a century than take all that trouble about it; but I would keep a basketful of those postal checks in my desk all the time and ruin myself every year.

S. What becomes of the retailerⒶtextual note in the towns and villages and cities?

W.S. He will order and sell double as many cheap articlesⒶtextual note as he dares to order now.Ⓐtextual note

S. Why?Ⓐtextual note

W.S. Ⓐtextual note Because the great postal checkⒶtextual note sales will advertise the thingsⒶtextual note finely and he will get the benefit of that advertising. And there is one kind of customer that can never be taken from him.

S. What customer is that?

W.S. The men and womenⒶtextual note that won’t buy an article until they have had a chance to examine it.

S. True. If you could persuade the GovernmentⒶtextual note to try your scheme right away, when would your ten-fold boomⒶtextual note begin?

W.S. It would begin before very long; I think it would not be a long wait.

S. And the extent of it?

W.S. When it was under full headway I think it quite likely that a cheap and useful noveltyⒶtextual note that sells three thousandⒶtextual note examplesⒶtextual note by the present methods would sell a hundred thousandⒶtextual note then.

S. Would the GovernmentⒶtextual note think this postal check scheme a wise and promising one?

W.S. Well, the GovernmentⒶtextual note could not absolutely know Ⓐtextual note without trying it. But why not try?Ⓐtextual note The cost of a trial on a small scale would be very light.

S. What custom should it first bid for?

W.S. At first forⒶtextual note that which I have heretoforeⒶtextual note indicated: that which is too small for theⒶtextual note money-order traffic.

S. For instance—as to details?

W.S. One doesn’t take the trouble to buy a money-order for 10 cents, nor for 25, nor 50, nor for a dollar. If a person wants to send for an article which costs one of those sums, he must send stamps or a dollar bill. Thousands of people do that, every day, but many other thousands do not Ⓐtextual note do it,—merelyⒶtextual note because of the risk of loss by theft. The checks [begin page 669] would remove the temptation to steal, stop the stealing, and dispose of the fears of the sender. Three good things. These would justify the Government in trying the check-experiment on a small scale.

S. The removal of the temptation to steal is not without value.

W.S. Yes. The Government does not like to have its servants tempted, but at present there is no way to help it.♦Ⓐtextual note A merchant’s mail consists largely of envelopesⒶtextual note containing small bank-billsⒶtextual note. You have noticed that.

S. Yes.

W.S. In the postal-currency times they came by the basketful. This kind of small trade fell off heavily when the postal currency was abolished. But that currency was always unsafe and improper matter for the mails. By and by you will see everywhere this addition to mercantile advertisements: “Send by mail no form of money but postal checks and certified bank-checks.” Ⓐtextual note

Mark Twain.Ⓐtextual note

Vienna, Feb. 9Ⓐtextual note, 1899.

Ashcroft-Lyon Chronology

Late 1880s      Clemens meets Lyon at a card party at the home of their mutual friends, Franklin and Harriet Whitmore.
June 1902      Clemens buys stock in the Plasmon Company of America, of which Ashcroft is assistant manager.
October 1902      Lyon begins working as secretary for the Clemens family while they are living at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson.
October 1903      The Clemenses, accompanied by Lyon, leave for Italy, where they rent the Villa di Quarto near Florence.
5 June 1904      Olivia Clemens dies in Italy, after which Lyon takes on a more substantial role as Clemens’s household manager.
Summer 1904–Fall 1905      Clara is placed under the care of doctors, after suffering a nervous collapse brought on by grief over her mother’s death. She is not often with the family in New York City or in Dublin, New Hampshire.
18 June 1905      Clemens writes Clara that she and Jean should compile his letters for publication. Lyon is to help them and share in the royalties.
[begin page 670] January 1906      Albert Bigelow Paine receives permission from Clemens to write his biography; he begins to spend time with the family and has access to Clemens’s personal papers.
February 1906      Jean begins treatment by Dr. Frederick Peterson, an authority on epilepsy.
27 August 1906      Paine contracts with Harper and Brothers to write the biography.
25 October 1906      At the urging of Lyon and Dr. Peterson, Jean moves to a sanatorium at Katonah, New York. She is a resident there for fifteen months.
Late December 1906      Clemens considers making Paine his literary executor.
14 January 1907      Clemens amends his will to name Clara as his literary executor.
19 February–28 March 1907      Clara is on a concert tour throughout New England.
7 May 1907      Lyon is given power of attorney over Clemens’s affairs, including the authority to sign checks.
8 June 1907      Clemens deeds to Lyon a cottage and twenty acres of land on his property in Redding, Connecticut, where a new house is under construction.
8 June–22 July 1907      Clemens visits England, accompanied by Ashcroft, to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University.
December 1907      The creditors of the Plasmon Company of America file a petition for involuntary bankruptcy, which the court approves a month later.
January 1908      Lyon begins to mistrust Paine’s handling of Clemens’s letters and informs Clemens of her misgivings.
9 January 1908      Jean leaves the Katonah sanatorium and moves to a cottage in Greenwich, Connecticut, with sisters Edith and Mildred Cowles and Marguerite (Bébé) Schmitt.
May 1908      Jean and her companions move to a cottage in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where they are nearer to Dr. Peterson.
16 May–9 September 1908      Clara is on a European concert tour.
18 June 1908      Clemens moves into his new home in Redding, Connecticut, ultimately called Stormfield.
18 September 1908      Burglars break into Stormfield early in the morning and are chased off, then captured.
[begin page 671] 26 September 1908      Jean departs for Berlin with two companions and lives there under the care of Dr. Hofrath von Renvers.
1 October 1908      Clemens’s butler, Claude Beuchotte, and a number of other servants leave Stormfield, allegedly in reaction to Lyon’s harsh treatment.
2 October 1908      Clara moves into an apartment in Stuyvesant Square in New York City.
28 October 1908      The Mark Twain Library in Redding opens in temporary quarters. Lyon greatly assists Clemens in its establishment.
November 1908      Ashcroft becomes a director of the new Plasmon Milk Products Company.
14 November 1908      Clemens signs a document giving both Ashcroft and Lyon broad powers of attorney. He later does not remember signing it.
17 December 1908      Clemens instructs Jean to return from Berlin.
22 December 1908      The Mark Twain Company is officially incorporated, with Lyon and Ashcroft on its board of directors. Ashcroft also serves as manager and secretary.
Christmas 1908      Clemens makes a gift to Lyon of $500 to be used in renovating the cottage he gave her.
January 1909      Jean returns from Berlin and moves to a farm on Long Island with paid caretakers.
February 1909      Paine goes abroad to retrace Clemens’s 1867 Innocents Abroad travels.
23 February 1909      Lyon, suffering from nervous prostration, leaves for several days’ recuperation at the Heublein Hotel in Hartford.
24 February 1909      Ashcroft informs Clemens of his engagement to Lyon.
Early March 1909      Jean moves to a private care facility, Wahnfried, in Montclair, New Jersey.
Early March 1909      Clemens agrees to an audit of the household finances as proposed by Clara, who has begun to suspect that Ashcroft and Lyon are dishonest. H. H. Rogers will oversee the investigation, and Ashcroft is asked to voluntarily assist by handing over the relevant records. At this time, Clemens is not convinced that Ashcroft and Lyon are guilty of any wrongdoing.
13 March 1909      The “great Cleaning-Up Day.” A number of documents are brought for Clemens to sign, detailing Lyon’s and Ashcroft’s duties and responsibilities as well as some financial arrangements.
[begin page 672] 14 March 1909      Clemens orally revokes Lyon’s 7 May 1907 power of attorney to sign checks.
18 March 1909      Ashcroft and Lyon marry.
31 March–
6 April 1909      Clemens and Clara go to New York City. From there, Clemens, Ashcroft, and Rogers go to Norfolk, Virginia, for the opening of Rogers’s Virginian Railway.
2 April 1909      Ashcroft informs Clemens that Clara has discharged butler Horace Hazen.
7 April 1909      Clemens sees Clara in New York on his way home from Norfolk and questions her about Hazen. She insists that she did not dismiss him; later Hazen claims that Ashcroft forced him to say that she had.
13 April 1909      Clemens attends Clara’s concert at Mendelssohn Hall in New York City. Lyon and Ashcroft do not attend, as formerly planned, and instead they summon Dr. Peterson to confer about Jean’s condition.
15 April 1909      Clara secures permission from Dr. Peterson for Jean to come to Stormfield for a week. Clemens gives Lyon a month’s notice to leave Stormfield. Claude Beuchotte returns as Clemens’s butler.
22–25 April 1909      Lyon packs to leave before Jean’s arrival. Clara notices that her mother’s carnelian beads are missing and accuses Lyon of stealing them.
Late April 1909      Paine returns from his trip abroad; Jean arrives to live at Stormfield.
29 April 1909      Ashcroft writes to assure Clemens that he and Lyon have been handling his affairs “honestly and conscientiously.”
2 May 1909      Clemens begins writing “The Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” prefacing it with Ashcroft’s letter.
Early May 1909      Miss Watson, one of Rogers’s secretaries, is put in charge of investigating the Ashcrofts’ handling of Clemens’s money.
9 or 10 May 1909      Clemens learns from Harry Lounsbury that work on Lyon’s house cost close to $3,500, not $1,500, as Lyon reported. According to Lounsbury, she spent close to $2,000 of Clemens’s money before he offered her a loan at Christmas, 1908.
19 May 1909      H. H. Rogers dies in New York City. Clemens puts the Ashcroft-Lyon investigation into the hands of attorney John B. Stanchfield.
[begin page 673] 29 May 1909      Clemens revokes in writing Lyon’s 7 May 1907 power of attorney to sign checks.
1 June 1909      In Clemens’s bank in New York City, Paine discovers the power of attorney that Clemens signed for Ashcroft and Lyon on 14 November 1908. Clemens revokes it that day.
8 June 1909      Ashcroft and Lyon leave the country for an extended stay in England. Ashcroft conducts business there for Clemens and the Plasmon Milk Products Company.
14 July 1909      Lyon returns to the United States after discovering that Clemens wants the Redding cottage returned to him and has put a lien on her property in Farmington, Connecticut.
17 and 20 July 1909      Clara, Jean, and attorney Charles Lark visit Lyon’s cottage to negotiate its transfer back to Clemens and arrange her departure.
27 July 1909      Ashcroft returns from England.
30 July 1909      Ashcroft writes Stanchfield protesting his and Clemens’s treatment of Lyon. He lists various conditions to be met by Clemens before they can consider all business between them finished. The letter is transcribed in the Appendix “Ralph W. Ashcroft to John B. Stanchfield, 30 July 1909.”
4 August 1909      The New York Times prints Ashcroft’s invective against Clara: “Ashcroft Accuses Miss Clara Clemens.”
17 August 1909      Clemens’s final will gives Clara and Paine joint authority over his published and unpublished literary works.
7 September 1909      Last date recorded in “The Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript.”
10 September 1909      Clemens, through his lawyers, reaches a settlement with the Ashcrofts to avoid any lawsuits (except for a few minor details); Ashcroft agrees to resign his position with the Mark Twain Company.
13 September 1909      An article in the New York Times, “Mark Twain Suits All Off,” presents Ashcroft’s false claims that Clemens and Clara have retracted all their charges and that he has been asked to remain an officer of the Mark Twain Company. Clemens makes no public comment.
26 September 1909      Final details of the settlement are worked out; Clemens severs all connection with the Ashcrofts.
6 October 1909      Clara marries Ossip Gabrilowitsch. In December they depart for Europe, where they plan to live.
24 December 1909      Jean dies at Stormfield.
[begin page 674] 21 April 1910      Clemens dies at Stormfield.
13 June 1927      Ashcroft and Lyon divorce, having separated on 24 May 1923. Ashcroft remarries on 1 October 1927.
8 January 1947      Ashcroft dies in Toronto.
4 December 1958      Lyon dies in New York City.
19 November 1962      Clara dies in San Diego, California.

RALPH W. ASHCROFT TO JOHN B. STANCHFIELD,
30 July 1909

---

[begin page 675]

ralph w. ashcroft
24 stone street
new york

July 30, 1909.

John B. Stanchfield, Esq.,

5 Nassau Street, New York.

Dear Mr. Stanchfield:

As doubtless you have been informed, yesterday, together with my attorney, Mr. R. A. Mansfield Hobbs, I had a talk with your Mr. Lark, and at his request write you this letterⒶtextual note.

My surprise in London at hearing that Mrs. Ashcroft’s real estate in Connecticut had been attached in a suit against her by Mr. Clemens, turned to amazement when I discovered on my return on the 27th inst. on the S. S. Caronia that she had been inveigled into transferring her cottage and land at Redding to Mr. Clemens.

As you are aware, Mrs. Ashcroft returned from Europe two weeks before me, immediatelyⒶtextual note on receipt of information regarding the attachment, solely for the purpose of protecting her name and reputation. Three days after her arrival, without being permitted the benefit of counsel, when alone with her mother in the cottage, and, as she says, by threats and intimidations, and what she is led to believe, misrepresentations, she was induced to sign a paper, the purport of which she knew not, and give a check for $1,500., the amount of the mortgage she had raised on the property. All of which transpired at a time when, as her doctor says, she was a physical and nervous wreck.

Mrs. Ashcroft was with Mr. Clemens for about seven years, first, when Mrs. Clemens was alive, as his secretary, and, on her decease, and owing to the disability of the two daughters, was necessarily forced to take complete charge of Mr. Clemens’ household. As Mr. H. H. Rogers said a few days before he died: “When Mrs. Clemens died, Clemens needed such a person as Miss Lyon at that crisis of his life, to look after him and his affairs, and she came to the front and has stayed at the front all these years, and no one has any right toⒶtextual note criticize her.” You personally are familiar with the position she latterly occupied with the family. It was that, practically, of a daughter. She was Mr. Clemens’ hostess and person of affairs. Her position is more adequately described by him in this letter to his daughter:

The present differences,Ⓐtextual note as you are aware, originated through women’sⒶtextual note jealousy, Mr. Clemens at first siding with Miss Lyon. Latterly her opponents solely having his ear, his leaning seems to be in their direction. At the incipiency of the matter, Miss Lyon courted a rigid investigation, and I, at the request of Mr. Clemens, spent nearly two months of my time making up the account to be submitted to Mr. H. H. Rogers, who, as you know, had one of his accountants go over the same, who reported that the account was correct. Unfortunately, Mr. Rogers died before this could be reported to Mr. Clemens, who then turned the account over to you; and the account and figures you have are mine, thus submitted, without, however, being completely classified, as, on the decease of his father, Mr. H. H. Rogers, Jr., refused to allow the accountant to have anything further to do with the matter.

Mr. Lark expressly states that Mr. Clemens or your office do not charge Miss Lyon with any moral turpitude, embezzlement or defalcation. Should any such charge be made by any responsible person, please consider the after part of this letter withdrawn, and we will immediately prove to the satisfaction of a court or jury that not $1. was ever misappropriated or misapplied by Miss Lyon, and will justify her reputation by holding those responsible for the defamation, in addition to enforcing whatever rights she may have in the matter.

This letter is not alone to you in the capacity of Mr. Clemens’ attorney, but as an old friend of all concerned. You have known Miss Lyon for several years, and I think that you will agree that any imputation of dishonesty against her is cruel, unjust and malicious. She is hurt to the quick; and this matter and its attendant notoriety have made her a nervous wreck. She loved Mr. Clemens as a daughter; [begin page 677] anticipated his every wish and desire; labored day and night for seven years for him, and indulged in a sort of hero-worship; and the return that Mr. Clemens made her for these services and sacrifices has broken her down in health and spirit.

No accounts were ever kept of the household expenditures, nor was Miss Lyon ever requested or instructed to do so. The items Mr. Lark seems to question are cash items. According to Mr. Rogers’ audit, during this time $6789. was drawn in cash, an average of $282. per month—a mere bagatelle when you consider the receipts and disbursements passing through her hands, which were: receipts, $342,751.; disbursements, $279,536. Out of this $6789., part of the servants’ wages was paid—the pay-roll for servants amounting to about $5,000.; also, out of this $6789., the sum of approximately $3,000. was paid in cash to Miss Clara Clemens for her accompanist, Mr. Wark, her manager, Mr. Charlton, part of the expense of her concert trips, a trip to Nova Scotia, and many other items. Every cent of the balance was used for the expenses of the house, traveling expenses, and other payments in Mr. Clemens’ or his daughters’ interests.

As a practical man, you are aware that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to go back two years, and take a stub entry showing an amount of say $100. drawn in cash, and technically account for each cent of it. The only records ever kept were the brief stub entries, which was the manner in vogue when Miss Lyon assumed her duties. It can only be said that not $1. was spent dishonestly, and it was all disbursed for the best interests of Mr. Clemens. Never during her administration was she askedⒶtextual note to make an accounting or to keep any record of cash expenditures. She was practically a member of the family and treated as such.

There was no occasion for Mr. Clemens to attach her property, especially in her absence temporarily in Europe, and the resultant notoriety is only chargeable to him. The bone of contention seems to have been the cottage, and its acquisition by Mr. Clemens could have been accomplished amicably and equitably to the satisfaction of all, on her return, instead of by the discreditable means employed. I am advised that Mrs. Ashcroft would have little difficulty in setting the deed aside; there was no consideration for the transfer; it was procured by threats, intimidation and duress; she did not know what she was signing, only that it was represented to her that if she signed such a paper, it would mean a complete ending of the matter.

I think until my talk with Mr. Lark yesterday, by his surprise, you were unaware of the following agreement:

Mr. Clemens gave this cottage and 20 acres of land to Miss Lyon as some appreciation of her unique and extraordinary services to him. When she wanted to mortgage it for the purpose of raising money to rehabilitate it, Mr. Clemens told her to use what money of his, was, in her judgment, necessary for that purpose. This she did to the amount of about $2,700., with the full knowledge of Mr. Clemens, who voluntarily made her a presentⒶtextual note of $500. of this amount as per the following:

Consequently Mr. Clemens has, by the tactics alluded to, become possessed of the record title to the cottage: has my personal notes for $982.47; is under agreement with me to take my notes for the balance of the money he loaned; has taken back his present of $500. to Miss Lyon; has $1,500. in money, the proceeds of the mortgage (which we do not know whether the deed recited or not, and which mortgage, so far as we are aware, has not been, as yet, satisfied with the proceeds of the same, to wit: the said $1,500.): has not repaid Mrs. Ashcroft the sum of approximately $100. to $150. recently expended on the cottage (details of which I can furnish later.)

I have endeavored to give you by this long letter, both sides of the controversy. Any further details that you wish that I can supply, please ask me for them. Your representative, Mr. Lark, at our conference yesterday at Mr. R. A. Mansfield Hobbs’ office, wanted to know my attitude, which briefly is:

Neither Mrs. Ashcroft nor I have any desire to be belligerent or litigious, but we are both extremely hurt by Mr. Clemens’ actions, attitude and ingratitude (I personally having performed many services for him for several years under sometimes difficult and trying circumstances, without any compensation whatsoever, [begin page 679] but purely out of my fondness and respect for him), and fully intend to protect our rights and Mrs. Ashcroft’s reputation before our friends and the public, regardless of whom it will now affect. If this can be accomplished without further litigation and notoriety, we shall be pleased, but the following conditions must be complied with, not that I state them arbitrarily,Ⓐtextual note but only in justice and protection to ourselves:

First: An exchange of general releases for all acts or actions to date, between Mr. Clemens and Mrs.Ⓐtextual note Ashcroft, and Mr. Clemens and me.

Second: A signed letter from Mr. Clemens to Mrs. Ashcroft, in about the following form:

Third: Satisfaction of the mortgage on the property at Redding, with the $1,500. received from Mrs. Ashcroft for that purpose.

Fourth: Withdrawal of the attachment on Mrs. Ashcroft’s property at Farmington, Conn.

Fifth: Return of my notes, and release from my obligation to provide further notes.

Sixth: Return of the present of $500. to Mrs. Ashcroft, and reimbursement of the recent expenditures on the cottage, amounting to about $100. toⒶtextual note $150., details to be furnished by me.

Seventh: I should be equitably reimbursed for my two months’Ⓐtextual note work and expenses, on the accounting and auditing, which I made at Mr. Clemens’Ⓐtextual note request.

---

On my part, if the above settlement is made, I will retire from my connection with the Mark Twain Company, and will consent to the cancellation of my contract with the Company, on payment of my percentage to date of cancellation, and payment of the Company’s debts contracted during my administration of its affairs; a certified copy of some suitable resolution of regret at my resignation and satisfaction with my services, to be passed by the directors, to be given to me; no interference with my work and the proposed contract with Sir Thomas Lipton in regard to the Plasmon Milk Products Co. to be permitted, Mr. E. E. Loomis now representing Mr. Clemens’ interests in the Company. Of course, it would be [begin page 680] understood that with the exchange of releases, no action would be brought by us to set aside the deed of the property at Redding, Conn.

With kind regards, and again assuring you as I did before my departure for England that I am only too willing to give you any and all information in my power, believe me,

Yours, sincerely,

PREVIOUS PUBLICATION

Autobiographical Dictations, March 1907–December 1909

1 Mar 1907: previously unpublished.

6 Mar 1907: previously unpublished.

26 Mar 1907: previously unpublished.

27 Mar 1907: previously unpublished.

28 Mar 1907: NAR 18, 118–19, partial.

8 Apr 1907: previously unpublished.

9 Apr 1907: SLC 1981.

10 Apr 1907: SLC 1981, partial.

11 Apr 1907: Salsbury 1965, 33–34, 38, 58, 60, 62, partial.

20 Apr 1907: previously unpublished.

18 May 1907: previously unpublished.

23 May 1907: AMT , 348–49; Lathem 2006, 4–5.

24 May 1907: previously unpublished.

26 May 1907: MTE , 358–66; AMT , 138–43.

29 May 1907: MTE , 19–22.

30 May 1907: MTE , 22–24, partial.

24 July 1907: Lathem 2006, 11–12.

25 July 1907: Lathem 2006, 22–23, 38–45.

[begin page 681] 26 July 1907: NAR 23, 169–71, partial; Lathem 2006, 45–46, 54–57.

30 July 1907: NAR 23, 171–73, partial; MTE , 320–23, partial; Lathem 2006, 57–59, 62–70.

10 Aug 1907: SLC 2010b, partial; L3 , 435, partial.

16 Aug 1907: MTE , 323–28; AMT , 350–53.

17 Aug 1907: MTE , 328–31; Lathem 2006, 79–80.

19 Aug 1907: MTE , 331–38, partial; Lathem 2006, 82–84, partial.

22 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 85–87.

23 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 88–89.

26 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 91–93.

27 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 93–94.

28 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 94–97.

29 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 97–101.

30 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 108–9, partial.

31 Aug 1907: Lathem 2006, 109–12.

4 Sept 1907: MTE , 239–43, partial.

6 Sept 1907: MTE , 338–42.

12 Sept 1907: MTE , 342–46.

13 Sept 1907: MTE , 14–19 [dated 7 Sept 1907], partial.

26 Sept 1907: previously unpublished.

1 Oct 1907: Lathem 2006, 30–32.

2 Oct 1907: Lathem 2006, 112–17.

3 Oct 1907: NAR 25, 489–94; MTE , 351–58; AMT , 154–58.

5 Oct 1907: Cooley 1991, 73–75, partial.

7 Oct 1907: previously unpublished.

10 Oct 1907: previously unpublished.

11 Oct 1907: MTE , 213–28, partial; AMT , 174–83.

18 Oct 1907: MTE , 7–10, partial; SLC 2010a, 231–32, partial.

21 Oct 1907: MTE , 10–14; SLC 2010a, 232–35.

25 Oct 1907: previously unpublished.

1 Nov 1907: MTE , 4–7, partial.

2 Dec 1907: MTE , 36–51.

10 Dec 1907: MTE , 51–60.

12 Dec 1907: previously unpublished.

13 Jan 1908: MTE , 312–19, partial; AMT , 353–57.

12 Feb 1908: previously unpublished.

13 Feb 1908: Cooley 1991, 102–6.

14 Feb 1908: Cooley 1991, 106–7 [dated Apr 1908], 127–31, partial.

19 Feb 1908: previously unpublished.

16 Apr 1908: previously unpublished.

17 Apr 1908: Arthur L. Scott 1966, 116–22, partial; Cooley 1991, 137–41, partial.

27 Apr 1908: previously unpublished.

[begin page 682] 28 Apr 1908: previously unpublished.

29 Apr 1908: SLC 2009, 87–94.

21 May 1908: MTE , 96–105, partial.

22 May 1908: previously unpublished.

3 June 1908: previously unpublished.

26 June 1908: MTE , 347, partial.

3 July 1908: MTE , 292–95, partial; AMT , 357–60.

6 July 1908: AMT , 360–62.

7 July 1908: MTE , 303–9; AMT , 290–94.

8 July 1908: MTE , 295–301; AMT , 362–66.

9 July 1908: MTE , 301–3; AMT , 366–67.

10 July 1908: AMT , 368–70.

14 July 1908: MTE , 24–33, partial.

16 July and 12 Sept 1908: MTE , 1–4, 34, partial; MTB , 3:1633–36, partial.

16 Aug 1908: SLC 1923a, 351–54.

6 Oct 1908: SLC 2004, 56–57, partial.

31 Oct 1908: MTE , 349–51, partial.

2 Nov 1908: previously unpublished.

5 Nov 1908: previously unpublished.

12 Nov 1908: previously unpublished.

24 Nov 1908: MTB , 3:1640–42, partial.

8 Dec 1908: previously unpublished.

10 Dec 1908: previously unpublished.

16 Dec 1908: previously unpublished.

22 Dec 1908: SLC 1909d.

Christmas Day, 1908: SLC 2010, 235–38.

5 Jan 1909: previously unpublished.

11 Jan 1909: Shapiro 2014, 353–57.

10 Mar 1909: Cooley 1991, 254–55, partial.

25 Mar 1909: SLC 1909a, 144–50.

16 Apr 1909: previously unpublished.

“Note to Chapter . . . ”: previously unpublished.

21 Oct 1909: previously unpublished.

“Closing Words of My Autobiography”: SLC 1911, partial; AMT , 371–80.

[begin page 683]

“Chapters from My Autobiography” in
the North American Review, 1906–1907

The texts listed below in italic type were published in full or nearly so—that is, with no more than a paragraph or occasional sentence omitted.

Installment	Published	Contents
NAR 1	7 Sept 1906	AD 26 Mar 1906 (Introduction); My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] (first part)
NAR 2	21 Sept 1906	AD, 21 May 1906; Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX (first part); [Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich]; AD, 3 Apr 1906
NAR 3	5 Oct 1906	ADs, 1 Feb 1906, 2 Feb 1906, 5 Feb 1906
NAR 4	19 Oct 1906	ADs, 7 Feb 1906, 8 Feb 1906
NAR 5	2 Nov 1906	ADs, 9 Feb 1906, 12 Feb 1906
NAR 6	16 Nov 1906	ADs, 26 Feb 1906, 7 Mar 1906, 22 Mar 1906
NAR 7	7 Dec 1906	ADs, 5 Mar 1906, 6 Mar 1906, 23 Mar 1906
NAR 8	21 Dec 1906	AD, 19 Jan 1906
NAR 9	4 Jan 1907	ADs, 13 Dec 1906, 1 Dec 1906, 2 Dec 1906
NAR 10	18 Jan 1907	ADs, 28 Mar 1906, 29 Mar 1906
NAR 11	1 Feb 1907	ADs, 29 Mar 1906 (misdated 28 Mar in the NAR), 2 Apr 1906
NAR 12	15 Feb 1907	[John Hay]; ADs, 5 Apr 1906, 6 Apr 1906
NAR 13	1 Mar 1907	My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] (second part)
NAR 14	15 Mar 1907	ADs, 6 Dec 1906, 17 Dec 1906, 11 Feb 1907 (misdated 10 Feb in the NAR), 12 Feb 1907, 17 Jan 1906
NAR 15	5 Apr 1907	ADs, 8 Oct 1906, 22 Jan 1907
NAR 16	19 Apr 1907	ADs, 12 Jan 1906, 13 Jan 1906, 15 Jan 1906
NAR 17	3 May 1907	AD, 15 Oct 1906; Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX (second part)
NAR 18	17 May 1907	ADs, 21 Dec 1906, 28 Mar 1907
NAR 19	7 June 1907	ADs, 21 Dec 1906 (with note dated 22 Dec), 19 Nov 1906, 30 Nov 1906, 5 Sept 1906
[begin page 684] NAR 20	5 July 1907	Notes on “Innocents Abroad”; AD, 23 Jan 1907
NAR 21	2 Aug 1907	ADs, 8 Nov 1906, 8 Mar 1906, 6 Jan 1907
NAR 22	Sept 1907	ADs, 10 Oct 1906, 19 Jan 1906 (dated 12 Mar 1906 in the NAR, with note dated 13 May 1907), 20 Dec 1906
NAR 23	Oct 1907	ADs, 9 Mar 1906, 16 Mar 1906, 26 July 1907, 30 July 1907
NAR 24	Nov 1907	ADs, 9 Oct 1906, 16 Oct 1906, 11 Oct 1906, 12 Oct 1906, 23 Jan 1907
NAR 25	Dec 1907	ADs, 11 Jan 1906, 3 Oct 1907