Young John D., you see, has been dripping theology again, yesterday. I missed his reunion of the honorary membership of his Bible Class last Thursday nightⒺexplanatory note, through illness, and I was very sincerely sorry. I had to telephone him not to come for me. However, perhaps it was of profit to me to be obliged to stay away, forⒶapparatus note I was going to say some things about lying which would have been too nakedly true for Bible Class consumption. That Bible Class is so uninured to anything resembling either truth or sense that I think a clean straight truth falling in its midst would make as much havoc as a bombshell.

ThatⒶapparatus note is a scrap which I have cut from this morning’s Times. It is very prettily done, charmingly done; done with admirable ease and grace—with the ease and grace that are born of feeling and sympathy, as well as of practice with the pen. Every now and then a newspaper reporter astonishes me with felicities like this. I was a newspaper reporter myself forty-four years ago, and during three subsequent years—but as I remember it I and my comrades never had time to cast our things in a fine literary mouldⒶapparatus note. That scrapⒶapparatus note will be just as touching and just as beautiful three hundred years hence as it is now.

I intend that this autobiography shall become a model for all future autobiographies when it is published, after my death,Ⓐapparatus note and I also intend that it shall be read and admiredⒶapparatus note a good many centuries because of its form and method—a form and method whereby the past and the present are constantly brought face to face, resulting in contrasts which newlyⒶapparatus note fire up the interest all alongⒶapparatus note like contact of flint with steel. Moreover, this autobiography of mine does not select from my life its showy episodes, but deals merely in the common experiences which go to make up the life of the average human being,Ⓐapparatus note and the narrative must interest the average human being because these episodes are of a sort which he is familiar with in his own life, and in which he sees his own life reflected and set down in print. The usual, conventional autobiographer seems to particularly hunt out those occasions in his career when he came into contact with celebrated persons, whereas his contacts with the uncelebrated were just as interesting to him, and would be to his reader, and were vastly more numerous than his collisions with the famous.

Howells was here yesterday afternoon, and I told him the whole scheme of this autobiography and its apparently systemless system—only apparently systemless, for it is notⒶapparatus note that. It is a deliberate system, and the law of the system is that I shall talk about the matter which for the moment interests me, and cast it aside and talk about something else the moment its interest for me is exhausted. It is a system which follows no charted course and is not going to follow any such course. It is a system which is a complete and purposed jumble—a course which begins nowhere, follows no specified route, and can never reach an end while I am alive, for the reason thatⒶapparatus note if I should talk to the stenographer two hours a day for a hundred years, I should still never be able to set down a tenth part of the things which have interested me in my lifetime. I told Howells that this autobiography of mine would live a couple of thousand years without any effortⒶapparatus note and would then take a fresh start and live the rest of the time.

He said he believed it would, and asked me if I meant to make a library of it.

I said that that was my design,Ⓐapparatus note but that if I should live long enoughⒶapparatus note the set of volumes could not be contained merely in a city, it would require a State, and that there would not be any RockefellerⒶapparatus note alive, perhaps, at any time during its existence who would be able to buy a full set, except on the instalment plan.

Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which was wise in him and judicious. If he had manifested a different spiritⒶapparatus note I would have thrown him out of the window. I like criticism, but it must be my way.

Day before yesterday there was anotherⒶapparatus note of thoseⒶapparatus note happy literary efforts of the reporters, and I meant to cut it out and insert it to be read with a sad pleasure in future centuries, but I forgot and threw the paper away. It was a brief narrative, but well stated. A poor little starved girl of sixteen, clothed in a single garment, in mid-winterⒶapparatus note, (albeit properly speaking this is spring) was brought in her pendent rags before a magistrate by a policeman, and the charge against her was that she had been found trying to commit suicide. The Judge asked her why she was moved to that crime, and she told him, in a low voice broken by sobs, that her life had become a burden which she could no longer bear; that she worked sixteen hours a day in a sweat-shop; that the meagreⒶapparatus note wage she earned had to go toward the family support; that her parents were never able to give her any clothes or enough to eat; that she had worn this same ruined garment as long back as she could remember; that her poor companions were her envy because often they had a penny to spend for some pretty trifle for themselves; that she could not remember when she had had a penny for such a purpose. The court, the policemenⒶapparatus note, and the other spectators cried with her—a sufficient proof that she told her pitiful tale convincingly and well. And the fact that I also was moved by it, at second-hand, is proof that that reporter delivered it from his heart through his pen, and did his work wellⒺexplanatory note.

In the remote parts of the country the weekly village newspaper remains the same curious production it was when I was a boy, sixty years ago, on the banks of the Mississippi. The metropolitan daily of the great city tells us every day about the movements of Lieutenant GeneralⒶapparatus note so and so and Rear-Admiral so and so, and what the Vanderbilts are doingⒺexplanatory note, and what hedge beyond the frontiers of New York John D. Rockefeller is hiding behind to keep from being dragged into court and made to testify about alleged Standard Oil iniquitiesⒺexplanatory note. These great dailies keep us informed of Mr. Carnegie’s movements and sayingsⒺexplanatory note; they tell us what President Roosevelt said yesterday and what he is going to do to-dayⒶapparatus note. They tell us what the children of hisⒶapparatus note family have been saying, just as the princelings of Europe are daily quoted—and we notice that the remarks of the Roosevelt children are distinctly princely in that the things they say are rather notably inane and not worth while. The great dailies kept us overwhelmed, for a matter of two months, with a daily and hourly and most minute and faithful account of everything Miss Alice and her fiancéⒶapparatus note were saying and doing and what they were going to say and what they were going to do, until at last, through God’s mercy they got married and went under cover and got quietⒺexplanatory note.

Now the court-circularⒶapparatus note of the remote village newspaper has always dealt, during these sixty years, with the comings and goings and sayings of itsⒶapparatus note local princelings. They have told us during all those years, and they still tell us, what the principal grocery man is doing and how he has bought a new stock; they tell us that relatives are visiting the ice-cream man, that Miss Smith has arrived to spend a week with the Joneses, and so on, and so on. And all that record is just as intensely interesting to the villagers as is the record I have just been speaking of, of the doings and sayings of the colossally conspicuous personages of the United States. This shows that human nature is all alike; it shows that we like to know what the big people are doing, so that we can envy them. It shows that the big personage of a village bears the same proportion to the little people of the village that the President of the United States bears to the nation. It shows that conspicuousnessⒶapparatus note is the only thing necessary in a person to command our interest [begin page 443] and, in a larger or smaller sense, our worship. We recognize that there are noⒶapparatus note trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them. In a village they are just as prodigious as they are when the subject is a personage of national importance.

Now thatⒶapparatus note is a very genuine and sincere and honest account of what the Swangos have been doing lately in the interior of Kentucky. We see at a glance what a large place that Swango tribe hold in the admiration and worship of the villagers of Hazel Green, Kentucky. In this account, change Swango to VanderbiltⒶapparatus note; then change it to CarnegieⒶapparatus note; next time change it to RockefellerⒶapparatus note; next time change it to the PresidentⒶapparatus note; next time to the Mayor of New YorkⒶapparatus note; next time to Alice’s new husband. Last change of all, change Mrs. Shiloh SwangoⒶapparatus note to Mrs. Alice Roosevelt LongworthⒶapparatus note. Then it’s a court-circular, all complete and dignified.Ⓐapparatus note

This clipping from a Des Moines, Iowa, newspaper, arrives this morning. Ed Marsh was a cousin of my wife, and I remember him very well. He was present at our wedding thirty-six years ago, and was a handsome young bachelor. Aside from my interest in him as a cousin of my young bride, he had another interest for me in the fact that in his Company of the Second Iowa Infantry was Dick Higham. Five years before the war Dick, a good-natured, simple-minded, winning lad of seventeen, was an apprentice in my brother’s small printing-office in KeokukⒺexplanatory note, Iowa. He had an old musket and he used to parade up and down with it in the office, and he said he would rather be a soldier than anything else. The rest of us laughed at him and said he was nothing but a disguised girl, and that if he were confronted by the enemy he would drop his gun and run.

But we were not good prophets. By and by when President Lincoln called for volunteers Dick joined the Second Iowa Infantry, about the time that I was thrown out of my employment as Mississippi River pilot and was preparing to become an imitation soldier on the Confederate side in Ralls County, Missouri. The Second Iowa was moved down to the neighborhood of St. Louis and went into camp there. In some way or other it disgraced itself—and if I remember rightly the punishment decreed was that it should never unfurl its flag again until it won the privilege by gallantry in battle. When General Grant, by and by—February ’62—was ordering the charge upon Fort Donelson the Second Iowa begged for the privilege of leading the assault, and got it. Ed Marsh’s Company, with Dick in it serving as a private soldier, moved up the hill and through and over the felled trees and other obstructions in the forefront of the charge, and Dick fell with a bullet through the centreⒶapparatus note of his forehead—thus manfully wiping from the slate the chaffing prophecy of five or six years before. Also, what was left of the Second Iowa finished that charge victorious, with its colors flying, and never more to be furled in disgraceⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note

Ed Marsh’s sister also was at our wedding. She and her brother bore for each other an almost idolatrous love, and this endured until about a year ago. About the time of our marriage, that sister married a blatherskite by the name of Talmage Brown. He was a smart man, but unscrupulous and intemperately religious.Ⓐapparatus note Through his smartness he acquired a large fortune, and in his will, made shortly before his death, he appointed Ed Marsh as one of the executors. The estate was worth a million dollars or more, but its affairs were in a very confused condition. Ed Marsh and the other one or two executors performed their duty faithfully, and without remuneration. It took them years to straighten out the estate’s affairs, but they accomplished it. During the succeeding years all went pleasantly. But at last, about a year ago, some relatives of the late Talmage Brown persuaded the widow to bring suit against Ed Marsh and his fellow executors for a large sum of money which it was pretended they had either stolen or had wasted by mismanagement. That severed the devoted relationship which had existed between the brother and sister throughout their lives. The mere bringing of the suit broke Ed Marsh’s heart, for he was a thoroughly honorable man and could not bear even the breath of suspicion. He took to his bed and the case went to court. He had no word of blame for his sister, andⒶapparatus note said that no one was to blame but the Browns.Ⓐapparatus note They had poisoned her mind. The case was heard in court. Then the Judge threwⒶapparatus note it out with many indignant comments. The BrownsⒶapparatus note rose to leave the court roomⒶapparatus note but he commanded them to wait and hear what else he had to say. Then in [begin page 445] dignified language he skinned them alive, pronounced them frauds and swindlers and let them go. But the news of the rehabilitation reached Marsh too late to save him. He did not rally. He has been losing ground gradually for the past two months, and now at last the end has come.

This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-miningⒶapparatus note comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years. Higbie figures in a chapter of mine in “Roughing It,” where the tale is told of how we discovered a rich blind lead in the “Wide West Mine”Ⓐapparatus note in Aurora—or, as we called that region then, Esmeralda—and how instead of making our ownership of that exceedingly rich property permanent by doing ten days’ work on it, as required by the mining laws,Ⓐapparatus note he went off on a wild goose chase to hunt for the mysterious cement mine;Ⓐapparatus note and howⒶapparatus note I went off nine miles to Walker River to nurse Captain John Nye through a violent case of spasmodic rheumatism or blind staggers, or some malady of the kind; and how Cal and I came wandering back into Esmeralda one night just in time to be too late to save our fortune from the jumpersⒺexplanatory note.

I will insert here this letter, and as it will not see the light until Higbie and I are in our graves, I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed. They plainly state that he is not educated, and they as plainly state that he makes no pretense to being educated.

I have written HigbieⒺexplanatory note and asked him to let me do his literary trading for him. He can shovel sand better than I can—as will appear in the next chapter—but I can beat him all to pieces in the art of fleecing a publisher.Ⓐapparatus note