As I have already remarked, “Old Times on the Mississippi” got the Kaiser’s best praiseⒺexplanatory note. It was after midnight when I reached homeⒺexplanatory note; I was usually out until toward midnight, and the pleasure of being out late was poisoned, every night, by the dread of what I must meet at my front door—an indignant face, a resentful face, the face of the portierⒶtextual note. The portierⒶtextual note was a tow-headed young German, twenty-two or -threeⒶtextual note years old, and it had been for some time apparent to me that he did not enjoy being hammered out of his sleep,Ⓐtextual note nights,Ⓐtextual note to let me in. He never had a kind word for me, nor a pleasant look. I couldn’t understand it, since it was his business to be on watch and let the occupants of the several flats in at any and all hours of the night. I could not see why he so distinctly failed to getⒶtextual note reconciled to it.

TheⒶtextual note fact is, I was ignorantly violating, every night, a custom in which he was commercially interested. I did not suspect this. No one had told me of the custom, and if I had been left to guess it, it would have taken me a veryⒶtextual note long time to make a success of it. It was a custom which was so well established and so universally recognized, that it had all the force and dignity of law. By authority of this custom, whosoever entered a Berlin house after ten at night must pay a trifling toll to the portierⒶtextual note for breaking his sleep to let him in. This tax was either two and a half cents or five cents, I don’t remember which; but I had never paid it, and didn’t know I owed it, and as I had been residing in Berlin severalⒶtextual note weeks, I was so far in arrears that my presence in the German capital was getting to be a serious disaster to that young fellow.

I arrived from the imperial dinnerⒶtextual note sorrowful and anxious, made my presence known, and prepared myself to wait in patience the tedious minute or two which the portierⒶtextual note usually allowed himself to keep me tarrying—Ⓐtextual noteas a punishment.Ⓐtextual note But this time there was no stage wait; the door was instantly unlocked, unbolted, unchained, and flung wide; and in it appeared the strange and welcome apparition of the portier’sⒶtextual note round face all sunshine and smiles and welcome, in place of the black frowns and hostility that I was expecting. Plainly he had not come out of his bed:Ⓐtextual note he had been waiting for me, watching for me. He began to pour out upon me in the most enthusiastic and energetic way [begin page 316] a generous stream of German welcome and homage,Ⓐtextual note meanwhile dragging me excitedly to his small bedroom beside the front door; there he made me bend down over a row of German translations of my books and said,

“There—you wrote them! I have found it out! By God, I did not know it before, and I ask a million pardons!Ⓐtextual note That one there, the ‘Old Times on the MississippiⒶtextual note,’ is the best book you ever wrote.”

The usual number of those curious accidents which we call coincidences have fallen to my share in this life, but for picturesqueness this one puts all the others in the shade: that a crowned head and a portierⒶtextual note, the very top of an empire and the very bottom of it, should pass the very same criticism and deliver the very same verdict upon a book of mine—and almost in the same hour and the same breath—is a coincidence which out-coincidences any coincidence which I could have imagined with such powers of imagination as I have been favored with;Ⓐtextual note and I have not been accustomed to regard them as being small or of an inferior quality. It is always a satisfaction to me to remember that whereas I do not know, for sure,Ⓐtextual note what any otherⒶtextual note nation thinks of any one of my twenty-three volumesⒺexplanatory note, I do at least know for a certainty what one nationⒶtextual note of fifty millions thinks of one of them, at any rate;Ⓐtextual note for if the mutual verdict of the top of an empire and the bottom of it does not establish,Ⓐtextual note for good and all,Ⓐtextual note the judgment of the entire nation concerning that book, then the axiom that we can get a sure estimate of a thing by arriving at a general average of all the opinions involved, is a fallacy.

Speaking of coincidences, one has come my way this morning. While my breakfast was cooling off at my bedsideⒶtextual note, I was puzzling once more over how one might define the word civilization in a single phrase, unencumbered by confusing elaborations. Necessarily, one could not hope to describe the edifice itself in a phrase, nor in a hundred phrases; but one might hope to squeeze into a phrase the foundation of the edifice, the basis upon which all the elaborations are built toward the sky. By and by I concluded to word the phrase like this: “civilization is a condition wherein every man is of necessity both a master and a slave.”

It means forced labor, compulsory labor—every man working for somebody else while imagining that he is working for himself, and at the same time living upon the work of other men who think they are working for themselves and not for him. I do not know of any one, from the emperor down to the rag-picker, who under the hard conditions of civilization is not both master and slave, and who is not obliged to do work which he does not want to do, but does the work because he is a slave, and his master requires it of him and is able to compel him to do it. I seem to have been an exception, for forty years. I seem to work only when I please, and to do no work that I don’t want to do. But a moment’s reflection shows me that this applies only to my trade. But even this detail will not bear examination. Several times a year I do literary work which I do not want to do, but feel that I cannot escape it; also many times a year I attend banquets and make speeches, whereas I would never attend a banquet nor make a speech if in my condition of slavery I could avoid it, and have my own way. Many things go to the building of that irksome and unsatisfactory condition which we call civilization, but I am satisfied that [begin page 317] the whole edifice rests upon the basis of enforced slavery. I find only one man who does only the work which he likes to do—and therefore works not at all, for work which one enjoys is not work, but play: that man is the uncivilized man, the savage. In a fine and large degree he is no man’s slave; he is only a master, a slave owner, and his slave is his wife. She does all the work; she gathers the wood and builds the fire and cooks the food; she jerks the beef; she tans the skins and makes the clothes; she puts up the tents and takes them down; she packs the ponies and moves the camp, and on the move she walks and her husband rides. He seldom does any work, but hunts and fishes and goes to war, and to him it is all play and pleasure. I have an impression amounting almost to conviction that the conditions of his life are worth more than six of our civilizations.

When I had finished these philosophizings and was ready to begin upon my cold breakfast, I took up the Sun Ⓐtextual note and found an editorial in it which could have been written with my belated thinkings for a text. It was quite a striking coincidence, and it seemed to me that the writer was an unusually wise person and profound and sane thinker. Then I read the rest of his article and found that he was crediting the meat and marrow of his conclusions to meⒺexplanatory note. At first I was not able to recall the connection; then I perceived that he had in his mind the whitewashing of the fence in “Tom Sawyer.”Ⓔexplanatory note I was afraid he was going to overlook something; I was afraid he was going to imagine that I had originated the idea, and that would have been a mistake, for I have never originated an idea, and I have never heard of anybody who had originated one. But he did not make the mistake. He suggested that without any doubt these notions had been held and discussed by other wise persons thousands of years ago.